Sequim Gazette Editorial and Letters to the Editor

If you expect your marriage to last through the night, you must learn to share. Share everything. Not just the good stuff but everything.

I guess this must mean diets, too? Now, that's a tall order.

Wife Nancy is on another new diet and that spells T.R.O.U.B.L.E.

I think I've endured about every diet there is and then here comes another one. How much can a body endure?

Actually, the last major diet that Wife Nancy embarked upon to lose weight was an excellent program and still remains as others have come and gone. In the interest of fairness to other vendors, I won't mention the name. But in the interest of spouses, I'll have to admit that the diet left the least scars. Eating sensibly and keeping track of what you eat was the theme for that diet - and for the most part, it's stuck. But I was stuck as well. I get full reports on my overeating and certain admonition when I revisit the dessert table for the third time.

One diet that Wife Nancy (and I as the co-sufferer) endured involved her carting a shaker and powder with us wherever we went. I ordered a steak and she ordered water, which she poured into her shaker along with the mystery powder. After several minutes of vigorous shaking, the lumpy substance was poured into a restaurant glass and sipped with puppy dog eyes peering over the top watching me eat my steak. The weight came off rapidly but it went on even more rapidly when a normal meal was slipped in now and then. Thank goodness this plan went by the wayside. Feeling guilty about overeating is bad enough but savoring even a skimpy meal while watching your loved one drinking a glass of sawdust and water just wasn't right.

The diet that featured eating specific items in a specific quantity for a specific number of days was a real test of spousal commitment. Eating meals consisting entirely of one item is not my idea of a balanced meal. And if that one item is grapefruit - even worse. That's enough acid to eat through a sidewalk, let alone my ulcers. I really can't remember why, but I seem to recall that that diet didn't last very long. It may have been jettisoned even before the full plan had been exercised.

The diet that weighed and measured everything that went down the gob was most definitely a pain. And I mean pain. Wife Nancy is a pretty mild-mannered sweet thing normally, but let me describe it in Jim Croce terms. You don't spit into the wind and you certainly wouldn't try taking Alpo away from the junkyard dog while it was dining. I think I still have fork-hole scars on the back of my hand from attempting just a small sample off her plate in a restaurant featuring some new tasty delight - and packing a scale around just didn't seem practical.

This new vegetarian, vegan thing has me worried. What am I going to eat? She will barely even sit at the same table with my lamb now. What's she to do when she's full into this new diet that bans animal anythings from our fridge? Does this mean I need to move my knife and fork to the garage as well as my chair, TV and cot?

I'm thinking we spouses should get organized. Don't we have any rights? I mean, we're talking survival here. I can't just eat grass and leaves. One burp later, I'll be starved again. Cows have the advantage that they don't have anything else to do all day and there's plenty of food right within easy reach; but I'd need to be eating all day long if I couldn't have any animal products to get me through until the next meal.

I can have a breakfast of steak and eggs and go hike Klahhane Ridge and come home for dinner and be just fine. If I had a breakfast of leaves and twigs, I'd be hungry before even clearing the ranger station. I'd need a backpack the size of a three-car garage to house the amount of fruits and vegetables I'd need to sustain a hike up to Storm King.

What's going to happen to all the chickens of the world if there's no one to eat the eggs? They'll be out of business. And besides, can you even imagine the smell of all the unused eggs lying around?

And how do you go about extinguishing all the cattle, chickens, turkeys and fish that no longer will have a use in our society? It just wouldn't be practical for each of us to adopt a cow or take home a fish or lead a chicken around on a leash. We have enough trouble keeping our wild cats and dogs in check as it is.

Please, Wife Nancy, won't you please reconsider? Just a little bitty taste of meat now and then?



Jim Follis is a retired school administrator, has published two books and currently writes three newspaper columns. Eating, drinking and making merry are his professed hobbies. Traveling, trekking and observing people follow not far behind.