Turkey Day and other causes of Type II Diabetes

Turkey day was good, I had two in fact, one on Thursday and again on Saturday, I basically started over eating on Wednesday night and didn't stop until dusk Saturday. Consider it my last hurrah because going to get healthier.

Ok, so next week I'll be breaking my decade long streak... I'll be going to a doctor when I'm relatively well. Usually I have to be bedridden for 48 hours before I consider going to see an MD. And then when I do I go to a McMD like Primacare. I like those places because they don't want a relationship or to know about my personal life. Just the facts and get out of here with a Rx. (Also, they don't weight you.)

Anyway, if you haven't figured it out already I'm an overweight hypochondriac. I also verge on Christian Science thinking: God will heal me or he won't. I have a tendency to self-diagnose. So if its a cold, I'll just ride it out. If its something worse, I'll suppress it and hope it goes away.

What caused my sudden change in disposition? My sister told me she was concerned about my health. 5 Years ago I would have ignored her. 10 years ago it would have been an argument. This year, I figure its time to try out my insurance card and see if it really works.

My list of diseases/syndromes I think I have but have no medical proof of:

• Type 2 Diabetes
• Hypothyroid
• Cancer
• Heart Disease
• Heart Worms
• Tapeworm - Actually that would be good, I might loose weight.
• Mono - It can lay dormant.
• Heart Arrhythmia
• Dunlop Disease*
• Sleep Apnea
• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
• Munchhausen Syndrome
• and Stockholm Syndrome

List of things I'm worried about at the doctors office:

• Catching something from all the sickies
• The scale
• My doctor is female
• Them confirming anything from the first list
• Them suggesting something involving my back door. (I've looked up a Bible verse and I'm prepared to refuse for religious reasons, I'm a proctological conscientious objector.)

I've probably worried years of my life away worrying about a check-up. I know I'm probably as healthy as an ox who over-ate at Thanksgiving.

Well, wish me luck and feel free to comment here but when you see me IRL^ please act like you did not read this blog post. Make no mention of the doctor or how my visit went. If you do, I will infect you with my Stockholm Syndrome!

^ IRL = In real life.
* Dunlop Disease: In case you didn't know this is a dangerous disease common to members of the CofC where cheese covered dishes and fried chicken are commonplace. Dunlop disease is when "your belly dun lopped over your belt."

School Lunches Pt. 2

A lot of reactions to Pt. 1. It seems I was oblivious to the Vinyl bags being the final stage of evolution. How could I, I was a Buyer? Mags filled in some details for my last post and reminded me vomiting in the lunch line, but I think I've said enough about that already.

Today I want to focus on the contents of the school lunches.

As a Buyer, I can recall exactly the FDA approved lunches I used to get served. They often tried to add things like peaches to make something seem healthy but they were always out of a big can in heavy syrup. Being a Buyer taught you the important lesson: "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit." You had no control on the menu, the portion or the temperature of the food. Each day you show up and take your beating. Somedays, yak, creole spaghetti and other days Pizza!

Us Buyers really resented you Bringers when you crossed the line and bought your lunch on Pizza day! This was our line, our lunch lady! But sure, when its convenient for you come Buy a lunch and make the line super long!

The Bringers lunches seemed much more interesting to me:

* A sandwich wrapped in that plastic bag with a flap. (This was before the proliferation of ziplock bags.) The sandwich was usually bologna on white, PB&J on white, or ham and cheese on white. Wheat bread meant a sure fire beating I was sure. Occasionally there was one leaf of lettuce on there for some reason.

* Carrot sticks - I never knew why so many kids got these, but they seemed to like them. They ate them, and I still don't know why.

* Drink - Sometimes moms sent a quarter in the bag to buy milk but more often they sent Capri Sun or used that awesome matching THERMOS! The best was one soda wrapped in Tin Foil! The tin foil didn't keep it "not cool, but palatable... not cool, but palatable." (That last quote was for Ms. Patty.)

