Life Change #15: Stop trashing the President (and wishing he would go away)

It may seem like piling on, given the time that has passed since we, err, elected our current president. After all, he has had serious spikes and swoons in his popularity, and surely there are some people left that really like him. His wife, maybe his daughters. His brother, his parents. They all still like him….they may even love him. They might even tell him so.

However, on the night that he was elected, or maybe a few days after that, when the courts decided he was president, I recall having a conversation with my sister. I said, in an utterly sad act of foretelling the future, that he would be the worst president ever. I thought I was employing a not so subtle act of hyperbole. Whether or not I really believed it or not is matter of some dispute, but somehow, I had serious reservations, and the president and I have had a pretty rocky relationship ever since. I really have no idea what he thinks of me…I doubt he would like me if he met me, because I would share with him, almost immediately the laundry list of missteps he has made since being elected…in fact, I might even go back further, and suggest his decision to run for president was ill conceived, as was his decision to enter rehab…he’d be doing us all far more good as a drunk.

And that is the crux of the matter. My tenuous relationship with the president is very one sided. I have no idea what he thinks of me, and quite likely, he thinks NOTHING whatsoever about me. And despite the fact that I share my opinions about him, with anyone who will listen and even several who don’t, I doubt it ever trickles down to him. IN other words, my criticisms are pretty ineffective. It feels good (at first anyway) to rant about his inattention to important stuff, while spending our blood and treasure on a war that seems intended to demonstrate some sort of perverse one-upmanship over his dad .

Perhaps this is his problem as well as mine. Perhaps he would be a better president if he heard and understood legitimate criticism about his leadership skills, such as they are. I am sure I could learn, over time, to present my criticisms without starting them with expressions like “you moron”, though at first, I am sure that would present a challenge. I’d also have to work hard to avoid swearing, since that is often the first type of word that comes to mind when considering the past several years. But whether it is me or someone else, someone needs to suggest to this person that he either get his act together or resign before more irreversible damage is done to our country. Of course, that is after a new vice president is in place.

Our nation has a long tradition of criticism, both thoughtful and acerbic. Political cartoonists have, since the inception of the republic, gently prodded and sometimes even savaged the leaders for their various ineptitudes. Free speech is a wonderful thing, and I will never forget how great it is that I can write how bad our president is without fearing a knock at the door. At least according to the kool aid I have been drinking.

In the case of THIS president during THIS administration, though, I feel he has gotten the best of me. I really feel like I took it personally, and it allowed me not only to get down on him, but down on a lot of aspects of our country, our society, our culture. Even sitcoms don’t seem as funny to me as they did during previous presidencies. After several years of optimism that maybe the government can better represent the people of our country, I have become disenchanted, and deeply suspicious of anything that done by our leaders. Whether it is sending our young people to die in the name of lower oil prices, or suspending civil liberties, or spending our country into further dept, pretty much every move they make is wrong, and I wonder if our children will grow up with a profound sense that the government can’t be trusted. Will that spell the end of our democracy? I know it seems like an overreaction, but nothing lasts forever. We have learned that football teams can change cities, tall buildings can fall to the ground, and nuclear reactors can melt down. Everything is prone to decay and destruction--even once proud democracies. Just writing those words scares me.

So ineffective and troubling has this president turned out to be, it has had another odd impact...it has brought the election season upon us much sooner than we bargained for...which of course means we will have to endure it for that much longer. All those states that couldn’t wait to get their primary underway—I know there are other factors, but at some level, I can’t help think that there is a subconscious need to simply move on....and move past “this”. As I watch analysis on TV, I am struck by the odd sensation that he is already gone....sadly, though, I know this is not the case...how much damage could he do in the next year? Oh, I think plenty. I have circled on my calendar a special date....1/20/09. Hope we get there safely.

As a child growing up in the sixties, it seemed that dissent was both more overt and more effective. People unhappy with their government marched in protest, or demonstrated on campuses. They carried signs, and burned draft cards and bras. They sang songs of revolution, or change and decrying the acts of the government. The government, in turn, drafted enemies lists, open fire on students, and eventually resigned in disgrace. Even if all the forces and reactions were unrelated, there was the sense that the populace had some power, some measure of control. It seemed that changes had come as a result of the actions of those who vote for the leaders, and the leaders were forced to follow. It was an era of effective dissent. 4o years later, the government has gotten good at ignoring dissent, and those of us who would dissent are ineffective. It is an era of silent, even pointless, dissent.

I am guilty of accepting this silence, as much as anyone. I have not bothered to pick up a sign, or march in protest, or even write a letter. I rant and rave every time I hear on the news that another soldier has been killed or each speech made that accuses those of us opposing the war as somehow unpatriotic. I shiver in anger every time a talking head shows up on TV saying how good a job this president is doing keeping us safe and trying to falsely describe our war sacrifices as keeping our democracy safe. (I do admit I am happier since I stopped ever turning on the FOX news channel....nothing there but blather anyway!)

So, next time I am inclined to hurl another epitaph at our clueless leader, I’ll simply swallow my words. To do otherwise only raises my blood pressure, and does little to preserve the democracy. I have only a few months to endure this life change, and then, perhaps if we manage to elect a responsible leader, I can return to appropriate dissent, mixed with occasional praise and perhaps at times admiration. I sure hope so. I’m just glad the vice president isn’t running...I am not sure I could stand an election season listening to his lies…

Update on Previous Life Changes :

Flossing takes less time than I used to think it did. Since I am doing it every day, it seems to get easier, less messy…guess I am getting good at it. I’ve gotten good exercise on about 65% of the days, perhaps less over the holidays, but that life change seems well on its way to being a bona fide change in habit. I’ve begun to notice that my baggy loose fitting clothes feel looser, though clothes that I would consider snug still seem snug…go figure.

Life Change #14: I Don’t Tell the People I Love, That I Love Them, Often Enough

There are many people that I really and truly love. I hope they know that…but if they do know it, I am sure it is because I have somehow shown them…I simply have never felt comfortable saying “I love you” as a close to a conversation, telephone call, or social situation. I know many people who do say it, and I think it might approach the sort of rote recitation of “How are you?” or “Have a nice day”. It gets used in so many circumstances that it loses, if not its meaning, at least the impact. Expressing love for someone ought to have some importance. I really wonder if it is good to “love” everyone. Doesn’t that sort of dilute the emotion for the important people in your life? I guess this is a matter for religious and philosophical scholars to wrestle with. For me, I wrestle with the fact that I need to make sure the folks that I really do love, get the idea.

While love is the purest, perhaps most profound feeling that a human being experiences, I realize, for me, I will never be able to “love” everyone. There is simply too much stuff about the world we live in that I don’t like, much less love, and someone has to take the blame…so by definition I don't love them, and so the folks doing stuff that I don’t love will never hear me say “I love you”. The folks dropping bombs on third world nations will never hear me say it. Nor will the idiots that throw beer cans out of their cars on freeway on ramps….don’t love them. I am none too fond of people that hold up liquor stores and steal car stereos, and drive tanks over defenseless villagers. But it occurs to me that in many instances, some one loves even the people that do these things, or perhaps not. Perhaps that is why they do those things. Perhaps some of the people that behave really badly do so because they never felt love and no one loves them, so they feel OK about holding up a convenience market, or spray painting expletives on freeway overpasses. Perhaps the absence of love creates some of this anti social behavior. Perhaps saying “I love you” can cure the world of some of its problems. Can it really be that easy?

I honestly feel love needs to be earned, but perhaps that is “trust”. Perhaps trust and love are related, though that would not really explain love at first sight, which is probably more akin to “lust”, but who’s counting---it feels good so how bad can it be? But love creates exceptions. I loved my children from the moment they were born…probably even before that, though it was far more abstract when they were riding around in the belly of my wife…but surely that does not mean you have to see someone to love them. I can love someone even if they are not in the room.

We are expected, though, to love our family...our husbands or wives, our children, our parents and siblings, even our pets. This kind of love is never earned, though I supposed it could be squandered. Even family members fall “out of love”…certainly husbands and wives do.

We love our friends in a totally different way. Our lives are made complete by the people that we love, and though our family comes upon us without too much insight or arrangement, we get to pick whom we call “friends”. In some ways, saying “you are my friend” is the most personal acknowledgement we can make. It is a willful choice, free of the complications of physical attraction, bonds of blood or even physical proximity. I have friends who I see only occasionally, but they are still people I count as friends. I also have family members (thankfully distant) that I would not call “friends”…and I wonder, do I love them if I cannot call them my friends?

Clearly a physical attraction is not necessary for love, though it surely helps when it comes to getting married and making babies. But I have women friends who I would not want to sleep with, that I consider friends, and by the same token, there are women I’d consider sleeping with far before I’d consider calling a friend. Love and sex are pretty clearly different things, and yet somehow related. We still refer to sex as “making love”. That can certainly lead to some perfunctory “I love you’s”.

Death seems to create an opportunity for abstract love. I still love my father even though he has been dead for many years. I understand and appreciate him a bit more with each passing day. I am sometimes amazed at how much he affects me even now, and most of the time, it is for the better, and for that I love him. Or is that appreciation? Or both?

And what about respect? Doesn’t love require respect? Can you really love someone that you do not respect? Once you lose respect for someone you love, doesn’t that also mean you love them less, if at all? Then again, I can respect someone without loving them...definitely. And I wonder, is lust simply love without respect?

When you add up all the factors it becomes a pretty complicated equation. At the risk of going all metaphysical, perhaps that equation is in fact the “meaning of life”...the unification of all the things that go into making a life meaningful. No doubt, love is an important part of a meaningful life.

Love then, takes some measure of trust, respect, appreciation, friendship, and can sometimes be amended by the presence of physical attraction or blood relationship. And, if we can choose our friends, doesn’t that mean we can choose whom we love?…and by definition, is it even possible to love everyone? I know people who profess to love everyone. I have heard it in church, at weddings, and funerals, and other visits to sacred events. I am not sure I believe it. So when I hear someone say I love you after every encounter, I am left wondering if that is true…can it be true? And if the words are so important, if love is such a vital part of our humanity, is it really a good idea to reduce it by overuse. If we even try to love everyone, how then do we separate our feelings for those who fail to meet the criteria described above…how do we elevate the folks we need in our lives just to get through the day?

