All You Can Eat? Really?

I've always had a problem with my weight.  As in, I have too much of it.

Oh, sure, I lost about 50 lbs. six years ago, and since then I've kept most of it off, but just because I dropped a few sizes doesn't mean I've gotten rid of the Chubby Girl mentality.  I still struggle every day with the voices I hear coming out of the pantry and the refrigerator: "In here! In here! I'm delicious! You need me, even though I have 30 grams of fat per serving, more sodium than an entire bottle of soy sauce, and have been known to cause cancer in lab rats." (No, I'm not on medication.  I've been assured that this sometimes happens to food-obsessed people.  I was told to eat a carrot or an apple when it happens.  This hasn't quieted the voices, but I am getting more fiber in my diet.)

Oh, and I hate to exercise, even though I'm usually in the gym locker room right around the same time the over-70s aquasize babes are gathering for their MWF sessions, and I've learned tons about the goings-on at the nearby retirement community. Even though these ladies are older, there's still lots of, shall we say, interpersonal relationship drama happening.  As in, "That Silvie's a slut."  Silvie's about 85, I'm not even kidding.

Anyway, I tell you all that to set the stage for the nightmare I encountered last Friday, when Mark took his whole department to the Diamondbacks-Dodgers game and we sat in the All You Can Eat section.

No, really, they have that.

And not only do they have that, but you have to ride a special elevator to get there, and once you're in, you have access to this nice area with unlimited hot dogs, chips, peanuts, popcorn, soda, and really pleasant helpful people who take really good care of you.  As they like to point out, it says right on your ticket "All You Can Eat."  It's above the doors in the corridor when you get off the elevator.  Plus (and this was my favorite part) right above our heads as we watched the game was the big sign, advertising to the entire stadium that yes, the spectators with mustard stains on their cheeks and peanut shell dust on their black shirts were indeed able to consume unlimited mass quantities, all for the price of their ticket to the ballpark.

The last time I checked the Diamondbacks were only 3.5  games out of first place in their division, and they're playing some pretty solid baseball.  But this is Phoenix in the summer, so attendance at the games is pretty spotty, and the people responsible for putting butts in the seats at these games offer good deals to fill up the stadium.  Not that I expected a classy group of my fellow citizens in the All You Can Eat section, but, just to give you a picture, this is what I overheard in the bathroom:

"My husband was two hours late for our first date.  And he showed up hammered."

"That's nothing.  Mine was an hour and a half late for our wedding.  But I cut him some slack because he had to pick up the keg."

I wanted to offer some relationship advice to Woman 1--you know, about how maybe after 30 minutes you should've found something else to do, maybe that's not a good sign for a first date--but my daughter tells me I'm too chatty in public places.  So I just washed my hands and got out of there.  When I got back to our seats, there was W1, taking her husband a plateful of (free) hot dogs and three boxes of popcorn.  Her very large spousal unit was wearing a Dodger's shirt (traitor! enjoying our All You Can Eat section!) that was so large and so blue that for a second I got all disoriented when he stood up because I thought I was looking at the sky.

But back to the food.

Now, I love hot dogs.  I know, I know, they aren't real meat, they have tons of bad stuff in them, they're all fat, etc., etc.  I walked into the AYCE section that evening telling myself I could have one hot dog.  Just one. (I ended up having two, but they were small.  And spaced at least four innings apart.) And I'd go easy on the other stuff, like chips and popcorn. But peanuts, well, that's a whole different story.  Peanuts in the shell, you have to work to get those bad boys out, so that's exercise, right?  By the time the rest of Mark's crew showed up, right before the National Anthem, I'd laid down a pretty good carpet of shells around my seat, even throwing some over towards Catharine's so it didn't look like I was having all the fun.  After we were introduced, Liam, who's 6, took a look around my feet, checked out the whitish debris on my shirt and shorts, and said, in a monotone, "You like peanuts, huh?"

Chubby Girl gets busted.

All in all, it was a really fun night.  Well, except the Diamondbacks lost (their 7th inning rally fell short).  But I got to meet a bunch of Mark's nice coworkers and their families, and it was fun to watch W1's husband tip over when cheering for a Dodger home run.  (serves him right)  But the All You Can Eat section?  It's too much for a girl like me to handle.  Girls like me need $6 hot dogs and $5 bags of peanuts, if only to make us think twice about what we're consuming. Having all that there for the taking?  It's just not healthy.

At least I wasn't that high-heeled, platinum blonde woman, who, after mincing her way around the buffet table three times, whined, "You'd think they'd put out some fruit or something."  Really?  You'd think that?  It's a BASEBALL GAME, you moron.  You come to watch the game and eat hot dogs and peanuts and yell at the umps.  Geesh.  After that, I kept an eye on her.  Not that I was keeping close track, but on my watch she ate three hot dogs, two boxes of popcorn, and had as much or more peanut dust on her sparkly t-shirt when she was leaving as I did.

I went home well fed and happy.