Beau Brummel in the Woods

 I enjoy sartorial splendor.  There, I said it.  I don't have kids, I have clothes (and a cat).  I bought a four bedroom house years ago with a closet in every room including the kitchen and den, a hallway cedar lined closet, and two attics (one over the house and one over the garage)  in anticipation of  having enough space to store a life's worth of stuff for me and my family.  It turns out I needed all the space for a life's worth of stuff for me and well, me.  This is hard for any man to admit but I own more clothes, shoes, coats, jackets, and watches than my wife.  She does own more accessories such as jewelry and purses than me.  I only own one purse.  A murse.  More like an over the shoulder travel bag you find in the LL Bean catalog for adventurous travel to dangerous locales like Nigeria and Nicaragua.  Only no one who goes to these places would ever be dumb enough to stuff all their important papers in a visible and easily rip offable shoulder satchel.  That's what money belts are for.  So I assume other men use them for trips to the mall like me.  But it is fun to pretend.

I also own a lot of hats.  Western, outback, fedora, Panama, wool felt, fur felt, straw, waxed cotton, Tilley, Bailey, Stetson, Akubra,  and even one made of buffalo fur and leather.  I have loved hats ever since I can remember.  In grade school I saved up my money to buy one of those Cuban Revolutionary's caps that Fidel always wears.  It was the sixties and Che Guevara was a household name in liberal New York Jewish households.  I feel it necessary to state at this point that I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the communist party.  In fact I generally have no pity for the working class of which I include myself.  Though I don't think Wisconsin should take away the collective bargaining rights of it's civil employees.  But did you know it was just the right to arbitrate for their benefits?  They could still collectively bargain for their base salaries.  But I digress.

I long for the days when men, no matter what activity they were engaged in, wore fedora fur felt hats.  I find myself drawn to those old photos of the Atlantic City Boardwalk, or the pictures of food lines in the 1930's when all the men, no matter how down and out, were wearing natty chapeaus.  A smartly tilted hat will make even the most hapless fellow seem a bon vivant.  In fact it has always been my motto that "If you don't know what you are doing, look good doing it".  And please, do not mistake my enthusiasm for a stylish hat as an implicit approval of wearing baseball caps for any purpose other than catching baseballs.  Perhaps a John Deere baseball cap would be okay for a farmer out tilling the fields but a broad brimmed straw hat would set him apart from his fellow toilers and do a better job of protecting his head, face, and neck from a nasty carcinoma.




I own a separate set of clothes for each activity in which I involve myself.  I also own a coat or jacket for each five degree change in temperature and precipitation.  Forty-five degrees and sunny?  I have an app for that.  Fifty-four degrees and raining?  I have an app for that.  You will not come upon me hiking in the woods or climbing up a mountain wearing anything other than a smart looking Schoeller, Polartec, and GoreTex outfit and a handsome full brimmed hat.  I might be bringing up the rear but I look damned good doing it.  Out doing yard work?  I am wearing a stylish barn coat and cowboy hat.  My neighbors may think I am quirky but I know every guy wishes he owned a cowboy or outback hat and wore it while cutting up downed tree limbs with a 60cc chainsaw. 

I've noticed another thing.  It has become fashionable to post a life's worth of pictures at a viewing for the deceased.  When the eight people present at my funeral stand there admiring my life well lived I want them to say to themselves "Damn, I need me a hat like that".

If the Sugar Doesn't Kill Me the Torment Surely Will

As if you don't have enough problems of your own you have unfortunately chosen to read about mine here in this blog.  As promised in the last of my rarefied posts the results of my Nutrition Response Test are in.  I need to swear off wheat, wheat gluten, white rice, corn, soy, oats, spelt, caffeine in all it's manifestations, alcohol in all of it's manifestations, and dairy (organic and otherwise). I also should stop drilling toxic mercury fillings out of peoples' teeth, stop over-exercising, and stop swallowing my food after two chews.  Also, my adrenal glands are fatigued from my high flying lifestyle, my liver is struggling due to overexposure to toxic metals (hazard of being a dentist) and my pancreas is stressed from my "white sugar in the form of cookies" habit.

In place of the convenient lifestyle I have come to recognize and love I must; always have a protein with my carbohydrates, eat only whole grain carbos sold by the Birkenstock wearing owners of farms in Vermont where Buckwheat is actually a grain not the African-American Little Rascal, eat seeds, nuts and legumes in such quantities that I may in fact develop diverticulosis, choke down fistfuls of dark green leafy vegetables that are in no way related to light green iceburg lettuce, snack on home made "granola bars" that make Civil War era Hard Tack seem like a toothsome delicacy, and I am not quite sure what I can have for breakfast besides eggs since Frosted Flakes and frozen waffles are out.

