DAY NINE ALKALINE YEAR

FERRY RIDES, FRIENDS, AND FOOD

October 5, 2009 From my earliest rides on the ferries that connect our islands with the mainland, food and food smells played an important part. The smell of popcorn, like Proust's madeleines, takes me right back to a protected time when, if my mother could afford it and was feeling generous, I could spend the hour-and-a-quarter ride nibbling the fragrant corn and looking for whales (Orca whales are actually part of the dolphin family), or spinning wildly around the old Klickatat's brass poles in the main salon, popcorn flying every which way. Fortunately, ferry food has gone the way of that boat and its floor-to-ceiling brass poles, and the food is not as interesting as it once was. More challenging now, from my need to eat alkaline this year, are friends and social life.

Have you ever thought about how much your closest friendships are related to food? Again, going back in personal time, my best friend in the school here and I now can laugh at a teen-age incident in which we made fudge laced with ExLax and fed it to all the boys. We narrowly escaped being expelled. What saved us was that among the fudge's most avid consumers were members of the high-school basketball team. They barely could practice that night. The next evening, they won their big game against a team from a nearby island. Taking totally undue credit for their win, we joked that we'd purged them. (My friend later became a teacher and reported that she had equally disgusting students sometimes.)

More devastating incidents occurred the next two years at private school (transferring there was unrelated to the ExLax incident) when another friend and I found a way to raid that institution's candy cupboard; we reveled in gobbling Look bars, four or five apiece at one sitting. I gained 10 pounds during senior year, up to a lifetime high of 135 pounds. And how many courtships, not to mention affairs, are based on alcoholic beverages? Won't touch that one, at least not today! The friend from boarding school wound up seriously overweight all her life, with many surgeries including one to staple her stomach. She died at 70, perhaps from a combination of medications and alcohol. I was lucky to meet different people and to read different books.

Now, I belong to a group whose stated purposes are friendship and philanthropy, and today we go to a neighboring island for lunch and discussion. We all bring our own sandwiches and the hostesses provide coffee, tea, and snacks. For me, sandwiches are out because of no starch. Ditto with most snacks. Today I'll take along an apple, radishes, and the usual almonds. That should do it. More than that, I can practice extending my friendship skills, bettering the art of listening and responding and story telling.

Will report back on successes and, God forbid, lapses. No serious ones so far, unless you count a slightly acidic tomato!

LATER

Happy meeting, in a home filled with our hostess' favorite quilts, including one she'd made from her late husband's shirts, which included messages of love and caring from all her family and friends. We were a gabby but not gossipy group riding back and forth on the Orcas-Friday Harbor ferry, and we laughed a lot. I of course told them about the blog; several people were very encouraging and a couple were funny. ("What? No wine? No way!!") Humor is always good unless I take it as personal rejection. At lunch I did snack on a small bunch of fresh grapes, mildly or moderately alkaline depending on which experts you like, didn't even get time to touch the radishes, but the avocado was good, and now, back home in the late PM, the apple tastes delicious even though it's a Gravenstein.

Inevitably, the question came up today: Are you doing this to lose weight? No; this AM my scales'' digital display said 113.8 pounds. Likely that would be 119 pounds after dinner tonight. I'm comfortable with my weight range: anywhere between 110 and 120 pounds, where it will likely fluctuate over this year. However, I'd certainly like to rearrange some of it! . Walking doesn't do much for my belly or arms but perhaps I'll add other activity this winter. I know what to do and what I'd like to do (rowing) but I'm not committed to it yet and that's okay. My reasons, as stated in an earlier blog, are simply to avoid headaches, rashes, tiredness and--a big one for me--feeling out of control.

Tomorrow's activities include volunteering at the Food Bank, where we've been fortunate all summer to have dozens of donations from farmers large and small. The only food challenges there will lie in the fact that the church where it's held serves lunches to both clients and volunteers, with excellent coffee and tasty cookies. Maybe they'll have a salad!