Category: NYC

 

I’m under 250 lbs at last!

15 lbs to go before I progress from obese to merely overweight.

I felt so good this past weekend that I played more actively than usual with my GSD, running around and doing sharp cuts on the back porch as we played dog soccer.

The predictable result was that I tore the MCL in my right knee.

Talk about a bummer.

I need to be able to do a lot of physical stuff later this week, in NY, when I start to to get rid of all the furniture, books, and bric-a-bric in the house that I’m selling up there.

How am I going to accomplish this with a bum knee?

I feel and look better after losing 23 lbs in 2 months, but I need to slowly build up to moving around as I once did before gaining all this weight from the treatment I undertook for Graves’ Disease.

So easy does it, for now.

I had to buy a black knee brace from Winn-Dixie on Saturday, and I am training myself to walk without putting undue pressure on my right foot.

I’m supposed to rest the knee in an elevated position for a week till it self-heals; this is only a Stage 1 tear, so no need to go to a doctor.

Instead, I am soon going to be carrying boxes full of books, old clothes, towels, cutlery, and dishware down various flights of extremely steep stairs to the basement befor they are carting off by Junkluggers.

I have to do this.

I have to empty out the place of as much loose stuff as possible, with help from Junkluggers (who will cart off the boxes of loose stuff), before the heavy duty furniture movers come on Friday May 5 and clear out the big tickets items, such as the beds, mattresses, sofa, desks, wall units, and so on.

It’s a complete bitch, and I am really worried that my knee will become unstable from this exertion and lay me out flat at some point — unless I hire someone to help me fill the boxes with the loose stuff and take them down to the basement for Junkluggers to haul away.

For now I can still walk around without a cane or, God forbid, a rollator.

A lot of people who make it to my age (71) can’t ever walk around normally.

So I’m not complaining.

And the weight loss is obviously a good thing, especially as I was fast becoming borderline Type 2.

I have to keep at it, knowing full well that the next 20 lbs or so are going to be harder to get rid of:  I’m hoping by August, barring any more injuries.

So even though my knee hurts like hell right now, I am going to keep it positive and do what needs to be done to preserve my mobility while accomplishing what needs to be done.

The reward at the end of this tunnel of pain is going to be very sweet, but more than just the money, which of course is rather important.

Now that I am on the verge of having economic security for the first time in a life filled with long patches of poverty and self destructive behavior, I am actually looking forward to the future  — something I haven’t really felt since I was 18.

But to enjoy the good life for any length of time, I will need to be much fitter than I am today.

Now I finally understand why the geezers around here go around on all these endless manic walks.

It’s not that they particularly want to look good — though many do, as vanity is a tenacious bitch.

Nobody really looks that good after 60, though you can look darn pretty good at 60 or 70 — for 60 or 70.

It’s more that they want to improve their chances of waking up in the morning to smell whatever bouquet of roses life is still sending their way.

Nothing wrong with that.

The moment you become disinterested in simple but important things like smelling roses or listening to the songbirds in the yard is likely one of those inflexion point moments when you probably need to worry about slipping away, every day a little more, into your own closed world, and maybe one day just packing it in and never coming back.

After decades of alcoholically-induced false elation and massive depression, as well as a sense of amorphous anger induced by a perception that life had somehow treated me unfairly, a protracted, self-absolving, responsibiilty-evading rationalization that, nevertheless, in my rare sober moments, was undercut by the nagging truth that I had been the one who let countless opportunities slip through my fingers, this sort of attitude is a big change for me.

I’m starting to enjoy it.