By Rick Ryckeley
Fayette County Fire & Emergency Services

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 back to the hotel room and filled the bathtub up with warm water. (At that moment it dawned on us that we were probably the only ones in West Virginia trying to thaw a turkey in a hotel bathtub.)

It was well thawed by morning and we cooked it in oil at 350 degrees for forty five minutes that afternoon. We all ate fried turkey (which, by the way, turned out fantastic) except her brother. (He needs to meat, er, meet my chiropractor). Her mom cooked all the rest of dinner, the traditional stuff: sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, green bean casserole, and homemade biscuits. We also had two kinds of pie: pumpkin and apple.

After dinner her Dad brought out the special ice cream he had bought just for the occasion, chocolate-mocha-crunch fudge. I said, "How could you eat that? Do you know how much cholesterol is in it? Just look on the back label."

He replied, "The front label says all natural ingredients, that's all I have to know. It's all natural, so it must be good for you."

Who was I to argue? He is a retired nuclear physicist. After dinner I was asked to clean out the gutters; they knew that I would be good with ladders because I'm a firefighter. I guess it's true to get a man to do what you want him to all you have to do is to feed him. A good time was had by all and none was the wiser about our bathtub turkey.

The next day, as we left, I told my father-in-law that I needed to get back into the gym, work out, and get back into shape. He replied, "You are in shape. Just remember, being round is being in a shape."

Well, in that case, pass the Christmas cookies please. Besides, I heard that broken cookies have no calories, because when they break, all of the calories run out.

[Rick Ryckeley is employed full-time with Fayette County Fire and Emergency Services. He can be reached at saferick@bellsouth.net.]

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