On the other hand, it would be a shame if the people that I do love are unaware. That is a chance I should not take. So, even though I really try to show love through my actions, it won’t hurt to go ahead and say it. Of course, that creates a completely predictable and yet still surprising response….the incredulous stare. I have found if you do not tell someone you love them for long periods, and then you start again, they wonder what is going on. Wives wonder if you are having an affair, kids think you are weird, friends wonder if you are dying. It is not an easy transition and therefore requires an occasional explanation. My kids and wife know all about the daily changes I stumbling through, and so they give me a bemused smile and say “If you are going to say it, you really should mean it”….and that’s just the point. I do.


Update on Previous Life Changes:
As the grayness of a wet winter drags on, I am left to ponder how nice it would be to have to worry about sun block. Must confess, haven’t applied any in quite some time!

Life Change #13: I Do Not Floss My Teeth Daily

What a nasty habit…either way. Not flossing is apparently not a good thing, and flossing is a bit nasty as well, as we get up close and personal with the slime that resides between our teeth. We drag it out smudged onto a thread that squeezes between our teeth. Alas, I have run out of excuses! It used to be that flossing was sort of messy and somewhat uncomfortable (wrapping thread about your fingers and then pulling it tight so the circulation is cut off seems an odd practice). Flossing adds time to my daily preparation cycle that I did not have. After sleeping so late because I stayed up too late, every minute is important…but no doubt soon I will be well rested and turning in earlier (thanks to future Life Change #21: I stay up too late), I will have more time to floss…it is remarkable how everything is interrelated…or maybe it is predictable…anyway, I find it sort of fascinating.

Flossing is one of those habits that took an invention--or at least, a leap of faith. I can see rubbing on the teeth to clean off the scum…the “sweaters” as I have heard it called. American Indians used Manzanita leaves or something like that, and at the very least, a finger or small bit of cloth could be used…but floss…someone had to think that one up. I am going to ram thread into the gap between my teeth and see if there is anything there I should take out. I am going to do this between all of my teeth, and surely the first time it was done, the result was bleeding gums…how could anyone recognize this had therapeutic value? Creative dentists, I suppose.

I remember sitting in the dentist chair and reading that rather funny and at the same time horrific warning….”You don’t have to floss all your teeth! Just the ones you want to keep”. It was written on some chart showing you how to brush or floss and it sort of suggested that maybe there were other people who do not floss daily.

I have considered the alternative, and I guess I am not too keen on keeping my teeth in a glass of water by the bedside if I can avoid it. I remember there was just such a glass on either nightstand of my grandparents’ house. The water and the curvature of the glass made the teeth look strangely oversized. Monster teeth. I really do not want monster teeth.

I am a stop and start kind of “flosser”…I will floss for a few days, then miss a few, then floss a few….maybe 25-35% of the time I ram that waxy thread between my teeth, and the rest of the time, I simply don’t get to it. My dentist frowns and says, sort of patiently, and sort of irritated, “You really do need to floss EVERYDAY”. Pangs of guilt. I cannot even suggest a defense. I am a lazy fool, who is still sorting out which teeth he wants to keep.

Now of course, they have these little pre threaded loops that fit on a handle and make the wrapping around the fingers part unnecessary. It also makes angling the floss to get between the teeth easier (for me anyway), and it is certainly easier to throw away (the old floss seemed to sort of want to stay attached to your fingers and often wound up half in and half out of the wastebasket). But now, the little loop unsnaps and we drop it into the trash, perhaps insignificant, but I wonder how much more plastic will enter the waste stream because of these little loops of plastic…all in the name of my convenience. I consider reusing these little loops…and then take a look at the stuff that resides on the floss after I use it. Suddenly, the waste stream seems a better spot for this stuff…perhaps they will invent reusable loops that I can put my own floss on.

Flossing is one of those things that if you do every day, it seems to lose the sense of drama. A daily flosser (and I know folks who do it each time they brush…two or three times a day!) will have almost know reside on the floss…I know this because when I floss a lot, I note that the floss stays pretty clean….but the occasional flosser…now they get a lot of residue…they can really see they are doing some good. You just want to keep that from your nose….there is no joy in smelling that!

The one odd market niche is all the kinds of floss they make…waxed or unwaxed? You tell me, do I want wax? I don’t even know what the wax is for. Mint or plain? (mint seems ok, but really I am not trying to taste this stuff), but the greatest invention in the annals of floss is this sort of “teflon floss” that glides easily in between each tooth…not sure what took so long, but I frankly can’t imagine why they still make the other stuff….brand loyalty? Hard to muster much loyalty to waxy white thread in a plastic box?

I always wonder whether it is best to floss before brushing, thereby assuring a lot of grungy stuff on the stringy device, or if it is best to brush first and remove, (hopefully) all but the most clingy grime. I am typically someone who likes the gratification of seeing results, like mowing the lawn when the grass is quite long, but in the case of flossing, I really don’t need to see “that”. A leftover bit of food, maybe some plaque and tartar, and whatever else resides in our mouth. I really don’t even want to search for a name. I know it is slimy and does not smell good.
Some foods demand use of floss. Corn on the cob and barbecue ribs often produces compelling need for floss. Celery seems to have floss built into it, though I have never heard if it is good (or bad) for the teeth. Apples act as a sort of natural toothbrush/floss as well.

So, after not flossing in a week or so, today I begin the journey of being a daily flosser. I have set aside the time, and developed the mind set.

Update on Previous Life Changes:
As we passed through the holiday season and into the new year, I feel a bit like a ball rolling along that comes upon a gradual uphill climb....progress is bound to slow, and, perhaps stop altogether--for me it surely did. I seem to have lost enthusiasm at times for various “changes”. Swearing, as I predicted seems only marginally improved. I pretty much have mastered the toilet seat thing, and I feel at peace with low fat milk, brown sugar, and green tea. As the weather has cooled, my water intake has slipped---I really have to work at this-- and sometimes I don’t.

Life Change #12: I Consume Too Much Artificial Sweetener

Those of us who have a few extra pounds look for painless and effortless ways we can keep extra calories out of the diet, or at least we feel good thinking we are trimming some unwanted sugar out of what we eat each day. Hence the development of the little pink packet…All the sweetness, and no calories…how in the world do they do that? Artificial sweetener is a mainstay in canned soda, light juice products, and there are those of us who drink it daily in their coffee. However, since I keep a bowl of it handy to spoon into my coffee each day, I have had occasion to notice something ominous. I notice it kills ants.

Yep. If left to crawl into the bowl, and eat all they want of this stuff, they never make it out alive. They do OK if they find the sugar bowl, and certainly the cookies, pies and cakes they have found over the years did them no notable harm, but the saccharin seems to kill them. And I wonder, what is it doing to me?

I managed some years ago to give up diet soda, and in fact I seldom drink soda at all except when it is the only thing that is available…it is not really a health related things as much as a “like” thing. I simply don’t like soda as much as other alternatives. But I do enjoy my guilt free sweetened coffee. With the milk and sweetener applied liberally, the coffee becomes almost a dessert, and since the sweetness added no calories, it was easy to indulge without thinking too much.

The thing is, though, having something that sweet, with no calories, is a bit like getting something for nothing…sort of too good to be true, and nothing ever is. In the back of my mind there was this concern, faint at first but gradually a bit more forceful. “What is this stuff doing to me?”. Perhaps killing any ants that might live in my stomach (I imagine I might have eaten a few over the years!)

I considered the plight of the lab rat, force fed this stuff until tumors broke out all over its body, and though I would always write that off as an inordinate amount of the stuff (as if any normal person would consume a pound of the crap in a day), it does give one pause. Over time, I figured I might have eaten pounds of it, and maybe it was the cumulative effect as opposed to the amount eaten over a short period. I really don’t want tumors all over my body, but I also consider what it would be live to add all those calories to the diet over the years. Sure there are trade offs, and I cannot really sit here and sat which is right, but now, based on how I feel, it seems time to give up the pink packets and pull out the jar of Brown sugar. Still not sure why, but somehow “brown sugar” feels more healthful than “white sugar”. On this point, I know that I am wrong, but I do know that it seems I can use less of it, and the additional flavor it brings makes it seem sweeter, and so in that sense, perhaps it is healthier.

So why are sweet things bad for us, and yet we crave them? I sit important for nature to make things we crave bad for us? Seems like a rather unfunny practical joke. The only reason anyone ever thought to invent an artificial sweetener was because sugar was deemed unhealthy. For diabetics, it is surely more serious than that, but for most of us, sugar adds calories, and that leads to expanding belt lines. Sugar also rots teeth, makes children hyper, and probably stings if you get it in your eyes. But despite all that, sugar is in fact everywhere. From donut shops, to candy bars, in our desserts, our soda, and in most of the condiments we put on our steak or hot dogs. Clearly, despite any and all health concerns, we have a sweet tooth that needs attention. And eliminating sugar from the diet is a fairly daunting task.

Sugar dominates the landscape of our culture. Soft drinks take up more space on the grocery store shelves than any other product…typically an entire aisle….the only other thing that comes close is cereal. I’ll venture the unverified guess that sugar is a primary ingredient of most of those products as well. Ice cream takes up its share of space as well. Point is, like so many things that are not good for us, it seems that we are directed to consume them anyway. Sugar, tobacco, alcohol…gasoline. Who is in charge here?

I suppose sugar has to be somewhat bad for us just to make sure we eat our broccoli …I mean if sweet things were healthy, when would make space on the plate for brussel sprouts? Sugar is bad for us simply to make sure we maintain a balanced diet. Or so it seems to me.
So…what if you could devise a product that offered the same taste as sugar, didn’t attack your teeth or waistline, and diabetics could eat it without problems. Wow, talk about a better mousetrap. It seemed so easy!

Thing is, it’s not natural. Like anything else that is too good to be true, so too is the concept of the artificial sweetener. Sure, my teeth are better off, and who knows how fat I would be if all the coffee I have consumed over the past 20 years had sugar instead of little pink packets sweetening it. But the images of rats with tumors, coupled with dead ants in the bowl have finally given me pause. Hell, ants eat anything…they attack the pantry with gusto, eating cookies, corn flakes and pancake batter. They eat old watermelon rinds and apple cores in the compost pile. They devour dead mice and squished earthworms. And yet, this stuff—this sweet white powder in little pink packs-- kills them. Pass me the brown sugar.


Update on Previous Life Changes:
After a couple of rough days, I feel like I have gotten back on the horse, so to speak. Ands this is how I know things are different this time. In the past, a couple of setback days would derail any momentum, but this time it seems I knew it would happen and just sort of shrugged it off. Habits are bad because they are repetitive and diminish our quality of life in some way. But occasional occurrences are a tad different. IF I swear all the time, that is bad, if I swear occasionally, well, that is life. SO this past weekend, I sort of took a vacation from life changing moments, and that is over, it is Monday, and I am back.

