Tag Archives: diet

If These Intestinal Walls Could Talk

anatomy-160524_640Like with many people, my digestion has gotten a lot more talkative as I’ve gotten older.  We don’t usually have extensive discussions unless I go to the seafood buffet, but I’ve become fluent enough to carry on a basic conversation in Gurglish (that’s what I’ve named the language of my alimentary canal).  My small intestine, which is the chattiest of the bunch, likes to wait until I’m out in public and then tell me long stories about how much better things used to be in my gastrointestinal tract, with the other organs chiming in for emphasis.  Here’s how the major players in my digestive system tell me it used to be in their salad days:

Infancy

Mouth:  Milk!  Oh, boy!  This is the best thing ever!

Stomach:  Look, I’m not saying it’s not awesome, I’m just saying, we’ve had milk for the last two hundred and seventy three meals.  Couldn’t we change it up a little?  Maybe some juice, a little cereal?

Small Intestine:  We could try spitting up again.  I think we’re really getting the hang of it.

Large Intestine:  Wake me up when there’s something for me to do.

Childhood

Large Intestine:  What on earth is she eating this time?

Stomach:  I’ve stopped asking.

Mouth:  Yesterday she ate what was in the dog’s bowl, and I’m not sure all of it was food.

Small Intestine:  I’m debating throwing up just on principle.  Thoughts?

Stomach:  Let’s do it.

Adolescence

Mouth:  Pizza!

Stomach:  Pizza!

Small Intestine:  Pizza!

Large Intestine:  I hate you.

College years

Mouth:  Chug!  Chug!  Chug!  Chug!

Stomach:  I’s were not shurr no food izzz good idea, now— oh, escussse me.

Large Intestine:  How come no one ever invites me to the party?

Small Intestine:  Everybody stop everything, I think we’re gonna hurl!

Young Adulthood

Mouth:  Ow ow ow!  She didn’t let the coffee cool down again!

Stomach:  Now, that’s just careless.  And I see we’re having Pop-Tarts for breakfast again.  One of these days, Metabolism is going to go on strike.

Small Intestine:  Come on, guys!  We’re not that fussy little GI tract we used to be; we’re in our prime!  We can handle anything she throws at us!  Let’s get those digestive juices flowing!  Who’s with me?

Large Intestine:  Whatever.  I think it’s all crap.

Small Intestine:  That’s the spirit!

Now

Mouth:  Did that Number 7 meal seem off to anyone else?

Stomach:  Don’t ask me.  I’ve been empty for hours, and now suddenly I’m dodging half-chewed chunks of Big Mac and a side of fries I think she swallowed whole!

Large Intestine:  Were the fries at least hot?

Mouth:  Lukewarm.

Stomach:  At best.

Small Intestine:  That’s it!  HUMAN!  HEY!  YEAH, YOU!  LEARN TO CHEW!  AND TRY EATING SOMEWHERE WITHOUT A TAKOUT WINDOW, WHY DON’T YOU?  AND WHILE YOU’RE AT IT, EAT SOME FREAKING LETTUCE ONCE IN A WHILE!  IT’S CALLED “ROUGHAGE,” MORON!

Large Intestine:  Amen.

It’s a tough job, being an alimentary canal.  Twenty-somethings, learn from my example and start eating better before your small intestine starts yelling at you.  Oh, and my stomach was right:  Metabolism did go on strike.  Negotiations are ongoing.  That one may take a while.

Incidentally, major kudos to anyone who got my truly awful digestion joke in the beginning.  If you didn’t get it, honestly, don’t try.  It was really bad.

 

Image, as usual, in the public domain via pixabay.com.

7 Comments

How Not To Be A Workout Buddy

floor-exercises-825064_640So you’ve decided to get serious about going to the gym?  You know, one of the best things you can do to improve your exercise routine is to get yourself a workout buddy.  Studies have shown that people who exercise with a partner are more likely to reach their fitness goals.  After all, no app, tool, or supplement can give you the kind of motivation you’ll get from a workout partner who really knows you:

Little Blind Girl:  Hey, I know we’re supposed to go to the gym right now, but Skeeter’s Taco Shack is having this contest called “Guess the Fish” where you eat free if you can—

Friend:  Nope.  The last time we skipped our workout, you made me swear on Season Two of Grey’s Anatomy that I would never let you do that again, so go squeeze your doughy butt into some spandex.  We’re hitting the gym.

