Health

Ecce lignum crucis in quo salus mundi pependit

We went to Massachusetts at the end of July for the first long trip since the pandemic started. It was for a memorial for my wife’s mother who had died of Covid-19 in May 2020 at age 89. She caught the disease in a New Jersey nursing home, and by the time she was admitted to a hospital there didn’t seem to be much they could do to help. Arrangements were made to transport her remains to where her long time home had been in the Berkshires where she was interred with no one to witness, which seemed a great lack.

Tired

unsplash-logoJason Abdilla I read a piece today about how prolonged stress can lead to persistent fatigue in a person who might be at a loss as to an obvious cause, and I’m thinking that that is what’s going on with me now. The worst comes at the end of what seems like a terribly long working day, which is frequently one where I felt like I came up short in results.

Time capsule

Here is a time capsule from the Covid-19 plague year for future readers who might be interested in what it was like around these times. The cold rain has come back, comfort to those who worry about drought, but making it difficult to go outside to take in a little bit of exercise. Spring has been as slow to come as it has been every year, and since it doesn’t snow here we don’t have the receeding line of old drifts to tell us how much progress we’ve made since the beginning of January.

Before and after

© Anna Vorobyeva ID 8789711 | Dreamstime Stock Photos Here I am on Easter Sunday, the week before the diet began and here again this morning, carrying the equivalent of the shed pounds more or less

The weight

© Braendan Yong ID 5658144 | Dreamstime Stock Photos It took ninety days. Was 190 pounds, now 150 pounds. Was officially over the line between overweight and obese, and now I’m down to dimensions I haven’t sported in maybe twenty-five years. It was becoming clear to me that most of my long-term health issues were linked with diet and fitness, and that that was going to be the only way to avoid worsening quality of life in my remaining years, I was going to have to do something major about it.