In a drunken fit of drunkenness, I agreed to wear a pedometer and set some fitness goals. Omron kindly asked me to join their Fitness Blogger Challenge Campaign, which, DUH, screams AUNT BECKY, right? They sent me some sweet ass swag (and some for YOU, too) and I was all, I am so going to beat the shit out of this challenge.

I just knew it.

I mean, as long as I could call it an “odometer,” I was pretty happy to try wearing the thing for a month. I mean, I walk all the time…right? Surely as a “writer”* on the Internet who spends her time watching zany cats do stuff while pecking out email after email on her Big Mac is probably an athletic superstar.

Really, how could I *not* be eligible for an award like, “most athletic blogger,” or “walks most steps in a day?” I scoffed at the suggestion of 10,000 steps a day – certainly I did at least a million steps each day. Probably TWO million!

In fact, I bet that I’d break the odometer with my awesome steps.

I couldn’t wait to go to the Omron factory, right in my backyard, to be all, “I broke this with my awesomeness.”

Happily I strapped it on the first day – I didn’t even drop it in the toilet. I hummed a little as I imagined the odometer getting all confused after I passed the 1 million steps mark.

At the end of the night, I glanced down at the thing and was all, OH EM GEE, this ridiculously expensive odometer is broken. Obviously.

Because there is NO WAY I only walked 2,398 steps. It probably had to roll over from 99,999 or something. Right?

The next morning, I got up and happily strapped the thing on again. This time I included some yoga pants (who cares if I never actually DO yoga in my yoga pants?) and a headband to catch all the sweat that I’d be dripping. I’d have used those weird 80′s wrist cuffs if I had any, but sadly, no.

I put up a picture of Bob Greene as a motivator-thingy and pictured him cheering me on each time I wrote an email.

“YOU GO AUNT BECKY. YOU BURN THOSE CALORIES AND YOU TAKE THOSE STEPS.”

His voice sounded like Billy Mays, so I got a little nostalgic. And when I get nostalgic, I have to take a nap. Kind of like when I have a cheeseburger. Or really, any time. I love naps. I bet Bob Greene does too. I get to talk to him next week and I plan to ask him about it.

The end of that night, after I was all EYE OF THE MOTHERFUCKING TIGER about shit? My odometer read 1,082.

Apparently, WEARING yoga pants isn’t the same as working out. Who the fuck knew?

Anyway.

It was a bad month to work on getting fit – pneumonia, now I’m dying of something that’s growing in my sinuses, then an ear infection, now Ebola – so I’m going to have to cram all of my Getting Fit With Omron into a week and a half. What can I say? I’m a procrastinator (although this time, not by choice).

So I’m setting a ridiculously low goal and trying to stick to it. I know that simple shit like parking far away from the entrance to Target (my boyfriend) is an easy way to get a little bit of exercise. If all else fails, I can throw the odometer on one of the kids and be all BOOO-YEAH.

Because Your Aunt Becky has GOT to get fit. Or die trying.

Oh yeah, and I’m being compensated to write this post by Bookieboo LLC in a blogger campaign with Omron Fitness.

*use of quotation marks is intentional.

Okay, Pranksters – I need some ridiculously awesome (or hilarious) fitness tips. Because obviously. Or if you’ve got none, tell me what your favorite flavor of cupcake is, because delicious. Obviously.

Every Saturday night, we’d go out to a nice dinner. There were four of us – the Fantastic Foursome – a group of giggly girls dealing with everything from single parenting to dating abusive assfucks, and there sat, week after week, a different restaurant each week. Sometimes, before we’d go out to eat, we’d watch episodes of Sex in the City, because, well, we were girls of a certain age.

I was the first to dissent. My new boyfriend, The Daver, lived in Chicago, and we, well, we were suburban girls. As much as I planned to bridge the gaps in geography, Daver and I were in the middle of that ever-so-sweet honeymoon stage of our relationship (well before the “I want to claw your eyes out with a hammer as you sleep” stage showed it’s pretty little head), so the very thought of NOT being with him was patently absurd.

