Diet Wars

Recently, my grandson Ethan has become "horse crazy".  Since we have had the horses longer than his ten years, he has always been exposed and around them, occasionally exhibiting mild interest, but now he is full blown, head over heals, wild about the horses.  Since he is allowed and encouraged to vent his zeal on Ebony, she is the object of his desires. Grandma and I have been hoping for a horse crazy grandchild for a long time.  For a while, it appeared Emily, Ethan's sister might be horse crazy, but it is hard these days to for a kid to be able to make the commitment necessary to abandon most other pursuits and focus with the intensity necessary to win the confidence of a horse.  Time is the only way to truly bond with a horse.  Riding, brushing, feeding, cleaning stalls, and just hanging out
are all necessary to form the partnership with a horse that is so rewarding to both man and beast. 
When I was young, I was "horse crazy".  This was a very unfortunate condition for a kid that lived in the middle of a small city.  My uncle had a farm and boarded horses, but at the time, he didn't know I was "horse crazy" and I didn't know he could have used my help.  Actually, when I was about twelve, I tried to help him bale hay.  My job was to ride along on the hay wagon and stack the hay as the baler dropped them on the hay wagon.  Unfortunately, I had hay fever and despite the three hankies which were soaked by continuously explosive discharges from every opening on my face, I couldn't stop sneezing.  I was a pitiful mess and after a while it became painfully clear to all that I was destined to be a disappointment as a hay stacker.
A couple of things happened two years later that brightened my future as an aspiring horseman.  The United States Food and Drug Administration approved "Contac" as an over the counter allergy medicine and my mom started working at International Resistor Company where, as fate would have it, a wonderfully timid horse owner worked next two her.  She had a "green broke" young mare that needed to be ridden more than she could find time to do.  My mother, bless her, suggested she had a "horse crazy" fourteen year old son who would love to help her out.  In those days, fourteen year olds were kept out of trouble by being given jobs that required athleticism and a certain amount of danger to keep it interesting.  Fourteen year olds were young enough heal quickly, were not supplying the family with any meaningful income and were therefore ideal for tasks that could be mildly dangerous if attempted by someone in their mid thirties.  Putting miles on a young horse is just the sort of thing  at which they excel. 
Well that horse and I had many exciting adventures, most of which I thought would be of little interest to my parents or the horse's owner so I never mentioned them.  Consequently, I rode that horse so much, if I thought something the horse would do it.  When you ride that much, you are not thinking of riding at all.  You and the horse just become one. It is an indescribable feeling and I have always hoped to provide one of my grandkids with the opportunity to experience it.  So when Ethan started to become "horse crazy" Grandma and I were both ecstatic.  (Did I mention Grandma was "horse crazy"?)
As a result of Ethan's new interest in horses, he and I saddled up "Eb" and Belle a couple of weeks ago.  The snow was still deep and after throwing Ethan up on "Eb", I trudged over to the mounting rock (used by "old horsemen" around here) and struggled to get on.  That rock must have been heaved up by the frost, I don't remember it being so high. Anyway when I threw my leg over the saddle Belle let out a squeal of objection for some reason but offered no resistance.  (She has a nice "crow hop" which she has on occasion used to spice up a ride and see if your hat and glasses are on securely.)  The saddle had shrunk since I last sat in it and I fit in it so tight that my stomach rested on the saddlehorn.  Slowly it dawned on me that I must have gained weight.  We road and I offered a few pointers to Ethan and a couple of hours slipped by.  Finally, I decided if I was going to get off, I had better do it soon or my knees would not support me when I did get off.  After, Ethan jumped off and bounced around to put his tack away.  I hobbled around putting mine away,
I was feeling a little old and overweight. I went in the house and plopped in my chair at the table.  Kris had the computer on and said "look I got a video of you and "E" riding.  "Grandpa and Grandson riding together, pretty cool huh?"  She hit the play button and a picture of Ethan and I riding away from the camera came on the screen.  No wonder Belle squealed---I was "huge".  I bulged over the back of the saddle and out the sides.  I could still feel where the saddle horn had bounced my gut.
My classic moment for the ages with my Grandson and I am a blimp!
