1. A deferred milestone. I thought I was on track to hit the next weight milestone – 200 pounds even, or down 130 – on or about my birthday. Although I’ve started slowly creeping down again, the previous three weeks where I held all things equal has pretty much guaranteed I can’t get there from here unless I develop a pretty nasty stomach bug. It’s disappointing, of course. I was hoping to sit down to my traditional birthday lunch of crabcakes and hushpuppies and proceed to getting back to a “maintenance” level of eating. That feels out of reach. But I’m still damned well planning to have the crab cakes and hushpuppies.
2. Foreign aid debate. You know what one of the most successful bits of foreign policy of the post World War II era? Yeah, that would be when the United States poured out absolute shiploads of cash, material, and expertise on Europe and rebuilt a shattered continent. It turns out prosperous liberal democracies bound together by deep ties of trade tend not to try to kill each other nearly so often as they did when international diplomacy was a zero-sum game. The weight of American troops and weapons arguably won the war, but it was the Marshall Plan that won the peace. It’s a pity that Americans consistently refuse to remember their own history when we’re talking about relatively paltry sums in the contemporary foreign aid budget. Every scrap of progress we can make by throwing money at the problem is far less expensive than anything that happens when we need to get involved kinetically.
3. Walking. Gods, even with the latest in listening technology, walking is just a deadly dull way to spend 30 or 40 minutes every day. Yes, the scenery in the neighborhood is nice. Sometimes I get to see neighbors doing something stupid in full view of the sidewalk. Aside from occasionally getting to interface with the local wildlife, I’m sorry, but there just isn’t much to recommend it. Living at the far end of the dead end street, there are only so many ways to make the path different… and after six months, I’ve trod all those down multiple times each week already. Look, I’ll keep doing it… under protest and purely because the doc says I must… but you’ll never convince me that there isn’t a more interesting or entertaining use to those 30 or 40 minutes of every day that isn’t called off on account of weather.
Walk up to the average bulldog owner and tell them that you’re thinking about adding one to your pack. I’d be willing to bet that 4 out of every five of them will warn you off the breed. They’re sickly – prone to a list of illnesses as long as your leg. They’re rife with potential genetic abnormalities – their airways are too small, their joints are prone to problems, their skin, God help you, will demand seeming around the clock attention. The most common dog foods are apt to trigger a host of potential allergies for them. Bulldogs, despite their popularity, are a troubled breed and not for the faint of heart or thin of wallet.
jowls, smiling under bite, and undiluted obstinacy. Reaching his tenth birthday today, I’m acutely aware that I’ve got far fewer days left with him than I’ve had with him already. It’s one of life’s great inequities that the time we get with these animals is so incredibly short.
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