...my heart is FULL!

I remember back in September of 2001, just about a week before the 9/11 attacks, I was teaching 8th grade in a small Catholic school in Southwest Philadelphia. It Was one of the first couple of days back to school and I was establishing my bona fides as a Social Studies/History teacher to my kids. The way I did this was by having the students clear their desks except for the kid who was physically most far away from me with their book open to the appendix listing all of the presidents. I sat in the front of the room on a stool with empty hands and went through each president in order and the years they served. When I finished and the kid with the book told me I was correct, the kids asked questions about the presidents.

One child asked if I thought that there'd ever be an African American president and, in those days 3 years before anyone ever heard of Obama, I said that I thought that I'd live to see a woman president but not a black president, but that I thought that THEY would.

Given what we were offered by the Republicans in 2008/12, THANK GOD I was wrong.

In 2008 my wife and I supported Hillary in the primaries then, when Obama won fair and square, my wife and I supported him with NO hesitation.

This year, I was with Hillary from the word go. Tonight, I am very emotional and joyous to know that on January 20 of next year, I will have seen both a woman and a black president.

There is a part of me that believes, while we know that Hillary has always had big goals and ambitions, that some of the credit should go back to a September night in 1973 and to Billie Jean King, who opened the door to the dreams and ambitions of so many young women when she handed Bobby Riggs's ass to him in the "battle of the sexes" tennis match and made tens of thousands of young girls and women ask "why not?" about their own dreams.

Tonight the reality of a woman PRESIDENT is one step closer. While we still have to break our asses to make it happen, I know that this country will NEVER elect something like Donald Rump to be our president.

"Madam President"...it has a pretty nice ring to it, doesn't it?

PEACE!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I spent 17 long and awful days in the hospital this past February with a BASTARD of a case of Cellulites. Speaking as a 28 year cancer survivor and a recovering alcoholic of 26+ years, I can honestly say that I'd never felt sicker than those 27 horrendous days.

The day I went into the hospital, I weighed 378 pounds. I was put on a special diet and after 4 days I weighed 391 pounds. That was the closest that I came to signing out AMA because I remember snapping to the nutritionist that I could fail on a diet all by myself! F course, if I HAD signed out AMA, my wife would have kicked my ass until my nose bled!

The long and short of this is that while I was told that I had Cellulites, I looked at it as a case of "scare the hell out of Jackites", and knew that it was time to stop playing with myself and get serious about my weight. I've made the adjustments that I've known that I needed to make for years and got determined to make a permanent change.

As of this morning, I weigh 314 pounds. I know that I still have a long way to go to reach my initial goals, but I now see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. 77 pounds is a big deal and I'm determined to reach 100 pounds off and decide where to go from there. Once I get OUT of the 300s, I'm determined to never be back IN them again

Anyway, I just wanted to share this with you. Thank you for reading!

PEACE!

I was in Cumby here in Winthrop, Maine getting my wife a coffee and a couple of muffins for us. I saw an old guy, maybe early 70s, wearing a "Trump...Make America Great Again" Tshirt and one of those stupid red hats. I told him that they were the funniest damn tshirt & hat I'd seen in a long time.

The asshole THANKED me!

I wonder when, or IF, he'll figure out that I had just insulted him!

PEACE!