I was going to have to change my eating habits.  I thought they were just about perfect.  "Eat all you want whenever you want."  How can you improve on that?   I recalled an incident of a few years ago when we were having dinner with a friend.  He had been to the doctor and gotten the "you need to lose weight" lecture and had replied "I might die of something Doc---but it won't be starvation!"
Well, perhaps I had taken that pearl of wisdom a bit too much to heart. Slowly I resolved to lose weight.  (The thought still makes me shudder.) 
I told Kris I was going to diet.  She smiled sweetly.  She can be so irritating when she smiles like that. It was the "I know you believe you are going to diet smile, but I know you won't last a day" smile.  You know the one. So it was going to be that way. Well that really deepened my resolve.
 Still smiling she asked "What diet are you going on?"
"The one where I stop eating like a pig diet" I replied.  "You going to diet too?"
Her smile broadened. This was her "I can beat you at anything, anytime anywhere smile" 
"Sure," she replied and started giggling.
We began that day at that moment.  To say we cut back would be an understatement and the diet started in a spirit of cooperation and encouragement and I am sure if we could both lose the same amount on the same day the competitive forces that caused the first bit of underhanded diet tricks would never have started.   
The first mornings weigh in was disappointing.  Our scale obviously weighs 10lbs heavier than your true weight, but since it is the only scale we have we took note of our starting weights.  This sets the bench mark for future weight loss.  As a dieter, you can't look at where you are today.  That information would be almost as depressing as your starting weight.  Instead you look at the amount you have lost.  This is the number that scores your dieting and hopefully rewards your efforts faster than the urge to eat something big any juicy or gooey turns your iron will into mush.  Since we are together and mostly at the farm, it is easy to control your meals.  We both ate the same things and in roughly the same amounts.  I might have an extra boiled egg in the mornings.  At lunch we would have a piece of fruit.  In the afternoon we might have two small pieces of cheese and two crackers. At night we would have a salad with less meat than I would drop off my plate onto the floor in the good old days.  That's it.  If you get to the point of starving you can have a piece of fruit. 
After an almost interminable day one and night one, we jumped on the scale, each of us lost at least a lb.  This pattern went on for several days.  Kris actually was ahead for the first five days.  One day I happened to take the lead.  I might have lost 6lbs to her 5lbs.  That night Kris dished up the meat onto the salads and I got a little more than she did.  I thought she was being kind until the next days weigh in.  I hadn't lost any weight. Zero, nada, zip.  She, on the other hand had lost over a pound and was now in the lead at seven pounds.  She remained in the lead for six more days and beat me to TEN pounds by several days.  It occurred to me that I was being sand bagged by her generosity at the evening meal.  I began to pay more attention to how things were split.  Suddenly fairness became my passion.  Soon, I too had made it to the magic 10lb mark and we were even again. Then in a pivotal moment, I lost enough to claim eleven pounds and she had stalled at ten.  She went back to bed in the "throes of deep depression".  After awhile I felt she had wallowed in self pity long enough and said in what I thought was clearly a joking manner, "come on chubby time to get up."
Some things in life are not to be joked about.  Poor weight loss days evidently fall into that category and calling your wife chubby is probably poor judgment regardless of how good your comedic delivery is.  Things went from white hot to near arctic conditions around here and Kris has resorted to the unthinkable and unfair tactic of secretly working exercise into her daily routine to boost her weight loss. 
Grudgingly, I have been trying to walk at least as much as she does since I can't let her get too far ahead or I won't beat her to twenty pounds.  I am not sure how this is going to end but the war continues and surprisingly I already feel better.  I am able to bend over with out my heart being squeezed and blood squirting out both ears. By now I am sure I would have quit if Kris wasn't so competitive.  I am not very competitive.  I just don't want to get beat by a girl.  I can't see how this ends well, but I am not going to worry about anorexia until I am under two hundred pounds. She is so stubborn. 

