Splurging on Freedom

After my successful gallbladder surgery, i slowly began testing the waters in the (once-angry) sea that is my digestive system.  After that first week of recovery, and nibbles here and there, i decided to give it a whirl.  We had lunch at Time To Eat, a burger joint in Clemmons.  I splurged with the cheeseburger, onion rings, and a milkshake.  Let's shoot the moon!

My hard-working pancreas passed with flying colors.  No pain, nothing.  I guess this medicine stuff really does work.

Since then, i've had to make up for lost time, and catch up on all the ice cream i've missed.  Eating a bowl almost every day.  That was the thing i missed the most these past several months.  I don't care about the still-evil french fries; i'm over those piles of grease.  But i gots to have me some cookies & cream, or chocolate chip cookie dough (note to one manufacturer:  it's supposed to be blobs of the dough of chocolate chip cookies - so to speak - not blobs of non-descript cookie dough within chocolate chip ice cream; there's a difference; don't screw it up!) or anything with caramel in it.

Dangerously enough, our bathroom scale picked this key moment to die on us, so i don't know how much catching up i've really done.  My nadir weight, which actually came a few days AFTER the surgery, was 166.  I hit that one morning, and only one morning.  Probably in the mid-170s, but everything still fits like Josh Baskin at the end of Big or like David Byrne of the Talking Heads in Stop Making Sense.

Were i really to muse right here, i'd ponder the metaphor of expanded freedom, and our tendency to make unwise choices with such freedom.  Or how sometimes we need to be saved from ourselves, to be, as Leslie Phillips once sang, "free from no borders".  My diet has no borders any longer.  And while i wouldn't go back to the days of pain and trepidation, i do miss the discipline that came with it.  Now, that discipline must come from within, or at least from a place that pulls us toward life.