Jack Sprat and the Mrs.

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition on 3/9/12

Do you remember Jack Sprat and his wife?  No, they haven’t been in the news for espionage or for embezzling funds or for blatant infidelity.  These are the characters from the old nursery rhyme.  Surely, you remember Jack Sprat, the man who could eat no fat?  Remember his wife?  How could you?  She didn’t even get a name.  I suppose we are supposed to be satisfied with calling her Mrs. Jack Sprat.  Regardless of her appellation, we do get the picture that she was the rounder one because she simply could eat no lean.

To me, it’s an ideal relationship.  The Sprats could go out to dinner, and after the Mrs. had wedged herself into the booth, and Mr. Sprat had planted his knobby knees under the other side of the booth, they could order just one meal.  He would guzzle down the water and chomp on a few ice chips while the Mrs. went to work on the creamy mashed potatoes and the slab of beef.  I’m sure she would need a milkshake, and if you’re going to splurge on a milkshake, why would you deny yourself the whipped topping and that single Maraschino cherry?  Jack is going to indulge in none of that.

What about the blooming onion with the sauce?  It has its basis in a vegetable.  Forget that. Jack might have to settle for only a whiff of that calorie-laden decadence, and even that might be too much for him.  The aroma alone would probably bowl him over.  He would probably just eat the green beans, even though that would seem somewhat cannibalistic.  If the man has any fat on him, it’s going to be in the form of his wallet. 

When the dessert rolls around, she might let him have a bit of the fruit filling from her pie – if he behaves himself and doesn’t make rude comments regarding her calorie intake.

I feel something like that couple.  My husband possesses much better will power than I do.  If he decides he will or won’t do something, you may as well throw in the towel.  You might feel like throwing the towel at him, but he is fairly firm in his convictions. 

He has a very strict dietary regimen.  Lots of tomatoes and fish – oatmeal and green tea, almonds and walnuts, blueberries, and spinach salads, and the occasional sugar-free cookie.  I, on the other hand, will everything else.  By choice.

The other day, our nine-year-old daughter complained that he hadn’t even tasted the birthday cake that she had dutifully made for her brother, even though she had removed the frosting from his tiny portion.  (I might have helped save the planet by making sure the frosting did not go to waste.)

When I conveyed his latest affront, he decided to be a good sport and made a big show of eating that one morsel of cake.  One.  It put the biggest smile on our little girl, because Betty Crocker isn’t always a piece of cake, you know.  It takes so little to make some people happy.  For a smile like that, I could have eaten the whole cake.  In fact, I might have…in small portions, of course.

So, what is the secret to the happy marriage of Jack and his nameless wife with the shameless eating habits?  We’re never told if Mrs. Sprat is a marathon runner.  You never know.  At least she might have been assigned a number for us to remember her by.  From the illustrations that accompany these rhymes, though, I’m going to take a wild guess and say that she was not.

You may recall that my wedding and engagement rings had to be cut off of my finger in the summer, just a few months before our 25^th anniversary.  That was because the 25 extra pounds I have added over the years had decided to aggregate right around that ring finger.

My husband, however, has lost 45 pounds over the last year.  A couple of months ago, as he was changing a filter in the car (at night), his wedding band slipped right off and went clinking into the abyss.  It hasn’t turned up anywhere in the car, and we still haven’t found it in the driveway or the grass. 

So, as a result, 25 years into our marriage, neither of us has our original wedding band on.  It’s a good thing I don’t believe in omens.

In the meantime, if someone wants to lend me a metal detector, don’t be shy. Mrs. Sprat will be happy to take you on a tour of the driveway.

The Burden of Being Atlas Jr.

publlished in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend on April 29, 2011

The issue of weight has been weighing heavily on my mind. It has been weighing heavily on other parts too, of course, but we’re not here to talk about me. Notice how my photo cuts off before the wide-angle lens is required? Be thankful for good editorial insight: they know when and where to truncate things.


