I'm ashamed of what I did for a Klondike Bar.

It's that time of year again when we hang our heads in shame and realize that we can barely see our toes. I, myself, chose to gain five lb's over the Christmas season by overdoing the party list and consuming large amounts of cheese, wine, topped with chocolate, more cheese and more wine. I am by no means overweight, but I currently feel like a pig in a blanket when I get dressed in the morning.

I just love how it goes down every year. You go to the New Years Eve party and there's the size double-zero girl with perky, perfect C cup rack horsing down a bowl of ranch dip and a family sized bag of potato chips. Then there you are, starving next to the veggie tray, eating six whole baby carrots and dreaming of punching her in the face Fight Club style and you momentarily consider it as a rational idea until you remember that she's your friend. The next morning you hit the scale and immediately slit your wrists with your cuticle clippers because you gained a pound for each carrot and currently look four months pregnant. You plot out exactly how many hours you can reasonably go without eating before passing out or nibbling off a fingertip and fill your day planner with well-intentioned gym visits. At least, that's what I do.

I've finally gotten to the semi-levelheaded stage of getting up early to work out and have started eating healthier. I went to Wal-Mart to buy a workout DVD and was stopped for shoplifting because they thought I was walking out with a pair of basketballs shoved in my dress pants. Turns out it was just my ass. So now, Jillian Michaels is kicking those basketballs every morning as I gasp, wretch and wish to die. So far, my waistline hasn't changed much but it has successfully reduced my knockers into a pair of badminton shuttle-cocks that are very much reminiscent of my pre-adolescent years. But here's another thing about working out and eating healthy that drives me crazy- you're hungry all the damned time. I swear, I used to eat a Sonic kiddie burger and I'd be good for lunch and dinner. Now I'm eating radicchio salads with lemon juice dressing and finding that it's only true purpose is to make me more ravenous. I'm so hungry I'm chewing on straws, pens, paper clips and other various office supplies like a little crazed donkey in a lettuce patch. It makes me so agitated, my school kiddos are fantasizing of the day I give up and go into full-on binge mode just so I'll stop gnashing my teeth and stomping around like a t-Rex. They fear getting their fingers too close to me. So bottom line, I'm miserable but wistfully awaiting that magical day that I start to see some noticeable change. The day when my jeans fit more like jeans rather than leggings. The time when my stomach will have finally shrunk enough that I can blissfully enjoy only eating one cube of cheese. The moment when my skinny thighs make my shuttle-cocks look like boobs again. So raise you Nalgene's full of water and Benefiber and toast to better days! Cheers!!

Top Ten Reasons its Great to Be Non-Married

10. There's a half gallon of milk, carpet cleaner, a satin pageant sash, Q-tips, the receipt from your most recent pap smear, a ceramic pig, your car title, some leftover cheese and a crusty knife, $116 cash, a hanging plant with one leaf, a wet glove and Armor All within five feet of each other on your kitchen counter and it doesn't matter. No one will see.

9. Your Christmas tree can stay up as long as you deem.

8. Your bathroom is your very own personal recording studio, much like P Diddy's. Also like P Diddy, there is no room for critics of your singing abilities and/or the amounts of hair products you own. American Idol has nothin' on this, beeyoch.

7. You bed is your domain. Your small kingdom, if you will. The comforter, blankets, pillows and sheets- all to your liking. Fart in them if you wish.

6. You can come home after work and not feel the need to be cute or impress anyone but yourself. I prefer my thin, green homemade Masters Champion t-shirt sans bra so I can walk around with National Geographic boobs, my navy, men's XL baseball sweatpants that I stole from a kid in high school, my brown loafers, and my black cardigan. I very much resemble the dad in A Christmas Story. And I love it. Hott.

5. Don't feel like cooking? That's nothing that saltines, some Taco Bell fire sauce packets and a few scoops of orange sherbet can't fix.