Life Change #11: I Have Let Our Earthquake Survival Kit Fall into Disrepair

About once or twice a month, I get a little reminder that I live in Northern California, and though some may question the wisdom of that due to the cost of living, home prices, traffic, or the woeful public schools, the one issue that looms over all our heads with little or no solution is that each day we are drawing closer to a catastrophic earthquake. Happily, these reminders come in the form of a little jolt that simply gets the heart rate up, or awakes everyone from a sound sleep. But someday, I know, there will be a jolt that does more than frazzle nerves. There will come an earthquake that destroys buildings, roads and bridges, that breaks water and gas lines, and sadly, injures or kills people. In the back of my mind, I hope not to live here when that happens, but frankly, it could happen before I finish typing this page. If anyone could predict an oncoming earthquake, this might not be such a bad situation, but the uncertainty creates a distinct need for…preparation.

Like many folks in the Bay Area, I have an earthquake kit….stocked many years ago and probably more of a health hazard than a survival tool. I know it…I can see a telltale rust stain on the bottom of one of the translucent containers we store the kit in. It is time to open, and assess this earthquake kit. The survival of our family depends on it.

The containers are stashed in the far recess beneath a seldom used desk in my office. The building is separate from the house, and I figured if the house was destroyed or unlivable, this building would most likely still be standing. I am not sure when I last opened the box, but it must have been at least 10 years ago. I retrieve the first container; there are two, each about 18” by 30” and about 20" deep. Upon opening the lid, I am struck initially by the bad news that one of the water bottles sprung a leak…the water which would be so vital to our survival if the water service had been compromised in some way, had basically destroyed most of the stuff with in. Now it was reduced to a rather messy scrapbook of what I thought we needed when I initially stocked it

Apparently one of the 4 bottles of water had leaked , because 3 of them looked more or less sealed up, but the presence of water had rusted cans, and soaked everything else. Somehow, ants had gotten invited to the party, and even though they were not active now, there was evidence that thousands had breached the seal. IN addition to the water bottles, there was a Ziploc storage bag of dry cat food (our feline family members will also want to survive). The bag had leaked, and the food within was sort of moldy and not at all edible. There was an odd assortment of canned foods, and I tried hard to think about what was going through my mind when I placed them initially. There were several cans of mandarin oranges, I assume to ward off not only hunger, but also perhaps, scurvy. These cans fared poorly….the steel was either thin or vulnerable to rust, because these cans had leaked, apparently leading to the ants discovery.

There were perhaps a dozen diapers indicating at least one of our kids was a baby or toddler at the time, most likely my daughter The diapers seemed so small. It seemed like just yesterday that I was a young parent changing diapers, and learning the art of parenting on the fly. We had included some diaper rash ointment, a pacifier, and several jars of baby food. I pondered what might have been should we needed this survival kit in recent times. How might baby food have fit into our lives with my two teenage kids? What would we have used the diapers for? I wondered if we might be able to laugh about it despite serious circumstances. It sure seemed odd just now, throwing away damp diapers that never got used. The baby food was past its expiration date, so I tossed it out, but first scanned the labels. These must have been the kids favorites at the time….carrots, strained chicken, strained peaches…I used to come home after work, and sit and spoon this to them as they awaited each impatient bite. If they didn’t like it, there was that tortured “chewing” and then the pasted would ooze right back out of their mouth. Rejected. “Bring back the peaches, dad”, they would say without speaking.

I considered for a moment the pacifier. It was brand new, in an unopened package. I can imagine had an earthquake arrived while there was still a baby in the house, that a pacifier might be pretty important. Frayed nerves would only be made more so with the abject unhappiness of a baby, perhaps hungry, perhaps cold or hurt, with little a parent could do. Seemed a good addition. Wish they made these for adults. I though also of the nights when we could not locate the pacifier, when the need seemed so critical so that we could get some sleep, and all the while there was one right here. I am surprised it made it without a preemptive use on such an occasion.

There was some dry baby food cereal stuff made of rice…I remember mixing this in with the strained fruits or with milk to make a paste. It never looked or smelled too good, but the kids gobbled it. I must have been pretty focused on the needs of a baby. Much of the stuff in here was specific to a 1 or 2 year old. Would have been handy had the earthquake come the week after I packed the box.

And in truth, one did occur when our first child, our son, was only a couple of months old. We were living in a different house, and we had no earthquake survival kit, and there were many who wound up needing them. Before the earth had stopped shaking, I was in my car, racing home and ignoring all speed laws, as I made the 15 minute drive home in about half that time. I saw chimneys laying all over the road, so I dodged bricks, and traffic lights were out, so I snuck through intersections, avoiding freeways and main streets so I could dodge traffic. There were smoke plumes in various places, and the radio seemed to have unreal stories about collapsed bridges, buckled freeways, and apartment buildings on fire. The more I heard, the more quickly I drove. I had no cell phone, and land lines were either down or overloaded. The only way to know if everyone was OK was to go there and see for myself. For me and my family, the news was good. We had dodged a serious earthquake without benefit of an earthquake kit. We might not be so lucky the next time around. So soon thereafter, these boxes were packed.

The second box had some dry goods, and happily no water had leaked in to destroy things, though ants did find their way in, as did a handful of spiders, but nothing seemed to be alive in there any longer. There were the requisite Mylar reflective blankets, to ward off cold should it be winter. Some wash clothes and a couple of towels. I am guessing my wife was in charge of this box. There was a Swiss army knife, $40 in cash, several boxes of macaroni and cheese, as well as some dry cereal (Honey Nut Cheerios!) a couple of pairs of socks. A disposable camera, predating the advent of digital cameras, was stowed along side a box of kitchen matches. A camera is a good item to include, I congratulated myself. Documentation of human suffering, and more to the point, the resilience of humans would be valuable…even if not for me and my family, but for future generations. I recall seeing photographs following the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, where the city hall dome was standing atop timbers, while everything around it was a smoldering ruin. That sort of tells the story pretty well, now that most survivors have long since passed away. Perhaps my little disposable camera would share similar stories with my children’s grandchildren. There was a tube of toothpaste, a bar of soap, and there were a handful of pictures and a list of phone numbers of important friends and relatives, near and far. Some of the relatives were no longer alive, and some of the friends had moved out of the area, or had not been seen in some time. As I sifted through the stuff that could be saved and sorted it from the stuff that needed to be discarded, the boxes became more like a time capsule than survival kits. This was what we thought was important 10 or 12 years ago. This was what we thought we needed. As conditions on the planet have devolved, some of the stuff seemed almost quaint.

There was a first aid kit, reminding me of the serious nature of the supplies stocked in there. There were dozens of band-aids, and not much in the way of medical supplies. This earthquake was hopefully just delivering some scrapes and bruises. There were a couple of instant cold packs, an ace bandage, and some aspirin. The was something labeled “first aid cream” and various and sundry gauze pads. I recall watching on TV during our last earthquake as they hauled broken bodies out of the rubble of fallen overpasses, and wondered if this first aid kit was sufficient.

I managed to place a Ziploc bag of coffee and some tea bags into the undisturbed box, and was curious about what 10 year old coffee grounds would taste like. I also wondered what I was going to brew the coffee in, but I did include some filters, so perhaps I had a plan. There were two flashlights, and two packages of batteries, as well as some candles, a note pad and several pens and pencils. In an envelope was some paperwork folded up. Birth certificates for the kids, a copy of my driver’s license, a copy of our homeowner’s insurance (very much expired) and our health insurance policy. There was a pack of gum (since we’d want clean fresh breath), as well as a handful of candy bars, and a picture book I recall reading to the kids when they were young. That might be comforting, I thought.

There were a couple of old sweatshirts and a blanket rounding out the provisions, and as I discarded the pork and beans and canned corn that looked too rusted to be appetizing, I started to consider how I might fill up an earthquake kit for today, for the post 9/11 world, when it might not be an earthquake that causes us to open this box for real. Should I include a gas mask? Duct tape to seal up doorways and windows. What about gasoline? Should I stow some sort of firearm in there? I don’t even own a gun, and pretty much oppose their use, but it occurs to me that seismic shifts don’t always occur below ground.

Now with the container empty and cleaned out, it was time to consider what to put back. Of course, the list would start with water…how much? What really constitutes enough water? How long will we be without it I wonder? I consider gasoline. I really don’t want to store gallons of gasoline at my house, but it does occur to me that one of the best things I could do in the aftermath of an epic earthquake is get the hell out of here. Drive eastward until the impact of the quake is no longer felt…like Wyoming. Of course, a 500 mile drive would mean keeping 20 or 30 gallons of gasoline…far more than I would think wise. I always think I should leave the car tanks full for the same reason, but that is way more trouble than it is worth. Guess we’ll be riding it out.

Since we will be sticking around, better have a flashlight or two and some batteries. A radio would be nice, but I don’t have one of those transistor radios that we used to have that we would carry around in our pocket and listen tot the World Series secretly at school when I was a kid. I think those took like two AA batteries. I wonder if they even sell those things anymore. We do, however, have three or four boom boxes...which take like 16 D batteries....probably be good to listen to the news, and wouldn’t hurt to be able to blast tunes...better leave a couple of CD’s in there just in case...that should take me about a year or so to figure out which would be the right music for the post disaster world we would be living in....”It’s the End of the World as we Know it” sounds about right.

What kind of food will we be eating? Since the advent of survival type shows on the Discovery Channel, Bear Grylls has show us that you can eat almost anything in a pinch...you can even drink your own pee if it comes to that (thanks, I’ll just pack in some water!). I began to weigh the various options....cans seem to rust (at least when water bottles leak all over them)...bottles and jars could shatter, and dry food needs water to become edible (which means storing more water). Will we be cooking? Will our current household staple, Macaroni and Cheese, be viable? I have so many questions about the apocalypse.
I finally decide that a blend of things might be the right tack. Some boxes of Mac and Cheese, some cans of beans, some applesauce, even some backpacking food that seems as though it might last forever (in part because no one actually wants to eat it!). Cereal...maybe some beef jerky....some Tang (remember the ongoing scurvy threat!)...some food for the dog and cats might be nice as well, though I flash momentarily on the prospect of eating that stuff given the direness of the circumstances...I wonder at what point the survivors get the short straw.

In the end, I realize that the central problem is that I want to stock it and forget it...but a real earthquake kit gets rotated about once a year....I wonder what habit needs to change to afford me that sort of discipline.

