Neanderpundit

You know, I have always had little use for the medical profession. As a rule? they seem to be guessing. I have been through five doctors in ten years, and I have yet to find one with their head fully out of their ass. I dislike dealing with doctors on any level, but here are the “doctorisims” that I find most disagreeable:

1: You need to lose some weight.

Well, duh fucking hey. I weigh 350 lbs. I am active, and strong, but I’m big. Any suggestions as to how I might do this? Oh, while you’re thinking, i have tried every single thing there is to try, excepting surgery and heroin addiction. There is no “diet” I can stick with for any length of time without going barking mad. My body is particularly efficient at storing fat, I can only lose weight around 900 calories a day.

2: Eat less, exercise more.

Eat less than what? it’s not as if I’m a glutton, I eat less than most people I know who are thin. I have a sweet tooth, and it wins some times, but it isn’t easy when at least three days a week someone drops by the office with four or five dozen Krispy Kremes.

Exercise more than what? I perennially have some home improvement project going on, and I work at work and come home and work at home. What sort of exercise should I do? Oh, I also bicycle and spend three nights a week weight training.

3: take this, that, the other drug for your gout/acid reflux/cholestrol.

Sure, and by the way, deal with the side effects, collateral damage. I snore, they prescribed a CPAP machine. Imagine strapping a giant scorpion to your face while you sleep, and you have the CPAP effect. I have muscle aches and pains, they send me to a cardiologist to get a goddamned Angiogram. How about trying to help me deal with those things in other ways; how about giving me reasonable dietary changes that will help with this or that. No, just drugs and deal with it. Sorry.

Maybe I should find an acupuncturist. Look, everyone is different. Some people can eat like hogs and weigh 180 lbs, some people can eat like birds and weigh 350. It’s that category I fall in, and everything I do to try to change that is near to impossible.

When the kids I was going to school with were rubbing turpentine on dogs testes and putting duct tape on cat’s paws, I tried to help or set the animals free, if i could. I don’t brook torture to animals, I don’t believe they deserve it. If I’m going to kill an animal to eat, I kill it dead, and I kill it fast.

Amphibians, on the other hand, weren’t warm and furry and while I didn’t ever set out to injure one, it didn’t occur to me to be concerned if someone did.

V-man is having some concern with frogs, and it brought this little episode of my life to mind.
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I am blessed- blessed in ways few people are, in that I had two incredible parents.

My father, God keep him, was a saint. a SAINT. I’ll blog on that someday. He died when I was 27. I miss him every single day.

My mom, as well, wears a halo. She jokes about it, but it’s there.

Mom is the toughest, gentlest, kindest, nicest, most in your face mom you could imagine. Give my mom absolute power, give her five days, the conflict in the middle east would be OVER. A Mom utimatum is the toughest kind, and mom always meant business; there were consequences to your actions, and you learned that early. Mom sat by her father and watched him die slowly, over the course of several weeks, in horrid pain, and though he abandoned HER as a child, she never once walked away from what she felt was her responsibility to him, even though a weaker person would have.

When my best friend’s father died, and she found him, dead for a couple of days, she matter-of factly picked up the phone and made some calls, called ME at my friend’s house and had me tell him (that conversation, I wish I never had to have) she didn’t freak out, she didn’t go crazy, she just did as she needed to do and moved on.

Last week, while the wife was away and even I had to leave for a few days, she sat with my daughter, got her to school, etc. The Daughter LOVES gramma, and rightfully so, but Gramma found her sitting on the front steps, crying, because she missed mommy and daddy.

Mom didn’t tell me this till I returned home. She knew not to, she knew it would tear me up. She DID take the daughter and spend time with her, made her have so much fun she forgot all about her sadnes till mommy and daddy returned, a skill only seasoned moms have.

I don’t know if i can ever show my mom how much I love her. How much I appreciate all she does for me, for my family. But if I fail, it will NOT be because I didn’t try.