Unequal measures

Sucks lemons doesn't begin to cover it.

How can I toil on the treadmill and exercise bike, lift weights and do ab exercises and still weigh the same as my deep freeze?

There is some perverted math going on here where every molecule of food ingested equals the equivalent caloric count required to launch the space shuttle - I'm sure of it - I just can't prove it to people who don't have to sweat off any pounds or struggle with body image issues while hoping that a piece of celery makes up for something somewhere at some time.

Underneath my flab, my abs are tight. Of this I am convinced. But the Michelin inner tube surrounding my gut looking oh so much like a deployed airbag is hiding my fabulous physique.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Oh, shut up! Your laughter is unbecoming!

The reality is that work, by the very nature of it, is indeed a FOUR LETTER WORD! Yes, I find joy in the work that keeps me one step from the operating table for a triple bypass... the fact that I am not dead is a good thing, right?

But the time factor is the struggle for me.

Those scientists who are trying to make green beans that glow in the dark would be better served to figure out how to take the essence of who we have become and go back in time to pick up the bodies we left behind that still functioned at optimal speed and health.

We waste millions to research ways to kill roaches (HELLOOOOOO - we will ALWAYS have them!) and the money could be much better applied in real time experimentation in how to wide-beam our flab into deep space.

SPLAT! Take that alien hoards!

Can you imagine the lack of interest if they thought our only export was flab? How less likely they would be to desire our planet... unless they have some sci-fi special effects way to put it into a renewable resource to power the world!

Then we who carry a few (thousand) more pounds than we need would be in demand for our resources! We could band together in coops and bargain away our precious resources to 'help all mankind'!

But I digress.

After I ride the bike, I truly feel like everyone needs to lay down and take a nap. However, I have been told that this maneuver is actually counterproductive. Fun suckers!

Over the past few days with holiday and Holy Day food choices upon me, I confess to not having made many very wise decisions. No one shoved that spoonful of dressing and gravy INTO my mouth, but by the same token, I wasn't exactly shoving it AWAY from me either.

So now the work phase begins and the under construction signs come out to announce to me and the world that the soul's temple is taking in serious renovations and reconstruction.

No knives will be employed, but instead, sweat pants, tennis shoes, running shorts (although running is out of the question now with the damage my ankle has endured), and a new pair of those cushion footed sox that have the colored heels and toes. Call it a weakness...

With the advent of the school semester, I'll have more training time out of doors since Jared will be safely in the care of his wonderful classroom teachers and aides. So that means my days will return to outdoor assassination schedules with the resident furbag. She will be so happy.

I hope I will be. She has missed our outdoor exertions and getting her onto the treadmill lately has been an exercise in futility and sweat as we wrestle for time and position.

Does futile sweat count in the weight loss process? Again, I digress...

In a way, I'm looking forward to it, because it means that I am working toward a goal that I CAN achieve. In another way, I am not looking forward to it because I know it means that once again, I am starting from ground zero after having rehabbed my ankle from the latest battleground casualty.

If anyone can figure out the exact equation to apply to the process so that results come faster, please let me know. In the meantime, I'll be the sweaty gal in the mismatched exercise clothing trying to find the fountain of youth for a drink.

Pinecones and Holly Berries... Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh

Christmas has become a secular holiday instead of a religious and deeply felt HOLY DAY.

And the fault lies within ourselves.

We are seduced by the twinkling of lights and sparkling of metallic papers and our gaze has dropped to things terrestrial instead of finding the wonder of the Christ in that star so bright that heralded His Birth.

The shepherds received a startling message. They, among some of the most humble professions on the planet, sat out in the dark and watched over the helpless sheep with their very lives. How fitting that they were the recipients of the most powerful revealed truth which came to the world that night!

The good news - the gospel - the angelic messenger brought an announcement that has rippled through time and will continue to spread forever - Jesus Christ is come to the earth!

They dropped what they were doing, important as it was, and came with all due haste to the humble manger - a place of animal habitation where the lowly and the Almighty met in the most meager of circumstance. There, before their very eyes was Salvation come!

