A bald-faced lie.*

When it comes to nutrition, I try to nail the basics. I have a large regimen of supplements I take daily, I work hard to hit my five veggies per day, I drink the lawn clippings that are powdered greens, and I shoot for a minimum of 64 ounces of water (and no, sadly, I don’t count my coffee, otherwise I’d easily double that number).

While I try to focus on eating whole foods and avoiding processed stuff, I also have my 20% of the time (sometimes 30% or 40%) when I eat what I want. Usually on Friday nights.

And one of my favorite splurges is curly fries.

Looooooove me some curly fries.

Which is why, in perusing the internet for healthy recipes, zoodle curly fries caught my attention. Zoodles, if you’re unfamiliar, are strands of zuchinni that you spiralize into noodles. You can use them in place of pasta as a healthy alternative.

I’m not a huge fan of pasta, so I never mind the substitution. Which is why I thought I’d give the zoodle curly fries a whirl.

The end result?

Well, after dipping spiralized veggies in egg and rolling them around in a Parmesan cheese breading mixture, my hands were covered in something akin to baby vomit and the green strands on the baking sheet looked like a pile of grass-puke from my dog Vinnie.

Sheila popped out to the kitchen to survey my progress.

“Stop pretending that’s going to be a curly fry.”

I was hanging on to some optimism though. I mean they hadn’t even gone into the oven yet. I showed her the picture of the golden brown zoodle fries on my iPad and insisted that this was going to be a worthy, healthy alternative.

“Keep telling yourself that,” she said, walking away.

I looked from the picture back at my baking sheet of sadness.

Do you ever have that point in trying a new recipe when you realize that it’s going to be an epic failure? Every time you cook? No? Oh. Me either….

After an hour in the oven, I had baked baby vomit strands and the crushing realization that I’d been avoiding for so long.

It was time to call a spade a spade.

A zoodle is a zoodle. And nothing about a zoodle, baked, air fried (although I suspect this would be better), or otherwise is only ever going to be a zoodle. Nothing about a zoodle is going to come anywhere close to tasting like the hot, crispy deliciousness that is a curly fry.

I’m all for finding healthy alternatives when it comes to my nutrition. But, while I like habinaro baked chic peas and find them tasty, if I put more than three in my mouth at the same time they suck all of the saliva like the saltine-sponge that they are. And while I don’t mind them as a crunchy alternative, they are not Doritos.

Sometimes you want some variety and a healthy alternative to stay on par with your nutrition and zoodle fries, chic peas and soggy-home made kale chips are worth the effort.

But, as with putting cream in your coffee, life is too short to pretend that zoodle fries are curly fries.

Sometimes you just have to eat the curly fries.

*Most sources agree that the original expression, coined in the late 1600s, was actually barefaced lie. At that time, bare meant brazen or bold. At that time in history, almost all men sported a full set of whiskers, and it was considered quite daring or even audacious for a male to be clean-shaven, or barefaced. Eventually, the word for “hairless” went from bare to bald, and so did the description of a blatant fib.

Rooney, my 12-year-old basset hound lays beside me as I do what has become a favorite Sunday ritual. I wake up early, feed him breakfast, pour a hot cup of coffee and then sit up, writing in our King size bed, as he and Sheila sleep soundly. I drink my coffee and scratch his head in between thoughts.

This morning as he lays next to me though, his breathing is labored. He is not comfortable and hasn’t been for several days. He has cancer. Lymphoma they think. And so his morning began, not with breakfast but with a cocktail of drugs that I had hoped would lead to breakfast later on.

You know when you sign up to be a dog owner that it’s a short-term contract. Hopefully 10-12 years or more, but there is always the possibility of less, as with any of us.  

Sheila gets in the shower and I carry him to the kitchen. He can walk, but not very well, and so I fold his legs into my arms and sink into the chair where I prop him upright on my lap, as I have so many times before.

I’ve written often about the comfort I take in him – the way he lays on me like a weighted blanket while I rest my chin on the top of his head. I take in the corn chip smell that is a basset hound, rub his long velvet ears between my thumb and forefinger, and look out into the meadow behind our house.

His breathing is even more shallow and difficult than it was earlier and I find myself sobbing onto his head and soaking his ear. Because I know it’s time.

And so it is that Rooney crossed the rainbow bridge on Sunday.

