I lost nine pounds over the last little while. I deserved a reward. And now I’m back from my Walmart Super Center with my bundle buggy full of reward.

Don’t laugh. I go to Walmart Super Center primarily because they’ve got the best pistachio nuts anywhere.

It’s some kind of house brand California roasted and salted pistachios that I’ve only seen at the Walmart Super Centers. Not at the regular Walmart stores. Maybe they’ve got them there, but I didn’t see them. But I know you can get them at the Super Centers.

These things are big. And they’re all so easy to open. Way fewer barely open ones than you get in fancy store brands.

I am a master of self-discipline so I only picked up a basket on my way in for the pistachios.

And then I went and selected…

Just pistachios…

• And Doritos.
• And Munchos.
• And rice crackers.
• And cheese popcorn.
• And Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn.
• And Goodies.
• Oh, and then two bags of pre-prepared salad fixins and some soy milk, to make me feel less guilty.

I ended up having to get a cart and put everything in there.

Sometimes I think to myself, What would Dame Edna do?

As I get off the elevator in my apartment building I notice that Edna, my elderly neighbour, is in the hallway, picking up some junk mail off the carpet in front of her door.

Here’s the thing: I’ve been in my building for more than 15 years and Edna’s been here about 10. When she goes away to her son’s for Christmas and for a few weeks in the summer, she comes by and asks me to make sure there isn’t any junk mail in front of her door when she’s gone, so no-one thinks they can break in because she’s not there. And she has a little Tweetybird Christmas wreath that she hangs on her door in December. It’s cutely ridiculous and it makes me smile. Usually. Unless I’m pissed off at something, which is my typical disposition.

So Edna’s a nice woman. I bump into Edna about twice a year in the hallway. And today was one of those bumps.

“Hi, Edna.”

“Hi, Paul, how are you?”

“Hot.”

“Yes. Me too. All of a sudden it’s hot finally. We haven’t had much of a summer, have we?”

The summer has been quite cool, actually. And as a fat guy I’m elated. I hate hot. Hot makes me ooze out sweat like a stuck pig oozes blood at the abattoir. But I didn’t want to say that because people never know precisely how to respond to that.

So I didn’t feel like getting into a hallway conflab with dame Edna. I didn’t feel like being honest and I didn’t have the energy to complete a fake conversation.

And dammit I was hungry. I just wanted to get to my junk food and feed my ravenous Calorie Creature.

So I put on the ‘I’m pretending to be polite’ tone with Edna:

“No, not much of a summer. Not much of a summer. Okay, nice to see you, Edna.”

“You too. Goodbye, Paul.”

Hall monitor junk-food cop? In my hallway? What is this, grade 4?

And then as I push the hawl from my Walmart Super Center buying binge past her, Edna leans over and peers down at the bags of junk food stacked high in my buggy and gives them a good, long, obvious, judgmental gawk.

Turd-head fart-ette. I felt like stuffing her face right into all that food. I mean, she was practically touching it with her nose anyway.

Of all da noyve!

If it were anyone else other than my sweet long-time apartment neighbour I would have said, “Sorry ma’am, was there something you needed in here?”

But it was Edna. I carried on down the hallway, visualizing her behind me, hand on hip, vigorously and manically waving her boney little finger at me.

“You’re not going to get thinner eating goddam shit like that, young feller,” I could hear her not saying to me but wanting to.

Witch.

So I just continued on to my apartment.

Ready, set, pig out

I pigged out heartily, doing my best to balance out the calories I burned off at the gym with the calories I purchased at my glorious Walmart Super Center, where patrons such as myself don our finest sweatpants (ones with no holes in them) just for the occasion.

I hope you can appreciate my struggle here. You see, I’m trying to achieve an extremely delicate life balance here: a little bit of exercise on the one side; a lot of bit of porking out on the other.

It’s not easy. But this is how you keep your life in harmony...

And your ass in 64”-waist pants.