I don’t want to succumb to the pitfall of obsessing over my weight. The diet and weight loss industries are doing well enough without my chipping in my two cents into their billion-dollar bins.


Even so, weight is often on my mind. My youngest boy (recently turned six) is as scrawny as ever. He’s acting like adding even one ounce to his bony frame would be tantamount to adding to the burden of Atlas Almighty. Just tell me whether Atlas was still riding in a car seat after he turned six because he hadn’t reached forty pounds YET.


It’s a good thing little Atlas Junior is my sixth child. That way, I don’t have to get bent out of shape when someone sees him and asks if he is four years old. He is, after all, still comfortably wearing size 4T, as long we can classify comfortable as the elastic inside the pants’ waist being yanked to its tightest setting and his belt being set at maximum strength so that I only have to remind him fourteen times a day to pull up his pants. Why should I be offended? It’s not a crime to have a child of petite stature, even though we live in America, home of the super-sized portion. Admittedly, no teenaged boy is going to want to be classified as “petite,” criminal or no.


For many people, this Size-of-my-Child thing is a matter of supreme parental pride. They gloat over the percentile of their child’s height (or infant’s weight) as if it were a score indicating the child’s abilities or the parents’ competence, whether by way of being genetic contributors or as nutritional providers. “Why, little Frankie is in the 97% percentile for height,” they gloat, “but we don’t know where he gets it!” I want to warn them that the oxygen might be a little thinner up there where Frankie’s elevated brain resides, but I resist.


Even though it’s not a crime to have a child that’s on the left end of the bell curve, it still feels like a blemish against the maternal record for producing such a puny person in the first place or for allowing him to remain one. Were you eating enough protein during pregnancy, or were you busy putting down slabs of chocolate cake? What kind of lousy nutrition have I got my family engaged in? 

Or should I blame genetics?  Forget genetics.  Genetics is for people who can’t own up to their own faults. “You know, Little Sammy here might have been so much more productive, except he’s got that Excessive-TV-Watcher’s gene, you know?”


Because he is my sixth child, I am at least spared the self-doubt and insecurity when the grocery store clerk comments on Atlas Junior’s size after complimenting his cuteness and inquiring his age. The clerk gasps, “Oh, really? Jeez, my son is only three and he’s already this high.” She motions just below her pendulous bosom, and all I do is smile. All I CAN do is smile. Sometimes, smiling is as much a weapon as it is a defense. I want to say, “That’s great for you. Maybe next year your preschooler can bring you to work on piggy back with his massive self.”


So why can’t or won’t my little man pack on a pound or two? And then, a brilliant idea occurs to me. All over the media and marketing, we get pointers on what is contributing to our obesity. If I reverse the logic, couldn’t I impose on him all the things we are supposed to avoid in order to help him pack on the pounds? Or even ounces? I could be happy with ounces, you know.


Special K promises that people who eat breakfast tend to weigh less than people who don’t. Great. Make the kid skip breakfast. That should help him put on pounds.


Apparently, people who have regular bedtimes, as opposed to night owls fueling themselves on hard cinnamon candies, also tend to weigh less. I don’t know how much more productive night owls are, but they can certainly claim, in addition to the extra pounds, more cavities as well as a cranky need for caffeine in the mornings.


Also, people with sedentary lifestyles, especially those “engaged” (entranced?) in lots of TV-watching, also tend to carry excess weight. So here’s part two of my master plan, a double-jackpot: the sedentary night owl. Strap the boy down and force him to watch late-night TV. He might possibly gain weight, but he’s definitely bound to gain some worldly wisdom.


Then, when he’s tired and cranky the next day, especially after I make him skip breakfast, I will give him a doughnut, which he will ravenously wolf down. I’d add coffee to this regimen, but that might stunt his already stunted growth.


Ask me in a year whether I’ve achieved success. Or, just look for me around town. I’ll be the one riding piggyback on Atlas Jr.

