by Kelly

I am the proud owner of a gym membership. When I joined last fall, I had all sorts of ideas about how often I’d hit the gym, how aerobic, toned, flexible and dedicated I would be.

And I go. I go to the gym, but . . . But I’m not nearly as dedicated as I had hoped I would be.

Winter in Minnesota is dark and cold, and it’s much easier to stay indoors than it is to venture out.  This course of action — or rather inaction — has resulted in some extra padding, extra padding I’d love to shed now that spring appears to have sprung.

I was, therefore, able to relate with this tiny little book: The Sound of One Thigh Clapping: Haiku for a Thinner You.

The author, Meredith Clair, is a serial dieter, and in the midst of attending yet another weight-loss class, it hits her that the act of dieting is a lot like the act of writing haiku.

“To write a good haiku,” Clair says in her introduction, “one must pare down, economize, and make sacrafices.”

Dieting, of course, requires the same. And so it was that Clair found writing haiku to be a perfect side dish to her weight-loss plan.

I guffawed at many of her haiku, including this one:

So sweet. So creamy.

Yet so diabolical.

Dulce de Leche.

It immediately reminded me of Alison, my haiku’ing partner and a lover of dulce de leche. She picked up that love, of course, during our English-teaching days in Buenos Aires.

This one also jumped out at me:

This Filet-O-Fish

is neither fish nor filet.

And yet, I eat it.

As soon as I saw the words “filet-o-fish” that dang McDonald’s commercial started running through my head!

Filet-O-Fish aside, however, this little book inspired me to write my own diet-themed haiku:

Chocolate is breakfast.

Disagree if you want but

my mind is made up.

Now all I need is the inspiration to step away from the computer (I already know I won’t put down the chocolate) and hit the gym.