To Your Health

I'm exhausted, and I'm not even sick.

When did it get to be so much work to be healthy?

I run because exercise is supposed to be enormously beneficial for me; it's good for my heart, it prevents osteoporosis and seems to help stave off breast cancer. I keep my weight under control for my blood pressure and so I don't become diabetic. I eat lots of dark leafy greens and stay away from burgers made with cheese and bacon served on a Krispy Kreme. (For so many reasons.) I drink green tea. I get plenty of sleep. I live a relatively stress-free life. I quit smoking years ago. Really, you'd think I would live to be a hundred and eleventy-two years of age. I never seems to be enough, though; there's always another danger lurking around the corner, and it's going to play havoc with your health.

I really can't imagine any of my ancestors in rural Ireland a hundred years ago worrying about staying fit, or avoiding dairy products or flushing their bodies of toxins. I'm sure they would be bewildered beyond belief at the thought of going ot a gym or counting carbs.
They were probably way more concerned with getting enough to eat and not dying from infection or childbirth or drowning in the rain and mud.

So, now it is the flu I have to think about. I know flus can be dangerous, they can kill an enormous number of people in short order. Also? I hate being sick. It's my number one thing I hate doing in the whole world. (The only thing that getting sick makes acceptable is the wallowing in bed for a day and eating copious amounts of chocolate with impunity.)

I do plan on getting a flu shot, two of them in fact, one for the regular flu and one for the H1N1. But the lines will be long and the wait will be excruciating and I will whine incessantly. (It baffles me that so many people are against getting a flu shot. There's been thousands of years of human existence that would have given anything to avoid illness, and here we have it, and most of us couldn't be bothered. I'm not sure when our society got to the point where they were more afraid of a shot than a particularly deadly strain of flu. )

But get it I will, even if it does mean more work for me. You know what would really make the flu shot appealling??? If I could get one while lolling in bed, eating chocolate!