This is the government warning on a packet of Fruit Snacks - "KEEP KIDS SAFE! To avoid choking, give Fruit Flavored Snacks only to children who can easily swallow chewey foods. Children should be seated and supervised while eating."

That's actually longer than the warning on my cigarettes.

Best bit - every frigging day I feel fine. I smoke, I eat meat, I worship salt, my entire vegetable group is "potatoes lubricated with butter," I drink beer, I walk 4 miles, I take naps, and I feel GREAT. My great grandmother lived the exact same life, and she didn't even get put into a home until she was in her mid-90's. And at that point her bp wasn't much worse than the stupidly low figures I am currently posting, and mind you this was in the 80's when medical care was pretty much nothing but drilling into your head to let the demons out.

Only now, according to Frau Klebb, I "suffer" from high blood pressure.

No I fucking don't. Oddly enough, "slightly elevated" blood pressure doesn't mean shit to me in my day-to-day life. I've drunk 4 cups of coffee to kill off a hangover, strapped on 2 pounds of footwear, and tramped 3 miles through a snowstorm while chain-smoking... and have never even felt light-headed. Pfft, I only eat two meals a day - bagel with cream cheese somewhere around noonish and a plate full of meat with salt on it for dinner, I have yet to faint. That's my three meals a day... coffee, bagel, meat.

So now I have six months to get the mildly elevated bp back down, or else it's more tests and medication, which I loathe, despise, and won't fucking take unless it's at gunpoint. I am, according to Frau Klebb, supposed to cut my salt down to three grains per meal, stop drinking, stop smoking, eat more green shit even though that isn't food, it's what food eats.

So let me get this straight... I have slightly elevated numbers. Ok. I feel perfectly fine and I love my life and enjoy ingesting whatever my body tells me it wants and needs. I function perfectly. Ok. This is defined as "suffering" from high blood pressure.

The cure is - give up cigarettes, beer, whiskey, red meat, butter, salt, mashed potatoes, staying up late, horror movies, crossing intersections in front of busses, Dr. Demento, seeing 120 am on a clock, and thinking about anything political.

Which one's the actual "suffering?" She lost me there.

Frau Klebb can kiss my ass. I only get one ride, I'll be fucked if I'm gonna trade feeling fine and loving it for feeling slightly better and hating every minute of it.

I would rather die at 50 having loved every single minute of it than die at 90 having hated almost all of my adult life.

Kiss my ass, dr. doom. Me and salt are still bffs, and in spite of the hangover I will still wake up tomorrow, strap on what's left of my workboots, and hike four miles through the freezing cold to buy cigarettes and beer.

Life is only life as long as it's worth living.