Update on Previous Life Changes (Day Eleven):

A wall, or sorts. A busy day, a general malaise, and for the first time since I started this little lab rat examination, I failed to find time to exercise. I think I did OK on everything else, but I was surprised at the mix of guilt and apprehension I felt when the day ended without the requisite exercising. I was frankly tired, and the thought of climbing aboard the elliptical was almost nauseating, so I decided NOT to push it and in hindsight, that may have been exactly the time to dig a little deeper. No pain, no gain, or so goes the adage.
The truth is, today notwithstanding, I am starting to feel the impact of all the changes I have made. I do not get tired running up and down stairs, I have adjusted to the low fat milk, my body craves water if I do not drink enough of it….even though we are only into he 11th day, some things are taking their place in my life. The more “gourmet changes” like cursing and toilet seat positioning are basically changes in mindset. I simply have to be present enough, in the moment, to see these changes through. I raally have not left the toilet seat up, and I believe I have not sworn for 3 days(though I have noted that I managed to curse in my “inner dialogue”, silently, and wonder if that counts…perhaps that will go away with time).

Life Change #10: I Don’t Drink Enough Green Tea

Just as we, as a nation, do not drink enough water, it appears that we do not drink enough green tea….or so says certain nutritionists or perhaps the cadre of green tea producers in our midst. In any event, it seems we need to solve this crisis, and I plan to do just that…one cup at a time. Aside from forgetting to do this, I think this will be a fairly simple habit to break. I often will warm up any left over coffee from the morning or sometimes even pour it over ice as a sort of afternoon pick me up. I will simply opt for green tea instead. I can drink it warm, or pour it over ice on warm days, just as I would coffee. I like the flavor, don’t really need to add sugar or milk or anything. I think just a cup a day is all I need, and really, if I miss a day, no big deal.


This may be the latest in a series of “fad foods” that we Americans get crazed on. We like foods that promise something we may not be getting elsewhere. In the case of green tea, simply put, the promise is longer life, in the form a batch of anti oxidants that fight disease, cell degeneration and aging it self. Sounds pretty good for a lightweight paper pouch full of ground up leaves. Sign me up.


Before green tea it was blueberries. Pomegranate juice is good. So is spinach, almonds, garlic and seaweed. Someone sent me a list one time of the top 10 most healthful foods you could eat, and it made a pretty good meal. We took spinach and sautéed it with garlic, olive oil and sliced almonds and placed a piece of grilled salmon on the spinach, served it with a glass or red wine and had blueberries in a bowl for dessert, served with green tea. The meal contained all 10 of the 10 best things to eat, and it was darn good.


In any event, there is always something that is attributed with curing diseases, old age and subsequent death. I have a theory that if you can cure all those things, folks will beat a path to your door; even more so if the cure is in the form of a good tasting food, or easy to take vitamin pill. Fish Oil was the cure of choice some years ago, and I recall my doctor indicated he thought it might be a good thing to take a fish oil supplement on a regular basis. Awhile later, it was disclosed that the concentrated fish oil, while having definite benefits, also acted to concentrate the mercury so often found in fish, thanks to our ill considered decision to dump our wasted and industrial by products into streams and rivers, and the ocean where it all winds up anyway. I still take fish oil, but wonder if the mercury is killing me.


Vitamin E was another panacea pill….a powerful antioxidant that seemed to deter aging, and when combined with Vitamin C, fought off cancer, wrinkles and did your homework if you asked nicely. Then they found out in some study that people who took Vitamin E supplements faced a greater mortality risk, though they could not establish any link to the actual vitamin…even saying it might be that unhealthy people took vitamin E at a greater rate than the general public with the hope of offsetting the damage their body had already sustained.


Longer life in a pill form or easy to drink liquid is a pretty attractive claim. I mean who wouldn’t want to take a chance? If such a claim is true, how can you go wrong? What is a person to do? What to believe or discard as nonsense? In the United States, most every claim made is an attempt to sell something. Either Dyna Gyms, Jack LaLane vegetable juicers, or fish oil capsules -- someone profits if I believe I just have to have something.


Green Tea is likely no different. However, I like the taste, and based on centuries of use in China and Japan, it appears that it does not wreak any sort of havoc, so it seems safe, even if it does not double my life span. We want to live forever, or if not forever, at least a long time. But I daresay we ought to put in there the proviso that those increasing later years are filled with good health and comfort, as well as strong mental acuity. Anything less is not a great bargain.
Green tea, though, also happens to taste good…and that is a bonus. A habit that comes easy. They make green tea ice cream, and candy, and it is a somehow comforting taste when brewed hot or poured over ice. I wonder if green tea ice cream has all the health benefits suggested by the name, or if the fat and sugar sort of offsets any premise of well being.


Rather than ponder those things, I will simply warm up the teapot after lunch each day so that I can take a spot of tea each day. Just think, if it helps me to live longer, how many cups of tea I will need to drink. What a great marketing tool….longer lives mean more tea consumed!.



Update on Previous Life Changes (Day Ten):

2 straight days with out cursing! Maybe anything is possible! Adding tea to the program impacted my water intake a bit, but I’ll get that under control. I’m feeling good, even if the waistline has remained consistent. I am far from perfection, I can see that clearly, but I can also see that 92 days of these type of changes will bring some tangible differences…can’t wait to get there!

Life Change #9: I Forget to Put the Toilet Seat Down

This may be the site of the initial battlefield of the Battle of the Sexes. It is surely nearby. I am not sure who decided that the default position of the toilet seat is in the “down” position, but I was not consulted and despite any and all protestations I may present, it never goes unnoticed in my household. Since I am not the only male in the house, and my son often has friends in tow, I am sure it is not always me. I however ALWAYS get blamed. I must have protested too much and hence lost any credibility on this matter.

The toilet seat is a marvelous invention. It raises and lowers depending on who needs to use it, and it even includes a lid, which inconveniences both sexes more or less equally. Hence, when I put the toilet seat down, I always include the lid…it requires no extra effort, and restores the toilet to a sense of neutrality. My wife refers to the bathroom as the “men’s room” when the seat is in the up position…I guess implying it is, or should be, the “ladies room” when restored to its normal state. Lowering the lids is my silent protest against that arrangement.

The primary reason I forget is that, as I work primarily at home, I am the one who uses the toilet most often during the day, hence I figure, if I am going to be the next user, I ought to be able to leave it as I will need it to be, my so called coffee mode. I am frankly surprised at how often my estimate fails to produce accurate results. My wife often walks into the bathroom before I have switched over to afternoon/evening mode. This of course has gained new importance now that I am drinking in excess of 100 ounces of water every day. That does not come without a price… all day long. No more coffee mode.

I am told that it is disgusting to have to touch the toilet seat before using the facility, and I wonder if raising the lid is any less so. I am guessing this stems from the use of public bathrooms, and perhaps one of the basis’ for same sex bathrooms. Women, apparently do not like to touch toilet seats. Men apparently do not either, since they can use urinals, and if everyone plays by the rules, the only person to ever touch a toilet seat is the janitor, and he would likely be wearing rubber gloves. This arrangement has carried over into my house, and though I suppose I could suggest we install a urinal, for now it appears, the seat needs to be adjusted.

My wife has an even more extreme idea than the installation of a urinal. She suggests that I sit down to pee. She intimates that many husbands of her friends do the same…I stop to wonder how comes by this information. I wonder if this is really the type of thing that women discuss when they get together for tea or a glass of wine…the urinary habits of their husbands. I can assure you that men NEVER discuss the urinary habits of their wives, unless it is to complain about the number of stops they have to make on a road trip. We discuss women, just not in that way.

Aside from the obvious suspicion about the veracity of the claim that some men are sitting down to pee, I ask myself, “why?” One of the notable good things about being a man is that you can essentially pee anywhere. With barely a fuss. Unzip and you are ready to go. Literally. In a field, behind a bush, against a wall, even in a toilet. In fact, I had occasion in my early teenage years to walk aside two friends down the main street of a small mountain town late one evening, peeing. All three of us, in unison. “A walking leak”, we called it, right on Main Street, for any and all to see…no one much cared, or even saw, or understood. Still, we added it proudly to our resume of places we have peed. And most men, I daresay, have utilized this flexibility to pee in various places at some point in their life time. Only to give up eons of evolutionary advantage to sit on a toilet? To avoid having to raise or lower the seat?

This does run counter to my intuition. Inventors have spent countless hours trying to perfect devices that would allow women the same ease and utility. I never hear women suggest that peeing sitting down affords them a chance to relax for a few moments. No way. It is a burden, depending on how many layers of clothes they are wearing at the time. NO one in their right mind would trade the convenience of standing up, unzipping, peeing and being done. You don’t even have to touch anything but your own body if you opt not to flush.

There is also the matter of sitting on a toilet unnecessarily. As I mentioned earlier, my house is entering its second century of service. Our toilet seems to be one of the early prototypes of toilet technology, and hence the seat is a scant 13” off the ground. It takes me a good 3 minutes to summon the strength and courage to stand up from a toilet that low. My knees simply do not enjoy that sort of thing unless nature demands that they cooperate. To sit on the toilet when there is another option is simply out of the question. Perhaps if the house was fitted with those newfangled “high-boy” toilets.

I can understand the seat position debate if in fact the problem was that I never raised the seat when going pee. My aim is not that good to reduce the target area by 25%. In fact, I have argued (unsuccessfully) that by leaving the seat up, I have offered proof that I have not attempted to “pee through the seat”. It is a signal that the seat, when lowered will be clean and ready to use. If it is left down, how can you really tell? What assurance do you have that the last person that used it did not pee all over the seat. This problem was surely a more pressing issue when my son was much younger. He definitely had no problem working on his target practice, and often seemed to treat the seat as a part of the target. In that context, raising or lowering, much less using the seat had a less appealing slant to it.

A subcategory in this debate is the issue of leaving the seat up at night. I am told that one of the worst feelings is using the toilet and feeling cold porcelain on your rear end just prior to slipping downward into the water. I cannot say from first hand experience how this might affect me, nor can I really prove that it has happened. I must confess that it sounds dreadful…uncomfortable, disgusting, and really not at all the kind of thing you want to happen to you in the wee hours. I can say, though, that one of the solutions is quite simple. The light switch.

However, after some 20 years of having this discussion, I will relent. I will change the sign on the door from “Water Closet” to “Ladies Room” (at least in my own mind) and I will keep that seat (and lid) in the down position, and wonder why, if this is so important, they don’t have toilet seats self lower upon flushing. If that is truly the default position, why does the toilet not have a self actuating reset button, to return the toilet to neutral following each use? Like windshield wipers, or the refrigerator door? They could have a very slow acting spring hinge, and the seat and lid would descend almost imperceptibly once it was raised…and then, perhaps 3 or 4 minutes after each use, the toilet would be back to the closed position.

