paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- condition and environment It�s Friday afternoon, otherwise known as productivity zero time for me. The weight of the week and all of the things I have not accomplished pushes at my back. But the promise of a bit of release with the weekend adds some promise. Enough, at least, to make it difficult to complete the relational database for my initiative. Enough promise to take a walk this morning through the zeroscaping garden across the street to observe, first hand, that plants can grow in a Midwestern drought, but they are thin and rugged looking plants � plants look like their conditions. Life and environment seem to merge in an interesting way. The conditions in which we live and grow up become part of our bodies. Plants in a drought grow spindly, their leaves and flowers more spare, but also more beautiful and alarming. Their courage to flower at all seems more brazen and miraculous than a lush garden set atop a mighty automated, underground sprinkler network. Everything at home looks left-over or weed-beset � but slowly, portions of our �yard� are swinging around to the possibility of being inviting. I gave up on curb appeal a long while ago, but, it just may be that we end up with curb appeal after all. Just once in my life, it would be great to have something that I don�t care about and others do � their house has such great curb appeal and they don�t even realize it, people might say. But that is not exactly true because I know I look at houses and think �that�s a nice-looking home.� So, I am aware of curb appeal. But I guess the larger issue is that I don�t want our house to look like we purchased the book and template �Great Curb Appeal in 30 Days.� The weight loss industry supplies intriguing models for thinking about other aspects of life. Or maybe I am infiltrated by the weight loss industry every where I turn. Sometimes I think I look like a pack of notebook paper � pale skin with traces of bluish veins running up my arms, down my hands, my legs, my feet. This summer I want to loose weight so I will quit thinking of myself in these bizarre terms and other related bizarre terms. Everyone in our office is extremely interested in weight. My boss feels uncomfortable talking about weight issues around the chubby, but she is working to overcome that. The greatest virtue is to be on a diet and nothing gets support like a noontime walk or multiple trips to the water cooler. I work with a pack of fruit-pushers � thin people who eat fruit publicly and celebrate their fruit-eating. In our office, it is high status to bring an orange to staff meeting and begin the sticky process of orange-eating in front of people. People remark on the sensual qualities of scent, texture, taste. People drool after the orange and the person who eats an orange has the full attention of everyone (who am I kidding; we have a big bowl of them because we are anti-obesity in our office). Any kind of fruit will do, especially the exotic ones. But bananas must always be shared with another person. A lady � we are all ladies here � never eats an entire banana. We think about the weighty issues surrounding obesity too! But what I wonder is why the weight loss industry doesn�t seem to be contributing to helping inner-city residents have good grocery stores near them with fresh produce. This is trust-worthy hearsay, but hearsay nonetheless: one of the large chains in our city gives all of the freshest produce to the suburban stores first. When produce doesn�t sell in the suburban stores, it goes to the inner city stores. And when it gets moldy � it goes as a donation to the food pantry. I�ve always wondered why produce sections smell so much more pungent in the inner city stores around these parts. And I�ve wondered why it goes bad minutes after it comes home. I wonder why the weight loss industry doesn�t help � it certainly rakes in the bucks. Some industries do a lot. Others just sit back. It seems odd to me that with so much virtue surrounding weight loss that the industry doesn�t openly �give back.� Or maybe it does, but I don�t know about it. This is always a possibility. 1:20 p.m. - 2003-05-30 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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