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Our Friends Don’t Care if We are Fat!

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Our Friends Don’t Care if We are Fat!PEI Lobster Dinner

I’m being a little callous here but I’m guessing that more than half our friends don’t really care if we lose weight or not. Yes, they would worry if we fell ill because of it but, on a day to day basis, they probably love us for who we are. But they don’t really care much, one way of the other, about our weight. Or how we might feel about our weight. The other half, some of them may be trying to lose weight themselves, might even be hoping we fail! 🙂

Dieting is a lonely endeavour. That doesn’t mean we can’t feel empathy for each other, even if only for brief periods of time. It doesn’t mean we can’t share parts of each other’s journeys. And those things too can be valuable. But for the most part, we’re left to our own devices when it comes to weight loss.

Below is the text of a Facebook post that I shared with my friends. The pic that accompanied it is above.

Poor man’s dinner in PEI …
Endless bowl of seafood chowder.
A salad (wtf is that for? Though half the plate was potato salad, so not bad!) 
Endless bucket of mussels (ate them all but did not ask for more!)
PEI spuds swimming in half a pound of butter.
And, of course, a sea cockroach!
I didn’t eat the delicious, fresh baked little loaves of bread that sang out to me the whole time!
AND I skipped dessert.
Good boy, Paul!

Most will give it a like. Or rejoin with a little humerous comment of their own. But very few will comment on the diet & weight-loss parts of the post. Not that I would want them to do that publicly. My skinny friends might be horrified! LOL

But you’d think one or two might share a word of encouragement by personal message or something, wouldn’t you? Or perhaps they’ve seen me fail too many times before & they don’t want to embarrass me? And yes, now that I think about it, I might actually be embarrassed. Worse yet, is it possible that I might perceive the message as insincere? Supporting each other can be a complex thing sometimes. Despite the challenges, I’m grateful for the friends I have in my life anyway.

On the other hand … screw them! I’ll get my revenge when I strut into the next social gathering several pounds lighter! 🙂

PS … The funny side of dieting & life aside, I am actually a little worried at the moment. I haven’t really tested this level of looseness, of so little dietary restriction, previously. Have I been too loose over the course of this holiday? Did I go overboard a couple of times too many? When I look at that pic, & realise how much I ate at that one meal, I have to say … I’m a lot worried! The scale will tell the tale this coming weekend.

I know you don’t care all that much but please cross your fingers for me! 🙂 🙂 🙂

Feeling Sorry for President Trump

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Feeling Sorry for President TrumpThe Die is Cast

I am so reluctant to admit this out loud, but I’m a big reality TV fan. I was first hooked by Temptation Island. I know, I know, but I couldn’t help it, I loved the show. I always thought that it was too easy though. They should have had longtime married couples on, instead of couple that were just dating. Now that would have had some serious emotional equity to challenge! I have no time for the loud housewives from any city but I still enjoy The Bachelor & Bachelorette shows. I stopped watching American Idol, in favour of The Voice. I thought the judges on The Voice were generally nicer to their contestants. For the past couple of years though, American politics is where it’s at.

Prior to Donald Trump getting into politics, I had such a low level of interest that I had to look up the party platforms, here in Canada, before going to the polling booth to vote. Regardless of your political leanings, you have to admit that Mr. Trump brings a high degree of entertainment to political proceedings. I wasn’t a fan of The Apprentice. Insensitive, overly loud & egocentric characters tend to turn me off. And he was all that. In the political arena though, it became far more interesting. It wasn’t Mr. Trump beating up on some subservient contestant, he was going up against a bunch of big, beefy professionals in the space. Far more interesting!

That didn’t stop him, of course, & he proceeded to run the White House pretty much the same way he probably runs his own businesses. The same way he ran his TV show. And he’s gotten away with it! Or at least ’til now. It’s taken ’til this week for the push-back to be significant enough for him to have to back off on anything. He brushed past a couple of faux pas in Europe, en route to Helsinki, for his meeting with the Russian President. And it’s from this that he’s had to backtrack on a number of his positions.

While I thought that racking up the hours watching CNN & Fox News were educating me, I’ve hit a wall of ignorance again. The big questions I now have surround US foreign policy. And the systems of checks & balances. For example, it looks like the President can have a differing foreign policy from the house & senate, despite them being of the same party. Is that possible? And what can the other branches of government do if they don’t like the President’s position? Is there an equivalent to the Vote of No Confidence that’s sometimes employed in many parliamentary democracies?

Though mostly Trump appointees now, it looks like the President doesn’t take his senior staff into his confidence. Nor does he seek their advice as he wanders the globe meeting foreign leaders. The clip of DNI Dan Coats at the Aspen Security conference yesterday was so funny. I felt the same kind of slight “wrongness” by laughing along, as I might feel laughing at a contestant’s predicament on a reality TV show. But it was still funny.

But that is also quite sad. Mr. Coats learned of the invitation for the Russian President to visit the White House during a televised interview. Mr. Trump doesn’t seem to discuss such things with his senior staff. He’s running the world’s leading superpower country. Alone.

I’ll leave it to others to comment on what policies are, & are not, right. But the sadness comes from the fact that a 72 year old man, powerful & successful by most measures & metrics, does not have a common-sense confidant that he can discuss his daily grind with. He has his own staff on board & he doesn’t seem to feel that he can speak with them. Or ask for their advice on such matters. And I think that’s both lonely & sad.

I hope I’ll be as healthy as he is at that age. Actually, I’m just hoping I’ll make it to that age one day! While I’d like to think I’ll still be motivated & inspired to do great things things as I grow older, running a country won’t be on my to-do list. In between blogging (I’ll probably still be trying to lose weight!), maybe I’ll golf a little. And probably with a cart. I hope I’ll have grandchildren to visit. And I’ll likely be making plans to spike them, just before I leave to go home, with a pocketful of red candies!