Of course, if peeing was taking a long time for whatever reason, the seat might eventually descend enough to get in the way. This might actually add pressure, and make peeing even more difficult. In this case though there is an easy solution: You can simply sit down to pee.


Update on Previous Life Changes (Day Nine):

Feeling a groove sort of take over. Got the exercise, the water, the right kind of milk in my coffee. And you know what? I do not recall uttering any expletives. A miracle after only 9 days…of course, other than to drink coffee and water, I elected to go with the gag all day, so I couldn’t utter any words at all….not really, but it did cross my mind. I have made now 9 changes, and have fit all of them into my daily regime with little difficulty, other than the occasional word that slips out. But even there, I seem to be swearing less.

Life Change #8: I Use Whole Milk in my Coffee

I hate milk. It has been about 43 years since I last drank a glass of the stuff. I never liked it, and though I would never consider eating a bowl of cereal without milk poured over it, I am also the last guy in the world that would pick up that bowl, when the cereal is gone and drink the milk remainder. I’ll drink chocolate milk, but even that is not something I ever crave. Milk and I simply walk different roads.

That said, despite my love, no, need, for coffee to start each day, I could never drink that coffee were it not for milk. I have tried coffee black and much as I love it fully “polluted” that is how much I despise it “black”. Pity too, as I have this sense that it would be far better for me if I kept my coffee to two simple ingredients….water and ground up coffee beans.

When the advent of coffee houses really took control of our lives and there was one in every block, I began the bad habit of using half and half in my coffee….I mean it was so easy…the little thermoses with three kinds of creamers…it was so much richer, smoother and for some reason, it seemed right, when spending two bucks for a cup of coffee, that it be somehow more flavorful, more decadent, more unhealthy than what I would have at home.

Eventually I discovered something interesting: they sell half and half at the market. So the argument became, “if I have this at home, perhaps I will be less inclined to go out and buy coffee”, since I could get that great coffee house flavor at home. This will save me time, and money. Half and Half may be the cure to all of my problems.

Well….though I am no richer, and I surely did not put that time to good use, I am not sure that half and half was the panacea I was looking for. I am sure though, it raised my cholesterol. SO after a year or two of seeking half and half when making coffee, I down grade to simply whole milk…still laden with fat, to be sure, but without the whole cream to really insult any pretense of eating healthier. At first it seemed a bit less tasty, but I’d guess no more than a week went by before my taste buds had made the adjustment….so why not go all the way. Why not avoid those trips to the store to get whole milk, when in fact there is (almost always) 1% milk in the fridge, as a result of having two teenagers (and their friends) in the house. Hey, maybe THIS will save me time and money!

Of course, on day one, I am under whelmed. The first thing I notice is the color. Gone is that sort of tan color…the drink is clearly brown. And there is a thinness to the drink…I can sense the way that it hits my tongue and goes down my throat that there is something missing. That something, as it happens is called fat. Can fat really make that big a difference? What does fat taste like? Why do we miss it when it is gone, and deplore it when it is present? Why do we have to have phrases like “half the fat with all the flavor?” Are “fat” and “flavor” related in some strange way? Lemonade has no fat, and it has a lot of flavor.

Fat is a word that carries almost no good connotations. Unlike “sun” or “sunshine” which sound great but are apparently a grave danger, “fat” leaves almost no room for confusion. I am fat, and that is unhealthy. If I eat fat, I will get fat, and that is unhealthy. If I am fat, and want to get skinny, one way to do that is to eat less fat. And yet, fat seems to taste good. Fat seems to be present in large amounts in foods that we may crave…ice cream, t-bone steak, chicken wings, cheese, chocolate mousse, and of course, half and half and whole milk. Perhaps this leads to the phrase that seems to be the exception to the rule…”fat and happy”.

It seems as if many of the experiments to eliminate fat go awry in some manner. Margarine was thought to be a healthy alternative to butter, but it turns out that all the hydrogenated oil was even worse for you than the animal fat in butter. Non Dairy creamer uses those hydrogenated oils as well. Synthetic fat (no feel good words in that description) gives you the runs if you eat too much of it (or so I am told).

In the end though, some non fat foods are sure to make you lose weight. When we buy fat free cheese, as sometimes happens during a bout of health consciousness, fear or with swim suit season approaching, we find we eat far less of it because it tastes so bad. It is dry, melts poorly, and has no flavor. We are guaranteed to eat less cheese, at least until someone can get to the grocery store to buy some decent, fat laden cheese.

Low fat ice cream has some potential. I understand that they simply infuse the product with air, so the same volume has fewer calories, but I am willing to live with that illusion. I’d probably be willing to give low fat or non fat frozen yogurt a chance, but it hardly stands a chance when it has to sit in the same freezer as the ice creams, which offer a dizzying array of flavors like “Butterfinger Almond Mocha Crunch with Fudge Swirls. Yogurt offers “Chocolate”. That is not even a fair fight.

Even buying super lean ground beef is unsatisfying. A burger made of this ostensibly healthy product falls apart on the grill, and typically comes out dry and mealy. Again, as a weight loss food, not a bad concept, but if you are actually hungry….

So what is this stuff, fat? It adds flavor, adds texture and binds things together, it creates a sense of richness, of thickness. It clogs our arteries and kills us, slowly. It seems essentially irreplaceable as no great options have appeared in the marketplace. And yet despite all it seems to do, it still has a very bad reputation (probably the “kills us slowly” part). Fat is in need of a good agent, or perhaps a council. Like the folks that try to get us to drink more milk (Got Milk?) or the folks that want us to eat more pork (the other white meat?). The Fat Council; or perhaps the American Fat Association. Definitely need someone to spruce up the image. Take care of that pesky artery clogging thing as well….

The milk that I will use in my coffee now is called “low fat milk”. But they do not call the stuff I used to use “High Fat milk” or “full fat milk” they call it “whole milk” or simply “milk”. Whole milk is either clever branding or very devious. “Whole” brings to mind words like “wholesome” implying healthy, and the word “whole” seems to imply that something valuable is missing from the low or non fat versions. The something is called “fat”. And yet, if you are a “whole person”, that means you are well rounded, and it does not mean you are fat (though you may be anyway since a large portion of Americans seem to be); and if you get the “whole enchilada”, well I guess that includes generous sauce over the top.

For now, and given my family history, I think I will seek to trim the fat wherever possible. The one thing I do everyday is to drink coffee, and as it stands now, that means drinking it with milk laden with fat. If I cut that to low fat milk, then it seems a positive step towards cutting my fat consumption, and until they get a council to convince me otherwise, I will consider that a good thing.
I
am also unsure if I should make the switch to 1% milk, which is in plentiful supply around my house, or bite the bullet and drop all the way to skim milk, which has zero fat, but offers the same lack of convenience as half and half and whole milk. Ina week or so, after my taste buds have grudgingly accepted the change, I can look forward to never having to adjust again (the only thing left, I suppose, would be to add water to my coffee, and frankly, that seems unfulfilling)…besides, I get a little calcium if I add milk, whole or skim. And I am told we need some of that.

Update on Previous Life Changes (Day Eight):

As I enter the second week of my little self improvement project, I note that many of the earlier Life Changes are already integrated into my life. I have found time to exercise, and it has not been a struggle to do so…Today, I expanded both the duration as well as the degree of difficulty, and it felt right. In fact, I noticed my heart rate did not climb as high, and I recovered much more quickly than I had initially. I will not say that I am in good shape yet, but after only a week of conditioning, my body is changing…soon, I hope, it will be shrinking a bit, but it is nice to detect things happening, even if they are invisible to the outside world.

Life Change #7: I Find Too Many Excuses (Not to Exercise, Wear Sun Block, etc)

This is really my most insidious habit, and the root of most of the things that I’d like to change about myself….sticking to things once I start. I will really start to feel good, after a few weeks of regular exercise. I will start to notice it when I climb stairs. Maybe even my wife makes a comment, or my daughter. And yet, despite the internal and external positive feedback, I simply stall out. I quit. The opportunity to stop presents itself, and instead of working overtime to stick with it….I simply let it go. If I have an all day meeting, instead of waking up early to get in the exercise, I let it slide….one day at a time is OK….I get that, but for me, the loss of momentum is profound….If one day ever turns into to 2 or 3 days, then it will almost assuredly turn into 2 or 3 months…and back to square one we go!

Maybe this is just who we are now. We want quick simple gratification. We don’t want to work for anything. We want fast food, easy money, quick fixes, overnight sensations and love at first sight. Expressions like “short attention span theater”, “the MTV generation” and “Quick Lube Oil Change” are permanent fixtures in the lexicon of our language. Folks, we want it fast. I have been exercising for 7 days now…aren’t I done yet?

The problem with a good excuse is that it often rings true in the moment. If I decide to get some exercise, my mind might race to any one of the following gems: I am too tired, it is too hot, I am hungry, I do not have time, my head hurts, I am expecting a phone call, I should go get gas in the car, there is a lunar eclipse next week, weekends should be three days instead of two, there is nothing good on TV. At one time or another, all of those statements have been true, and it is also possible that they have all been true at the same time. It suggests the range of legitimate and ridiculous things that creep into my mind when I am trying to rationalize why I am not doing something I wanted, or needed, to do.

Sometimes, the fact that the excuse is wholly unrelated to the task I am excusing myself from, does not occur to me until well after the fact. I have opted not to exercise because I have an early morning meeting (leaving me, conveniently the entire day to exercise once the meeting is over). I have opted not to wear sun block because I left it at home, when in truth, there is almost always someone in attendance at our various outdoor activities that has an ample supply. Sun block is one of the things that is shared willingly, generously and sometimes even, forcibly. Forgetting the sun block is not an excuse. The fact that I invariably get sun block in my eyes at some point during a day in the sun may well be a reason to buy sun block that does not hurt the eyes, but it still does not defend skipping the task altogether.

