IT'S A UNIVERSAL LAW

I believe that there are a certain number of pounds to go around and when that gets tight the pound-gods issue more pounds, kind of like the government did, releasing new money. (And how did the government get the money into the system, I'm wondering. None of it showed up in my band account.)

Anyway, back to the pounds. My friend has lost eight. I've gained eight. As much as I'm thrilled with her loss--and I really am, I am not thrilled to see it show up on me.

If anyone knows how this works please let me know. It's one of the things that keep me awake in the dark of night.

While looking for a photo to go with this post I came upon this: "Fat people are harder to kidnap."

Now you can rest easy. Unless you've lost eight pounds, then you better be a good runner.

TODAY I SHOULD BE BURIED ALREADY SO I CHANGED MY ATTITUDE AND NOW I'LL NEVER DIE. ALMOST.

I checked the Death Clock website today and found that I should have died on my birthday this year. I had zero days to live, in fact, I should be mouldering in my grave.

So I changed my outlook from "pessimistic" to "optimistic" and found that I have loads of time left. I'm going to live to be 101, three months and ten days.* Who knew that happy, cheerful people live longer?

So, then I decided to loose a whole bunch of weight--theoretically--and I am supposed to die sooner. Ten years sooner.

If I am a pessimist and thin I should be dead already.

If I am a sadist and thin I should have been dead twenty-four years ago.

The conclusion: Optimistic, fat people live the longest.

I hope this makes your day.


*I have a feeling my first "optimistic" statistics are somehow skewed but I am not redoing them. Since I've decided to be an optimist, I'm believing it. Why not? It could happen. Yup, that's how us optimists think.

"An optimist is the human personification of spring." (Susan J. Bissonette)

TWINS

Sometime today, at the BYU Writer's for Young Readers Conference, these words came to me:

"She is as thin as dental floss."

Where that came from, I don't know. But, when you are around creative people odd things happen. You start to look at things in a different way. I love this conference. I love Claudia Mills. I love my class mates--boy, can they write. I will be sad when this conference is over for another year.

I had a two minute window of unfrantic busyness today, I was probably waiting for a lecture to begin so this is what I wrote:


She was thin, dental floss thin. Some of her internal organs were missing. At night she is hooked up to machines that softly beep in the darkness as they process the food that has been waiting in her patient stomach. In the morning she stretches, unhooks from the friendly beepers and runs her hands down her flat stomach. She smiles.

Her twin has all her organs and her sisters too. Two livers. Four kidneys. 56 feet of intestines. The intestines are usually full as her body squeezes every bit of nutrition from every mouthful of food. If the planet depended on her "fertilizer" to jump-start the world's vegetables we would all be dead within months.

Twins. So alike and yet so different. One has a great abundance of all the things that make the human body run properly and yet it's her sister who wears a size zero. The organ-deprived sister shops three days a week and the other four she accepts dates from lovely men.

The organ-rich sister? She writes.