Stalking the Wily Bandersnatch in Search of Fire Engines

There's a fine line between having good intentions and taking meaningful actions and I balance on it for the most part like a circus bear tottering on a unicycle holding a parasol. Not that I'm alone in that respect but more on that in a minute.

In pursuit of my new goal to live forever, I've chosen to shop healthier, though my holy grail of healthy foods, kale doughnuts, continues to elude me. Nevertheless, I persist and sometimes I end up self-owning.

Here's what I mean: about ten days ago while in the produce department of one of our local groceries, I bought one of those containers of already-cut celery. The stalks were about six inches long, packed in what I assume was water, and looked very appealing. If you believe urban myths, celery is a negative-calorie food, but after careful consideration, I think that's mostly in the eye of the beholder. 

Anyway, no-fuss, no muss, just us (actually me) and the container of already-cut celery in my reusable shopping bag along with other fruits and vegetables and a rather large bag of salty snacks that, I believe, were already in there when I opened it  (that's my story and I'm sticking with it). I was already glowing from my healthy choice, but like those TV infomercials say, 'wait! there's more!' 

I was very pleased with my choice of snack and placed the container on the top shelf of our refrigerator when I got home and stole a peek at it the following morning to remind myself of how terrifically healthy I was being. 

Maybe it was the heat, or perhaps the humidity or just the Lockdown Lassitude but it wasn't until this past Sunday while looking for something else in the refrigerator that I came across the still-unopened container of celery, stuck like a statue undaunted, on the top shelf. 

I was chagrined to realize its 'Best By' date was now a thing of the past and not the recent past. I hurriedly placed the container in our kitchen trash bag, hoping, perhaps if I moved quickly enough my brain wouldn't fully realize what my hands had just done but too late. 

I was hoist with my own petard which doesn't even qualify as an aerobic exercise (I looked) and as near as I can tell from standing on the bathroom scale I didn't even lose any weight despite having purchased the celery. There should be somewhere I can go to lodge a complaint. 

Except, looking at recent local headlines, I'm thinking I'd be standing in a queue and you know how impatient I am. Last Friday, while my celery was still in the fridge, the city received eight bids for a proposed fire services study that was originally approved at a somewhat contentious City Council meeting in early May.

I've lived here for almost thirty years and we've had more discussions about studies on our city's fire services than I've had celery stalks. For all I know the newly-submitted bids could be part of the same discussion that was going on when I first arrived, but it's not the study that I think any of us are worried about. 

It's undertaking any actions the study might recommend. That, I suspect, could prove to be politically less appealing than those kale doughnuts. 
-bill kenny