Excuses offer us the illusion of having choices. We may not want to do something, so we offer up an excuse to give ourselves an alternative that is more appealing. “I cannot help you move on Saturday because I am going to the beach, where I will apply sunscreen liberally.” Often times these “excuses” are simply facts resulting from a busy life which many of us “enjoy”. “I cannot go to the ballet on Saturday because I already have tickets to college football game that afternoon, much as I’d love to see the ballet.” Sometimes the choices are hard, sometimes they are easy…

But it is also, sometimes a reflection of how we’d rather spend our time, and this can be touchy. This is where excuses can veer into the territory of outright lying. I don’t want to attend the ballet, because I do not like the ballet, and so, if invited, I say I have plans that evening, as opposed to saying “the ballet sucks”, or “I cannot imagine spending even one moment of my life span watching ballet” which, though true, would be rude and sort of implies an unnecessary disagreement. I understand that people like the ballet and that is just fine….How do you decline something like that without creating debate.

Even if I decide to find a gentle way to take the high road and decline to go to the ballet because I am not interested, it invites the response “Have you ever been? You might really like it!” To this response there are two possible outcomes. First of all, it is so doubtful that “I might really like it” as to be laughable…but what if I do really like it? What if I love it and crave it and want to return as soon as possible? Do I really need some other thing to fill up time in my life? I have my kids and all their activities (none of which, happily, include ballet), I have work, and at least 3 organizations I volunteer time to. I like sports…attending sporting events, watching sports on TV, and I live in a house that is marking its 100th anniversary, and hence it could always use a helping hand somewhere. I spend time with friends, and my kids and their friends, and it seems like I have no time for some other activity that I enjoy…like ballet. Though I have always been curious about Robot Wars….

Sometimes we have excuses that are misconstrued as attempts to wiggle out of a task or commitment that we don’t want to do. Odd sounding excuses seem to fall easily into this category, even if completely true. The first date I ever had with my wife had to be postponed because my dog had suffered a stroke a couple of days prior. I needed to be with my family, and sit with the dog that evening, because we feared she would not survive the night. This kind of excuse assumes that everyone loves dogs as much as my family does. My wife, to her credit, did not hold this against me for too long, but it was not an easy excuse to offer, initially.
But no matter what, an excuse carries some implied debit, as if using an excuse to get out of doing something reduces your stature in some, even infinitesimal way. An “excused absence” means you gave a reason why you did not attend, but you were still “absent”. You missed something you were supposed to be a part of, and even though you had, perhaps, a good reason for not being there.

The best excuse is the one that cannot be rejected. You have to be careful using these. They are often unverifiable and usually involve some sort of urgency or illness. “I cannot attend the dinner party on Friday because we must go to a funeral out of town”. Slam dunk. You are out of that engagement…just be sure you have a name and relationship ready for the inevitable “Oh I’m sorry to hear that…who died?”

It is difficult to offer these kinds of excuses to your personal self help regime unless they are entirely truthful. “I cannot exercise because my grandmother died” is ineffective if it is not true. It may not even be a good excuse if true. Personal excuses carry the burden of needing to be entirely truthful, but have the advantage of always getting the benefit of doubt. “I cannot exercise because my feet hurt” can derail a planned exercise session if given enough credibility, and since you only have to convince yourself…the person with the sore feet…it seems a near certainty that you will be swayed.

Unfortunately though, this is where I have the most trouble, and this is the habit I must break free of today…I allow these little internal excuses to derail too many commitments in my life. “I cannot exercise today, because I must write”. Seems reasonable, but a well organized person, committed to the importance of both, would plan his day accordingly. “I cannot write today because I have a dentist appointment” is also a matter of time management, and I find that most excuses are driven by some lack of time. If we had infinite hours in each day, we could find time for everything. In truth, we may have 17-18 hours, at the most, to do all we want or need to do in a day. It is a surprisingly small amount of time.

Excuses, then, are also a kind of tradeoff…a negotiation with ourselves to address the finite amount of time we have…today, this week, and in our lifetimes. We can measure the amount of hours we have in a day, and a week, but since we do not know how much time will make up or lifetimes, we must negotiate vigilantly to avoid spending too much doing that which has no meaning to us. And we must also make sure we allow proper time for the stuff that truly matters, and acknowledge that sometimes there is not even enough time in a day to do what we really want to do.

I propose then to examine my priorities each day, starting with family, work, and my personal goals, and prioritize accordingly. I will try to make certain that my excuses are legitimate reasons as opposed to time management decisions that favor laziness or a lack of organization. This sounds a bit like the swearing habit (Life Change # 3: I swear (way) too much). A noble goal but difficult to measure and prone to minor or even major slip ups. However, if I do mess up, I’ll have a really good excuse---if it were not for bad habits, I’d have no habits at all!


Update on Previous Life Changes (Day Seven):

Memo to self: On hot days, in which I am sweating, be careful not to rub your eyes while wearing sun block. Sort of like getting shampoo in the eyes…a sting that lasted the better part of 10 minutes. Sure made tanning sound fashionable. Though I got in my required water intake,(again, the heat and the time spent outside made 4 or 5 32oz Nalgene bottles go down easily), I also added some lemonade and a cherry snow cone to the liquid intake…totally worthwhile misadventures.

I pushed through the couple of weeks of my bad habit elimination regime with mixed, but overall, decent success. As expected, I have had more slip ups with swearing than any other Life Change. I doubt I have been able to go an entire day without uttering one of the words that John Stewart has edited out. But I have grown aware of saying them…they do not slip out along with the rest of the words, and so I’d say my swearing has reduced dramatically, and I hope, I will maintain this awareness and gradually swear less and less.

I did get in at least 30 minutes and sometimes closer to 45 minutes of quality exercise each day, and though no tangible results in terms of weight loss or appearance, I do feel better...more energetic, more alert. I also found that introducing 96-128 ounces of water each day was not as hard as I thought, and I find this to be a change that already seems integrated into my daily regime. No more standing with the refrigerator door opening searching for something to drink…I keep my water bottles in the freezer, and when one is done, I go get another. I actually find myself vaguely thirsty, so it is never something I have to force myself to do…my body has quickly started to appreciate all the water I am consuming.

I did yell at a guy in an intersection today, to stop smoking. I was doing a u-turn and saw him as I had revered direction and drove past him as he waited to either do a u-turn or turn left. There is no doubt that he thinks I am crazy….and those who could hear me thought that as well….it just seems odd to hear someone scream, randomly, “STOP SMOKING!!!” at strangers on the street. I have no idea if this helped him stop smoking or not, but at least he did not follow me and run my car off the road. I consider this to be a signal that he is open minded about the need to stop smoking.

Life Change #6: I Forget to Wear Sun Block

Today I slather on sun block. On my face, forehead, nose, on my ears (my ears peel really badly when they get sunburned). I’ll put it on my arms and chest, and I will apply lip balm with an SPF rating of 25, and I will walk out into the warm sun of late summer in Northern California. I will do this, as I should have done most every day this summer, and for many summers before that. And yet, all summer, in the backpack I carry around with me most of the time, I carry SPF 50 waterproof sun block. For the last month or so, I have even had some special SPF 45 sun block that is made entirely differently and blocks special rays that cause wrinkles and wreak untold havoc on free and not so free radicals and all that stuff. I have no excuse for my oversight. Somehow, deep ingrained in my brain, against all scientific understanding, I carry with me the completely absurd thought that being tanned is a sign of good health.

I am a product of the late 70’s, of Southern California, when tanning on the beach was considered an activity, and the sunscreen of choice was Baby Oil. I recall feeling unhealthy in the winter because I was growing paler, and losing my hard earned tan. We admired those who had garnered a deeper darker tan than our own. We particularly admired those girls who seemed to have achieved tans with no apparent tan line. We admired them a lot. In fact, that may be why we bothered to go out and sit in the hot sun at all…so we could admire those girls with imaginary tan lines…lots of imagination involved with those tan lines.

I wonder about the girls I went to high school that truly committed themselves to the art of the tan. There was a handful. It took some serious time and effort to maintain that bronze mocha tone that seemed at the time to reflect the picture of health. They were typically long and lean, and wore about as little bikini as possible in order to show off their life’s work. They were always there, at the beach. And I wonder now, if they are still tan and lean, or perhaps they are less tan and wrinkled, or worse. Another good reason to attend my high school reunion, I suppose.

Now of course, I have friends that have been stricken with skin cancer, and we fully understand that tanning is no sign of health. In fact it seems to suggest that the sun is microwaving your body to a crisp like a piece of bacon. How, though do I undo the wiring from so long ago…don’t get me wrong…next to exercising, this is probably the most important habit I will break on this little journey….I guess I just had hoped that when I got that body back in shape, I’d be able to take my shirt off and get a tan.

Still, this is a tough topic to be smug or funny about. At the end of the day, it takes, what 15 seconds in the morning to take care of this…maybe another 30 seconds around mid day if you are in the sun for a long time. I really ought to be able to add this to my daily ritual. I’ll be outside watching my daughter and her friends play soccer most of the day, and it will be sunny, and today, I will be protected…is it too late? I think at some level that has been the question that has been at the back of my mind each day I march out into the sun with nary a hat.
As a (nearly) lifelong Californian, the word “sun” has been synonymous with, well, everything. So much of our lives take place outside, that I have come to feel uncomfortable if for some reason weekend activities keep me indoors. The sun can be warm most any time of year, and as nice as it is in the summer time, it is more so in the winter when we watch football games on TV that are played on the “icy tundra” a while it is 66 degrees and clear outside. I have heard it described that the greatest travel advertisement for Southern California is the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl on New Years Day, while most of the country is covered in snow and ice, the invariably sunny warm weather for these events seems to rub the salt intended to melt ice into the open wounds of the viewers. Almost seems unfair.

We even use “sun” as an indication of happy healthy things….a sunny disposition describes a happy, upbeat person, while a walk on the sunny side of the street evokes feelings of warmth and well being, like you are headed in the right direction. “You are the sunshine of my life” is an appreciation directed at someone whom you love. It is a difficult adjustment to make to suddenly consider the sun a danger.

I guess we deserve it though. If we have dumped chemicals into the air that erode or destroy the protective ozone layer around our planet, then I guess this is our reward. What is odd, however, is how we as a family of nations respond to these discoveries. IF it is determined or even suspected that something we are doing is making the sun dangerous to us, shouldn’t that behavior stop immediately while we sort it out. If you suspect that each time someone shoves a sharp stick in their eye, they wind up losing sight in the eye; it seems prudent that step one is to stop with the sticks in the eye, while we figure out what is going on. The retort, though, today seems to be if some chemical is dangerous to the ozone layer, that chemical is phased out (over what is usually like several decades) or the very data is questioned, thereby leady to a series of arguments while the lawyers figure it all out…meanwhile, bye bye ozone. “I will continue to shove sticks into my eye, until you can prove to me that it is dangerous.” I’d advise setting the sticks aside immediately.

