Happy New Year!

All is well -- very, very well -- in the land of BMGS, and I hope with you.


It's a little after 6 a.m. and I've been up for about half an hour, which means that I slept longer than usual, a solid 8 after Betty and I began dozing off a little less than halfway through Nashville, around 9:30.


My first act of 2010 was a weigh-in, central to our themes here. 251, which is what I weighed on June 29, 2009 and is 25 pounds less than I weighed on January 1, 2009, so 2009 was a good year in that respect.


And my enterprise here is to make 2010 even better -- to make it my healthiest year in years -- by doing a few simple things:

• keeping my calorie intake below 2,000 calories a day
• swimming daily
• getting my weight under 225 and keeping it there
• making and following a medical plan that includes addressing my knee and ankle problems, even if they require surgery, as well as submitting to some of those pesky 50-something bodily inquiries that I have managed to avoid for the first 9 1/2 years of my fifties.

I guess we can call it BMGS 3.0. These things seem to come in waves.

But while I focus on the physical, I will also continue to build upon the blessings that made 2009 a truly wonderful year:

• I'll enjoy my three children and my grandson and be a good Poppa to them.
• I'll continue to get to know and love the wonderful woman I met at Starbucks on a Sunday morning 362 days ago.
• I'll focus on the essential things about my work that made the last few months of 2009 so successful, while keeping an eye on where my work and I will be at the end of 2011, 2013, and 2015, and trying to avoid taking on projects that take me away from long-term goals for a few short-term bucks.
• I will meditate in the steam room each day after my swim, and I will find my way back to a regular GA meeting (because whether or not I need it now, a daily could certainly come when I need it, and in the meantime I have a lot to give).
• I will cherish my friendships with Betty, Larry, Ned, Rena, Nick, Deborah, and Steve, and re-connect and be a better friend with Stewart, Bill B, Jim, René, Ariane, Pete, Rick and Emmy, and others.
• I will continue to get my financial house in order.

So, like the oysters, I will polish my pearls.

Happy 2010.

Life is what happens when you are....

All is well with my eyes, for those who followed my travails yesterday after an otherwise successful and satisfying third straight day at the pool: 12 laps Tuesday, 14 laps Wednesday, and 16 laps (400 yards) Thursday.

I bought goggles and allergy-relief eyedrops. The burning still returned gradually to my eyes after I applied the eyedrops twice yesterday, but -- since the allergic reaction was effectively the same as being sick -- I took an hour nap in the afternoon and woke up to find that the burning was gone. Some puffiness remain, I was told by an acquaintance who pays more attention to my face than I do.

So I got to thinking that the various eye symptoms I was experiencing might be compounded, once the pool's chlorine set them off, by the hours I spend staring at a computer screen (hopefully seeing new words appear on the screen fairly regularly). I continue to give my eyes a rest through last night, applied some eyewash in addition to the eyedrops, and changed my plan for today: I would swim in mid-day rather than when the pool is open from 7 to 9, which would give me a chance to assess whether a morning work session at the computer -- yes, that's right now -- would inflict more irrittaion on me.

And here's what I have to report:

• My eyes are good, so I am looking forward to the next swim, with goggles and eyedrops and eyewash at the ready.
• However, that swim is not going to come at noon today as I'd thought, because after it was too late to change my plans back and do a morning swim I learned that Danny is home sick from school today and I offered to split the day of Danny-care with his Mom. So, since I already planned on taking one day a week off from the pool, I'll make the off day today and take Danny and Brownie for a little walk around the neighborhood, instead, if they are up for it.
  

So there may be a plan for BMGS, but the underlying plan is that I am blessed to have a life that can trump my plans.

And just to make it easier on me, I was happy to note from the scale today that my weight is down from 256.2 to 255.0. I ate very moderately yesterday -- some pasta and salad left over from Paparazzi for lunch, as comfort food when I was feeling sick, and the only things I ate after that were two pieces of cinnamon toast and a banana smoothie with half a shot of Frangelico.

Meanwhile, got to hurry to finish as much as I can of a day of work before the Danny drop.