OBSESSIONS

                         Obsessions

I stood at the kitchen window watching my children fight and argue with each other as they waited for the bus to arrive. It was a day pretty much like every other day, I had cooked my children, husband, and myself a nutritious breakfast. Scrambled eggs with fresh herbs that I grew in my kitchen garden, peameal bacon, homemade home fries cooked in the air fryer, whole wheat bread, and a small smoothie filled with wonderful greens and whey powder toted to be the best and most nutritious on the market.  According to my husband Ben, no expense was to be spared when it came to giving our family a nutritious well-rounded meal.

My husband was a nutrition and fitness guru. He only ate wholesome foods, and even with a hectic schedule he managed to carve out time for both a morning run and an evening one as well. Before he came home from work he spent an hour in the local gym, doing his daily routine. Circuits, reps, and weights were all words I heard every single day of my life.

 In our basement, we had a mini gym, with a rowing machine, stationary bike, and a treadmill. These were of course just the bare minimum or basics that were needed so that our family could be in top physical condition. This gym was just to augment Ben's use of the real gym. Our teenagers, Jax and Jewels, were expected to do their training in the basement, every day when they got home from school.

 On weekends my husband Ben was in a club where they either ran a half marathon or full marathon on both Saturday and Sunday. But this did not preclude his own personal workout before we even met with his fellow marathoners. The man was obsessed. He kept meticulous notes on his times, his distances, his steps, and his general overall progress. Each member of the family was also expected to fulfill their daily quota and file their results for his perusal so that he could offer them advice, encouragement, critique, and if necessary, constructive criticism.

For years I had stood at the kitchen window and watched my children arguing with each other as I washed the breakfast dishes and planned out my day. My hybrid job allowed me to work four and a half days at home, but my day always started with a run on the treadmill. It was according to Ben, an awesome treadmill that allowed you to track your speed, distance, and calories burned. This was to help me obtain the goals and personal objectives that Ben had set for me.

I must confess this and would go to the grave without telling a soul except I now had a serious dilemma. To bring our training up a notch and maximize our potential. Ben had devised the idea of putting a camera in the gym so that he could be our personal trainer and analyze our workouts by watching the replays when he got home.

 The big problem with this was every day after the alleged workout I took a picture of the display and sent it to Ben as he had requested. He wasn't being an exercise Nazi, he was doing this to help us maximize our potential. And he was thrilled to offer me his guidance.

No Problem right? Wrong! For months now I had trained our Border Collie to jump up on the treadmill and run for my designated time. I had started my training on the treadmill and thought how proud Ben would be of my diligence and speed. I wanted Ben to be so proud of my accomplishments but honestly, I didn't have the motivation, the desire, or the energy for Ben's expectations. I also hate to sweat.

 I figured no worries, who was it hurting? Ben was proud of the results that I was sending him daily and Lassie was getting in her workout which she absolutely loved. Border Collies are built for running, they are intelligent so it was easy to train her. I started out that first day, with a pork chop tied to a rope, then discovered she didn't need even that encouragement. Collies have great energy and are easily trained, it cut down on her surges of excitement during her puppy phase when she was given to having the zoomies. Afterward, she would get her treat, have a long drink of water, and have a long nap. I swear she had a smile on her face as she slept.

I would watch her till she was finished, take a picture of her progress on the digital readout, and text the results to Ben, who would often send me a thumbs up or smiley face emoji.

 I would of course stay with Lassie as she ran, there was a comfy old chair in the basement. Where I could oversee her, underneath the chair were several of my favourite novels and an old tin box. In this box was my most guarded secret. It was my eggie stash, milk chocolate morsels covered in a thin layer of crunchy candy-coated goodness. The shell was a lovely pastel colour. I was addicted. I had several stashes hidden throughout the house.

The stash under the cozy chair in the basement was my main stash. The dining room China cupboard also held a small package or two, hidden inside my great-grandmother's teapot. The kitchen was too obvious a hiding place so that room was out of the question, as was the night table beside our bed. A big box of feminine products in our ensuite washroom held the upstairs stash. In the garage, a tin can holding garden twine held the emergency stash, but this one was not always a reliable receptor as candy was apt to freeze in the winter months and frozen chocolate just didn't have the same texture or taste as its regular temperature counterpart. Also, I have learned the hard way that frozen candy from this container can chip your teeth.

Ben, working in the financial world, did our banking, paid our bills, balanced our checkbook, and oversaw all our receipts and reconciled them with our bank statements. It was all Greek to me, but I had enough smarts to realize that he often took a close look at our grocery receipts. Therefore, the stash had to be put on a separate bill and those cash receipts disposed of separately, along with the evidence of the candy wrappers. As Ben also was in charge of taking out the trash I sometimes had to get inventive as to how I disposed of said evidence. 

Sometimes I felt like a criminal finding devious ways to hide the proof of my deceptions. As if my steadily growing belly was not already validation and confirmation of my deceit.

I had finally come up with a semi-solution, after Ben had put the trash out I would sneak a hastily filled bag of candy wrappers and stick it in our next-door neighbour's garbage can. If Ben looked at the bins standing next to ours and saw the candy wrappers he would assume that our neighbours either had a sweet tooth or were serial candy eaters.

 At times I felt guilty about deceiving Ben, he was a good man and only wanted the best for his family. He wanted to be healthy so that he could be there for his children and his grandchildren at some point in the distant future. But when I really took the time to look at the situation I realized that Ben too had an obsession, an addiction. He was obsessed with health and fitness, I was obsessed with junk food. You see it wasn't just the candy eggies, yes they were the main staple of my deception but then there were all the other chocolate morsels secreted around my house as well.  Then there were the stashes in the car, but that's another story.

 So I had started off on Ben’s program with good intentions, looking forward to the natural high he always talked about after he finished a long run or a bout at the gym.  He would expound excitedly about how the increase in endorphins made a person feel good and put them in a positive state of mind. Unfortunately, this was not the case with me, I found out that exercising made me, sweaty, which I hated, it made me tired and irritable which I abhorred, and exercising in general just made me miserable. On the other hand, chocolate made me happy, relaxed, and uplifted and proved to be a highly effective mood boost with the endorphins dopamine and serotonin that are found in my dear friend the cocoa bean. The phenylethylamine or PEA or whatever did the trick for me without the sweat. I never seemed to get sugar crashes. The only negative effect I saw was every now and then I would have to splurge and get a bigger size of pants. C’est la vie.

Ben was always encouraging and explained that maybe my metabolism just wasn't as fast as the other members of the family’s metabolism. Maybe I would just have to work harder, I groaned. And then he would come up with a surefire way to make me feel guilty. He would say, Tess, I love you no matter how much weight you gain. At this remark, I didn't quite know whether I wanted to hug him tightly or punch him in his gorgeous six-pack abdomen.