* Chips - I usually got a handful of chips in a sandwich bag, pre-crunched. But some kids got those proportioned little bags of chips. I also recall how horrible it was when the 20 count variety bag was down to Frito's how horrible that could be. You'd eaten all the Cheetos and Doritos and were down to corn toe nails.

* Fruit - Apple or Banana standard. An orange was too much work. Most of the Bringers I knew often threw away the fruit still in the paper bag. (Touch luck starving kids in China.)

* Dessert - It was always an odd number of cookies. No self respecting mom would give their child 2 or 4 Oreos. It had to be 3 or 5, rarely 1 if it was a big oatmeal creme number.

* The infamous note - I remember little notes being written on napkins. I was envious of them, but the Bringers were shamed by them. They desperately didn't want anyone to know that they had a mother who loved them and who drew little hearts on their napkin.

Clearly the moms of America sat down each morning with the food pyramid and did their best to live up to it.

But what about the wild card of school lunches: Dads. I could always tell when for some reasons a dad had been forced to make the school lunch of a friend. It would be like a comedy of errors. Instead of ham and cheese you got Pimento cheese. Or they tried to make PB&J and had used Apricot instead of Grape, what a scandal. An even number of cookies, usually too many, like 6. No fruit, instead whatever was prepackaged around the house: granola bars, pop tarts, croutons. Thankfully they left no note.

School Lunches Pt. 1

A universal American experience is the elementary school lunch. A lot of thought and preparation went into slapping bologna on bread back in those days.



I was 99% of the time a kid who bought their lunch. I envied those brown paper bags and Ninja Turtle Lunch box kids, the Bringers. So I did what any anxious kid did, analyzed them out of the corner of my eye so that one day, if I brought a lunch, I could blend in with the brown baggers. But that was a rarity, we were a buy-your-lunch family not a bring-your-lunch family.



Today, I think I'll focus my jealous nostalgia on one aspect of the school lunch experience. The container. I had no choice in my container, just a plastic tray and they only came in one color, tan... or was it faded blue? (Maggie might remember.)



Anyway, the Bringers always had a lot of variety in their lunch container. My favorites were the lunch boxes with coordinated thermoses! Genius! Oh, what I wouldn't have given for one of those. (Of course, I had one but there was never a lunch inside it so it stayed at home.)



The lunch box gave you a chance to declare you allegiance to something too. There was the G.I. Joes, the Ninja Turtles, the A-Team! There were also female equivalents, but since as a 1st grader girls were just a buzz on the periphery of my mind I don't remember them as well. (Like I said, Maggie will probably remember. She's entrusted to keep my memories for me, for example, what's the name of the teacher who had us sing "Texas our Texas" every morning? I don't know but guess who will.) But I digest (ba-dum-ching).



I also remember the fickle winds of fate that blew through the lunch room sometimes. It seemed one semester you had to have Ninja Turtles, then suddenly after Christmas the turtles were lame! Only dweebs still had that kids show. Now you had to have the Power Rangers.



Upon reflection on this topic with Jeffro, he said, "Nothings said maturity like a brown paper bag." I hadn't realized this. I was a Buyer, Jeff was a Bringer. As an outsider, I never realized there was a hierarchy. But its clear to me now. When you finally rose above the petty childish plastic lunch boxes (with awesome matching thermos) you brought the brown paper bag.



But there is nothing like a lunch box! When I got my current employment I bought this lunch box for myself.

I hope to one day have my last meal served in my Last Supper Lunch box.




I guess I have a lot more to say about lunches, like what goes in them so I've added that "Pt. 1" to the title. I'll get back to you after lunch. I'll leave you with my parting bit of angst.

As all of you Bringers opened you boxes and bag I had to carry that tan/blue tray to the table. And everyday somebody had to say: "Hey, nice tray, Trey!" Every single day of my life! It happened a week ago at the Casa Linda Cafeteria! It's a wonder I'm not on top of a bell tower somewhere with a painball gun and a thermos full of chicken and stars taking my revenge on the world.

