I run. You eat. Let's see who really gets the better end of this deal.

I've still been running, in case anybody's wondering.  Daily now.  It's become so simple.  Routine.  Yet, I'm still shocked that I can run.  I always envisioned my leg bones crumbling if I tried, but apparently you can spend years chain-smoking, drinking way too much and living on a diet of ho ho's and chocolate milk and then one day just say, "I think I'll be healthy now," and your body miraculously is okay with it.  However, I have learned that I'm not allowed to 'go back'.  If I try to drink even a few beers, I wake up with a very poundy head and find myself unable to fully open my eyes for the next twenty-four hours.  It hurts like I never imagined and makes me feel like I'm thirty years old.  (In case you're new here, I am thirty years old.)


So I am becoming something that I never, ever, ever, NEVER envisioned myself being: a health nut.  I find myself subconsciously tracking calories and reading nutrition facts.  Couch-potato Sundays are now roller-skating Sundays.  We've traded the all-you-can eat pizza buffet for Subway.  And this isn't a trial run.  It's already stuck.  The kids have taken to this way of life with stride and ease.  The only resistance whomsoever is Kenny.  He has a stash of Little Debbie snacks hidden under the bed.  (See my willpower?  I know they're there and I honestly don't eat them...except maybe one every now and then).  If he knows he's exercising, he refuses.  (He hasn't caught on that roller skating and biking are exercise yet).  He still smokes like a chimney.  He's never been a beer-drinker so at least he's good in that aspect, but I just don't know what more I can do for him aside from tricking him into exercising and healthy eating (which really hasn't been very difficult at all so far).

The saying is true:  Be a good role model for your children and they will follow.  However, it doesn't work on husbands.  I run on my twenty-dollar treadmill for half an hour, sweat pouring down from my forehead, and I see Kenny looking thoughtful.  He exits the room and for a moment, I think he is going to put on his jogging shoes and join me.  But then, ugh, then he returns with a freshly-opened bag of potato chips that he had stashed in his car and he plops down on the couch to eat them in front of me.  He licks all of his fingers after each chip and every so often, he looks at me and tries to smile innocently but I see right through him.  He's trying to avert his manliness (aka stubbornness...I am eating this chip to show you that you cannot change me and also because I know you are hungry and sour cream 'n onion are your favorite and now I will lick the greasy goodness off of my fingers and smile at you to show how sweet I can look but really I am trying to hurt your soul and it is working...) but I know that he, too, will crack someday and fall into the abyss of good health that the rest of us are in.  A matter of time, that's all.  If I have learned anything about Kenny in our thirteen years together, it's that reverse psychology works on him in the same manner as it does on a two-year old child.  Is that all you're having?  Chips?  I can make you some hot chocolate with extra marshmallows to go along with that snack.  And let me bring you an after-meal cigarette.  And the smile instantly fades from his face because he knows he is being tricked but he's not exactly sure how.  A sort of deja vu hangs in the air.  He puts down the chips.  No!  He picks them back up.  She wants me to put down the chips!  Did she just turn the channel to football?  What is this?!  I will not watch this.  She wants me to!  That's it, I'm going for a walk around the pond to clear my head!  And then he sets the bag of chips aside and goes for a walk, not sure yet if he's won or lost but knowing that he needs space to think.  And halfway around the pond, he realizes that he just abandoned his potato chips to go for a walk.  By the time he makes it back into the house, the chips are nowhere to be found and we're just getting ready to watch a family movie.

And that's how you do that.