Sheila drove as I sat in the back with him, arm draped over his body, scratching his ears and thinking of all of the things Rooney has taught me in our 12 plus years together.

1. You don’t have to yell to get what you need.

A few years ago Rooney and I were staying with a friend when he made his way to her feet and sat, staring at her.

 Does he always do this? she asked.

 I looked up.

Yes. He always did that when he wanted something. For most of his life, staring was his way of asking for things. For dinner, for a treat, to go outside, to be picked up. Bassets can be a noisy breed, but Rooney seldom barked. And he was remarkably patient. He’d stare at you as long as it took.

 In this day of over-communication, where we find ourselves shouting to be heard, I appreciated his method of silence (though maybe not staring at people so intently). He was an ever-present reminder that you don’t need to yell to make your point.

Sometimes you don’t have to say anything at all. But you do need to be intentional in your actions. And Rooney was nothing if not that.

 2. Be politely curious

Someone told me once that a dog stopping to smell things was like a human reading the morning paper. It’s how they know what’s going on in their world. Rooney had a nose like no other, as bassets were bread for hunters to follow on foot.

When I came home from a day at the gym or out and about running errands, he would give me the once over – his nose twitching a mile a minute trying to take in all of the smells. He’d wag his tail and let me scratch his neck as he sniffed away, but he couldn’t rest until he’d taken in all of the scents.

As humans we are often too wrapped up in our own stuff to be very curious about the people who walk into our lives. We often can’t see beyond the end of our own nose, beyond the shadow of our own problems to express interest in anyone else.

 Rooney could only express interest in everyone else.

 3. Be flexible

Rooney loved us as his owners, but he had no real loyalty to us. That sounds like a bad thing, but it actually meant that we could do almost anything with him and know he would be fine. We could leave him with friends for a week. We could leave him with different friends for a weekend. I could ask any client to walk him when he came to the gym with me.

We could put him in the car for the long drive to Pennsylvania and rest assured that he’d sleep soundly in the back seat.  

In the end, we had to shove pills down his throat and he let us. Clean his ears on a weekly basis? Yes, he let us do that too. Throw him in a bath tub? He went willingly.

Last week I wrote about the power of “yes, and.” Well, Rooney really lived that.

4. But know when to be stubborn

Bassets are known for their stubbornness, and the idea of clicker training him was a joke. For any of you who have trained dogs in the past, you know the purpose of the clicker – to mark the behavior and give the dog a treat. Rooney liked the training just fine, until his reward was met not with food but with affection, and then he wanted nothing to do with it. For his entire life, if you did not have a treat he wasn’t going to spend his energy listening to you.

Decide what is important to you, and then dig your heels in to get what you want. And never, ever, ever give in before you get it.

 5. Be kind and give lots of hugs (when the pandemic is over)

 This is, perhaps, the thing I will miss most about my pup. Rooney was not discerning with his love or his kindness (a trait I know to be true for many pups). He truly liked everyone – to the point where, when out on walks, he seemed genuinely confused when someone didn’t stop to say hello.

Dogs don’t hold grudges. They don’t care about political affiliations or status or appearance. They don’t care about race or religion. They care only that you meet their wags with some modicum of the enthusiasm with which they greet you.

Each morning, when I’d let Rooney out of his crate, he’d stand in the middle of the living room rug and wait for me to get down on my knees. He wouldn’t go outside – wouldn’t move an inch until I got down on the floor – and then he’d bury his head in my armpit and I would scratch his neck and we would take a few seconds before we both went on to start our days.

If there’s anything I’ve missed most in the past few days, it’s my Rooney hugs.

We live in particularly divided times where it can feel challenging to extend kindness in the face of such disunion. And yet, if we can learn a little from our pets, perhaps we can find ways to start our days with a little kindness and patience.

And, as the saying goes, try to be half the people that our dogs believe that we are.

