Where's The Rest Of Me?!

As autumn grows increasing cold and dark here in Ohio, people are doing whatever they need to do to avoid going insane.

Most seem to be eating more.

Judging from their behavior, many seem to be drinking more.

Me? I've taken to weighing myself before going to bed at night and then again when I get up.

I'm not sure what first prompted me to start doing this. I suppose the fact that I was full and the knowledge that drinking invariably gives me a headache had something to do with it. Throw in the fact that weighing myself costs me nothing and the fact that it gives me an excuse to parade around naked in front of my teddy bears and I suppose it was darn near inevitable.

I started Sunday night.

On Monday morning I discovered that I'd lost 0.8 pounds while I slept.

This was unexpected - and more than a little disconcerting. The average human brain, after all, weighs maybe 3 pounds. Could my body really have shed more than 25% of MY brain's weight while I slumbered? (Wait - did I do the math right there?) Could I have lost my appendix?? (I'm told those weigh a mere 1/6 of an ounce. Maybe I lost a dozen or two!)

I decided to search my bed very carefully before going any further.

Finding nothing unusual proved to be both a great relief and extremely troubling.

If I hadn't shed any body parts during the night, how had I lost 0.8 pounds?

Had I really exhaled and/or sweated away that much water? Unless I'd experienced one incredibly horrendous yet completely forgotten sneeze while I slept, that seemed the likeliest answer. But it still didn't seem very likely. A gallon of water weighs about 8 pounds. Had I really lost 1/10th of a gallon while just lying there in the cold, cold dark?

I decided to search my bed again.

Nothing.

Stymied, I decided to see what the next weigh-ins might reveal. Maybe it had just been a fluke.

As it turned out, it wasn't.

Between going to bed Monday night and waking up Tuesday morning, I'd lost another 0.6 pounds.

As tempted as I was to immediately call the police and report this fractionally missing person, I somehow managed to get a grip and tried to think things through.

After much cogitation, I realized that I'd worn a sleep mask for the first time ever that night in an attempt to block out all artificial light and get rid of the last bits of insomnia I've been suffering lately. It seems to have worked - I slept *very* well - but I found myself wondering if maybe that mask was also inadvertently responsible for my having lost only 0.6 pounds overnight instead of 0.8 pounds.

Had I unknowingly cried out 0.2 pounds of tears the night before?

Had 0.2 pounds of eye worms unknowingly exited my maskless head??

That way lay madness.

I stopped thinking altogether.

I awaited the results of another day.

Today.

And those results revealed that I'd somehow managed to lose 1.2 pounds last night despite wearing my mask again!

I quickly searched my bed again - in vain.

So I quickly searched my entire house. If part of my body was hiding anywhere, it's important to me that I be the one to find it - not the cable guy, not the plumber, not the lady I hope to hire someday to give my pet chicken private belly dance lessons.

Nothing.

Now, really.... Do you know how much 1.2 pounds is? When I get a pound of sliced turkey at the deli, I pretty much have to use both hands to put it into my cart. Ok, sure, maybe that's because I'm a "Safety First!" belt-and-suspenders kind of person, but still.... That pound of turkey will last me almost a week. How could my body be losing that much and more during a single night of non-running, non-walking, and non-hacking-away-at-itself-with-a-machete?

I don't know. I just don't know....

But I've been eying my scale with suspicion. I think it might be toying with me. It's a relatively new digital scale that I picked up over the summer. I'm not sure where it came from, exactly - or which of my other digital devices it might have taken a fancy to. Maybe it's been spending its nights thinking about how much easier it would be to connect with those other digital devices once it's driven me crazy and I've gone running off to live in the woods, eh?

I guess the future will tell. It usually does, being a real blabbermouth and all. In the meantime, I plan on eating a bit extra while I'm awake in hopes of reducing the odds of my waking up one morning without any weight left at all.

I suggest you do the same.

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TMI NOTE: Yes, I've weighed myself each morning *before* doing anything else. This morning - just out of curiosity - I also weighed myself *after* doing something else (i.e, pissing). That took me down another 0.4 pounds.

Being in no mood to get naked again at the moment, I can only guess at how much lighter I am now that my head has spewed out all these thoughts....