I started the 30 Day Shred (again) last night in an effort to get a jump start on my February goal of exercising more.  I have never been able to do any work out for more than probably 7 days straight and I’m pretty sure it’s not good for your body to not give it a rest day, but I have made the silly goal of actually doing the 30 Day Shred for 30 days.  I will probably fail, but, you can’t win if you don’t play.  “Pain is fear leaving the body.”  (God, I hate Jillian so much.)

So, because I wanted to have an idea of my starting point, I took my measurements and some “before” photos that are for my eyes only.  I took them on my iPhone and because I often whip out my phone to show people my darling son (the modern version of, “Here, look at my vacation slide show.”) I wanted to get them off my phone and into a place where people won’t immediately see them (and recoil in horror at my cellulited ass).  My phone does not currently sync with my computer, so I decided to e-mail them to myself.  I VERY carefully entered my e-mail address as I was mailing them to myself and hit send after checking and re-checking to see if I had entered the proper address.  As soon as the final picture whooshed out of my inbox an e-mail came in from my father.  Subject line: These came through.  Body of message: “I will check them out in the morning.  I’m hitting the rack.”

I think you can probably imagine the feeling I had.  That feeling of all of your blood draining from the top half of your body into the bottom half.

I immediately went into a flop sweat and checked my sent mail.  It appeared I had only sent the photos to myself, but what if I SENT THEM TO MY ENTIRE CONTACTS LIST?  What if there was some terrible glitch?  I felt like I might actually die.

I frantically dialed my father and the phone rang and rang.

“Please don’t be in bed, PLEASE DON’T BE IN BED.”

He finally picked up.

“Dad, um, what was that e-mail about?”

“What e-mail?”

“The one that said, ‘These came through.’”

LONG TERRIBLE PAUSE.

“WHAT CAME THROUGH, DAD?”

“Oh, that went to you?  It was supposed to go to your sister, she sent me some real estate listings.”

Jesus.  Fucking. Christ. ON A CRACKER.

I explained the story to him and he had a good laugh.  Then I forwarded the e-mail he sent to my sister and told her what had happened.

She responded:  You would have totally had a rom-com night tonight breaking into everyone’s houses and deleting their emails before they had a chance to see your underwear. There - now you have a script to start writing!

Moral to the story:  Never, ever, take before photos.  EVER.