Little Blind Girl:  Nah, I’m gonna bail.  Sorry, but there is nothing that could get me into my gym clothes right now.

Friend:  (thinks for a second)  Remember how you wore your fishnet stockings to that party the other night, but they’d gotten so tight that you had little criss-cross marks all over your legs the next day?

Little Blind Girl:  Hand me that sports bra.

When you exercise with a buddy, gym time isn’t just more fun; it’s also more effective.  Your friend will know when you’re not challenging yourself and can give you that extra push you need:

(while going for a run )

Friend:  You sure you can’t go any faster?  Okay, okay.  Oh, hey, I’ve got a call.  (talking into cell phone)  Hello?  Oh, hi, Grandma.  How’d the surgery go? (pause) Me?  I’m just out for a run with the Little Blind Girl. (pause) Sure, you can join us!

Little Blind Girl:  Very funny.

Friend:  (still talking into phone) No, Grandma, your wheelchair won’t slow us down.

Little Blind Girl:  Your phone isn’t even on!

Don’t forget that you and your exercise buddy can help each other outside the gym, too.  After all, no matter how much energy you put into your workout, you won’t see results if you don’t maintain a healthy diet:

(at Skeeter’s Taco Shack )

Little Blind Girl:  Well, Skeeter, I’m impressed by the addition of sushi to your menu, especially at that price, but today I’m more in the mood for the pasta carbonara platter—with extra parmesan, of course— and if you could bump the portion size up to “Last Meal On Death Row,” that’d be great.

Friend:  Guess how long you’d have to stay on the rowing machine to burn off all those calories?

Little Blind Girl:  I’ll have the grilled chicken breast, please.  No sauce.

And when all that effort finally starts paying off, no one will appreciate your hard-earned hard body more than the person who was with you for every rep:

Little Blind Girl:  Check out my new arm muscles!

Friend:  All right. (puts hand on Little Blind Girl’s bicep) Okay, flex.

Little Blind Girl:  I am flexing!

Friend:  Oh.  Are you sure?

The buddy system isn’t just for crossing the street.  When it comes to diet and exercise, there’s nothing like a partner to keep you motivated and on track.  So if you’re serious about fitness, make sure that when you head to the gym, you bring along the most important equipment of all:  a friend.

 

[Image is in the public domain via pixabay.com]

5 Comments

Grapefruit Juice: Even God Hates It

juice-73768_640My doctor ordered me to drink a glass of grapefruit juice every day.  Sure, I could just pretend I’m doing what he told me to do but actually keep drinking Sunny D.  Aside from my fear of turning orange from the beta carotene, though (and, yes, that happened.  To someone else, totally not me), I’m also terrified of my doctor.  He was in the army when he was younger, and he gets this look in his eyes from time to time that makes me think he didn’t serve in a medical capacity.  So now I drink a glass of grapefruit juice every day.

This raises a problem that I can’t ignore, however, and it’s not that I’m more scared of my doctor than I am of finding out that Johnny Depp hates my blog.  My fear of my doctor is probably the healthiest thing about me.  The problem is that I hate grapefruit juice.  I hate it with the burning, white-hot heat of a thousand suns.  For those of you who’ve seen the movie Clue, which I highly recommend by the way, my feelings for grapefruit juice make me think of Madeline Kahn’s character saying “I hated her SO… much… it… it… the… it… the… flames… flames… on the side of my face… breathing… breathless… heaving breaths…”  That’s exactly what it’s like for me, except that I haven’t murdered my grapefruit juice in the study with a candlestick (mostly because I can’t figure out how).

