I’m on another quest for weight loss. (Or maybe it’s just another chapter in the Saga of Fat. Maybe.)  Anyway, I haven’t really given up on paleo dieting, or the famous grapefruit diet, or the “veggies only” diet, or white rice for a week. I’m just giving those a rest.

Instead, I’m working on portion control, high fiber meals, lots of water, and eating six times a day. Really dull reading, I know, but one of the exciting tenents of the diet is to weigh each day in order to track weight loss…or lack thereof.

I chose mornings, and I’m turning it into a study of how to properly “weigh in.” For example, I tested the “fool the scale by not looking at it” until I’m ready to get the bad news method. Just sort of sneak up and then jump on. I don’t think that works very well, but I’m also trying the “stand on your tip-toes” method. If I don’t like the reading, I re-weigh until I’m satisfied there is nothing wrong with scale after all. The scale remains mutely dedicated to the truth. (Threatening to shoot the scale doesn’t seem to make any difference either.)

Yesterday morning, I tried the “one foot on the scale” and “one hand on the bathroom counter” trick. After all, if you are standing on one foot, you need to keep your balance. I recommend it if you want to lose a fast couple of pounds. (Just don’t look in the mirror for a while.)

I also vary the order of left foot-right foot step on the scale. I think the right foot-left foot mothod works best. At least that has become my preferred method of weighing in. The heck of it is, the diet is working…at least that’s what my “right-foot” reading is telling me. But if it doesn’ work long-term, I’ve been reading about a high pasta diet that…

Rod

I’ve been trying to get organized for nearly sixty years. Before then I really didn’t own enough stuff to need much in the way of order. I owned a few white socks I tossed in a drawer. Need a pair? Take two. I owned one pair of tennis shoes, two blue jeans, a couple of t-shirts and one sweater. My few books I kept in two wooden orange crates. Need to move? Tip the crates on their backs and give them a shake. Move out ready.

I had one fishing pole and some basic gear in a fishing creel, and one deer rifle I used to fill the larder once a year. (For a starving college student I ate pretty well.)

But after several years of the simple life, the great gather started in earnest. When you have children you need stuff…cribs, washers, tables, chairs, furniture, beds. You know…to set up a house. As children grow, and as incomes grow, the list of stuff grows until finally we have too much of it, especially after the kids move away. Then it’s time for yard sales and taking stuff to the local thrift store.

My wife Vi and I have been doing a lot of that lately…giving stuff away, telling our grown children to “come and get it.” Mainly, it’s pure relief to watch the piles disappear. A couple of things are valuable if we were to sell them. (We probably won’t. Those we’ll give to the kids.)

We find more value in the clutter of those things that store our memories: a painting from a sister; a painting from Mother; fishing tackle made by Dad; the “family” wall plastered with photos of all our people; leftover school papers from kids and grandkids; and lots, and lots of memorabilia in the form of photos, stuffed animals, framed pictures, birthday and Christmas cards, and a lot of cups that say schmaltzy things like “Worlds Greatest Grandma,” (or Grandpa); and personal gifts from close friends. Those have softened my desire to return to the simple life of orange crates, white socks and one pair of tennis shoes.

The great gather is over, I hope, but the memories linger. I give thanks to the Good Lord for all of it, and wonder how people manage lives without the stuff that stores our memories.

Rod

Summer smoke has pretty much trapped us in our house for the past several days, but the air is a lot cleaner this morning. Means we are safe to make a quick trip to Fred Meyer for some food and some other stuff.

I used to “help” my wife shop by splitting the list and rounding up items for the grocery cart as fast as I could. Somehow, my efforts always managed to irritate the crap out of her. And then I looked back and remembered my Dad saying, “Women shop and men hunt.”

The “hunting” style is to locate the items on the list, ignore any sales and head for the checkout stand as quickly as possible. In and out, that’s the way to do it. At least that’s how most men do it.

Women, on the other hand, “shop.” I’ve discovered this means going up and down every aisle…sometimes twice…comparing prices by brand name, looking for bargains even if you don’t really need the item. It takes a lot more time than the hunting style, but it must be more satisfying somehow. (I’m not sure I’ll ever understand why.)

If an item on the grocery list is on sale, it might encourage a man to buy a dozen cans instead of one or two, but the women I know will buy something just because it’s a bargain, regardless of its utility.(The rationale is that someone in the family might find a use for it.)

I’m happy to say I’ve finally solved the problem. My wife no longer becomes irritated when we go shopping. It’s really very simple: she “shops” while I buy a book, head for the Starbucks stand, buy a cup of coffee and settle in at one of the small tables. I read until my wife pushes the cart up to my table, sits down and says, “All done.” Wonderful words, those. “All done.” (And we are still friends, after all.)

Rod

For three miles (or is it four?)

