Wouldn't it be nice if the maker of people issued instruction manuals with each newly born human?

This model, it might say, needs to ingest lots of grapes in its lifetime along with daily chocolate. Another model might need purple grapes, potato chips and Pinot Grigio.  If and when those change, updates would be mailed.

We'd know which hazards to avoid--just like the ones that come on boxed pizza (remove the box and plastic before cooking--duh!).  We'd know in what places these bodies would flourish--and what sort of friends and movies and books to pick for maximum joy.

In the deluxe manual, it might even tell us step by step what to do when things go wrong.  What to say when other people hurt our feelings or how to avoid hurting theirs.  How to survive political tsunamis, along with answers regarding various existential questions--so we wouldn't have to search so long and hard for answers of our own.

Nice, but boring--right?

Here on this Planet Earth, we spend a lot of years trying to figure out our own answers, and maybe that's the point of living, learning this stuff.

Having eliminated certain foods and beverages from my diet for the past two weeks, I can now get up without my feet hurting.  I have lost ten plus pounds.  My joints don't creak when I get up from sitting at a restaurant.  I can walk up and down stairs one foot on each step again!  There are no body aches, no fibro days.  My fingers sometimes still get puffy but not the raging red puffiness that had them looking like fat little sausages three weeks ago.

I'm also eating lots of fruit, making smoothies, drinking kefir and kombucha again.  Taking high doses of fish oil.  Drinking more mineral water.  The results so far--knock on wood--are amazing.

I never was one to read manuals anyway.  I have never read the car manuals unless something goes wrong.  I mean to, I always plan to, but I never get around to it with all the literature I prefer to read instead.

Pain and puffiness are motivators.  I'm studying The Inflammation Syndrome, doing mostly what it says, and voila--I think I have found what works for this 68- year-old body.

I have had several days of the blues.  Experts (i.e. friends) say that this could be part of detox.  Yesterday's massage and this morning's yoga seem to have helped that a lot.