Well it finally

happened to me at 43 I have a pudge. One of my wife's friends at work

just had open heart surgery, and now we have to eat healthy. We cut down

eating red meat, chicken, and pork to once a week and some form of pasta

the rest of the time. (Do you know they can make pasta into any shape

they want to?)

We gotta eat

more veggies and green stuff and lay off the bread. We can't drink soft

drinks either no no, from now on it's only water and lots of it. The doc

says we need to drink a gallon each day. What he failed to tell us is

what drinking a gallon of water each day will do to you. Now we're up

all night going to the bathroom. (Maybe that's how he intends for us to

get our exercise.)

We can't eat

any of the good stuff anymore you know, anything that tastes good. Twenty

years ago I could eat anything I wanted to and not gain an ounce. Now

if I just pass the doughnuts in Kroger I gain five pounds.

I can remember

when my Dad first took me to the gym. I was only fourteen. I stood in

awe of all the machines and the many different ways one could inflect

pain on oneself all in the name of keeping in shape.

The younger

men would go for the free weights, always located in a back corner of

the gym. The ladies would find themselves in the pool talking about how

silly the men looked while they tried to show off. And the old guys went

straight to the treadmills. The old guys would run (walk) on the treadmills

while reliving the glory days of when they played football, ran track

or wrestled for their local high school or collage team. They talked about

how much overweight they are now, how high their cholesterol is, and who

had the best chiropractor.

I promised

myself that I would never get into that shape, did not know what a cholesterol

was, and thought that going to a chiropractor was a joke. Years later

I now have a pudge, I have found out not only what cholesterol is, but

that I have both good and bad, I enjoy running (walking) on the treadmill

at the work, and my chiropractor will love the idea that I'm trying to

cut out sugar.

My wife said

to me last week, "Honey, don't worry so much; you know that healthy

people die every day."

I said, "I

know - all of this eating healthy and exercising is going to kill me."

Like most folks,

my wife and I did not fly this holiday. We drove to see the in-laws. This

was going to be our first holiday together with her family since we got

married, so we drove ten hours to West Virginia. Somehow it took eleven

hours to drive back; I guess we were going up hill on the way back down.

I had decided

to bring the turkey and try a new way of cooking it. We all were going

to have our first fried turkey. Upon arrival in West Virginia I called

from the hotel room to inform her dad of our plans for dinner. I said,

"Sir, we are going to fry a turkey tomorrow."

The silence

on the other end of the phone was deafening. I explained, "In order

to fry a turkey you must first buy $100 worth of outdoor frying equipment,

one stand, one canister of propane gas, a 10-gallon alluminum cooking

pot with a lid, and of course five gallons of peanut oil to fry the turkey

in." (My cholesterol really liked that part of dinner.)

I told them

I had everything. He asked me if I had bought a large enough turkey. Keeping

in mind that their son has been a vegetarian for the last five years,

I said, "I have everything under control," and hung up the phone.

Ever tried

to buy a turkey on Christmas Eve? The only one we could find was frozen

and would take two days to thaw out in a refrigerator. We brought our

16-pound frozen turkey