".... like a bowlful of jelly!"

It is Christmas - as if you didn't know - and of all the things that Christmas means to me (don't worry; I won't go into them all here because I hate those 'what Christmas means to me' lists, too), today one Christmas tradition is really sticking out:.
My belly.
Yes. Apparently, tis the season to be jolly, and we all know only fat people are jolly, which is why there is always so much food associated with Christmas, at least in this country.
And just like the shopping season for Christmas starts earlier and earlier every year, so does my Christmas eating. This year, I think I started in July to make sure by the time Christmas got here I'd have the proverbial jiggle to my giggle so that, like Santa, I will "shake when I laugh like a bowlful of jelly!"
Not that I like jiggling. I really wish I was in shape.
Which always starts me thinking about exercise.
I think about exercise a lot. If you could actually get in shape by thinking about exercise, I'd be the Jack LaLanne of my generation (especially if I could get one of those white German shepherds!).
I know people who are really committed to exercise. They are always talking about how good they feel, and how good I could feel, too, if I just did what they did, which is commit half my life to getting and staying in shape.
I actually had one of these guys say to me, "think of it this way: every minute you exercise now is one minute you've added to the back-end of your life."
Which really sounded great ... until I realized what that really meant.
It meant I'd be using all this time now when I'm still at an age to enjoy life, to extend that period of my life when I'd be really old, and therefore least able to enjoy things.
That, to me, is not a fair tradeoff.
Every time I think about exercising, I also think about what else I could be doing. And inevitably, the 'what else' seems a lot more appealing than exercise.
In fact, I have just about decided the ideal is to start my exercise on the back-end of my life, because I'll probably have a lot more time to exercise then and whatever else I could be doing I'll hopefully have done so many times that I'm looking for something new!
So until then ... clear off the sofa and hand me the remote control, because another showing of "It's A Wonderful Life'' is coming on.
That Jimmy Stewart is so thin, it makes me wish I could be like him.
But if wishes were fishes, I'd be frying them up in batter and hot oil and eating them with a half-pound of hushpuppies and fries.
With a Diet Coke, of course.
I mean, I have to do something more than just think about losing weight.