This has very little to do with this forthcoming column, except that it has to do with conserving and eating, which are two things that I have discovered that I am quite good at, if that is not already evident.
If it is not already evident, it soon will be.
Down home, we have an old, expression that goes something like this: “pile up and then lay up.”
This perfectly describes my Winter habits, thank you. And I am not to blame if you say these are bad habits. I am not to blame for being lazy and overweight because I have assistants bound and determined to make sure that I own up to the Pile Up and Lay Up rule of Winter.
All day long at work, I eat a breakfast biscuit and then eat a hearty dinner and then nibble the remainder of the day on the assorted goodies that Rachel, Stephanie and others bring by the office for Dezi and I to enjoy, which we do.
After that exhausting day of eating, I come home from work and scavenge the refrigerator and the pantry for any food items that I did not consume the previous day. If I find, like Old Mother Hubbard, that the cupboard is bare, then I’m straight to the grocery store and/or the nearest restaurant.
If I am lucky, like I was last night, a family member will call me and invite me to supper. Of course I have to snack on my way over just to keep my strength up, as driving a couple of blocks can be a very hard business.
Just in case you have not figured it out, I like to eat. And I especially like to eat in the Winter, when I can truly pile up and then lay up.
By piling up, I am referring principally to my plate, but also to my ever expanding waistline, which I blame most conveniently on the diabetes medications that I take.
It is not my fault that I am as big as a circus tent and nearly as clownish. It is the medicine!
By piling up, I am, as I said, referring to my plate, or more likely, plates, in the case of multiple visits to the bar at every buffet restaurant in North and South Carolina. I really do not love to visit those buffet bars, my friends insist upon it. So, you can easily see, there are aiders and abetters here at work, trying their darndest to make me even more rotund. It’s not my fault!
Nor is it my fault that I am, because of all that heavy eating, worn out so early in the day that I have to lay up on the couch and then, after a doctor-ordered nap, go lay up in the bed.
It is not my fault that my couch is the most comfortable in the world, nor that the music of Mozart is so soothing that I am out before the overture of Don Giovanni ends. My family gave me the couch. God gave us Mozart, so do not try to place blame there, people!
It is also not my fault that I have to work so very hard and so very long. I am always literally worn out by the time I come limping into the house, hungry and searching for nourishment.
And certainly I cannot be faulted for the weather. This one factor in my not so slow expansion is beyond even my control.
In the Spring and Summer, I am wide open, running and bouncing around like a pinball.
I stay busy, doing actual work, such as working in the yard, although my neighbors will not bear out the truth to that statement I am pretty sure. Just because it took me three weeks to remove that pile of building debris from the front yard, what’s that? I was too busy at work to get home before dark to move the stuff to the curb for someone else to collect. And besides, I was too hungry.
In the Spring and in the Summer, when I am running and bouncing, I rarely have the time or the appetite to eat much more than a salad, so I don’t, well except for those cookies and brownies sweet people remember me with at the office once or twice a week.
But in the Winter, it is Nature’s own design that I eat everything is sight so as to build up that layer of blubber so that I can stay warm while typing away at the keyboard. Typing at a computer greatly endangers my health, you know, especially when it is cold outside. Brrring and typing at the same time can be deadly.
So I eat. And eat.
Then I feel so lethargic and overcome by the physical demands of my day that I am forced, forced I say, to crawl home and find the couch--right after I find the refrigerator.
It is a dangerous pattern that I have fallen into this cold Winter, but I think it is not the first time. It seems that this happens every Winter, with or without my will or willpower.
In the Winter I become a couch potato, which is not so surprising, but becoming one at about 7:30 is still surprising even to me.
I have, of course, informed my family, friends and neighbors that I am in hibernation and that I am as hungry as a bear, so they are all on standby.
They stand by and watch as I devour the food they send me or bring to me. They watch as I trudge home, worn thin and exhausted and by all that typing, and begin to tear apart the house looking for dropped crumbs or stashed bags of whole cookies and brownies.
Did I mention that some restaurants in St. Pauls will deliver?
It is late January now, and the end of Winter is nowhere in sight, so I am taking to the couch, right after I finish that last meal of the day.
In those immortal words, “It’s time to pile up and lay up!”
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