So, I had lunch with the Gentlemen from Louisiana, though we never did get around to talking about Nat King Cole. We did talk about New Orleans, photography, and ghosts. One Gentleman was a firm unbeliever and the other was in my camp, which is mostly disbelief except when weird shit happens.
But interestingly enough, both men were convinced that, if a ghost could exist, it would, clearly, either haunt where it was improperly buried or haunt a person–that a ghost has to have a reason for being here. He’s not just hanging out. And, once he’s achieved whatever he needs to achieve, he can go on to the afterworld.
So, they seemed to be of the opinion that the backyard could not be haunted unless the old man was buried there.
But I’m fairly certain that the only things buried in my back yard are a few housepets and the dead cat the Butcher found a couple of months ago.
I also, obviously, talked to my dad. It’s been a year ago this month that he had his bypass surgery, so he’s going in for a lot of check-ups with a lot of different doctors. I have my concerns, obviously, that he’s not doing as well as he pretends to be. But lately he seems better, so maybe January was just a bad month for him.
He’s really frustrated because, even though he goes to the gym every day and is following the nutritionist’s guidelines, he has ceased losing weight and is, in fact, gaining it. He thinks he needs to start walking in the mornings again. This will be, then, about three hours a day that he exercises (right now, he’s spending between an hour and two hours a day at the gym).
I am of two minds on this. On the one hand, I about want to strap him down and force him to read some Shapely Prose and to learn to just have some mercy on himself. If he’s able to exercise as much as the doctors want him to and his health metrics otherwise look good, well, we come from fat people. He is a fat person. Being fat is not some great failing. It just is what it is. On the other hand, though I thoroughly reject the weight gain or loss as a cause of or solution to problems stuff, I do think that it’s obvious that weight gain or loss can be a symptom of some problem or problems. Granted, I’m biased because my whole life I’ve been just an uncontrollable glutton who refuses to exercise and eat right and that’s why I’m so fat and no one will ever love me, when really, when I completely revamped my diet and got a dog and walked every day, I still gained weight because I had a medical condition it would have been nice if someone had picked up on instead of seeing my fat as proof of my shittiness as a person. Not that I have a soapbox about that or anything.
So, my point is that, if he’s eating the same stuff he ate when he was losing weight and he’s exercising the same amount as when he was losing weight and he’s gaining weight, there may be a problem. And I hope he doesn’t get all caught up in the “I’m just not trying hard enough” bullshit and has the doctors view it as a possible symptom of some other problem.
You know what I’m saying?
And the Butcher is bummed and I don’t know what to do for him. I don’t know that there’s anything I can do for him. Still, I worry.
Tiny Cat Pants 