4. There is no need to worry that someone will walk in and discover the tang in the air courtesy of your post-work happy hour margaritas and enchilada platter from the El Rancho Viejo, never mind the toilet skids.

3. I can blog with out explaining why I am threatening my life by using my laptop in the bathtub.

2. You can sit all afternoon and read the Twilight saga for the third time and there's no one to scold or debase you for brazenly squandering your time/loitering in a fantasy world to circumvent the mediocrity of your own existence/seducing yourself into believing there are men that are actually THAT devoted with huge sums of money/looks AND can run fast.

1. I can do what I want.

Ahhh America.... Land of the Enabled.

So part deux when it comes to health care (are you tired of it yet?.... yeah me too). Everyone is so up in arms about why EVERYONE doesn't have health care and why prices are so dang high just for a box of Kleenex at the hospital. We're all just trying to kill each other and harvest each other's organs, right? For those that are THAT short sighted and thinking that we should all be playing hopscotch and eating candy bars, let's skip into the land of reality for a short jaunt and answer that oh-so-big question.

You want a car? Buy it. You want a house? Buy it. You want more house or car than you can afford? Buy it anyway. If you want anything- a back waxer, a no-kink garden hose for your slip-n-slide with banana sprayer, Boeing 747, a Rainbow Brite jock strap, a cheap turkey baster or collagen to make your lips look like you been playing in the pool drain- you got it. Just go buy it! But yet you also want to stuff yourself like a cheap hot dog full of lips and buttholes, drink yourself until you pee in your closet, smoke until you cough up something that looks like escargot, sit your cottage cheese butt cheeks on the sofa, tan the resulting fat and try to undo it all with the Taco Bell Drive Thru Diet. Then, after making sure that you do everything possible short of running in front of a school bus to send yourself to an early grave, you want to gripe about the cost of putting humpty dumpty all back together again. Wouldn't it be great if everyone in the world could just be healthy? Of course, but its not reality because it costs money to clean up your hot ghetto mess.

Health care is expensive. Why? WE drive up the costs. We don't go get check-ups or physicals. We live promiscuously and eat over-abundantly, exercise nominally and then one day show up with our intestines rotting out of our anuses. As a whole we do not live any sort semblance of a healthy lifestyle. And yet, we blame our physicians and sue them when there's a post-surgery infection, thus driving up his costs that really get placed back to us. Really? If you'd just paid your $25 copay and gotten a checkup or maybe passed up on that Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready every Tuesday, your perforated colon would be normal and much less expensive and stinky.

My favorite thing in all of this is the media hype. I was watching this MSNBC "expose" on people that were suffering because of health care. One special couple- wife got fired and needed gall bladder surgery. Husband quit his job as a security guard after being confront with a gun, so total loss of benefits. Now they have $18,000 of debt, no jobs and were complaining about how unfair it all was. If a place needs a security guard, it means there are shenanigans going down. Like guns. But I wasn't there so I can't truly be judgemental. But what I can be condemnatory of is what was so great about this story. Their documentary was filmed in their living room from three leather sofas. They also got a shot of both people looking for jobs on the web in their office with two desktops, two printers, two scanners, two web cams and yep- two laptops as well. They both drove nice cars and she had acrylic nails and a huge head of overprocessed hair. And the best part- they were both overweight. Is that not the icon of America? If they sold even half of their "finer things" or heaven forbid- not have tacky, white tipped finger nails, their bills would be extinct. What, are you too good to flip a burger or waitress? For cryin' out loud, hit up the temp agency at least. Income is income, whether its millions or cents. And sheesh-stop shoving twinkies in your obese face and take a walk so you can avoid your next major health crisis.
As an incredible speaker, Bill Cordes, once said- YOGOWIPI. You Only Get Out What You Put In. You want health care? Get a job and buy it. You don't want to pay bills from your health care? Stop treating yourself like a garbage dump. Want to live a life of financial freedom? Act your wage. Health care is a benefit to those who earn it. Those who can't are already covered by Uncle Sam. Now THAT's health care reform.