May I Axe You a Question?

For those of you who know me well, you know I’m a pretty conventional kind of a feller. I wear a suit to church on Sundays, I shower every day, and I never drive slow in the fast lane. I even use all the correct grammar and punctuation when I text, for crying-gosh-sakes-out-loud. Bottom line: I’m as socially and hygienically as moderate as it gets.

So obviously, I have no business purchasing, much less wearing this very special concoction:

Yes, AXE Dark Temptation. 

I know, I know. Who do I think I am? I should have just kept my nose clean and stayed to my side of the aisle. Right Guard, Old Spice…maybe even Mitchum if I were feeling adventurous. But AXE? What am I, auditioning for an MTV reality series? Old Dudes Not Acting Their Age! Or America’s Next Top Delusional Father of Six. I don’t own any gold chains and I’m not personal friends with any club owners. What am I doing?

And not just AXE, but DARK TEMPTATION!

But hear me out. See, I figure that if there is a body part in need of some serious help in being considered tempting…ladies and gentleman, I give you…the armpit.

So now, when I get all dolled up for a night out with Katie, I gots everything a-workin’ for me. Oh, yeaaaaahhhhh. Salt n’ pepper hair? Check. Pants? Check. T-shirt? Check. (What? Were we going some place nice?) Pocket change? Check. 2005 Toyota Camry? Check. And now…tempting armpits? Double check. Sorry ladies…I’m spoken for.

To be completely candid, though, I should admit that “tempting armpits” was not the biggest selling point for me. No. It was the tagline “As irresistible as chocolate.” Strangely, it comforted me to know that in some post-apocalyptic setting, if all the world was falling apart and food everywhere was predominantly contaminated and looting was commonplace and we were on the verge of extinction…I could eat my deodorant. And it would be delicious. (Or, you know, if it were Sugar-Free January at the Craig house, it would be equally as important to me to have on hand.)

Anyway, I’ve been wearing/eating it for about a month now. And … nothing. I’d like to start a class action suit against AXE for false advertising, because I am neither more tempting than I was before, nor is my deodorant as satisfying as real, legitimate chocolate. But the good news is I think Katie and I might be candidates for the new reality show now in pre-production: People Who Believe Everything They Read, and the Women Who Love Them. 

Paying the Price of Being Sugar Free

Several years back Katie came up with the horrifying clever idea of dubbing the first month of the year “Sugar Free January.” Before you read any further, I would encourage you to read how this tradition started by referring to my blog post regarding its incarnation. You can find it by clicking here.

Essentially, the theory is that since December is such a month of caloric debauchery and habitual treat-munching, January should be a cleansing month. I’m not going to lie to you. January has never been my favorite month, and it is even less so now. We are currently in a fight, January and I.

In an effort to help me make it through these first few weeks, I thought I would chronicle the experiment in a daily log. I was going to call it a Sugar Log, but that just sounded too delicious, and I was distracted every time I went to write something down; not to mention I drooled excessively on the keyboard and it became unpleasant to type on it. So instead, I just refer to it as My Descent Into Madness: the Autobiography of Ken Craig’s January.

January 1: 9:00 a.m. Woke up feeling fantastic. Enjoyed an egg and toast for breakfast. Actually kind of looking forward to the detoxification and purging sugar from my body. A new healthier, happier me.

January 1: 9:15 a.m. Ransacked house looking for sugar. Checked pantry, fridge, 72-hour kits – even searched hard-to-reach areas for possible overlooked plastic eggs filed with Easter candy from 9 months ago.

January 4: Wept. Like a baby. Felt moody all day. Punished one of my children for “not being funny enough at the dinner table” and sent him to bed. Lethargic. Unshaven. Kicked the dog.

January 5: Realized I don’t own a dog. Wrote apology note to neighbors for kicking their dog. Tied note to brick and threw it through their window.

January 6: Ate entire jar of Sweet Pickles. Contacted lawyer for "false advertising" claim… Wondering where I can locate some Sugar Beets.

January 9: Promised Katie the Sugar Nazi if she let me eat a bowl of ice cream I’d watch Project Runway with her. Nothing doin’.

January 10: Promised Katie if I could eat a package of Hostess Donuts I’d look at the IKEA catalogue with her and pretend we lived in Manhattan and had a 600 square foot apartment. Nope.

January 11: Suggested we celebrate our four-year anniversary of “Sugar Free January” with celebratory cake and ice cream! One cake per person! Vetoed. 

