All this and fleeting fame, too….

It was a hard weekend.  But a fun one.  Kathryn came home for good from camp.  We went up Saturday morning to pick her up.  She had a great time there, and it was hard for her to say goodbye to so many good friends.  We took Kris’s dad up with us, and then came down and picked up the boys and got breakfast at Denny’s.  Good breakfast, but about the full day’s calories.  Anyway, needless to say, I didn’t have lunch on Saturday, and at a big dinner at Bajio (one of my favorites!) and went to a movie.  “Inception” was great!  And Sunday was quiet, and fairly innocuous on the calorie front.  but overall, not a great weekend.  Counts for the weekend are as follows:  Friday – 3445, Saturday – 2225, Sunday – 2730.  So for my goal of 2800 per day, not bad.  Nutrition-wise, though, it was a disaster.  But it’s a whole new week, and this was only my first week of counting calories religiously.  I’m still feeling good about things.

My wife made an off-hand remark over the weekend that for a while had me thinking.  We had just got home from the movie, and she asked if we had any Diet Coke at home.  I said no, but that water was better for us.  She said, “You’re not as fun when you’re healthy.”  It’s a joke, I know, and she would rather have me healthy and living longer than fat and sassy. (And who says I can’t be thin and sassy, huh?)  It made me think about something that’s been lurking in the back of mind for some time.  And it links to a comment my best fiend made recently about one of my posts: Will thin Tony be as funny as fat Tony? (or something to that effect.)  I have become very comfortable (relatively speaking) in my 250 lb. covering.  I have made the types of adjustments to life that I have needed to, and have, for the most part, kept my sense of humor about life and myself intact.  But I have the feeling that I was a lot more fun when I was in High School, and after I got married, until I started to get fat.  With the adding of layers I had other things crop up, depression being a huge part of that.

If you’ve never experienced depression, you can never know what it is like.  Your perceptions become distorted.  All life gets filtered through a new lens.  At first, you don’t really realize what is happening.  It’s like the story of the frog in a pot of cold water with the flame very low.  Gradually, bit by bit, the temperature goes up, and it’s so gradually that you just don’t notice, then before long, it’s gotten so hot, that you’re cooked.  You start to feel small changes, but nothing that doesn’t seem too much to handle.  You’re not as happy, you feel sad a little more of the time, and then you gradually get to the point that you don’t feel happy most of the time.  You lose sleep because of it; you treat your family like strangers, or worse; you stop connecting with those around you.  It’s a very dark spiral that you enter.  Hopefully, you have someone wonderful to realize that you are in trouble and need help.  I went through that.  I’m not proud of the way I was, but at least comforted in that I never really lost my true friends.  And I’m better now, and getting so all the time.  I know that losing this shell will go a long way to putting all that behind me for good.  And I am convinced that this jovial and affable elf you have all come to know and (hopefully) love will be even more fun to be around.  To paraphrase Auntie Mame, “Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.”

I know I keep saying this, but it’s really true:  I have no idea why anyone would read this blog.  I like to fancy myself a witty, urbane, raconteur with a wry sense of humor and a wide stripe of self-deprecating humor.  I know that I’m not a witty or urbane as I would like to think I am.  I couldn’t give you a definition of raconteur (but I know one when I see one), but that’s not really me.  And as for wry sense of humor and self-deprecating, I think, for the most part, I may have that covered well enough.  I like to think of myself as a good writer, but I’m not great, and when you compare me to my brother, he blows me out of the water on that account.  So why would anyone take the time to read this?  I can only surmise that it because 1) you know me, 2) you think I’m funny enough to take 5 mins. out of your day and/or 3) my honesty is refreshing/unique/a hoot.  I don’t know.  But I’m glad you do read it.  Keep on reading it.  Tell your friends to read it.  You know you want to.  I get nothing from this but the satisfaction that someone else is enjoying my efforts.  It is a bit of an ego stroke to get comments from friends, or to see that someone new has read the blog.  So, thanks, all.  I hope you continue to enjoy the blog.  If not, say so.  If you do, say so. 

Quote of the day:

“Another good reducing exercise consists in placing both hands against the table edge and pushing back.  ~Robert Quillen”