Asking the Right Question, Health Issues and Dieting

I have a (possibly bad) tendency to answer any question as it is asked, not as the questioner intends.  This means that when the Wino on the corner asks, “Can you give me a dollar?” I say “yes” and give him one.  If he asks, “Do you have a dollar?” I say “yes” and walk off.   Yes, I have a dollar. That is what he asked.

So, this morning my bride Management noticed my big toe was a blueish, purplish gray. “Your toe looks bad, did you drop something on it?”  “Yes, I did.”  “Does it hurt?” “Not at all.”

Now since my recent health issues, Management is afraid I will die before I finish all of the projects I’ve promised to do.  There’s no doubt I will die before I finish but I think she’s hoping I’ll get more of them done than I expect to do.

In any case, she was worried about my toe, or the completion of the projects or something. After more discussion and Googling “blueish, purplish grayish toe” she finally asked the right question.

“What did you drop on your toe?”  The answer was, “When I was painting your shed yesterday, I dropped some of the blue-ish, purple-ish grayish paint on my toe.”

Now I am in trouble and I don’t know why.

For the past six months I have been losing weight. This is a bad thing if it isn’t intentional. However, since it is intentional it is a bad thing if I don’t lose weight.

Frankly, I am having a lot of fun with dieting. I’ve often heard about and witnessed dieting and it sounded pretty ugly to me. However, with the right attitude it is fun.  I love a challenge.

This all started when I had another one of those “getting older” health issues which I am getting somewhat annoyed with, but not annoyed enough to take the other alternative.

Actually, this all started when my bride Management and I got married thirty-eight years ago this week. Prior to that my weight was constant. Every spring I weighed 175 pounds.  By fall I weighed 165 pounds.

So, I weighed 175 pounds thirty-eight years ago. Then marriage happened. I don’t think the weight was caused by the marriage although there is some evidence that marriage causes people to get fat. In my case, after waiting 29 long and lonely years to find Management, my excuse was “A long chase keeps a hound lean.”  For the next ten years my weight stayed constant. Then I added about two pounds a year which isn’t bad. The problem is when you have 28 years at two pounds a year. Suddenly you are fat.

One solution many people use is, Get married. Get Fat. Get Divorced. Get Thin AND Do it Again.  Say that out loud, this could be the lyrics to a song.

One of my fat cousins said I wasn’t fat, I was mature. He was wrong. I was fat AND still not mature. Anytime you add 30 percent you are fat. Then I had a health issue.  After several Quacks tried to kill me I found a good doctor. One of the things she prescribed was a diuretic.

I lost ten pounds in two days. Apparently, as a former lady friend of mine used to say, “I was retaining water like Hoover Dam.”

I thought, “That was easy and fun, let’s do another 20 or so.” So I did.

Then just for giggles I decided to get back to the size I was when we got married.  And as of this week (our anniversary) I am. Well, actually I am the same weight I was when I got married but my shape is different.  There has been some sagging, starting with my eyebrows and everything below them. Only my scalp and the soles of my feet haven’t sagged.

THEN, I realized that my pre-marriage weight was always at a doctor’s office or public scales. That meant I was wearing clothes and shoes. I didn’t even know that I was “supposed” to weigh naked and with every gram of excess weight removed (i.e., cut fingernails, nose hair, etc.), and first thing in the morning until Management brought a set of scales (and some dieting issues) with her to the marriage.

That means I have been wrong on my weight for half a century. I didn’t weigh 175, I weighted 170 and my clothes and coffee weighed five or so pounds and I was weighing in the  middle of the  day so I owe the cosmos another five pounds before I “reach my wedding weight.”

This should be fun.