Thursday, October 8, 2015

10/8/15: Post Season for the Royals Starts Today

Days of abstinence: 15
Days until surgery: 69
Weight:  164.6 pounds

The deal I made with my bosses at work is this:  I’ll work long hours and weekends until the deal that we are working on is done, without regard for how many hours a day or week I’m working, but I am going to take the time I need to take for “play breaks.”  Because Jack and I are quarter season ticket holders, we were able to buy tickets to all of the Royals post season baseball games.  I’m planning on going to every last one of them.  Today’s game starts at 6:37, so I’ll need to leave work around 3 or 3:30.  Tomorrow’s game is in the afternoon, so I’ll need to leave work at around noon.  On Wednesdays we bowl, so yesterday I left work at 5:30 (that still a long day considering my day starts at 7:00 AM and I take very quick meal breaks).  The flip side, of course, is I worked an 11 hour day last Saturday, a 14 hour day on Monday, and a 12 hour day on Tuesday.  I’ll most certainly be working this weekend, as well.  It will feel a little strange this afternoon to leave work early, when we are so busy and have so much to do, but I think this all works out.  I will get the work done and by taking the time to play I preserve my sanity and make sure Jack and I get to have some time together over the next couple of months. 

The ballgame will present another challenge, of course, and that is the opportunity to eat and drink off program.  I won’t do it, but since this is opening day of the post season, the mood will be celebratory and the temptation will be there.  I’ll eat dinner before we leave for the park and we’ll pack some healthy snacks and water.  It’ll be fine, I am confident of that, there will be no beers at the ballpark for Berta. 

I received one email in response to the article that I posted a couple of days ago.  It presented, I won’t say rebuttal exactly, but at least a different perspective of the article than mine.  I appreciated the perspective and the reminder to not to accept everything I read at face value.  Mostly I was reminded that this decision to not eat sugar ever again is very personal, it is my decision and I have made that decision because I believe I have an addiction to sugar and I believe that sugar is bad for my body.  I have made a conscious decision to be as healthy as I can be as I age.  I know I won’t live forever and I don’t have any idea what will kill me or when.  But I do know that I have some control over the way I will age.  I don’t want to slide down a slippery slope of becoming weak, fragile, diseased, and feeble minded and live another 20 years.  I want to be as strong, vital, healthy, and lucid as I can be until I suddenly die, whenever that might happen to be.  Just for fun, I plugged my statistics into an actuarial table just now.  My expected life span is 85.26 years.  That’s 15 year less than I want to live but hey, if I can have another 32 awesome years, that would be great.  And that’s what I’m talking about.  I want (at least) another 32 awesome years.  The first 40 years of my life were hard.  I mean really hard.  Perhaps the first 2 or 3 weren’t that bad.  I don’t remember.  But childhood, in general, was not fun.  College was kind of fun, but I got married while in school and my first child was born the day after I graduated.  That’s another story altogether, but all was not roses and buttercups and I spent most of the next 21 years raising kids by myself (whether or not I happened to be married).  I struggled, I sought and received therapy, and I grew and learned and healed.  My kids are doing great.  I was a single empty-nester for a while and got it figured out.  I am now happily married, have a wonderful and interesting blended family, have a good job, work hard and life is getting fun.  Now that life is fun, I want to live a long time and I want to enjoy it.  I mean really enjoy it.  I want to play kickball and climb mountains.  I want to hike when I want to hike, explore when I want to explore, take on new sports and activities, and stay mentally engaged.  I believe my chances of doing all this go up considerably if I take good care of myself.  I believe taking good care of myself means exercising regularly and having a clean diet (most of the time).  A clean diet means no sugar.  For a while, I thought that I could eat sugar now and then.  I don’t think a little sugar now and then is going to hurt anyone.  My problem, I am convinced, is that I am an addict.  I can’t do a little sugar now and then and not do a little more the next day, a little more the day after that, etc.

OK, it is getting later than I wanted it to and I have to go to work.  But these graphs are from Younger Next Year and they graphically represent the two choices I believe I have.


I can go down the slippery slope of “normal again” and be well into my process of dying long before I am dead, like this:  


Or I can live well and be strong and then all of a sudden die, like this:


I pick option 2.

OK – that’s all I have time for.

Have a beautiful day!


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