January 12: Packed a hobo sack, flung it over my shoulder, started whistling “Pour Some Sugar On Me,” and told Katie I was hitchhiking to The Big Rock Candy Mountain. She tried to convince me there was no such place. (As if I’m going to fall for that Sugar Nazi propaganda!)

January 14: Came back home, listless. I think my body is imploding. Bones weakening. Organs leaking vital fluids. Heart slowing. Breathing shallow. Darkness closing in. Slight headache.

January 15: While hallucinating, tried to eat plastic cupcake in daughter’s toy kitchen. Once hallucinations stopped, tried once more to eat cupcake. Found bag of Ruffles potato chips instead. Ate entire bag. And also the chips.

January 16: Realized this is just going to be one long month of zero happiness. Katie told me to pour myself a big heaping bowl of “Shut the Heck Up.”  Poured myself a bowl of raisins instead. That's what happens when you're living under a Sugar Nazi regime!

The Sugar Shack

Me (Standing): Hi. My name is Ken Craig…and I’m addicted to sugar.
Rest of the world: Hi, Ken…
Me (Taking deep breath): Well, I suppose it all started this past holiday season…

We as a society have embraced the reality that from the last week of November through the end of the year is pretty much a food fest, right? Well, for some wonderful reason, Food Fest 2005 was easily the most abundantly delectable year ever for our household. It was plate after plate after plate after plate after plate after plate of sweet, sugary, chocolaty, fudgy, bread-y, gooey goodness. It was magical. Generous friends and neighbors after generous friends and neighbors dropping off treats like clockwork. It actually became labor intensive to try and finish it all off. It was like we were spending the holidays at Willy Wonka’s factory. No, it was like we had moved to the town of Chewandswallow in the book Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and the weatherman predicted ‘sweets.’

I loved every delicious, fattening moment of it.

Then, one night at dinner, Katie had an idea. An awful idea! My wife had a wonderful, awful idea!

“You know,” she said, carving a slice of dinner-cake for herself, “We’ve really been eating a lot of sugar this month.”

“I’ll say!” I chimed in, serving myself seconds of the fresh fudge and toffee and topping off my Eggnog. “It’s glorious, isn’t it kids!”

“Oh, yes, father!” they agreed, pouring dressing on their tossed lemon bars. “Is this what they mean by Christmas Spirit?”

“This is it!” I validated, taking a napkin and wiping some kind of glucose-generated froth off my youngest daughter’s mouth.

“Well,” Katie spoke up, “I was thinking that since December has been our month of sugar, maybe January could be our month of NO sugar.”

We all froze…perfectly still. Just kidding. Of course there was way too much sugar coursing through us to actually be “still,” but it definitely got quieter. Then the kids spoke up, lead by my eager-to-please daughter Abbie, “That’s a great idea, Mom!”

“Are you INSANE!?” I thought to myself. “How could a person actually cut out sugar? And WHY – for the love of heaven, WHY?!”

I mean, in theory I agreed with Katie. And when I say “in theory,” what I mean is that I didn’t really agree with her at all. What she was essentially saying was, “Since December was a month of happiness, how about January be a month of NO happiness?”

But after we put the kids in bed to enjoy their sugar-induced comas, Katie and I got out some hot chocolate and pumpkin pie, sat on the couch, and discussed the idea some more. For the sake of an enormous dental bill, we decided to take a stab at it. And on December 31st, we put all items containing sugar in the trash. In actuality, I thought it was a pretty good idea.

Around noon on January 1st, I thought it was a horrible idea. My body wanted sugar like Jim Carrey wants an Academy Award. So I decided that rather than immediately cut out sugar from my diet, I would slowly wean myself off the stuff. So slowly, in fact, that January 1st was pretty much like any day in December. Once I started back at work, however, it became easier, simply because it wasn’t there. Except for the bag of Snickers bars that I purchased and kept in my drawer. You know, they say small portions of the poison are supposed to help when you’re weaning. That’s not me talkin’, folks, that’s SCIENCE!

Once I had my days under control, I felt better. My nights, though…oh, my nights. It’s tradition for Katie and I to enjoy a treat together regularly at night when we are unwinding. That wasn’t just a December thing – that’s a 10 years of marriage thing! So at night, when we’d be sitting watching TV or reading or something, I was jonesin’ something fierce. Often were the nights I would casually announce that I was going to the kitchen to get a drink of sugar-free tap water, but once there, I would frantically tear that kitchen apart as if I could smell sugar coming from somewhere.