And now you know the rest of the story... mmmmm, Good day!

I'm tired of hearing about the medicinal properties of chocolate!

Every week some soft news outlet has breaking news that, gasp, chocolate can cure cancer! We all have a PhD in candy science now, having been forced to hear about it so often. You probably already know which kind of chocolate is better for you without me having to tell you... dark chocolate, wonder pill!

The things chocolate can do you for you these days: Treat depression, good for the skin and probably really does cure cancer!

Here is a copy paste from thinkquest.org:
Chocolate acts as an antiseptic, diuretic, parasiticide, and pilatory. It is used to treat burns, cough, listlessness, pregnancy, and snake bite. Cocoa has theobromine which has a similar effect to that of caffeine. It stimulates the muscles, heart, and kidneys. In fact, it can relieve congestion during colds by simply opening the bronchial passages in the lungs.

WebMD wrote this article. - Basically: Chocolate = Magic.

I DON'T BELIEVE A WORD OF IT!

I think all this does is convince me more and more that we have NO idea what is going on inside the human body! For example, are eggs good for your or not? Nobody knows! Every 5 years they switch their stance on eggs. All they want to do is sell magazines and keep you watching the Today show until the next commercial break to sell more Tide! These should not be our sources of medical knowledge.

So what if Chocolate has antioxidants! In 2 years they'll come out and say we need more oxidants! But go ahead eat more chocolate. After all for years Placebo pills have cured all manner of ills. Maybe it isn't the placebo effect that cures people its just the sugar!

That's it! SUGAR! I can't wait for Martha Stuart and Jimmy Kimel to be telling us how sugar is really healthier than once thought. That phrase 'than once thought' can cover a number of wrongs. It basically means forget what we said, the opposite is now true, don't question us we're on TV. That is straight out of 1984, people!

Of course too much sugar and chocolate can lead to another of my soft news pet peeves: shots of fat people walking on the street from the neck down.

Burger War

I usually don't do this but I think it is REALLY important, now more than ever.

This was an idea was originally made up by a Dr. Pepper executive after spilling cleaning products and inhaling the fumes. Therefore you should all do as I say because a rich person had the idea and you have to listen to the rich!

So for the rest of your natural life (and any unnatural life that follows) we all need to refrain from buying hamburgers from the worlds two largest companies: McDonalds and "The Golden Arches" which are actually one company according to my mom.

If we don't buy burgers from them then they will be FORCED (yes FORCED) to lower their prices. And their competitors will be FORCED to lower their prices. Yes FORCED! They don't get to choose we can FORCE things, FORCE! I have control over how everyone reacts to things like this and they will be FORCED!

The current price of a Big Mac is $2.90! That's right $2.90! I remember saying "I'll never pay say more than $1 for a Big Mac!" But here we are paying more than 5 times what we used to pay and just taking it! We are not sheep! McDonalds and George W can not control me!

If we all buy elsewhere then we can see the price of Burgers drop not just at McD's but across THE WHOLE WORLD! Image eating a Wendy's originl triple with cheese for just $1.25! Or what if the Jumbo Jack was only $0.43? We can do it.

BUT WE ALL HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER FOR THIS TO WORK! IF YOU FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO 100 PEOPLE AND THEY SEND IT 100 YOU WILL QUICKLY ACCUMULATE THOUSANDS IF NOT MILLIONS OF >>>>>>>GULLIBLE PEOPLE!<<<<<<<< ALL CAPS MAKES ME FEEL IMPORTANT! FORCED, FORCED I SAY!

Don't listne to nay sayers who mention the cost of beef rising, natural inflation or how stupid this idea is. Those people are just puppets of the all powerful Ronald McDonald and his associate Donald Rumsfeld.

This can really work. You should really inconvenience your friends by sending this out. They won't think you are stupid. They will think you are a mensa member or some kind of wise jedi knight!

This can work, honest, why doesn't anyone believe me! I FORCE you to believe me! FORCE!