We do not know the rest of their story, as each shepherd took and spread that news. They published it abroad in the land, but we have no idea if others of their lowly station came also to see THEIR King. I hope so.

We know that angel choirs sang exulting the joy and happiness of the birth of the Messiah, who would be born in a manger, but grow to The Son of Man who would pay the terrible but necessary price in His precious blood for us to all be redeemed, if we will but choose to follow Him.

Later, Wise Men came from the East to bring the gifts that are synonymous with wealth - gold, frankincense and myrrh. They traveled far with the brilliant star to guide them to the place where the young child now lived. No journey from so far and so possibly frought with peril would happen in a short time. These Wise Men traveled from distant lands to seek audience and consultation with another king of mortal fame.

Being warned by the Holy Spirit that evil was in this mortal man so steeped in sin, the Wise Men did not return to him after presenting their life-saving gifts to the King of Kings. Instead, they returned to their own countries in other ways leaving the ruler of a tiny kingdom to fail in his misguided attempt to assasinate the Son of God.

Our celebrations of the birth of the Savior are a good beginning. But without the rest of His life and His selfless Atonement performed for each of us out of Love Divine, all we have is a baby being born in a rude stable on a crowded highway during the Roman Census.

How much of what we celebrate is man-made joy and how much comes from God above? Is my own heart filled with gratitude for all that I have been granted or am I merely content to take it all and hold out my greedy hands for more?

Would I have been as willing to leave my own personal flocks and come into the city at the invitation of the angelic messenger? Do I hear him even now as he beckons me to drop the world in favor of the Kingdom of the Most High? Or is the bleating noise of the world, the glitter of a falling kingdom and the false promises of that which cannot save grating in my ears preventing me from hearing about the Good News that even now can save, redeem and exalt?

Would I be wise enough to travel any distance and perform any service necessary to make myself able to give my gifts - indeed, my ALL - at the feet of Him who has come to save me, if only I will come unto him with the gifts He seeks the most: a broken heart and a contrite spirit?

I hope and pray that this time around, my ears will be far more in tune, that my heart may be more tender and that my soul will be attuned to those angelic strains that still reach out to each of us to bring us from the manger to the foot of the cross and to the very Throne of God.

Merry CHRISTmas. For without Christ and His continuing ministry to rescue the lost and wayward sheep of HIS fold, there is nothing to be merry about at all.

There must be some invisible rule...

Warmed over death isn't even close to how I am feeling today. That's a couple of steps up on the evolutionary scale.

Having said that, let's get down to brass tacks. My head feels like a balloon and my sinuses are the powerful force behind what will be accomplished today. Anyone who has to deal with sinus headaches knows what I mean because you are basically bowing down and begging to the all-powerful sinuses to be able to breathe let alone function.

Yet, fully knowing that I am sub-par today does not stop my other half from going back to bed while household chores need to be done.

Is there some invisible rule that says women don't get sick.

We can die, because that leaves a tragic figure of a man to be mourned with and grieved upon while people fix him casseroles and sandwich trays.

But let a woman be sick! NEVER!

That is against all rational movement in the universe. Why, any man in his right mind knows that if the hampers are full and the bathrooms need cleaning, then the little woman must be healthy enough to tackle those menial tasks! She doesn't even have to get out of her pj's for that!

And if there is mopping, she can do that while she chats on the phone. Multitasking. See - men can show you how to be efficient. Don't we all feel better now??

That would be a "NO", chuckles.

That I am doing these chores is more a testament to the fact that if I DIDN'T DO THEM, hell just might freeze over before they realized there was no clean underwear in their dresser drawers.

Yeah.

So, in ink only visible to male eyes is the rule "WOMEN CAN'T EVER GET SICK BECAUSE IT INCONVENIENCES MEN!"

I wonder how many loads of laundry I can burn before anyone catches on...

Why?

Paragon of virtue I am not.

Being a mortal being with a WHOLE lot left to learn is hard on me and the people who must wade through mortality with me in their lives.

However, having said that, I have an important question to ask.

What is with the rush of celebrities, sports figures and other notables revealing the seedy side of their lives with reckless abandon?

