Wonderful Wednesday

Good Morning,  All!

You are probably wondering why I entitled this post "Wonderful Wednesday".   I am wondering that myself,  to be perfectly honest.  It seemed like a terrific idea for some reason as I was heading home from my workout earlier (don't ask),  but now I forget what that reason was!  It doesn't really make any sense up there now,  does it?  Oh well, who cares!  Perhaps it will come to me later.

I'm standing here in my kitchen, after an unusually hectic first few morning hours,  attempting to choke down some old-fashioned oatmeal loaded with "superfood" ingredients - blueberries and walnuts (stringently measured to limit caloric intake while optimizing anti-oxidant benefits),  skim milk and cinnamon (not limited stringently enough, in my opinion).

One might wonder how something that sounds so tasty on paper could be so disgusting to eat in real life.  Well,  wonder no more,  my friends - with no thick, sweet cream, brown sugar nor enough blueberries and walnuts (what parsimonious grinch decided that a single tablespoon of blueberries would satisfy dieters?  This dieter will wring his scrawny neck if she can discover who he is!) - what we have here is a glutenous, tasteless mush.  Tasteless,  that is,  except for the obnoxious, up-your-nostrils (yet mysteriously useless at actually improving the depth of the flavor of the mush itself) legendary spice of sultans and kings:  cinnamon.

Yegods, I hate cinnamon!  I never really realized quite how much I hate it until this very moment.  Seriously, is it any wonder that there are hardly any sultans or kings anymore,  if this was their preferred spice?   No doubt,  sensibly civic-minded people ran 'em out of town for the sake of the greater good.  They should have thrown their cinnamon sticks out after them!

Actually,  I used to think cinnamon had a pleasant,  homey aroma when I was younger (I still do, really,  when I'm not being tormented by this health craze madness!),  but even back then,  I shied away from cinnamon hearts,  cinnamon buns and all candies,  desserts and especially drinks that are too liberally sprinkled with the stuff.  Like coffee,  cinnamon is the sort of thing whose aroma is far more pleasant to inhale - in very small quantities, preferably  (let's just cut to the chase:  the faintest whiff is more than sufficient for any normal mortal)  - than a teaspoon of the actual spice is to actually eat or (horrible thought!) drink.  Come to think of it,  even when I was younger and took for granted a kind of misty-eyed agreement with our society's apparent love affair with cinnamon,  it was far more likely the vehicle in which the cinnamon stowed its way onto my palate that I remember with fondness and continue to crave from time to time,  rather than the wretched, overpowering powder itself.  Apple pie and Christmas fruitcake owe far more of their memorable deliciousness to apples and dried fruits than to cinnamon,  even if it is the aroma of that obnoxious twig wafting through the house which everyone erroneously remembers as the best part of all.

Anyway,  enough about that.  I have forced the offending glop down my throat finished my stupidfood superfood cereal and am waiting for that wonderful glow of good health to spread over me.   I'm not holding my breath,  though.   Right now,  a more likely outcome appears to be that my insides may rebel but be unable to mount an appropriate defense due to the fact that the oatmeal doubles as lumpy papier maché paste on odd (and even) days,  and will undoubtedly petrify my entire digestive system.  I wish the Powers That Be would get to the bottom of the mystery of what sadist who started this health craze insanity,  because then I would know whom to sue.  Now,  that would be a sensible way to spend our tax dollars!

(I will never understand why the government doesn't just put me on staff and be done with it:  I have divined the solutions to countless vexing problems facing the free world and explained the true nature of humanity too many times to count,  but to date, there have been no calls or letters begging me to head up an international Think Tank or similar. <-- Their loss,  obviously.)

You know,  I am a little suspicious of the whole "feel-good/heart-healthy/healthy-weight" craze in general,  if I am to be completely honest.   It all seems like a bit of a scam to me.  There is no way -  no way on gods' green earth -  that any normal human being can master the complete so-called "healthy lifestyle" triumvirate.   There is built-in contradiction.  Sure,  one can pursue one branch of this odious trio,  but success in one endeavor nearly always will result in abject failure in one or even both of the others!

Take your typical "healthy-weight" diet, for example.  Everyone knows that in order to make a bowl of lettuce leaves or a tasteless vegetable soup even remotely palatable,  one must pour on about 4000mg of sodium (in the form of table salt, usually) just to be able to choke it down.  Bam!  There goes the blood pressure!