Perhaps, then, the reason that things have changed in the 40 years or so that I have been a sun worshipper is because the sun, or at least its ability to harm us, has changed. We don’t have the planetary sun screen in place, so we have to apply our own. I am sure as time goes by, the sunscreen that we apply will become stronger and stronger as we continually erode the ozone layer. And I wonder, will there come a time when the sun screen itself is so potent, that it will actually begin to harm us, and the suns rays pose such a threat that we will not really be able to go out in the sun at all. We will have to change a lot of songs, and phrases….we will rejoice at the “beautiful cloud filled skies”, and I will “walk exclusively on the shady side of the street”…and you will be the “dark cloud of my life”.

It will be an adjustment. Learning to love the clouds instead of the blue skies. Hopefully it will never get that bad. For now I will focus on applying sun block whenever I will be outside on a sunny day for more than a few minutes at a stretch. This exposure to the sun is not confined to summer afternoons by the pool…no…it is a year round commitment I make today. . I recognize that this is a change that may well save my life, or at least prolong it. Maybe I will have fewer wrinkles as I age, and maybe a few less freckles, and maybe I will simply change my idea of what a picture of health is…maybe even I’ll have to buy a wide brimmed hat. I just hope that in 10 or 12 years they don’t discover that the powerful and mysterious chemicals they need to use in order to block the sun’s rays aren’t killing us in some other insidious cumulative way, much as they said the sun was doing. Given the choice, I’d rather have it be the sun…so much more beautiful to say “I love the way the sun lights up your face”, as opposed to “I love the way the sun block shines on your pale skin.”


Update on Previous Life Changes (Day Six):

The exercise program faced a daunting challenge today…I really didn’t feel like it…after spending much of the day in the hot sun (well protected as noted above!) I really was not into finding the 45 minutes or so to sweat and breathe hard. Despite my distaste, I managed to force myself to do it…and as always, I felt like I had accomplished something when I was done…I knew there would be days like that and today I emerged victorious over sloth and lethargy. Not only did I wear sun block, I reapplied at about noon! I can already feel myself growing more pale…
Swearing was a mixed success…let’s just leave it at that, and on the hydration front, along with my 4 full Nalgene bottles (really easy to do when standing in near 100 degree heat), I supplemented my water intake with several beers in the heat of later afternoon, which tasted really good and until I am told (or convince myself) that is a bad habit worth changing, I will simply consider it “extra credit” on the road to ideal hydration.

Life Change #5: I Procrastinate About Anything That Involves Travel

This fall, I am supposed to travel out of town to attend my 30th high school reunion. I knew about this event 6 months, or more, prior, and now as barely a few weeks remain, I have not purchased a ticket, though I am sure I am going. Part of this is related of course to the upcoming Life Change #41: I Let My Fear of Flying Control Me. However, I can drive and take care of that, so there is other stuff at work here…and no, it is not about the reunion itself…I want to go…I plan to go, at some level, I wouldn’t miss it. I just can’t, or won’t, be bothered to plan my life around this, or any event involving traveling. And that is not unusual for me….summer vacation, holiday travel…anything like that…I can never commit.

The most pressing travel event on my radar right now is this reunion event. The Holiday season looms, and though I am sure it will be dinner time topic in the next couple of weeks, so far I have avoided any discussion---good thing too, as we still haven’t paid all the bills from summer vacation! As for the reunion—I am committing. I am taking out the checkbook, writing it out for $125.00, and even putting a stamp on the envelope…I am in. But first, I really should call a few good friends just to make sure they are going. I’d hate to spend all that money, travel all that way, and then not have them be there.

This fear of travel commitment comes up cyclically each year. Holiday travel is something I avoid at all costs, so I play the passive/aggressive card and simply cannot be bothered to make plans despite the reasonable requests of family and friends who want to know what our plans our. I have been known to throw myself behind the planning and execution of a holiday party simply to avoid rubbing elbows with the masses who find they must relocate for a week or so at the end of every year. Moreover, each summer, our departure date for the annual trek to the mountains is a date shrouded in mystery, often not becoming clearly defined until the week we actually pack up and go. I may be the only person I know that has this bad habit. Everyone else plans, I simply wait for that moment when it seems right…keeps me off airplanes, anyway.

But at least for today, I can address this. I pop the envelope into the mailbox, and instantly I am struck with the sense that perhaps no one is going. Perhaps it will be just me and a couple of guys from the marching band, hanging around some swank country club in LA, discussing different types of insurance, or reminiscing about events that none of us can recall. I never learned the art of disinterested conversation, and find it almost impossible to carry on dialogue with strangers if the object is to simply fill up the room with conversation.

I guess what most people think about prior to attending a high school reunion is their relative success when measured against their former peers. I’d guess these advance concerns are confined to the days leading up to the event, and when you actually go, you get caught up in the flora and fauna of the moment…the swirl of memory, and the chance to fill in pieces that help complete our picture of folks we have not seen in some time. The volleyball player who became a porn star…whatever happened to her? The math whiz who was synthesizing acid in high school…how did he make out? What about the old girlfriends? How do they look now? How do I look to them? Wish I had started that exercise program a few weeks (or months) earlier.

I recall the last event like this, I suppose it was my 20th high school reunion, and I was struck by the number of people who had died. Polaroid faces on a white poster board, precariously perched atop a flimsy easel… It was not a great number, perhaps 10 or 12, but it was weird to see faces of folks who did not even have the chance to consider how successful they were when balanced against the others there….it made such concerns seem pretty trivial. Why is it that money always can be made to seem trivial, but only for a few moments at a time? If I did not recognize the faces, I felt a pang, like I missed the chance to get to know them. These were someone’s son or daughter, husband or wife, and they did not get to weigh life’s great decisions, like whether or not to attend a high school reunion.

Somehow, the concept of classmates dying brings up the real reason we attend these events. Time is passing. Our time, their time, everyone in the room is a spinning clock. This is a stop along the way, specifically intended to mark the fact that the years have one by faster than anyone can imagine. This will be our 30 year reunion. Everyone will be in their late 40’s. There will be, I am guessing, even more folks that could not attend because they have passed away, and the next reunion, there will be even more. It goes without saying that is a list that none of us want to get on. But it will grow; until at some point that list is longer than the actual guest list. Cancel my tickets for that reunion.

The other reasons we go to these things is to, albeit briefly, restore contact with those “friends” you have not seen since the last reunion. I stay in contact with the people I really want to see, and in fact, I have several friends from high school I am still in regular contact with even now. Oddly, these are the same people I want to make sure plan to attend this event. I don’t want to be there without them, and yet, since I see them, and talk to them on a regular basis, I know what they are doing, how their kids are, what kind of house they live in, how many times they have been married…why waste time and money driving 500 miles to see them? And yet the experience would somehow seem quite empty without sharing it with them…so we can laugh about it later…discuss who looked great, who looked not so great, and who made the greatest fool of themselves (typically a result of sticking too close to the bartender). My reunion posse. Hope they can make it.

Just as the reunions of our lives mark time, so do the other “travels” I so vigilantly avoid planning. The holidays are essentially a yearly reunion we have with ourselves, as we pull out the same ornaments to place on this year’s tree, or gather in groups to celebrate the purchase of a new calendar, and make promises about how this year will be different. I can do all that at home, thank you. I do not need to stuff presents and winter clothes into the “closed and locked upper bin” or the back of the SUV. I do not need to battle weather, and traffic, and sleep on my in-law’s couch in order to enjoy the holidays.

Summer vacation. Two simple words, that when placed together perhaps describe the most perfect event on the calendar. I delay committing to it, I already know why-- because I love the notion that it is still to come, as opposed to having just ended. Summer vacation has it all…the weather is usually good, if you favor blue skies, warm weather, beach/pool play, scantily clad women, warm nights and long days of ample sunlight. Summer vacation has a meandering quality to it. Not scheduled around a day or date as the winter holidays, and there is often no objective (like shopping or decorating or shoveling snow). Summer is more about drinking a beer around a roaring campfire, or sitting on a boat dock listening to the splash of water against the moss covered wood. There is plenty of time to get to everything, because the agenda is short, and there is still lots of time left in the day. That said, the saddest day of the year is the last day of summer vacation. The ringing of the school bell, back to work, and the worst thing of all, almost a year before it rolls around again…a year to wait…far too long.

So as much as I look forward to it, I would far rather look forward to it, than rue its passing. So as it nears…as June gives way to July on the calendar, I begin to savor it. Like Charlie opening that first chocolate bar his grandpa bought for him on his birthday…morsel by morsel, I allow myself just a taste. Putting off planning it means it is still not here, and it sits, like an unopened present under the Christmas tree…full of potential, full of surprise. And when it does arrive, it’s a bit like that last day of school each year, when the binder paper can be thrown into the air, the assignment folder discarded into the dumpster. Homework left undone would simply have to stay that way.

So how many summer vacations do we get in a lifetime? 50, 60…70? Not nearly enough, I’d surmise. How many until they put us on the”definitely will not be attending” list at the reunion. How many Christmas trees will we decorate? How many calendars do we own in a lifetime? And what does any of this have to do with planning to travel?

In the end, I think my avoidance stems from not wanting to acknowledge that another year has gone by…I still have a lengthy to do list from last year. So much of MY travel involves ritual and tradition. Perhaps if I had a jetsetter job where I have to be in Paris for dinner and Milan for breakfast the next day, it would become second nature, and I would be able to get out one of the calendars I purchase along the way, and pick a date to be wherever I need to be. I wouldn’t worry about who would be there, or what I might miss if I depart from Northern California for a few days (an earthquake perhaps? See Life Change #21: I Have Let Our Earthquake Survival Kit Fall into Disrepair).

My fondest travels have always been those that had no strict itinerary. Those road trips without a clear beginning or end, where you linger in one place it feels right, and pass quickly from places that don’t offer much comfort. Perhaps that is why I procrastinate. I don’t like to lose that flexibility. An itinerary assumes everything has gone just as planned, and it seems, for me, nothing ever goes just as planned. How in the world can I know if I will be able to be at the airport on Oct 15th at 9:30? How can I be sure if I will be home next Thursday if I am driving through Yellowstone today? What if I like it? What if I want to stay? What if something better comes along? What if my car is surrounded by 861 bison, in front and behind and all over the road ahead and I must sit there until they have moved along? I could never quite commit to where I will be or how I will feel at some arbitrary date down the road. Who knows, I might even be one of those folks that can’t make the reunion.

But for now, for me, I will make that reunion, and if that goes well, I will try and layout my plans for the holidays, just so long as I get to sleep in my own bed.

