I am about to utter something I never could have foreseen myself saying. I am thankful to my parents for being pretty broke when I was a kid. When I observe the entitled children around me (my own included, unfortunately), I am surprised at their lack of life skills. Growing up on a mountain, I learned to fend for myself. When it snowed, we shoveled, we built forts, we sledded, we skied, we skated. My children ask for hot chocolate. Without daring to go outside. When we used to lose power, we read by candlelight, and pulled blankets up to the coal stove ( because we had run out of oil). My children ask if the DS is charged, and why our TV does not have battery backup. I pass by girls on the side of the road, with their overpriced SUVs sporting a flat, and I am concerned about the fact that she has not been taught to change tires, change spark plugs, change oil,as I was. I hope her beautiful SUV does not break down on her in a bad section of town at night. When I was young, I split logs on my porch, and helped my dad stack them in the backyard. I helped my mother hang sheetrock in the house, and epoxy her countertops. I helped lay bathroom tile, and watched all the neighborhood children. I don't know that many kids in this era could claim the same, and I fear that many do not even know how to use the washing machine or iron their own shirts. Girls are being taught that you feed your baby with canned powder, rather than the milk their bodies produce. Boys are taught to be aggressive and ruthless by the plentiful video games with war titles. Kids in elementary school are texting their friends with their iphones, but are having a hard time with simple division. I see myself writing this, and I laugh because I sound like the grandfather, bemoaning his walk to and from school in barefoot, uphill both ways. But each generation must be horrified of the next, losing the will to work for things, relying on dwindling fossil fuels, and refusing to learn the lessons that could keep them alive if survival of the fittest were put to the test. I am proud of the things for which I have worked. Jake and I have jokingly said that if everyone could live a life of poverty if just for a year, the world would be a changed place(with scads more liberals, I might add). It would be an interesting social experiment. To replace the opulence of the Real Housewives for the Real Little House on the Prairie. I, for one, look damn good in a bonnet.
I’m going to be honest. I take a weight loss drug. These days, we are hearing constantly about Ozempic, as if it’s some cure all catchall miracle- and don’t get me wrong, these drugs can do miraculous things but there are a lot of misconceptions, as there are with so many other miracles. In 2016, I wrote several blog posts about my attempts at exercising and losing weight, so I figured I would do a follow up now that I’ve lost 103 pounds. I would also like to point out that I will be the first person to tell you to love yourself as you are, and that we are all beautiful. This is a personal journey for me, and not in any way indicative of how I feel anyone else should approach their health or their weight. Fat people and poor people tend to get a lot of blame hurled at them, with people who have never been fat or poor finding a way to diminish the human experiences of others by placing blame. Fat and poor people must be lazy, they’re sponging off the healthcare system, they m...
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