Dad: The Leading Cause of Childhood Obesity

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So Lady Steed returned home from Tehachapi after I got home from work. The Big O was sleeping and she brought him in and laid him down on our bed. She changed clothes and left for stake women's conference (if you want to know what that is, ask her, I wasn't invited for some reason). When O woke up, he was distraught at arriving to a world of consciousness without the presence of his mother. He cried and cried and so forth. He couldn't believe she was gone--her Birks were still by the door--yet she was.

He wanted to go out looking for her, so we found our shoes and coats and hats (it's very cold in the AV just now) and went for a walk through the apartment complex. We only saw two cop cars, so that was good. Or bad. Depending.

As we walked I talked to him about dinner. Lady Steed had thrown together a delicious and nutritious potato soup before she left. He wasn't sure he was interested. So I talked about how afterwards he could have some ice cream--we still had some SpongeBob left--but he remained noncommittal.

We picked up the mail where I too received some exciting news and we came home.

The Big O was frustrated at our failure to find his mom and so asked for comfort via a box of conversation hearts. After a while, he was ready for soup. But he had not forgotten the ice cream. Or the old gummy NASCARs we recently found in a box somewhere.

If he gets diabetes at sixty months it will be my fault. Sans me, he would always get healthful (ie, mommy-determined) meals.

I need to start paying attention to what I eat as well.

The last couple weeks an alarming development has occurred. Here I am, six months from thirty, and if you see me naked in direct light you will notice that I am developing love handles.

The eventual emergence of such a thing has always struck me as a certainty, but to have it actually happen is a bit too much like learning that, for instance, I am not in fact an immortal demigod.

Weird, in other words. Offputting.

And this fatty development also has given me a weird, nascent desire. I think I might want to "exercise."

I'm not sure what "exercise" is, and I've never thought much of finding out, but now I have love handles! Egad! Perhaps I should do something!

But wait. If I start exercising for that reason, I am exercising for vanity and vanity alone. No other reason. I've never exercised for health reasons before. Perpetual shortness of breath and a dwindling lifespan have never been reason enough before, so if I start now, it is only because of vanity.

(Speaking of, I love Ecclesiastes. It always annoys me when people say it's depressing.)

Anyway, ask not for whom the fat rolls.

It rolls for me.