I exaggerate of course.  I do know what I can have for breakfast, but the rest is true. The real irony here is that I didn't need to pay $165.00 to  an alternative medical practitioner to tell me how to eat right.  I  learned that after reading the $14.95 tome "Omnivores Dilemma" by Michael Pollan.  That and the free advice given to me by my dogmatic nephew.  Dogmatic might be too harsh a word because in all honesty he doesn't give a crap whether you follow his advice or not. He, like the other male members of my family, just enjoys the art of the argument.  In any case, there is one additional facet that my new doctor brought to the table and that is the dispensing of supplements that I am quite hopeful will lead my internal organs to a place of harmony and balance.

You see, it is not good enough to just start healthful eating.  One must cleanse the bad karma left behind by Wonder Bread.  To that end I am now swallowing four veterinary sized pills three times a day in hopes of giving my liver a clean start.  In all fairness I must confess that one of the pills is an herbal supplement to calm my nerves.  That was really the chief complaint that started me down this road.  Irritability.  But as my sister said to me "What, worse than the past 30 years??"  The only problem I have now is that I am totally stressed out over my new diet.  Any calming effect the St Johnswort may have is negated by my fear of improperly balancing the carbs and proteins at my 3:30 pm snacky time.  It may turn out after all that the Oreo cookies do, in fact, love me back with their non-demanding attitude.

The Pillsbury Dough Boy Shall Be Slain

So it has finally happened.  I have become a middle aged puffy white male.  He snuck up on me rather surreptitiously.  Perhaps while I was distracted watching Seinfeld reruns and eating Oreo cookies.  Or maybe it happened while I was at work trying to keep my office afloat in these times of increasing costs and decreasing  enthusiasm for nice teeth and gums.  Whatever the factors involved in my slow descent into the torpid, stressed out  lifestyle of the typical fifty year old suburban male, I recently had a startling eye opener. 

My wake up call did not arrive via a conventional blood test and stern lecture on the dangers of LDL's by an over weight yet self satisfied physician .  Nor did the news arrive via a 4 mm fiber optic probe being guided through my large intestine by an equally smug colo-rectal surgeon.  No, in my case the news was delivered by a comely chiropractor practiced in the art of sensing the body's acupuncture meridians gone awry.  My liver, it seems, does not agree that a couple of glasses of wine after work is good for the nerves.  My adrenal glands are apparently tired of carrying the load necessary to maintain my high achieving lifestyle.  And not to be left out, my pancreas is just about at its wits end with trying to process my cookie habit.

Of course, like a stressed out parent (the Nutritionist's metaphor, not mine) my Pituitary gland is beside itself with worry over the unruly nature of my entire endocrine system.  All this great news delivered via my arm strength response while pressure is applied to the meridian for each organ.  That and the fact that I told the Doc I am a stressed out dentist, suffering from irritability, bloating, fatigue, and an excessive need to void my bowel.  I imagine 98% of fifty year old men suffer the same maladies, or worse, as me.  We just don't talk about it.  I say this not to detract from the validity of the diagnosis, but just to point out the need for some kind of motivational force beside a condescending lecture from a conventional MD.

Sure I could go to my family physician (if I actually had one) who would stick needles in my arm, a scope in my ears, nose, and throat, and a finger up my ass, just to tell me the same thing.  Eat better, drink less, and exercise more.  As if I don't already know this.  In fact, most people who know me assume I am the poster boy for a life well lived.  "As if you have to worry" is the response I get most often when expressing doubt about eating my twelfth chicken wing at the PJ's Pub across from my office.  Well I've got news for you, I have some issues and apparently my liver, pancreas, and adrenal glands are not going to take it anymore.

So in the interest of longevity I made an appointment with this alternative medicine practitioner.  I have only had one appointment so far but I do not have a good feeling about the news she is going to deliver to me at our next meeting.  Her mumbling something about wheat, gluten, dairy, soy, meat, caffeine, sugar, and alcohol intolerance during her palpatory examination on my stomach and liver has already got me thinking that I will be living on raw kale leaves for the rest of my life.  This thought leaves me a bit uneasy about the road I am choosing to travel down.  But hey, I am always up for a life altering challenge.

The technique is called "Nutrition Response Testing" and you may click on the title of this post for a demo on youtube.

Stay tuned.