Thoughts from the ammo line

Looking back on the year that was, Ammo Grrrll offers some PERSPECTIVE. She writes:

So I bought a nice little two-plus pound Pot Roast the other day and roasted it. Not in a “pot,” but in a blue enamel roaster for a long time until it became melty-tender, as is my custom. It was delicious, but that is not the point. I looked on the package as I freed it from its plastic wrap and observed that it had cost $25.00. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. That, my friends, was our WEEKLY food budget when we were first married in 1967!

Now perhaps you younger folks surmise that we must have eaten gruel? No. Those $25 worth of groceries were shlepped home, leapfrog style, in FIVE bags by the Car-less Kids. And up to our fifth-floor walk-up wretched 2-room apartment. We had meat meals five times a week (our walking-distance market had Prime T-bones!) and two meals of things like Tuna Noodle Casserole and Mac and Cheese. (Note to Minnesotans: “casserole” is a hoity-toity name for what real people call “Hot Dish.”) Usually, to afford the steaks, one meal was Liver and Onions (which was 39 cents a pound) and most of the rest were hamburger with the occasional Fried Chicken. I baked all our own bread and desserts. And packed a bag lunch for my work. All for $25.00 a week. I swear it.

And here’s where the perspective comes in. Yes, that piece of meat the other day cost the same as a week of groceries in 1967. BUT my Social Security check alone is five times what I took home from my 40-hour a week job in a month. And Max’s is much larger than mine because he retired 10 years later than I did.

So I have finally turned into my dear Mama – “In the Depression, we walked two miles in a daily blizzard to our one-room schoolhouse and the big mean boys on the neighboring farm used to take our lunches of egg salad sandwiches and give us theirs: Lard sandwiches! And everything was a nickel. But Grandpa didn’t have a nickel.” Right, Mama. We got this history lesson every time we wanted something that was “off budget.”

But poor sharecroppers though they must have been, they must have been richer than the late, great Chet Atkins’ family. In a special about country music, there was a quote from Chet: “We were so poor that it was well into the ‘40s before we realized there had been a Depression.”

MORE PERSPECTIVE

You may still be receiving your friends’ annual holiday letters. Talk about intimidating! I have received, over the years, news similar to the following: “Chad plays his violin for the babies in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit and recently attended a workshop with Yo-Yo Ma at Tanglewood.” That can hurt the feelings of someone who would have to respond: “I noticed that the carrying case for Max Jr’s baritone horn was open and inquired with great shock as to whether or not he had recently practiced. ‘No’, he said honestly, ‘The inside of the case is all velvety and the cats just like to sleep in it.’ Well okay then.” No Yo-Yo Ma in your future, son.

To continue: I also have had people report in their letters that little Pippa is learning Chinese in nursery school and that Hymie, a 9th grader who speaks English, Yiddish and Spanish, had an internship with 3M on research for which he has several patents pending.

People have raved about bicycling from Paris to Moscow, while others have reported doing an Iron Man Triathalon, which I believe involves biking across the Rockies, swimming the English Channel lengthwise and then drying off, having two rice cakes, and immediately running a Marathon. Remember when we were kids making a rapid circling motion around your ear with your index finger was the universal symbol for “crazy”? Yeah, that. My response: “Good job there! Fortunately, WE own a car.”

I was relating some of these brag sheet letters to some ladies at a National Council of Jewish Women event many years ago, when one woman said, “We got a letter from my sister that just said, ‘We have finally found a rehab program that will take Michael.’”

See, there’s your pesky perspective again. Maybe YOUR kids or grandkids are not world-beaters either, just regular healthy, happy, moral kids, but at least you are not dealing with therapists and drug counselors and the Alternative Learning Center (ALC) which the other high school kids in my foster son’s class referred to as A——s’ Last Chance. You can try to put a rosy, positive spin on some things, but kids know the difference. Just as they also know the score of the t-ball game in which you didn’t keep score.

Applying perspective to the notion of New Year’s Resolutions, I used to have extremely ambitious resolutions like “Reread the collected works of Dickens and Dostoevsky” and “Organize all your file cabinets” and “Lose forty pounds. By February 22nd.” And I learned that small, incremental steps are really the best way to go. In fact, the ONLY way to go.

The most successful weight loss plan I ever conceived was “Lose five pounds in January and then maintain for the whole year. Do that again every year for 5 years.” I actually DID that and it worked. After five years, I had taken off and kept off 25 lbs. As a bonus, I had clothing in Small, Medium, Large, and Suicidal. Almost ANYBODY can LOSE weight – it’s the maintenance that is the stumbling block. Two years of COVIDiocy lockdown made cooking and baking one of the few pleasures that staved off depression, with predictable results.

I tried to hold the line, but that line held as well as the Maginot Line. So back to basics. Some new friends have inspired me with their success using KETO, which allows none of the foods that make up my typical diet, except butter. Carbs are my life, so it is hard.

One of my favorite country songs is Toby Keith’s “Call a Marine,” in which the Marine motto to “improvise, adapt and overcome” appears. In that spirit of improvisation, I have tweaked the program ever so slightly to fit my needs. It allows 20 carbs a day, the equivalent of one slice of bread or 10 grapes and 8 cherries. I am allowing just three “cheat” days a week where I get 420 carbs and it has made me much happier. So far, I still seem to be gaining, which is puzzling. I may need to consult with Natalie and Joel one more time.

Happy New Year, dear readers! I think that 2022 is going to be epic for our side. Resolve to be brave, courageous, and bold. Put everything in perspective and be very grateful for blessings too numerous to mention.