The Girlfriend© and I have finally found a holiday destination for later this year. In September, as suggested in a previous post, we are heading for Croatia. It’s booked, so that gives me five months to lose some weight.

Impending holidays are often the motivation some people need to shed a few pounds, and I’m going to use the same (fairly) arbitrary tactic to lose a few of my own. Whatever makes it happen, eh?

They say that happiness can expand the waistline, so I guess with every pro there’s a con… but they also say that depression can do the same. Of course, this all makes it seem that the people who say these things are just covering their bases. Suffice to say, I’ll throw myself into the former camp, and blame The Girlfriend© for making me happy.

But seriously… I’m tired of my shirts being a little too tight, and I don’t enjoy not knowing if my jeans are going to fit me before I take them off the hanger. I’m tired of making excuses.

Most of us could stand to drop down a dress size or two, and this is my pledge to do just that.

So… five months, five stone? Probably not, but there’s no point aiming for the fence when you know you want to knock the ball clean out of the stadium.

I don’t know who is worse – this woman who ‘married’ a 37 year old zombie doll called Kelly, complete with ceremony and subsequent consummation; or the people who think that her bride is actually a dead child.

Admittedly, it’s quite a good (albeit gruesome) depiction of a dead child, but you would have to be both blind and high to think it was anything other than fabric and some decent face paint. That’s not to say that I think marrying a dead kid is any more or less weird than taking your vows with a puppet. Because it’s not.

Twenty year old Felicity was given the doll seven years earlier and they have been close ever since. This says it all:

“Despite having been in a relationship with Kelly for four years, getting married to her has made me feel so much closer to her, both emotionally and intimately... I married Kelly but only because I accept her for who she is, I look past her bloody face and I don’t mind her not having a jaw.”

Are you fucking kidding me? Looks aren’t everything – trust me, I get that – but at the very least I do like a girl to have the bottom half of her face intact.

Good luck, Felicity, but I reckon your zombie pal was munching on your brain long before the wedding took place.

Three weeks to go with the nasal drops. They’re not pleasant, but they are working.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t really think the course would fix it. I thought I had left it too long. You know, buried my head in the sand ostrich-style. Also, half the time I think doctors throw a bunch of pills and potions at you to see what sticks. But nineteen days after I started, it looks like – fingers crossed – I am back to where I was before.

If there’s a difference between this and being back to full sniffing capacity, then it’s imperceptible to me. Everything I have happened across that I should be able to smell, I can. I am rediscovering a part of life that most of us take for granted.

That sounds trite, I know, but it’s like moving from standard definition to HD, and who would want to be stuck with 480p?