Empty heart

It is time to decorate for Valentine's Day, so thank you Connie, for the Special Lady creation above (horses are okay, because they are running) but today I can only contemplate my empty heart. Yes, I would like to feel that I was loved and was in love, but I am not. You cannot be in love with a man with a giant alcohol addiction. He has only got room for it and it comes first. Doc is a beautiful looking man for a 71year old and has a great sense of humor, but I can see the wreck that he is, and others probably can, too. I am his friend. I know he might go down hill fast if it were not for me, but he is only able to connect to me like a wisp, a shadow. There is no heat in his embrace. I don't know how he keeps from just blowing away, so much of him is not there. But that is reality.
As I have made my way through many blogs I have been happy for women that I think are fortunate to have beautiful and loving relationships with a husband. One thing concerns me, however, and I hope that I don't offend anyone when I say this, because my purpose is to try to fend off heart break that comes with addiction. I grew up with country cooking where many a farm woman delighted in making the best and tastiest meals for her husband. Unfortunately even for the women, country cooking is tasty and addictive. So much of it is designed to please the palate, loaded with butter, sugar, etc. In the early days women were engaged in so many hard tasks like gardening, bottling, carrying water to wash clothes, that many of them lived pretty long lives in spite of their 'good' food, and the men were even more physically active and not where they could 'piece' so they stayed healthy, too. But the more modern conveniences country women acquired, the more unhealthy they got!
And that included me who went to the city where I vowed I would never bottle again and did not. I didn't garden either, but I was still very attached to country cooking. And that my friends has been so hard to give up. Because tasty food is apt to put on weight. In desperation, I finally became a full fledged vegan and in one fell swoop cut out a lot of delicious but fattening dangerous foods. I judge my weight by how I fit in my clothes, and I have not gotten out of my clothes for 20 years or more even though I came dangerously close a few times, and when I feel my zippers easy to zip I am escatic because I know I am losing instead of gaining. So the battle goes on. Believe me, weight gain at an older age is so dangerous I cannot emphasize that enough. It affects everything, your joints, your back, your blood pressure, your resistence to germs.
And some ladies who are mostly doing the cooking for husbands and other household members are affecting their health too by what they cook. So I implore everyone to examine closely what you eat, what you cook, what you like, and see if you are contributing to food addiction, yours as well as others. I would cut out desserts immediately. Do not ever cook your family dessert, and don't keep any in the house. No icecream, cookies, nothing like that. Because not only are desserts fattening but the sugar can be lethal for older people susceptible to diabetes.
Chips or soft drinks, no. The only way I am going to buy chips if I can't resist them, is one little package around 99c so when they are gone there are no more to munch on. In the past I have bought one popcycle if I craved icecream enough.
Doc is an enabler of sorts. He buys chips and icecream, but he has almost gone to being a vegan I have affected him so much with my dishes. Now he is slow cooking a lot of beans and eperimenting with different ingredients in his soup. He buys those cursed chile' limon chips whenever they are on sale. Doc delights if he can break down your resistence to bad things. He feels he is being good to you because he naturally believes that everyone should indulge themselves in an addiction if they want to. He threw all the rules about restraint and good health out the window a long time ago. So associating with him poses some dangers as everyone's addiction poses some danger to someone close who might be even more affected.
Here in Arizona everyone went on a giant chips, pizza, beer, pop binge with the Superbowl. Great excuse, so guess what the guys on the field got all the exercise and us home watching it ate everything we weren't supposed to and got fatter. That has always been my objection to watching other people do sports. You got to do in order to benefit. Just watching is dangerous! Cause we sit and we eat!

Valentine no no! Connie, thank you, this snag perfectly illustrates my point. Holiday treats feed our cravings, give us an excuse. Right?