Start with the freezer. Hmm…frozen corn! Aw, it’s not even Sweet Corn! Next, the fridge. Hey – cheese! Does cheese have sugar? It’s dairy – same family as ice cream. Maybe a cold bowl of cheese! No. Then, the pantry. Come on, come on…there’s got to be something sugary in here. Hello, what’s this in the back…behind the cooking oil – hey, cooking oil? Nah. – but what is this back here…it’s…it’s…oh, hold me; it’s a single, old packet of Nestle hot chocolate, long since forgotten. It’s a New Year’s miracle!

Well, January is over, and sugar is allowed on the premises once again. I can’t say that I successfully went 100% sugar-free in the month of January. But I can tell you that it will be a long time before I put Snickerdoodles and wassail on the table and call it dinner. And I’m okay with that. Yeah…I’m growing.

Delicious McCandy

If you and I are going to be friends, there is something you should know about me. I am, hands down, the biggest sucker for new things. This really applies to a number of areas of interest, but I am specifically intrigued by new food.

Many are the moments I am standing in line at the grocery store when I notice a new confection that almost causes me to have a hernia right there in the express lane. Have you noticed over the last year or so that the candybar industry has taken a very real interest in launching variations on their already existing delectables? Words fail me in expressing the joy that has entered my life from the delights of White Chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Mint Kit Kats, Cherry Chocolate Kisses and Chocolate Peppermint Patties.

And I am a helpless pawn in the candybar game, because I will fall for whatever they put in front of me that looks new. If I were standing in line at the store and I saw a new Hershey bar called “Chocorubbernougat: milk chocolate, creamy nougat, and burnt rubber tires” my eyes would bug out, I would snatch it up with great fervor, and I would think to myself “Wow! Nougat AND burnt rubber?! HOW has nobody thought of this BEFORE?! Sure, I wouldn’t eat a car tire on its own, but with chocolate and nougat, it must be delicious!” And then I would buy two of them.

Even more shocking is my sudden interest in the McRib, back for a limited time only. McDonald’s McRib sandwich, while not technically new, is a “food” that I have had in my peripheral vision since I was a child, but have never tried. When I was young and impressionable I was convinced it had to be the ultimate food stuff. I mean…ribs! Ribs and French fries! C’mon!

But I grew up in southern California, where In-N-Out and Tommy’s reigned supreme as the reason hamburgers were even invented, so there was never a reason to frequent McDonalds. And now, with my own family, we also patronize our local In-N-Out.

In fact, if there were a national award for The American Family Most Unfamiliar with McDonalds, the Craig family would win in a landslide. In truth, our only experience with McDonalds was on a road trip some years back, when it was the only place available to grab some “food.” Each of my children got sick from this one, single McDonald’s experience. Two years later, and they still remember it well. Just last week my son Connor wasn’t feeling great. When I asked him how he was doing he said, “I feel like I went to McDonalds and accidentally ate a hamburger.” “Like you ate a Big Mac?” I asked. “A WHAT Mac?” he answered.

Katie’s feelings towards McDonalds became crystal clear to me the other night when, after a commercial, I mentioned I was thinking of going there for lunch the next day and trying a McRib. “What?! You might as well go to a strip club!” she said.

I assumed she was being facetious, so went anyway. (To McDonalds, not the strip club. Though I did notice the McLap Dances on the Dollar Menu. Oh, Las Vegas. Why?) I was almost giddy with the anticipation of eating my very special rib sandwich, a meal 25 years in the making. I went to lunch by myself that day, as it felt like something I should do alone. Like going to the bathroom or listening to Wham! I went through the drive-thru and placed my order.

“Medium Fries and a McRib, please.”

“Would you like to try an Eggnog shake today?”

A WHAT-nog? Could this be a new shake, available for a limited time only? Oh, sister, I pray you aren’t toying with me. It’s like she knew about my weakness. “WOULD I!” I answered. A McRib sandwich and an Eggnog shake! This was going to be the best lunch ever!

I found the nearest empty parking lot and pulled over, directly. I removed the McRib goodness from the cardboard container and marveled at how messy it looked. I sunk my teeth into the McStuff and…and…I was pretty much underwhelmed. I mean…it was exactly how you would imagine it to taste. Maybe there was too much pressure for it to really measure up. Maybe I was expecting too much from McDonalds. Or maybe…just MAYBE... if you combined it with burnt rubber tire! Mmm…the McRubberRib. It has to be good!