Sports : There what's for dinner

It is official: my husband is a sports junkie.

What's even worse is I am an enabler. During football season I ignored how many games he watched and even joined him for some (I'm Southern and have somewhat of a devotion to the sport of the gods). When football ended college basketball was well underway and since I am in love with the Duke University basketball team (yes, I cried when J.J. Reddick became the all-time leading scorer for the Blue Devils), I let his addiction slide.

I mean we watched games for schools I didn't even know existed. It was a novelty at first - trying to figure out where these schools were actually located and who would choose a squirrel, banana slug, or zip to be their mascot (not made up, unfortunately). After the crushing blow to my heart by the loss of Coach K's squad, I put away my foam finger, waiting for September to arrive again.

Oh no! We couldn't stop there. My husband, who until recently showed little interest in the NBA, decided that every team would be his favorite and we would have to rearrange our schedules to ensure optimal game viewing for every televised event. By the time the playoffs came I couldn't handle it and avoided my husband - and our living room - like the plague. When I finally thought our lives would return to normal and we could eat at our kitchen table and talk about things of importance over a home-cooked meal, I was informed that World Cup Soccer was now in progress.

I was going out of my mind! I couldn't remember the last time we talked, I mean really talked! Dates? What are those? I don't even know what our new kitchen chairs feel like. They could be the most comfortable seats in the world, and I'll never know. Today as we sat on the couch watching our little baby (don't worry she was born in January and with labor, delivery and all we were done by noon - way before the day's basketball games started) as she struggled to sit up for longer than her previous record of 2 minutes, I saw that look on my husband's face and I knew what he was thinking.

As he reached for the remote, my heart leaped out of my chest. Fear filled every inch of my body. He turned on the television and entered in the numbers for ESPN. He sat, with beef jerky in hand, and proceeded to watch World Series Darts. Yes, they have a world tournament for throwing pointy, feathered sticks into a corkboard while semi-intoxicated. I am not sure if I was disappointed more in the program director at ESPN for showing this or my husband for wasting an hour of his life watching it.

I finally realized, this addiction is serious. According to the pros there are four stages of addiction: use, misuse, abuse, and dependency. My husband has already reached stage four of his SPORTS addiction. He has an excuse for every thing. "I need to watch golf because to be successful in my field you need to be a great golfer."

He used that same one to justify new golf clubs last year, a new pair of shoes, and an upgrade in golf balls. Tennis is important to him because he played in high school - yes that's closing in on ten years ago. World Cup only comes along once every four years - yes we watched every imaginable Olympic event this year too with that same excuse. You name the sport, he has some incredible reason why we must watch it or his world will end.

I have tried to come up with every reason why we should turn off the TV or throw it away, but it has not worked. The only idea I can come up with is to move to some tropical island ( I need warm temperatures) and live like they do on Survivor. I can learn.