BACK TO BASICS

An excellent review of the basics I seem to keep forgetting - check it out at this site.

CHINESE, ITALIAN AND GREEK IN ONE DAY

My stomach is not accustomed to international travel such as this.

My mother-in-law does not drive. There is no regular bus available in her home town. Therefore, she eats at the two restaurants that are within reasonable walking distance.

Today, we visited a high-school buddy of my husband, and walked to a restaurant just a block from his office.

Pizza was delivered this evening (to a seven-year old boy's delight).

So why hasn't any of this international travel helped my bloated waistline?

SHOVE A FRENCH FRY IN MY MOUTH

If I need to read another menu, I may throw up.

"Eating out" has always meant one thing, and one thing only to me.

Fast food.

I mean, the drive-thru at McDonald's is not at my house, right? Taco Bell is what you bring HOME from someplace else. And Pizza Hut delivers.

But a restaurant where you sit on a chair, a waiter or waitress takes your order, a cook cooks it, it is served on a ceramic plate... well, that's not eating out. That is going to a restaurant.

And a restaurant puts together things that the restaurant feels goes together well - and it cooks the items in a manner that the restaurant obviously believes people are willing to pay for.

The last two days, everything I have eaten, someone else has prepared and I have consumed it while perched on some wooden piece of furniture.

And I am dying for some greasy, fatty, unhealthy food that is sold to you while you are sitting in your car along with a 64 oz. plastic, non-recycle able huge cup of caffeine-saturated soda.

BEGINNING THE WEEK "IN STYLE"

Sometimes the cure is worse than the sickness, right?

I love the concept of a 'clean' slate, but it just doesn't always work well for me.

I'm currently in the middle of re-doing my personal living space (read 'bedroom') - and entirely because I then would have to file/organize/arrange the piles of loose papers that have been hiding... well, perhaps hiding is too subtle a word for the stacks - nay, HEAPED in various mounds in every corner of the room.

Guess what?

IT DIDN'T WORK.

My bedroom is now strung with papers, half-filled boxes, unfolded laundry (don't ask) and cleaning supplies (if you're clearing, you might as well scrub up, right?) - and not much of any of those papers are in any sort of order.

Unfortunately, I am also trying to make something ELSE 'work' for me (I am not a quick learner, okay).

I have a lab order for a fasting blood test - I have to go without eating - so let's start off a week with a fast, right?

Yeah - let's see if this works.

Money on me eating before 9 a.m.