Grapefruit juice hates me back, incidentally.  I’m staring at a glass of it right now, one I tried to make more appealing by serving it over ice in a fancy wine glass and throwing in some grapes and a couple of cherries.  Every time I do that, though, I eat the grapes and cherries first; then I put in some more grapes and cherries, and then I eat those; then I let the ice melt; then I put the glass somewhere I can’t see it so I won’t feel guilty while I do pretty much anything else; then I sullenly unearth the glass, pinch my nose, and drink the juice.  Then I tell the remaining citric effluvia how awful it is, with references to reality television and Fifty Shades of Grey.  It’s hardly surprising that the juice resents this a little bit, especially given what happens about an hour after I drink it.

non-judgment-801268_640 2My motto has always been, drink a glass of grapefruit juice first thing in the morning and nothing worse can happen to you for the rest of the day.  I’ve lived by that motto for years, starting every morning by not drinking a glass of grapefruit juice right after I get out of bed, no exceptions, no matter what.  Then, when bad things happen during the day, I’ll think, “At least I didn’t have to drink a glass of grapefruit juice this morning,” and it all seems a little easier.  It’s been a touchstone of my adulthood, a way to know if I’m headed in the right direction.  When I don’t know what path to choose, I ask myself, “If I take this road, am I more or less likely to end up drinking grapefruit juice?”  It’s the reason I didn’t major in Business.  It’s why I broke up with the guy who wore suits on weekends.  My hatred for grapefruit juice is essential to who I am.

I tried to explain this to my doctor so he would understand that telling me to drink grapefruit juice really means ordering me to contravene the dictates of my soul, and could he truly want such a thing?  That’s when he got that look in his eyes and said something I won’t quote directly because I like you and I don’t want to scare you, but the gist was this:  “Sometimes in life, we all have to do things we hate—things we can’t forget, things we still see when we close our eyes, things that will stay with us even as we lie in the sweet embrace of Death.”  He kept twisting the cord of his stethoscope as he said it, too.  I’m not saying that has any significance, it’s just the kind of thing you notice.

So now I have a new motto:  Do what your doctor says unless you want to gaze upon the ruins of your life and weep bitter, pink, grapefruity tears.  And then publish a blog post about it and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day!  I hope.  I mean, what are the odds that my doctor reads this blog, right?

 

[all images are in the public domain via pixabay, with modification]

5 Comments

Wait…what??? (Obligatory post-Freshly Pressed blog entry)

Bambi (character)

Bambi (character) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There I was, peacefully putting away my groceries (all healthy, worse luck.  I think my doctor reads my blog) and chatting with my mother, who was in town for a visit.  She went off to do something else, and I sat down to check in on my blog.  I pressed the stats button…

I recently got a new pair of glasses.  I thought maybe they had malfunctioned.  I’d had how many page views?  Suspicious, I took off my glasses, rubbed them, put them back on…yep, same number.  I checked out the Freshly Pressed section of WordPress and, sure enough, there I was!  With a blog post that I’d put about five minutes worth of thought into and basically consisted of me blowing off steam about my new diet and exercise plan!

Though, come to think of it, that’s probably a pretty universally interesting topic–not diet and exercise, which are just universally torturous, but being annoyed and frustrated by them.  Yes, I cunningly picked this topic of common interest, came up with a nifty list, inserted a colorful visual, all with an eye toward getting Freshly Pressed…no, I didn’t.  But it’s still fun that it happened!  I had the following conversation with myself after seeing my tiny little blog up there with the big boys:

Little Blind Girl:  Oh, wow, this is so cool!  Look at all these page views!  Look at all these comments and all the new followers!  Thanks, WordPress!

Voice in Head:  Wait, they picked this post?  I have, like, fifty other posts that are way better.

Little Blind Girl:  Oh, don’t be a buzzkill.  This is awesome!  I want to do a backflip, except that I’m pretty sure my body doesn’t bend that way anymore.

Voice in Head:  I’m just saying.  You wrote a sonnet to Johnny Depp, actually in iambic pentameter, and they go for this one?

Little Blind Girl:  This was a good post!  It may never get included in an anthology of insightful, provocative essays, but it’s not bad for an evening’s work.

Voice in Head:  You mean twenty minutes’ work.  Thank goodness I proofread.

Little Blind Girl:  Yeah, I kind of feel like a mother who tells her kid to wear clean underwear in case he gets in an accident and has to go to the emergency room.  “Now, blog, I’m going to make sure you don’t have any typos, just in case you get Freshly Pressed.”  “Aww, come on, Little Blind Girl, that never happens!”

Voice in Head:  Until it does.

Little Blind Girl:  Exactly.

Voice in Head:  So we’re just ignoring the fact that you’re having a conversation with yourself?

Little Blind Girl:  Just like always.

Voice in Head:  Right, then.  Hey, don’t you have a policy about responding to every comment on the blog?

Little Blind Girl:  Yes.  (Pause)  Why?  How many comments are there?

