Feeling your mortality ... just a little

If I want to blog at all today, this is my window of opportunity do to it -- and (thank whatever guardian angel looks after these things) the Internet connection is behaving itself.

So, naturally, there's nothing remotely interesting to blog about --

Except this:

"...over the past 50 years more than 75,000 chemicals have been introduced into the environment with -- yes count them -- 300 synthetic chemicals now found in the bodies of almost every American man, woman, child and even newborn.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-dejong/the-dirty-word-in-clean_b_171464.html

That little gem is from a story, "The Dirty Word in Clean," which is running on Huffington ... and I challenge you to read the whole thing. Your blood will run cold.

Do you ever get days when you feel barely human? When you're sure you're turning green and moldy, and maybe growing a second head or a third leg? There you go. Now you know why.

I've been something of a "fresh air fascist" since I watched my father die of lung cancer. It's the kind of experience that turns your life around. At one time, I had my father, a grandmother and two aunts dying of cancer, all at the same time; then my cousin (only three months older than me -- and this was 10 or 12 years ago, so said cousin was still only about 40) had a series of strokes resulting in paralysis and wheelchair dependency. I guess I became super-sensitive to the crap we live among, what we put into our bodies by just breathing ...

In your 20s and 30s, you know for a fact, you're indestructible. I certainly was. I lost my immortality at about the age of 43 or 44. I don't know quite how it happened, but one day I woke up and realized, hey, time is catching me up. I might not be immortal after all. To misquote the commercial, "well, shoot, what a feeling."

Today, as I run off in the direction of work, I leave you with this parting shot from that feature on Huffington: "The Soap and Detergent Association is a one-hundred plus member trade association representing the $30 billion U.S. cleaning products market and -- oops -- it seems that they kinda' forgot to inform their brand loyal customers that their products might be killing them." Go read the whole story. I dare you.

Cheers,
MK