Living Longer, Through Stubbornness

OK, I'm getting older, I know, it is obvious. It takes longer to get everything moving in the morning. Things hurt more, and the reminders of past stupidity hound me through small annoyances, I limp, and it is difficult to reach down to tie my shoes. My fingers are numb on odd occasions. Without my glasses the world is fuzzy, strange, and alien. I have gone from needing them to read to needing them, and didn't even notice.

But, I am trying, I go to the gym, I lift weights until my muscles ache. I rock and roll my way through painful, breathless torment on the elliptical machine. I exercise, I chase my 10,000 steps with the stubborn single mindedness of Ahab. Slogging, limping through summer heat, and winter cold, rain, snow, sleet, the postal service has nothing on me.

I can tell you about the pleasures of adding fresh spinach to a tossed salad. I can tell you the best way to cut a tomato with the dull flat steel slabs we call knives at work. I know, through repeated lectures and warnings, the value of low dose aspirin, fish oil and multi vitamins.

I am trying. Still, my weight hovers between making my doctor furious, and making him weep in frustration.

Then, you see the headline marching across Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus. "Why exercise and diet might not be enough." Dammit!!!

What do I have to do? Start cutting off limbs? Is this what Poe was trying to tell us when he wrote Eldorado? "Ride boldly ride, the shade replied..." if you want to lose a few pounds. Or, just sit there and stew in your morbid depression. Either way, it isn't going to help, fatso.

I don't even read those articles. Maybe I should, maybe there will be some magic, some fat burning alchemy. Go back in time using honey, vinegar and ground pepper. A new, smaller, healthier you, with the addition of olive oil and soy milk. Nothing is ever that easy, though.

Maybe I will write an article, "tell your doctor you're not that bad." or "diet and exercise, do you really need both?" Followed quickly by "two kinds of cheese and bacon, the burger of your dreams." Maybe, "beer, and bourbon, you can have it all."

I think it is time we had a voice, those of us who are trying. I think we need a magazine, "We Are Doing Ok, Thanks for asking." If you are interested in being a contributor please let me know. Email me at tweettweetjohn@yahoo,com.

Thank you.