adam overland

This week I saw the dentist, and for some reason—insurance probably, or to make you feel bad about both your teeth and your body—the hygienist took my blood pressure. Then she took it again, and then a third time, and then she said that I should probably call my doctor, like, today. After telling her to stay in her lane, I indicated that I believed I had some cholesterol lodged between a couple of molars, and would she mind? 

I’m already on blood pressure medication; high blood pressure runs in the family. But it’s mostly my fault. In the last few years I’ve almost entirely given up eating fruits and vegetables. What little fruit I do have I get from a grape variety that originated in the Bordeaux region of France, while most of my vegetable intake originates from the animals I eat that eat vegetables. 

I do not mean to be flippant about the lives of animals, but vegetables I find to be both exhausting and second tier, which is probably why they are on the second level of the famed food pyramid, while meat is near the top. The thing is, given my high blood pressure, I’m probably not going to live that long of a life. And so logic dictates that, since my life will likely be shortened because of my diet, and because I’d like to enjoy what time I do have left, and because there is little that I enjoy more than eating meat…I should continue eating meat.

I have also become, I admit, extraordinarily existentially fatigued and generally morose about life over the last few years. Admittedly, to some extent, I have given up. 

I have cooked for myself for many years, vegetables included, and while I have enjoyed it at times, The Joy of Cooking has of late been slammed shut, its pages dusty and crumbling like rhubarb crisp, which actually sounds really good about now, but probably doesn’t count toward one’s level 2 pyramid points. 

The fact is, I no longer want to cook. I want to eat. Still, I will take the hygienist’s advice. I will floss more. And I will call my doctor about my blood pressure, and my doctor will scold me as she did last year. We will then agree to up my medication, at which point I will almost certainly subconsciously increase my intake of salt and other high blood pressure causing foods. And the cycle will continue, until at last I become what I did not eat, this modern day pyramid, my tomb.