Likewise, in a heart-healthy diet,  the combination of eating paper and hamster pellets (otherwise known as "whole grains"),  enduring the watery blandness of vegetables cooked without salt and near-total meat-deprivation is usually enough to drive most normal people to load up on breads and sweets in order to make that extended life worth living.  There goes the waistline! 

And finally,  need I point out how utterly incompatible the "feel-good" chapter of the trilogy has always been with both "heart-healthy"  and "healthy-weight"?   Those in the Know have come to expect me to tell it like it is,  although I am nothing if not skillfully diplomatic.  Let's just tactfully nod in the general direction of a well-known fashion celebrity who coined the pithy phrase,  " Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels!".  We all know where that poor young girl wound up in her pursuit of the "feel-good" branch of the Holy Health Trinity.  It turns out that skinny does not actually feel good enough,  after all!

Regular people know this instinctively.  Consult any regular person and he will bore you to tears with his own tale of dieting woe  tell you exactly what I am telling you:  unlimited supplies of chocolate and creamy desserts,  heaping bowls of pasta and sausages,  thickly cheddared pizzas,  milkshakes,  potato chips,  hamburgers,  fries and a beer (and of course various alcoholic beverages),  not to mention cigars and other smoking pleasures are the wonderful things that all normal people crave.  Let's just call a spade a spade, here:  this is the stuff that makes people feel good.   And I am pretty sure that most of them are directly counter-productive to the goals of the twin horsemen of the health-craze apocalypse: "heart-healthy diet" and "healthy-weight diet".  Consult any "healthy-lifestyle" bible:  I rest my case.

There was a great deal more I intended to write on this topic,  but I seem to have lost interest lost my thread as the day has progressed.  There have been numerous diversions and flights of fancy as I struggled to maintain my focus on this quickly cooling "hot topic"  interruptions and urgent requests made of my time as I have struggled to satisfy the demands of others while continuing to perform domestic miracles in my own inimitable style.  Perhaps if I move on already!  turn my attention to other matters for awhile,  the rest of my no doubt brilliant post will come back to me.

But wait!   I just remembered why I decided to name this post "Wonderful Wednesday"!   My dear friend, Karen (whom I've never actually met but who would definitely be a dear friend if I did)  has a nifty widget on her blog where the title of other peoples' blogs plus a few lines of their current posts appear in the margins of her blog.   Yesterday,  I noticed that there was a blurb from Yours Truly's blog on Karen's page which I nearly overlooked because it was so stupendously boring  somewhat uninteresting (also not numero uno on her blog list,  but I don't quibble over who is more popular with ex-friends  <- ETA Egad! How did this get in here?),  and I realized then and there that clever blog post titles are essential to successful blogging!  Well, strictly speaking,  I realized it this morning:  I am a deep thinker,  but these deep waters do not run swiftly.  Keep it to yourself.   

There at the top of the list was Carolyn Ann's saucily entitled post (that show-off!),  which immediately grabbed my attention,  and no doubt the attention of every single visitor to Karen's blog (that attention-hog!). Indeed,  from its prominent position at the top of (ahem, ex-friend <- oops!) Karen's blog list,  Carolyn Ann's title fairly sang to visitors to come visit his blog, tooooo (completely overshadowing my clearly superior but stupidly less excitingly entitled post - that evil literary siren!).  Naturally,  I spent the rest of yesterday evening in a lather of fuming jealousy  I immediately set myself the task of figuring out how I,  too,  could  leech away as much of Karen's well-deserved audience as possible - and certainly more than that weasel Carolyn Ann! - and divert it to myself  earn the respect and readership to which a talented blog writer (moi) is entitled.

The trick is to wow them with a catchy title!   That is the honey with which one lures unsuspecting readers to boring blogs  the spicy teaser with which one hints at the excellent writing on a related topic that readers will find if they click on my blog.   I plan to use this trick every day from now on,  and I may even occasionally match content to the title if the spirit takes me  I am sure my delighted readers (purloined from Karen's blog,  heheheh  <- !  Great Scott! there must be a gremlin on this website!)  will enjoy a myriad of entertaining posts if I ever write any every day.

I love it when I have brilliant ideas!   As frequently as this happens,  I never grow tired of that smug, self-satisfied  wonderful feeling!

Good Day to All!