On Monday, I’m going to be 43, which, according to the Google:

The number 43 stands for a combination of discipline and creativity, patience and achievement, commitment and joy. It motivates you to set new goals for your life with a renewed enthusiasm and optimism

Um…I’m not sure if any of that is going to happen, but here are 43 random thoughts for you anyway:

1.     I have an alter ego named Worse Case Scenario Wilma. By even writing this, I’m freaking out about whether or not I’ll actually make it to 43. Also, if you’re ever five minutes late for dinner with me, I’m frantically texting you – if you’re ever 15 minutes late, I’m calling you – if we go past a half hour – I’m calling the local hospitals. Which brings me to fact number 2:

2.     I will never, ever answer the phone if you call. And I will never call you back.

3.     The best thing about smart phones is that I don’t have to use them as an actual phone. They are texting devices.  

4.     The next best thing about smart phones is that I don’t even need to listen to voicemails. I just look at Siri’s drunk translation and hope to get the gist.

5.     I used to try to apologize for never answering calls – now I just own it.

6.     The beauty of aging is that I spend more time owning who I am and less time apologizing for who I am.

7.     But….I do still apologize for who I am. I’m a work in progress. But aren’t we all?

8.     If I absolutely have to make a phone call, I don’t, and then spend all of the free time in my head obsessing about it.

9.     I don’t have any free time in my head because I’m already obsessing about all of the things that I’m not doing and hoping that odd pain in my side goes away because instead of calling a doctor, I’m just hoping I don’t die.

10.  I don’t like any music made after 1989.

11.  Procrastination both gives me immediate relief and long-term anxiety.

12.  If I was responsible for buying my own toilet paper, I’d probably just use leaves because that’s the kind of adult I am.

13.  But I’d always have coffee. Because coffee.

14.  If I could go back in time and meet only one person, it would be Ghandi. Also Lou Gehrig.

15.  If I were marooned on an island and could only have music from three people it would be Frank Sinatra, Chet Baker, and then toss up between my Dad and James Taylor

16.  My favorite Muppets are Statler and Waldorf – the two wise guys in the balcony. But I’m partial to the Swedish Chef.

17.  My version of cooking is buying pre-made meals from Whole Foods. Or eating those flavored packets of tuna that come with a spoon.

18.  Really it’s mostly that. The tuna.

19.  Every time Sheila tries to slow dance with me, I end up breaking out into the White Man’s Overbite mixed with the Church Lady mixed with the Grocery Cart move. While she stands at me, staring. Yes, I did this at our wedding.

20.  If you play Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You” I have to sing. It’s a reflex. It can’t not happen.

21.  The inside of my mind could be on an episode of “Extreme Hoarders.” I hoard thoughts. Most of them useless, unproductive ones similar to those in one through five.

22.  Give me a year though, any year, and I can probably tell you who won the World Series. Which is why I’m never sure where I left my keys.

23.  I have these, like, three pairs of underwear that I need to throw away because they give me wedgies, but I never remember to throw them away and then I find myself putting them on only to get a few hours into my day and think ugh, these are the wedgie underwear. When will I learn?

24.  I also have a cat.

25.  Going back to number 23, I buy new underwear less often than I buy a new car. I don’t know why. It just is.

26.  I don’t really like Thanksgiving food.

27.  I was named after a character named Kimberly on the soap opera “As the World Turns”

28.  Don’t ever call me Kimberly.

29.  Ever

30.  Every time I commit to making this list, I wish I was younger.

31.  I was in a sorority in college. Phi Sigma Sigma. Yes I can still do the cheers.

32.  I played the drums from fourth grade through my freshman year of high school.

33.  I also have bras that don’t fit right and I neglect to throw them away, only to find myself in a similar situation as number 23. Sometimes it’s both my underwear AND my bra. Those are rough days.

34.  I drink bad beer.

35.  No, like really bad beer. Like Miller High Life, which is most certainly NOT the champagne of beers. Unless champagne tastes like urine. Which I don’t think it does…

36.  I know how to make a potato gun.

37.  It requires a lot of Aqua Net Hairspray.

38.  I once used Aqua Net in my hair. It was like wearing a helmet.

39.  Every time I hear an accent, I have to repeat it.

40.  If you’re wondering, this tendency to pick up other people’s behaviors is called the Chameleon Effect.

41.  According to the Google, people who pick up accents easier are nicer people.

42.  I must be really nice, but I’m nervous to spend more than five minutes South of the Mason Dixie Line.

43.  If you’re wondering, and you’re not, the New York Yankees won the world series in 1943.

You’re welcome.

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**Looking for some help with your nutrition? Comment below or send me an email at kim@kimlloydfitness.com - I’m getting ready to open up a few spots in my coaching program in December.