Update on Previous Life Changes (Day Five):

A curious, unexpected surprise: since I have begun regularly exercising, and drinking so much water, I find that I have been drinking less coffee. In fact today, I actually made less of it, after dumping more than a little of it out into the sink the last couple of mornings. Could there be a connection? Or is it because I have stopped swearing? Are coffee and cursing connected? Happily, I got in my exercise, my water, didn’t swear (much), and against all odds, managed to avoid smoking. Didn’t get anyone to stop though, either. I kind of pushed things on the exercise front -- just shy of 40 minutes which seems a positive development.

Life Change #4: Stop Smoking

For me, this one will be easy. Simply put…I DON’T SMOKE. But I figured if you are reading this, you just might, and we best get our arms around this one right away. I am told, though I have no first hand knowledge, that stopping smoking takes time, dedication, will power, support, luck, nicoderm patches, several relapses, and in the end, failure is the most likely result. It seems to me simple…..it takes matches (or a lighter) to smoke. Hide the matches, discard the lighter. And there you have it…you cannot smoke! Then again, I always thought the best way to achieve gun control was to simply make ammo illegal. Constitution says you can have guns….nothing in here about ammo….

OK, so I am not quite so insensitive. I can hear ice cream call out to me at odd hours of the day or night. I can rationalize that one carton of Haagen-Dazs Swiss Chocolate Almond will not really hurt all that much in the grand scheme of things. I’ll exercise for an hour and then convince myself that “I earned it” and then eliminate any benefit I derived from a 600 calorie work out with a 1200 calorie ice cream binge. Addiction is addiction is addiction. But you should still stop…stuff is killing you, and it is not doing the rest of us much good either

I can scarcely imagine growing up the way I did. My mom smoked….everyone’s mom smoked. They smoked while they drove us around; they smoked while cooking dinner, while eating dinner, and all over the house. They smoked in restaurants, in theaters, on airplanes, at PTA meetings, in bed, in the bathroom…smoke was everywhere. Second hand smoke had a different description back then….we called it “air”. It was in fact the very stuff that we breathed—everything was second hand smoke….such was the prevalence of smoking.

At least now, we have relegated smoking to the back alleys or single occupant vehicles in our midst. Even so, when I pull up behind you in your Honda Accord with the windows down and the smoke billowing out the window, the smell is nauseating. How did I put up with this for so many years?…how did any of us put up with it?…how did smoking become so widely accepted? I want to get out of my car and tell you that I wish you’d roll up the windows, since I have small children in my car and don’t want them breathing that smoke. Probably get punched. Might even deserve it.

My limited experience with smoking came at the age of experimentation...about 13 years old…I stole a few Newport’s from my mom’s purse…getting cigarettes was no big deal…hell they all smoked so many of them so constantly that who would miss a cigarette or two. Cigarettes are so expensive now, that I am guessing a serious smoker knows exactly how many are left in the pack…that makes them hard to steal…and for that reason alone, expensive cigarettes seem like a good idea. Kids can’t steal them as stealthily from their parents.

The first thing I noticed as I lit my first cigarette is that holding a burning object that close to my eyes seemed wrong. In fact it burned…maybe my eyes are too sensitive, or a I smoked “wrong”, but it seemed that the little plume of smoke went right into my eyes, and that was not something I was going to easily grow accustomed to. Then there was the burning sensation in my throat and lungs…the sudden explosive coughing as the body rejected the entire premise of breathing this crap (I did allow myself to use that word, didn’t I?)…and finally, as if that was not enough, there were the spins….that “green around the gills feeling”…which is odd, because I do not believe I own gills…and yet, that description works…I felt like a sick fish. How in the world do people ever come back for cigarette #2 I wondered.

“Oh you get used to it”, I recall a friend, my partner in crime, telling me. “It’s pretty cool once you get the hang of it” he assured me. I think really, he just wanted me to steal more cigarettes from my mom, and he recognized that if I wasn’t interested, the supply chain was shut down. I think I got the second cigarette done. Not sure. All I know is that I simply never came back. I have a ton of bad habits, but happily, the worst, or at least one of the worst, habits is not mine to shed.

Still, tobacco holds some sway over our culture. I was floored when my son, on the occasion of his 18th birthday suggested that we might go out and smoke a cigar together. This is a kid whom I doubt has ever smoked in his life, and even if he had tried cigarettes, he had pretty clearly rejected them as a satisfying alternative to good clean fresh air. Now he wants to smoke a cigar with me?…it seemed sort of retro….like if we were some family of stature in the late 19th century, I’d take him into my drawing room on his 18th birthday and we would smoke cigars while discussing the ways of the world…big leather chairs…a globe...brandy.

I guess I sort of modeled that behavior…from time to time, I have enjoyed (not sure that is the right word, but we will let it be for now) a cigar with a friend…it typically surrounded some sort of uniquely male activity…bachelor parties, poker night, camping trips, scotch drinking…I’d guess a dozen or more times over the past 10 years…so that is what I will be giving up…no more cigars…if only to send a message to my son that even though I CAN smoke a cigar any time I want to, I don’t. And clearly, if I did, my wife would have a thing or two to say about it.

I chewed tobacco on a canoe trip with a bunch of friends from high school and college…seemed ok…easy to spit (anywhere) and if you did swallow a little and had to puke that was easy enough (anywhere). But there were no women with us…I always wondered what it must taste like to kiss someone who chewed tobacco, but since I never met any women who “chewed” I never got that bit of research done. I can imagine though…if kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray, I suppose that kissing a “chewer” is like licking a spittoon. If I had a choice, pass the ashtray…

Spittoons are not as common as say, beer bottles with spit and chew debris coagulated at the bottom…that is why in certain parts of the country, where chewing is prevalent, you never ever set down your beer bottle, and if you do, well, you go get a new beer…never risk picking up a bottle that might have been spit in…

However, despite these reservations, chewing tobacco is a much more personal thing to do than smoking…no second hand smoke…second hand spit may be disgusting, but no one suggests we are being killed by it…I’d rather be around a person chewing than a person smoking. And thanks, I’ll get my own beer!

So this bad habit is called “Stop Smoking”…and since I don’t smoke, perhaps it is time to look at the deeper meaning behind this…notice I did not say “Quit” smoking. No, I have to “Stop” smoking. Have I ever lifted a finger to keep a person from smoking? Nope (See Life Change #48: I Avoid Confrontation). Though there have been many times when I have been around someone who is smoking and it bothers me, have I ever said anything? If I say nothing, isn’t that sort of endorsing the despicable behavior? I should actually do something to “stop smoking”.

I should come at this somewhat naturally. My father, a life long torturer of smokers, way before it became fashionable, would make these labels on his little DYMO machine and put them all over his car…”NO SMOKING” they cried out in their embossed white on black background 3/8” high sort of way. It was sort of absurdly underwhelming, but he made up for it by putting them everywhere….on the dashboard, by every ashtray, by the cigarette lighter (cars used to have them, before they became “power ports”). It was, as if to suggest, that someone might inadvertently light up a cigarette and before he could utter the phrase, “No Smoking, Please!” a molecule of cigarette smoke might escape and linger in his car. Perhaps he was avoiding confrontation. Didn’t want to be the one to have to tell the poor fool about to light up that this was a no smoking area. In fact, I think my father’s car was the first no smoking area I was ever aware of.

Since my mom smoked, this was an issue of not so little consternation to both of them. On lengthy road trips, she would need to stop for a cigarette. Everyone’s bladder stayed nice and empty, so it wasn’t that great a problem, and she got to ride in the car, mile after mile with the little self adhesive label staring back at her. No Smoking. I recall thinking there was cruelty in the labels…but I am not sure who was more cruel…my dad for placing those labels, or my mother, for continuing to smoke despite the impact it had on his allergies and asthma. I suspect both had somewhat cruel intentions.

My father eventually became intolerant of the lingering odor of cigarettes which was noticeable long after my mom had finished her cigarette, so the road trip ritual was amended to include time to walk around after the last puff, to give the clothes and hair some time to air out. My father gradually made it harder and harder for my mother to smoke. She never fought back She was outnumbered…by this time, my sister and I were aware of the health risks posed by the “cancer sticks” and so she found less and less time, in less and less space to smoke, until eventually she gave up….for good. I can’t help but think it was a sort of gift he gave her. He made her stop…it took 30 years, but smoking eventually became so complicated that it was simply not worthwhile.

Back when everyone smoked, everything smelled of it. But now, with smoking such an outlaw enterprise, the lingering odor is a bit of a telltale. My daughter’s 2nd grade teacher smoked, and she didn’t like her simply because “she stunk all the time”. Everyone knows who smokes and who doesn’t now. So picking them out won’t be hard…making them stop will be difficult.

My son had a great approach back in his “parrot” phase of development. We would always tell him (brainwash him?) that smoking was “stupid”…from as early as he even knew about smoking. So of course, that paid dividends. I was walking with him in town one day, and we went past a rougher looking guy who was smoking while seated at a bench outside a store. “Look dad, that man is STUPID!” he said, with conviction and not the slightest trace of malice…as if simply stating a verifiable and obvious fact, like, “look dad, that guy has red hair”…clearly the dude heard the remark…we were only one or two paces past him….paces which I might add, that quickened after he said it…I never looked back (remember that discomfort with confrontation habit I am saddled with currently?), though to be fair, I think I was more fearful of getting a black eye in front of my son who at that time thought I was almost as cool as I thought I was. But it does bring up a point. Smoking is stupid. Everyone who smokes knows it, and it is the only habit that I can think of that would most gladly be shed by those saddled by it.

Perhaps someone reading these words will opt to quit…and then I will have succeeded on this life change…but just in case, the next smoker I see will hear it from me, or …perhaps I will bring my son along. See, if you quit…one less smoker, that much less smoke and I won’t have to get in your grill—I really do hate conflict.

Somehow, I gotta stop smoking.

Update on Previous Life Changes (Day Four):

Another day of well hydrated exercise sans I Pod. I did have that moment today, where putting on some pants I knew to be, well, snug, I hoped that maybe on Day 4 there would be some change…some easing of the tension of the fabric around my waist. Nope. I noted no reduction in girth. I have uttered the word “shit” on 3 occasions…immediately stopped myself and apologized to the people I was with and explained to them why…they all seemed to harbor doubts about my chances for success…as if to test my patience, two recent canine calling cards have been left on our front lawn. Someone ought to be tackling that nasty habit of letting their dog crap on my lawn, or any lawn, without cleaning it up. Come on people; let’s get YOUR lists started!