Once
again, I’d planned to do something on The
Bisti Business this week but ended up letting life get in the way of my
plans. That seems to happen more and more often of late. In the first place, my
new computer continues to act up. The screen occasionally burps … meaning that
it will suddenly jump up a couple of inches and then fall right back where it
was. That should technically qualify as a burp, right? Or perhaps a hiccup. It
doesn’t do any damage or cause me to lose material, but as I get older (which
is happening at an increasingly rapid pace), I become more paranoid. So I tend
to view this as something analogous to a volcano. These little “interruptions” are
likely precursors to a building “eruption.” So I’ll be taking the machine to
the fellows who helped me obtain it in the first place to see if my fears are
well founded.
However,
that is not exactly what sent me off the track this week. It was something much
more personal. I tend to wear plaid, Wal-Mart trousers around that house that my
friend E calls “pajama bottoms.” They aren’t (and I won’t shock her by showing
her the actual garment), but I like them because they are comfortable and easy
to slip into. Even so, I’ve allowed her interpretation of the trousers to
intimidate me to the point where I only wear
them in private.
This
morning, after rising earlier than usual and cleaning up, I donned a pair of
these casual pants and went about my usual routine. I noticed that something
wasn’t quite right, but didn’t actually realize what it was until I tried to
slip my cell phone into a pocket. I had the blessed things on backward. Now
think about that for a moment, folks. I walked around for half an hour with my
pants turned bass-ackward without knowing it. That bears repeating: Without knowing it. This should tell you
more than you want to know about the state of my aging and shifting physique. I’m
not even sure you can call it a physique any longer.
Now I
have friends who will say, “Aha, a wake-up call. Start watching your diet and
(wait for it now) … exercise.”
There are
others who will take the attitude of “so what. So long as you’re not obscene,
who cares?”
I have no
idea of how obscene I appeared as I felt absolutely no compunction to go check
it out in the mirror. I just removed them, turned them around, and donned them
the proper way. Something that took all of fifteen seconds thanks to the
stretchy elastic waistband.
What is obscene, at least in my dictionary,
is the word “exercise.” A shiver runs up my back every time I hear the word.
(By the way, does that qualify as a form of exercise?). I’m a reasonably
proficient writer, and I don’t think the word appears in any of my sixty short stories
and seven published novels except to “exercise caution” or “exercise patience,”
both rather non-physical applications of the word.
My friend
J wrote a post to her Farther to Go
blog the other day extolling the benefits of her physical exer… uh, physical
exertion program. Toward the end, she said something that caught my eye. She
found that sometimes sitting and imagining
going through a particular routine actually helped in the physical
performance of that routine. Sort of a One-Two approach.
Well, as
of today, I’ve progressed to Stage One.
Check with
me next month to see how much that’s helped.
Thanks
for reading. Please let me hear from you.
Don
Next week: I’ll really,
really try to get to THE BISTI BUSINESS.
New posts are published at 6:00
a.m. each Thursday.
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