Baby Steps

So, you're welcome for the chuckle on me about my Wii age.

Apparently, the news that I'm physically sixty years old has amused a great many people, if my real life feedback is any indication.

And then there are my online commenters. Helpfully letting me know their own Wii ages are several decades south of my own. Oh no! Don't try and cheer me up! Really.

It seems to me I have two choices. And they are : 1) Do nothing and apply for Wii social security (and possibly, by then, Wii disability) in two years or 2) Get off my prematurely decrepit arse and train with the Wii B!tch as well as on my own.

After a lot of deliberation (and you know how I like to deliberate), I'm going with Option #2. It's a painful and very extreme choice, but it is the one I have made nonetheless. To this end, I am implementing some lifestyle changes that I'll be referring to here as "Baby Steps" or B.S. Pun intended. (And being the movie buff that I am, you know that any similarity to Dr. Marvin's "baby steps" program in "What About Bob?" is also completely intentional.)

Baby Step One is:

1. Replace my usual Blueberry Pop Tart breakfast with Kashi sticks-n-twigs cereal, skim milk, and fresh fruit.
While this is an extremely difficult adjustment for me, it is even worse news for a certain furry girl. Who wakes up every workday morning with a big smile on her chops and paces impatiently about the kitchen while she waits for the Big Event. Which, in this case, would be the moment I sit down at the dining table with my usual breakfast: hot buttered Blueberry Pop Tarts.

The ritual is for me to dispose of my unwanted crusts (which hello, Kellogg? nobody eats the crusts! time to develop a crust-free tart--it's only been forty years now!) by tossing them in an arc across the room and directly into her eagerly waiting gullet. Often the crusts are swallowed without even a cursory chew. And FurGirl is, by now, embarrassingly adroit at not letting a badly tossed crust hit the floor. Somehow, I just don't see her leaping her 88-lb butt around like a trained circus animal with quite so much bright-eyed, floppy-ear-bouncing gusto to catch an unwanted whole grain twig. Unfortunately, we'll be seeing about that.

Baby Step Two is:

2. Yah. Exercise. Thirty minutes a day. Five days a week.

So, I hope everybody's happy now. Here I am, a divorced virtual 60 year old with a soon-to-be depressed Golden Retriever (who is herself nearing age 49 in dog years) on her hands. But, I'll be fine! Don't worry about me. I'll just be here sucking on my Geritol and looking forward to the MacNeil Lehrer Report.

***

On a serious note...I'm afraid I simply can't post without at least mentioning the horrendously over done coverage on Tim Russert. Shades of my Ted Kennedy post, I think. Only this time? The subject was, so unfortunately, really dead.

For the record, I think Russert was probably just what he seemed: a great father, an outstanding journalist, a gifted debator and interviewer and, in a world where decent guys are fewer and farther between, an incredibly decent guy. He made a heck of a contribution. Certainly his death is news.

But, for the love of God, the hours and HOURS of coverage that were devoted to the story? Ridiculous. Again? Most of the "coverage" was NOT NEWS. The news was: Tim Russert died. And he was a great guy who will be missed. Everything else? Was just wallowing. Embarrassing wallowing, if you ask me. Hal Boedecker of the Orlando Sentinel summed it up nicely: "The self-indulgence was breathtaking."

And I'm going to go a step further. On into the realm of pure speculation because this is my blog and I can do whatever I want to. I think Russert himself would likely have found the coverage inappropriate.

Please, American media, stop embarrassing yourselves.