Time and earth suspend a perfect piece of Maury Mountains Canyon Creek

I come each Fall to hunt

But more to see the sacred nine-inch King of the Road One Hundred Culvert Pool

I drop an orange salmon egg

And see the sacred trout snatch and gulp and disappear again

So quickly I could doubt the trout exists

A perfect piece of Maury Mountains Canyon Creek

Replete with cattle trail, a dying mountain spring its head, a desert gully for a tail

I flip another salmon egg for proof the sacred trout still lives

In this perfect piece of Maury Mountains Canyon Creek

(I hope the reader will forgive the layout of the poem. I just don’t know how to mess with stanza form on this blog system. Might have to learn how one of these days. Maybe. If I decide it matters enough.)

I often think the fabric of our lives consists of small pleasures…birds at the feeder, a good morning cup of coffee, a favorite song, a hug from our spouse or our grandkids. The Fall hunt is like that for me: a campfire, a good cup of coffee, golden mantle squirrels (chipmunks) snatching peanuts from a stump, camp robbers, good friends, the smell of pine needles. (I haven’t killed a buck in years, but I have let several walk away.)

An old friend of mine hunted for several years with an empty rifle. The rifle was just an excuse to take a walk in the woods. I do understand.

Rod

Age and experience force me to admit I’m smarter than I live. Like a lot of late middle aged people who fight weight problems, I have at least two dozen diet books on the shelves and probably know as much about nutrition as professional dieticians. Seriously. Heck, I think I could write a diet book…a good one. (Tomorrow. I’ll get back on my diet tomorrow.)

I know for a fact a lot of us intend to exercise more…just as soon as the weather improves, the rain stops, or we find a gym we like. In the meantime, our unused treadmill sits lonely in the garage, companion to our weight bench and unused weights.  (If you want exercise equipment at bargain prices, try your local thrift store. The last time I tried to donate to Saint Vincent’s, they wouldn’t take mine. Overstocked. There has to be a moral there.)

At a younger age I smoked more than was good for me. I really liked my tobacco, but with each puff, I worried about lung cancer, heart trouble and emphysema. (I could name a half dozen people who died from lung cancer. But I was quick to point out one of them never smoked, as if that proved something. As I write, I’m not sure it proved anything at all.) Over the years, I quit a dozen times, once for four years, but it took a serious bout of bronchitis and a midnight trip to the local ER to finish my smoking days.

I was never drawn to drugs, but I learned to like my beer. During my  early career with the US Forest Service, we took pride in being hard drinkers and hard workers. I gave beer up too, but America drinks. Boy, how we drink. And it’s no wonder. You can’t watch a TV program without seeing the lead characters drinking…programs like Blue Bloods, NCIS (the famous basement scene where Gibbs dumps the nails out of a pint fruit jar and pours whiskey for an uninvited guest), NCIS New Orleans…the party town.

I think we ignore what we really know in favor of the pleasure of our habits. I know I did. Maybe it’s a left over from our youthful sense of invincibility. Bad habits may kill, but it’s gonna get the other guy, not me.

Rod

My first disclaimer: I can’t say much about chuffy men. Not really. I’m still working on my winter fat from 2015.

My second disclaimer: This is not about the women of the world. Nope. This is about the men.  (Frankly, I’m afraid to be critical of women. That’s gotten a tad risky, at home as well as in the world at large. Testy, they are.)

That said, it seems we men are bent on letting our grooming standards slip to the point of just getting plain ugly. Take the big chuffy guy going into our local Bi-Mart store. If he ever shaved, it had to have been last year, and I’m sure his hair hadn’t been insulted by a comb or brush longer than that. (I mean, I’m mostly bald, and I still brush what little is left.) But it wasn’t beard and hair that stopped me in my tracks. It was the flannel pajama bottoms he had cut off at the knees…to wear to town…and, I guess, to show off his leg tats and fat knees.

(I mentioned the pajamas bottoms to my good wife who said they might just be a wild pair of shorts, but I didn’t buy in. Nope. He was wearing pajama bottoms.)

And I see some of us old guys wearing shorts to town that look like they saw the laundry last month and have been slept in every day since. I guess I’ve turned into an old fuss budget, but I can’t help think, “Where’s the pride?”

The grooming standards I grew up with came straight out of the Great Depression. As one old timer who survived that rough period put it, “Shave, keep your shoes shined, your hair cut and your pocketknife sharp.”

On TV I see celebrities who show up for gala events sans tie, sans shave, sans haircut, studs in their ears, and nose candy hanging like metal snot from their noses. (I have no idea what to say about some of the sleeve tats.) It’s like we men are in some kind of pushing match to see who can move the grooming standards to the next level…and it ain’t one level up.

Nope, I have to believe the new standard for male grooming is, “Let’s get ugly and go to town.”

Rod