I was working at home yesterday (I suppose I don’t need to specify anymore) and I took a break to get some type of diet snack out of the kitchen.
After my snack I walked back into my guest room/bedroom/office and looked at the news. The crawl said:
US DEATH TOLL SURGES PAST 1,300
I turned on my heel, headed back to the kitchen and ate 6 potato chips and one oatmeal cookie. It seemed the only thing to do.
It reminded me of 9/11/2001. September 11 was the last day I ever used my treadmill. I had been on it daily up till that date. I can’t really explain why I stopped.
I suppose it’s all about control. Why would I diet or exercise to control what my body looks like, if the breaking news says that life is going to kill me anyway?
12 responses to “Fast Breaking News”
Well, the death rate for human beings since the dawn of time is, broadly speaking, pretty close to 100%; life does tend to eventually kill us.
But it’s also just plain harder to remain motivated and keep doing maintenance when extremely stressed by something else, even when it (as 9/11) is unlikely to kill you personally/directly.
(I endorse cookies, but also endorse treadmill-ing. I don’t know.)
KC – no cookies today. I choose life!
Hooray for choosing life! It is sometimes reassuring, in dodgy times, to “invest” in things that will not have immediate payoff – to plant a fruit tree, do preventative maintenance, exercise. It’s a statement either that you have hope that this will end up being meaningful, or that you have enough moxie to say “whether this ends up mattering or not, it’s the right thing to do, so I’m going to do it” and either way, I think it’s a good thing?
(I say this while still being in favor of occasional cookies. 🙂 )
KC – I had another cookie last night, with a very poor reaction afterward. I am getting in so few steps that I went out and did some early landscaping.
Oh, that’s right!!! I forgot that pastries make you feel lousy, with the logical correlation that cookies would probably make you feel lousy. Oy. Then definitely don’t go for the cookies.
Landscaping ahoy! 🙂 Your yard won’t know what hit it…
KC – I felled a bush with a hatchet. That was exhausting.
Fascinating! What did the bush do to deserve it?
(also: chopping things down with hatchets is deceptively tiring. There is this prevalent concept [among city-dwellers, anyway] where chopping trees down with axes is easy, and… no, actually, it is not, there’s a reason that was a specialized trade and there’s also a reason we use chainsaws now!)(chopping open barrels of liquor with a hatchet: probably a lot easier. But I could be wrong; that one I’ve never tried!)
KC – it was licked to death by deer.
Ah. Yes. That is an… unusual way to die.
At least, I hope it is unusual.
KC – I’ve seen it happen elsewhere in our neighborhood.
Hopefully only plants, though, being licked to death by deer? (okay, or salt licks. But there their entire raison d’être is to be licked to death, so that is different?)
KC – just the one shrub. They ignored other shrubs that abutted it.