FIVE K FOR A CAUSE

PRONOUNCED WIFE AND MAN.......

THE FIRST LITTLE CREATURE, son of the sewer raccoon news managing editor, David Lee Dix Jr. recently crossed the finish line with his wife in a 5 K run in Oconomowoc. This is the story (and I have Sue's tentative permission to tell it.........):

David and his high school sweetheart, Sue Peters, married in their early 20's. They have been at each other's side steadily (and that is the key word: steadily) ever since. It is now 2008 and they are approaching 50. They have raised 3 children, two out of college and the welcome surprise child is with them and in middle school, in Dousman WI.

David has had but one job and has held it steadily all the years of their marriage. They live in the former house of David's grandparents on Highway D. They hold this property reverently, to keep the vibrations of Fred and Maurine Lee going in patterns that they feel the Lees would have liked.

Sue has struggled with a weight problem for years. She has tried many cures, but they never lasted. - A familiar problem, we dare say. - But this time she joined a fitness program in Oconomowoc at a gym with a wholistic approach: weekly weigh-ins, pared down but tuned up diets, and regular physical challenges, volleyball contests, running through sand, up and down flights of stairs, & etc. within a social network of co-aspirers, building up needy bodies gradually but surely.

Sue has faithfully and grittily - though VERY quietly - kept steadily at for months, and so far has dropped 55 pounds. And not holding; still losing, per her plan to bring about a total rebirth of self. This isn't just a weight loss matter.

There have been ups and downs in it, and David told us that he played a trick on Sue a couple weeks ago. Sue was in a funk and was mutterng how she just wasn't bringing about the change she sought quickly enough. David listened, and then went down the drive to the garage and got two big buckets. He'd taken the bathroom scale down there, behind his back.

He loaded the buckets to 55 pounds with rocks and then called Sue to come down and give him a hand with something. Sue was still muttering. David asked her to pick up those buckets and bring them to the pickup with the trash he was hauling to the local dump. Sue, knowing David could have carried them himself, did as he asked, but muttered.

When she got to the tailgate, David said, "See? That's 55 pounds you just carried. 55 pounds you aren't carrying on your body anymore!" She reportedly smiled.

To keep up with Sue, David himself has been working out more, and now bikes with her and runs with her. The crossing of the 5K finish line in a fast 39 minutes last Saturday was a celebrative moment. David is faithful, rock-steady, a balm in times of trouble. And Sue, well, we could wax very lyrical about her and her own reliability and talents, but in the interest of brevity and assuring non-embarrassing of Sue, (we HOPE) we merely say she's got guts! It's just that her intestines are reduced!

Congratulations, and an award of a figurative Golden Raccoon statuesque from the SR News!