Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

There comes a point in the year when we all sit around nursing out wounds from one too many Christmas dinners. We look ourselves in the mirror and wonder where our youth went. Maybe we are a little more gray, a little pudgier in the middle and suddenly we begin to see the faces of our parents staring back at us in the mirror in the morning.

There really isn’t much we can do about this. We try hard to keep our young and virile appearances through creams, exercise and lots of hair coloring, but I’m wondering if the aging we see in ourselves can’t be worn as a badge of honor for making it this far. For those of you who just simply can’t deal with it, and refuse to let old man time get the best of you I’ve come up with a few helpful ideas to get you started on that New Year’s resolution.

1. First, regardless of what you may think, trying to start a walking program in the Winter is pure craziness, unless you live in some warm climate like Bermuda and walk around your island all day drinking something fruity with an umbrella in it. So, since we can’t get out side you should go ahead and make that fruity drink and walk around the inside of your house aimlessly. For added fun start mumbling something about armegeddon and a treasure buried in your front yard. This is sure to get the attention of the rest of the members of your household and probably will keep them away from you which will keep you from having to explain why you are walking around in circles in your house.
2. Next, you should look at your diet. I know that there are still three tubs of Christmas candy in your refridgerator but that doesn’t mean that you are responsible for finishing them off. Now why don’t you play the old game of “ring and run” with your neighbors. Fill up a bag of all those goodies..sneak up to their door in the middle of the night..place the bag on their step and start ringing the doorbell like someone’s on fire. As soon as you see the first light pop through a window, run like crazy. Not only have you rid yourself of the unneeded treats, you also have done your exercise for the day.
3. You could start inviting all the kids in the area to come to your house to play. I guarantee that this will mean a lot of bending over to pick things up and put them away. This is great for your abs!
4. Instead of going out to purchase one of those expensive hair coloring kits try using a sharpie marker. This may not be as effective but much less painful than having the kids pull the gray hairs from your head.
5. Finally, and before Hey BOB comes running over here and beating me down for using three months worth of column ideas, you could try to wear magnifying glasses at meals. This will make all of you food look much larger than it really is, and just might help if you are being forced to cut down on your portion size.

Regardless of which plan you come up with to bring back your youthful appearance, the most important thing you can do is just to be nice to each other. In case all of these ideas fail miserably at least you might earn enough good points with the people around you, that they will love you regardless of how you look.

See you next week. Remember, we’re all in this together.