I tried to make it back home for those dinners – the highlight of my stressful week – but eventually, the dinners sort of petered out. We’d bring Daver with us sometimes, but it wasn’t the same.

A little after that, Ashley – one of my best friends – met someone too, and for a spell, we’d double date. The only time, I should say, in my life that I’ve done so.

Shortly thereafter, a weekly dinner became a monthly dinner, and those became as unpredictable as my love/hate affair with Christina Aguilera.

Bored one night last January, I decided to, for old time’s sake (back when I had time), pop in my Sex in the City DVD’s. It was there, watching the impossibly irritating lives of those four women, when I realized how far I’d veered. I knew, of course, that having three children, migraines, and a wicked case of PTSD wasn’t exactly as glamorous a life as I’d once (semi) led. I sat there on the couch, mouth in the “catching flies” position, realizing how abjectly miserable I was. And how I needed to regain that part of myself buried under the mounds of bottles, nursing bras and impossibly tiny, yet adorable Playmobil pieces.

It was then when I launched the Bringing (Aunt) Becky Back Project. It was time to pull a Madonna and re-fucking-invent myself.

And I have. Started small. Even though I was still lugging around scads of baby pounds, I bought some clothes that made me feel good about myself. I bought pretty (read: sparkly) earrings and perfume that smelled like roses. I began to get regular pedicures, even though I’ve been certain that those women are talking about my gross feet. I took baths alone and tried to banish the guilt when I decided to dick around on the Internet rather than scrub my floor. Eventually, those pounds fell off and I burned my nursing bra.

I’ve managed to pull that girl back out of the shell she’d been living through a combination of being kinder to myself, scads of therapy, launching Band Back Together and Mushroom Printing, and picking up some freelancing gigs.

The girl who used to have carefree Saturday night dinners with her girlfriends may be long gone, but the person I’ve become knows that hanging out on the couch, wearing happy pants and a stained Purple Should Be A Flavor, Dammit t-shirt while watching reruns of Prison Break (read: documentaries about hot dogs), surrounded by love, well, everyone should be so lucky.

Because I am.

I sort of feel sorry for anyone stuck visiting me. Not because I’m not a gracious host (and I’m using “gracious” to mean yelling “get your own damn soda” while I lounge about on the couch) but because I’m a wicked bad tour guide. I’d rather tour the dumpster I used to get wasted behind than go and visit some of the more touristy bits of Chicago. Mostly because I find my dumpster more enthralling than the masses of people staring up at the Tall Buildings.

For a city who loves tourism as much as we do, we’re awfully rude about having them. I love nothing more than spoiling a nice snapshot by standing behind the lovely tourists and making inappropriate hand gestures while the shot is taken. I’d much prefer to take you to witness two mob bosses having a fist fight than I would ride the Ferris Wheel on Navy Pier. I’d rather take you to the dumpy pizza place, praying we don’t get diphtheria (AGAIN) while we nosh on the most delicious pizza ever created (even if it is a front for a drug cartel) than tour the Sears Tower**.

But my girl Crys is coming into town today. And while I’d like to be all, “Pranksters, come visit and we’ll go do awesome touristy things while I play World’s Best Tour Guide,” I know myself better than that. Because while she’s probably expecting to see Chicago’s Greatest Hits*, I’m planning to sit on the couch and make her fetch me Diet Coke.

In fact, I’m such a good friend that I’m praying she gets introduced to Chicago the way most of us do: fist-fight in the airport.

Because I never know I’m home until I deboard in Chicago, where everyone glowers glumly as they take off or put on clothes – depending on the season – threatening other passengers with their eyes to not fuck with them. I feel sort of sorry for my California-based friends who have no idea why everyone looks so pissed off until they step outside and realize it’s Balls Hot or Balls Cold.

It’s only then that I know I’m home sweet motherfucking home.

Welcome, Crys. Remember: don’t make eye contact.

*an oxymoron.

**It is not, never has been and never will be the “Willis Tower.”

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PS. Am here at the Stir today. Also: here.

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Also: are you guys as lousy a tour guide as I am?