Commotion in the Pews

After a month long marathon I finished revisions on my novel last night. Had a deadline for entering it in a contest.

Over the last month I’ve worked on the book an average of four hours a day. That might not seem like a lot to some, but it’s on top of all that other stuff that gets in the way of writing – work, dog, wife, auto maintenance, making jam, and sleeping. Not nearly enough sleeping.

A full 12 hour respite was taken before being awakened this morning and returning to the computer to resume work on general writing tasks. There’s more deadlines, more projects, a few commercials to record, and other stuff that will be announced in due course.

The biggest coup of the day was fixing the air conditioning in my car. My friends will vouch for me being a theory guy, but not so much with a wrench. I did some googling and found a video on how to fix it. $28.00 worth of parts and not a single bad word later I have a multi-speed blower once again. Mark your calendars – that won’t happen a gain in the near future.

A concern has been expressed about my health with such demanding schedules. Someone made specific recommendations on how I should deal with my health – lose weight and drink green tea.

Well, never having been told to lose weight before I – wait a minute, that’s what every doctor tells me to do. And yet the same health issues manifested when I was skinny. I see an analytic issue there – weight is not related to the problems. I’ll go you one and say that my knee problems are exacerbated by my being a husky child, but the tears in the meniscus were both due to athletic events that would tear it in a skinny feller. Sleep apnea – same issue, snored and gasped like a fish when I weighed about 1/2 of what I weigh now at less than half my current age.

Am I too fat? Yes. Trying to lose some weight is an ongoing thing for me. Danged donuts and bacon.

Here’s the howler: I disagreed with the reader’s “diagnosis and prescription” and the retort was that I’m not a medical doctor and thus not entitled to an opinion.

Says a lot about our culture when you can’t hold a valid opinion without a certification. That the history and knowledge of my body’s condition should be of less import than the national fetish with weight loss is sad. I appreciate good humored advice, but hectoring is not on the list of things I’m open for on a regular basis.

On to the next project. There’s a pile of printing that needs to be done around here and supplies were running low. Off to Office Universe to spend a pile of money on the world’s most expensive printer ink and a quick return. Ink, unique paper, donuts, and cookies. So much for the weight loss.

Lest I forget – there was no real point to this blog post. I just had to clear the baffles and head deep. The next few days have more substantial topics to cover and I had this little bit of flotsam to dispose of before I flooded the tanks.