To Relieve This Bellyache

Sometimes good advice is good advice, no matter its source. Horoscopically speaking, I should consider what I want out of life this year because with luck and hard work, I might get it. Well, I can't argue with that. Pretty much any year good luck and hard work might bring me what I want. So, there you go. What do I want? It's not as simple a question as it sounds.

1. A government that works all night for the fresh, hot and freaky common good and makes scrambled eggs in the morning.

2. A body that is ready to go, rather than a physique that signals where the mind's wandered.

Let's be clear: I'm never going to have the body I had when I ate virtually nothing and lifted weights two hours a day, but that's not the point. No matter what anyone else's body says or does, mine wants to be strong and in motion, and when it isn't, that's all my doing and it means my brain's somewhere else. This summer, my Guatemalan cousin Regina, who is my age and a couple years ago survived a very serious cancer scare, will swim around Manhattan Island. If she can get up off her death bed to run marathons I can get off my ass and do some pushups.

3. Clothes that actually fit. Damn it, no more feeling squeezed like bratwurst!

4. Projects out of my brain and seen to completion. Dad's slides will be organized and restored. My art projects wil come to fruition. More things will move from where they are to where they are needed.

5. To save a little more money. I'd like to nosh on a better grade of cat food in my old age.

In short, I want a leaner, stronger, more capable me. A few years back, I wondered if I could learn anymore, such was the brain damage I was living with. Today, I'm going to help Pete paint a hallway for fun, which would have been a preposterous notion four years ago, when I would have been dead certain I didn't know how, let alone couldn't muster the strength to do it. Woe was me! Pfffft!

So that's what I want. Seen that in a catalog?