So , time to talk about investing the gift. If, through the grace of a power that is greater than myself I am alive and well, what do I do with the gift of life? The first thing that I am doing in enjoying life. I love my wife and I like being with her. In the mornings it is somehow my routine to make the coffee. I grind the beans, I make the coffee, and bring it to my wife.
I remember that, after getting my "adult" job a good 150 kilometers from my parent's house I would still visit an awful lot on weekends. My dad would, without fail make me morning coffee and deliver to my bedside. I was still a very young man, often recovering so to speak from a late Friday Night and the smell of the instant coffee next to my bedside was often not greeted with full enthusiasm by me. But something in my knew that of course the coffee would not last forever, that likely my father would leave the mortal world well before me and he did indeed die in 1990.
So it is with the coffee for my wife. The day will come when either I will not be there to make it, or she will not me there to receive it. But today I was able to make and give her coffee. It is a very, very, small payback but it helps me start the day.
I try to leave each day doing the right stuff for me, a sort of personal investment. I take my drugs: The morning is a baby aspirin, a beta blocker, a calcium blocker, a fish oil pill, a multivitamin, and a hit of extra fibre. At night it is another beta blocker, a statin and more fibre.
Then there is the food. I have a few things that I have done well. I love Frito Lay Ruffles but I only eat them on Christmas Eve. I have not taken up smoking or drinking. I have cut down drastically on my consumption of diet soda pop. I eat no more that two eggs a week. I never (well almost never) add salt at the table. But ice cream (soft cones) have entered my life a bit more than the summer heat should allow. I am getting careless on portion size. But I am trying to me mindful.

I try to move 30 minutes a day over and above what I have to do. Jogging, cycling, padding, and walking are what I do. Doggie walking does not count in the equation. The heat is making me lazy but each step, each stroke is an investment

More to come .....