Voice in Head:  Fifty eight and counting.

Little Blind Girl:  ….

Totally worth it.  Thanks to all the people who read, liked, commented on, and followed my blog, new and old readers alike!  And a special shoutout to my favorite comment, which was by laurenwhitney91:  “you are insanely hilarious. thank you for being you!”  Seriously, that’s the comment!  Best comment ever.  I love being Freshly Pressed!

Also, for those of you who read the hilarious blog The Waiting:  welcome to the world, Miss C.  You’ve got a really cool mom.

41 Comments

Satan butter

As a result of my eye problems, I have to be very careful to get certain things in my diet, and it’s pretty closely monitored.  The latest admonition is that I’m not getting enough fat in my diet.  I have to include more sources of fat, but I should stay away from saturated fats, watch my cholesterol, and on no account touch transfats….also I have to maintain a certain caloric intake and not mess with any of the rest of my diet….I’ve been doing hours of research and calculations.  I got my taxes prepped in less than an hour, but I’ve been at this task all evening (fun Saturday night activity, huh?  That’s how I roll) and I still don’t have an answer.  I think it may boil down to this:

Don’t you wish it could be that easy?  Satan butter:  if you touch it, you’ll go blind!

11 Comments

Oh my God, I ate a sock!

This post is dedicated to Jane, who wanted a post about cats and socks:

Once upon a time, I had a cat named Beatrice.  Beatrice, from the time she was a tiny kitten who could climb up the legs of my pants, liked to chew on clothing.  It was mildly exasperating, but nothing more than that until I came home to find her sitting on the floor with a peculiarly unsettled expression on her face.  It was a mix of extreme discomfort, desire for relief, and unwillingness to admit what she’d done.  I came to know this expression as “Oh my God, I just ate a sock.”

I took her to the vet who found that, yes, Beatrice had eaten an entire sock and it had gotten lodged in her digestive tract.  In order to avoid a lingering and painful death, she had to have small animal surgery that cost more than six months’ rent at the time.  As it happened, I’d panicked a few months earlier over what turned out to be nothing and had gotten pet insurance that covered most of the surgery.  Still, when Beatrice came home, I sat her down to have a Talk with her while she was too dopey from the painkillers to run away.  It went a little something like this:

Little Blind Girl:  Beatrice, you know I love you.  You know I’d give you anything to make you happy.  But you can’t go around eating socks.  They’re not good for you.  Why did you want to eat a sock, anyway?

Beatrice P. Cat:

LBG:  Well, if you say so.   I can’t say I’ve ever found them very appetizing, myself.  But the point is that they’re off limits.  How did you even get to the socks?  I put them away in a drawer specifically so that you couldn’t reach them.

BPC:

LBG:  Not buying it.  Try again.

BPC:

LBG:  Nope.  One more time?

BPC:

LBG:  All right, clearly you’re not giving up the trick.  Level with me, kittenface, what’s it gonna take to keep your mouth out of the sock drawer?

BPC:

LBG:  Too late, I pretty much exchanged all my cash to get the half-digested sock out of your intestines.  And no, before you ask, you can’t have it back.  I don’t know, Beatrice.  Are you mad at me?  Were you trying to get back at me for something?

BPC:

LBG:  Geez, kitten, that was a joke!  I didn’t actually suck out your brain, I just told you I did.  I’m pretty sure, anyway.  You’re such a talented cat.  Can’t you find a hobby other than snarfing my hosiery?

BPC:

LBG:  Perfect!  I’ll sign you up for some lessons, maybe you can get an agent, show some paintings in a gallery…this has to qualify for a talk show or two.  All right, promise me no more socks, and I’ll give you a free pass on the next three non-litterbox urinations.  Deal?

BPC:

Should have seen that one coming.  You can’t tell a cat anything.  That was the last time Beatrice ate a sock, thank goodness.  The ‘P’ in Beatrice P. Cat stands for ‘Pest’, by the way, something dreamed up by my Sainted Mother.  All cats share this middle name.  So, Jane, I hope you enjoyed the post.  I’m trying not to turn this into a cat blog, of which there are many many excellent examples already, as you can tell from the pictures, but this post was fun.  Let it impart the lesson:  Be careful what your cat eats!  You never know what it’s going to end up costing you.

12 Comments