New Year’s Resolutions – don’t tell me about them

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend on January 7th, 2011

Don’t talk to me about New Year’s Resolutions. Everyone in America is supposed to have the same resolution. Apparently, it’s to lose weight. Again.

Why couldn’t we all join some sort of Global Swap program in which we each trade lives with some underprivileged, undernourished person from an equally underdeveloped country for about six months? That would thin us out a bit and fatten them up a bit, and then we would trade places back…just in time for the monsoons. Oh, wait. I think I see a problem with this plan.

You must be wondering what’s wrong with me. Wasn’t I supposed to complete that fascinating column on how decrepit my microwave had become? With children home all last week, I force-fed them my last column. There was plenty of eye-rolling. I confess: I have written several columns on my dying dishwasher, the death of my washing machine, clogged toilets, and now, the microwave oven. I was scraping the bottom of the broken barrel, so to speak.


Think peer pressure is bad? Try progeny pressure. It’s worse.


Naturally, I have some New Year’s resolutions. These would be apropos to share with you in our first week of 2011. I realize that I am a little late, since this will print with January 7th’s date. I also realize that I am leaving another task (the microwave saga) undone, but all these can be dealt with in the Resolutions Phase.


Speaking of resolutions, mine are to lose some weight (don’t want to seem unpatriotic here), stop being late (although you must recognize that I am fighting a huge cultural handicap here), and to try to get my house straight (never-ending task). Summarized version: lose some weight, stop being late, and keep it straight. Also, I should free myself from this compulsion to rhyme.


There are other resolutions, too, but I’ll just stick with these few. Ugh! Another rhyme. I need my list to be small, because if it gets any bigger, I’ll have to write it down to keep track of it all. That would mean locating a list, and of course, when you’re disorganized, that adds in a complicated twist. Must stop rhyming.


Obviously I’m already failing on the punctuality issue. And when you’re afraid of losing a list, you’re not too well organized. So, seven days into the New Year and that just leaves the weight issue.


The dieting industry. Need I say more? Need I even use a complete sentence? Remember, when sentences go “light,” they use fewer words. Or should I use that hateful word, “lite,” because it weighs one letter less than its legitimate counterpart? It seems like the vowels are analogous to vegetables, so “lite” is tall and slim, while “light” seems to be a little constipated with consonant carbs in the middle. Enough of the word analysis. I am no lexicographer.


I don’t know how many billions of dollars we spend on trying to slim down. I know it’s healthier to be slimmer, but I feel like we have an unhealthy obsession with it.


I know. Don’t remind me of the statistics of my own home, because you’ll deflate my whole theory and also call into question my qualifications to talk about weight. But skip the part that my husband had a massive heart attack at age 52 and that most of my household is overweight. Obviously, I have been a little negligent in the nutritional department at home, and have abdicated my responsibilities on emphasizing exercise in the past. But that’s the good thing about a New Year. We can look forward and we can try to make changes. So ignore my personal experience, and just pretend I’m an expert.


The other day, I was standing at the grocery store checkout with my eight-year-old daughter. Honestly, it’s a little embarrassing when you are accompanied by young, reading-age children when you enter the checkout lanes, as you must, if you have selected something and intend to pay for it before departing the premises.


One of the headlines blared something like, “Get the thighs, legs, and butt you’ve always wanted.” What, were they advertising chicken parts? Amazingly, and thankfully, they had omitted mentioning those two items, whether you speak of squawkers or that which is of intense interest to gawkers. When your child scrunches up his or her nose or snickers, it’s one thing. If questions ensue, that’s another. There are words and thoughts and images that do not need to be pushed at their young minds. All I have to say is, why, why, why? Obviously, there is an audience for this sort of thing, but must it accost us, and must the covers be required reading for non-shoplifters?


So, forgive my defeatist attitude about New Year’s Resolutions. We all know that there is bound to be some measure of failure. That gives us the impetus to continue in our status quo until 2012 emerges. That’s when the majority of us, whether or not we are good habitual recyclers, will pull out those same tired but true resolutions. Provided we can find them.