The Joys of Good Water Pressure

Occasionally, an anomaly will disturb the universe and a burst of energy will appear in an unlikely spot.  In this case, I was sipping my coffee, oblivious to cosmic forces, when it occurred to me I should hook up the pump and pressure tank (which we have had for a little over a year now) to our gravity feed water system and change our lives completely.  Most of you have probably lived in houses with good water pressure and are blissfully unaware that  the faucets in your kitchen sink, bathroom lavatory, washing machine and shower are designed to dispense adequate amounts of water at 40 to 50lbs of pressure.  At 8lbs of pressure, a gravity fed water system barely trickles.  From a conservation stand point this is fantastic.  From an efficiency stand point, if you are trying to do dishes or fill the washing machine etc., you might as well pull up a chair, it's going to be while. More importantly, since we have more to do around here than we can get done, we could have a dishwasher which would save countless hours spent doing dishes.  (We home can a lot of our food and although 600 jars in the canning cupboard gives you warm feelings of security,  600 dirty ones on the kitchen counter aging gracefully, is hard on your positive outlook on life.)
So, I mentioned that I intended to hook up the booster pump and pressure tank to Kris and she reached over, felt my forehead and  asked "You feelin' OK? This is an Aprils fools joke, right?"
Well despite Kris's underwhelming confidence in my ambition level, after a couple of days, I actually hooked it up, surprising both of us.  I can scratch this one off my bucket list and move onto my favorite part of my next project, planning and buying the parts. I usually have a wild hare and buy the parts and have them so long, when I go to do the project I can't find them.  The corollary to this is I have a large back log of projects in various stages of started with lots of parts stacked around and not enough time to do most of them. 
In my experience, doing the projects causes body pain and mental stress and shouldn't be rushed into.
Well, knowing I have the tendency to put off projects, I have come up with an ingenious motivational technique that works for me. (Feel free to use this yourself.)  I simply wait until things degenerate to such a horrendous condition, that doing the project becomes by far the lesser of two evils.  I find this technique to be so successful that I now use it on almost everything.  In this case, the kitchen counter has so many dishes on it, that it would take way longer to do the dishes than to hook up the pump and the pressure tank then get the dishwasher working again.  See how easy and natural this technique is to use.  It just sort of flows and puts a positive spin in what otherwise would be a dismal situation.
I have been toying with another technique that might be useful to you.  I call it "doing nothing."
I'll give you an example.  Animals, horses and goats in particular,  are hard on everything around the farm.  Gates, walls, fences, feeders, hoses, water tanks etc. are damaged or destroyed on a regular basis.  To take care of all the maintenance, you would need a lot more staff than is walking around here.  So there are some instances, not all, but more than you would think, for which the "do nothing" technique works well.  Our horse Ebony helped develop this technique.  For a good many years she would kick the wall between her stall and Bell's breaking boards and worse she would get her leg caught in the wall and have to be cut out of it.  After numerous incidents and redesigns, reinforcements and nerve racking episodes of running a circular saw next to Ebony while she waited seemingly unrepentant and unconcerned about her leg sticking through the stall wall, I just left the two by tens out of the wall after each episode. In a moment of clarity it came to me that if the boards weren't there she couldn't break  then or get stuck.  She would just have to find something else to do that might be less dangerous.  My favorite episode, and the one that helped cement the "do nothing" technique as one of my favorites, occurred after all the boards, in what I felt was the range she could reach with sufficient force to smash through, had been removed.  This included everything below five feet.  Well much to my amazement, she kicked the fence with enough force to get her foot caught between two boards with her hind end suspended in mid air.  It looked pretty strange to see her other foot off the ground.  Her butt was off to one side and she was slowly twisting to an inverted position which would have left the entire horse hanging form the back wall and snapped her leg.  She didn't seem that concerned about it, evidently believing that by continued application of grandma's shoulder all would just dandy until I could find something to pry her leg out.  Any rational person would have went and got the phone and taken a picture of the horse's butt sitting on Grandma's shoulder appearing to be her head, but that went right by me and I just freed her leg.  I might of thought of it she hadn't been starting to panic (Grandma--not the horse, she never did seem to notice her leg wasn't where it usually was.) The other improvement to this episode would have been to mention to Grandma  when I was about to pry the boards apart.  It evidently kind of jumped her when five hundred pounds of butt and dangling legs came down all at once.  Well live and learn. It proved I can still out run her anyway (Grandma that is--not the horse).

Well anyway, you