Yes, two stars. One for today and one for yesterday. Not only did I get on the tready, but I went faster. Not that I’m ever going to be fast fast, but faster than last week. This is pretty much 1.2km in 20mins to 1.5km in 20 mins. sigh. Compare this to my friend Crimeweaver’s grand daughter, who did so well in a 2km race that she just missed out on being in a state team. The kid is 8 and she was running against girls a year older than her.

Ah. Last time I attempted a fun run I was passed by a little old lady with her handbag slung over her shoulder, 2 women who didn’t stop talking to each other the whole time, and a lady with a pram. Actually, I think the lady with the pram had her baby just jogging along side her. The pram was full of shopping or something. Honestly. Brain the size of a planet, but not a fast runner.

I have written all of that in the hope that no one will read this far and find out that I resorted to KFC yesterday. I have no idea why. I went to have my ultrasound in the morning. Poss is delighted to know that my liver is not pregnant. The tech doing the ultrasound was about 8ft tall and put his entire weight on that one little ultrasound wand thingy in order to listen to my insides. Man it hurt! Maybe he had to do that to get the soundwaves through all the layers of blubber. Maybe he was just punishing me for having layers of blubber. Oh, and speaking of blubber, check out this. It’s a link to belugacam at Vancouver Aquarium. The beluga had a baby, just in the past 24 hours and it’s soooooooo cute! I like whales.

Isn’t Slaughterhouse 5 the best movie? Love Kurt Vonnegut Jnr. That scene of the bombing of Dresden gives me shivers every time I think about it. Do love my balcony garden, too. When I first had it, it drove me nuts because brushy-tails were forever getting up there and either eating my plants, or just vandalising them if they didn’t like the taste.

Cute but aggravating. Then Beloved built me a possumguard™ for my birthday. He made it out of wood and wire and swearing. No possum has been able to trash my plants since then, although they do sometimes hang on the outside of the wire and nibble bits that are sticking through. That’s gotta have some Darwinian moral to it.

Oh, anyway, back to the ultrasound. The technician guy wouldn’t even give me a hint about my insides, so as soon as they gave me the ultrasound pics, I of course opened them and read the doctor’s report. Apparently my liver, gall bladder, aorta and kidneys are all good. They even counted my kidneys for me. Yep, two. I’m delighted.

So basically I’m in fine health. You know, I have normal blood pressure (though it can go a little low sometimes) and I have normal blood fats (okay, my HDL – “good” cholesterol) is a little on the high side, and I don’t have diabetes. Really, my big obesity issue is chafing.

Last night I was watching a TV show about people who are referred to as Super Morbidly Obese. Oh wow. They were just flesh mountains with a very sad human psyche trapped in the middle. Very confronting to see this happen to someone, but all I can think is that there has to be someone there putting food into them all day. Problem is, in my case that person is – me.

Here’s another blog from Craig Harper that hit home for me. The whole concept is again about having no option but to lose weight. There’s the man who suffers from chocolate toxicity and has to give up. The woman who tries and tries to give up smoking but “can’t” and is then trapped on a deserted island and so has no choice: yes, she can survive without cigarettes. It’s hard, but she does it.

In my own family there are stories of people giving things up. Alcohol has always been a bit of a problem, and one of my uncles was an alcoholic. Then he got terribly ill and was hospitalised. Like the man with the chocolate toxicity, the doctor told him that what he was doing was killing him. He’d become epileptic because of the alcohol, and the doctor told him that one more drink would kill him. So he gave up. Never had another drink after that, and I’m talking about a man who wasn’t shy about a cigarette and a beer for breakfast.

Now, I tend to take after Dad’s father with the alcohol: don’t drink, never had, just not interested. Grandfather still went down to the pub with his mates and drank with them and had his shout, but he drank lemonade when they were having beer.

The thing I have to learn to do is treat food the same way that I treat alcohol. Now this is the hard thing, because I’ve gone fifty years so far without needing alcohol and it’s never going to bother me if I do another fifty the same. Same with cigarettes: don’t smoke, never have, don’t want to (heh, I couldn’t afford it, even if I did want to!) But nobody’s going to die from lack of tobacco and alcohol, but lack of food will definitely cause death.

I used to go to uni in the city. I’d take the train in and then a tram up Swanston Street to Melbourne Uni. Sometimes I DIDN’T HAVE LUNCH. I know. Scary stuff! I used to have this fantasy that I would just faint away from NOT HAVING HAD LUNCH and kind ambos would gather me up and carry me in their screaming van to the hospital where dedicated doctors would study my blood and be shocked to discover that I HADN’T HAD LUNCH and how on earth could my body survive such depradations? They would speak to me sternly and tell me that I MUST HAVE LUNCH. It was a nice enough fantasy, but I never really wanted it to happen, so I’d get 1/4 chicken and some roast potatoes, just to stop myself from fading away and needing ambulances and doctors.

That’s the kind of thing I have to deal with.

It’s a shame that guy didn’t do an ultrasound on my brain.

Merry nearly-winter-solstice, fellow Southern hemispherians.