Girlfriend Emily and I purchased trial memberships in some fancy new athletic facility in Chattanooga. I think we have five visits which we have to use before Christmas. We bought them in a fit of enthusiasm when we got back from the Mississippi bike ride, when we were feeling quite full of ourselves and ready to start testing our bodies again. Sadly, reality has set in with a vengeance at the chemical plant and the courthouse, and Em and I have yet to make it down to Chattanooga with our workout gear. For myself, I have to confess that, while my titanium hip is doing just fine, all the original equipment around it is still ... well, original and, as such, not cooperating with the strategy to become lean and hungry again. I'm off to see the orthopedic surgeon again in the coming week but I have a feeling he's just going to remind me that he told me before all this cutting and replacing started that I would still be an old lady when he got through with me. Alas. I may just give up and join Gracie on the couch ...
And wasn't this the stuff of nearly all the world's poetry, the transitoriness of life and love and beauty, the knowledge that time's winged chariot had knives in its wheels?
P.D. James
