By the Numbers

I have wished, hoped and prayed that by now we would only be remembering when COVID was a bad dream we had awakened from. I want to see fewer cases so I can go to visit family and friends in other states without risking their or my safety.

These days we get up each morning and check the number of new cases in the state and in our county. A local TV station shows the breakdown on their crawl. When the trend is down we are always thankful.

Then I usually weigh myself and write that number down before I make coffee.

Not that writing them down changes anything about either of those numbers. But I check them every day.

Earlier this week, I read that 70% of the people this medical website surveyed said the pandemic is causing them to make changes to be more healthy – to eat better, exercise more, drink less. Really? No one surveyed me.

I knew long before this strange year that the medical answer to improving almost every health issue is lose weight. Sometimes I have and sometimes I have not. But I haven’t the mental fortitude to forgo comfort foods (you know what they are) or a well made bourbon drink in the midst of this stressful mess.

Sometimes I do my exercises and more often, my yoga breathing, but if I don’t I am not going to add the stress of feeling guilty about it.

I’d really like to join Bill Murray’s Meatballs campers and begin chanting “It just doesn’t matter!” but I know it does.

The key is to remember that worrying about the virus or the number on the scale or your cholesterol does absolutely nothing to change them. You need to take action to create the change or chose not to. The only thing you should never do is to worry. It is a time sucking, gut wrenching waste of time and it keeps you from sleeping. And we all need to sleep!