I don't want to know about their foibles! Dealing with my own is taxing enough.

While we look up to other mortals in a somewhat unrealistic fashion, most of our hero worship is rather harmless. When harm comes is believing even for an instant that those very fallible heroes are perfect and not subject to the rules the rest of us out of the spotlight must endure.

I don't want to know that some celebrity has failed at keeping their marriage vows nor do I want to know who has decided to come out about his/her/its homosexuality.

I have no desire to know every tick on the clock of their lives. My own clock ticks loudly and chimes like Big Ben frequently enough to keep me busy.

I long for the days when people had manners and when it was still considered gauche to discuss private matters in public. I miss the news being the news instead of a moving version of the gossip rags that adorn grocery store display racks by the check stand.

While the idea of knowing about a celebrity seems appealing, it only SEEMS that way.

They have problems in their lives that money can't fix, sponsorship can't erase and for which consequences show up just like it does for the rest of us in the great unwashed category.

I deeply want to believe my fellow man and woman to be people of character and decency until proven otherwise by cold hard facts, not tabloid innuendo.

Years ago the Soviets proclaimed that they could take over America without firing a shot because our morality was slipping and we would, in time, undo our own national fabric and let the influence of the immoral take over.

That remark didn't make sense to me when I was an innocent and naive child. I simply assumed that our greatness came from God and that we would collectively and individually always be grateful to Him for His Divine Hand of Providence.

Now I know there are people who thumb their noses at God, ignore him and still expect to be favored and blessed.

Now I know that our world is slipping into a sort of debauchery that took Rome down. The same sort of creeping sickness that destroys all great societies in due time - it's the disease of ease.

We have too much leisure and not enough responsibility for our actions. We have been too busy making things "better" for our children, that we have forgotten the lessons that remain when things are worse.

Far too many people have taken the opportunity to grab 15-minutes of fame by sharing dirty laundry in the public forum as if it was so worthy of time that everyone should share in its filth. And that makes more than the laundry dirty.

Momma used to say "Sweep around your own doorstep first before telling someone else how dirty their house is!"

The message is pretty clear to me now that I am older. It wasn't so much about the use of a good old-fashioned broom as it was the application of a clear conscience.

We have allowed things forbidden to become tantalizing and exciting by a repeated pronouncement of how 'open' we are becoming.

It's past time to post a 'closed' sign on private business.

That which degrades cheapens everyone, no matter how skillfully it is written up and spewed out. Filth is filth even if the reporter delivers the news sincerely. Regardless of presentation, there is nothing you can do to a pile of manure to turn it into anything but what it is... plain old poop.

But we have forgotten that and are eager as a society to lay hold upon it because someone somewhere said we needed to know and we are entitled to the information.

Maybe it's now important to say 'no thanks'.

If we don't buy the party lie delivered in a slick package, then that is one less dollar they earn from the gullible soul who thinks everyone else should be forthcoming... unless that truth is demanded in the same measure from themselves.

It's like the story about the kids who wanted their Dad to sanction their choice to see movies which were inappropriate - not just for kids, but for ANYONE.

The Dad had said no so many times that he was running out of inflections and emphasis.

Finally, he baked a special batch of brownies. Just like a tabloid rag, he extolled the ingredients that made the brownies worth their time and interest. And just like the tabloid rag, he left out a certain element of truth in the recipe until he was certain they were hooked.

The special ingredient was poop. It was just a little poop and hardly even worth mentioning.
His kids didn't want the brownies now. In fact, they recoiled from the horror that was now before them. How dare he defile the tasty brownies with something that rendered them disgusting!!

But that is what the point really is.

People are not perfect. They make mistakes. But public vilification and public pronouncements of personal sins doesn't make us stronger. It takes us further away from a moral center and closer to a society that only seeks for the next morsel of sensational crap.

The danger is there, but the excitement in revealing the shameful secrets and passions of another trumps decency.

Think about the poop filled brownies the next time a story is run that is meant to destroy personal morality. They are easy to spot because they are all sensation and no substance.

And just say no.