DARK AND COLD AND DREARY

I know one reason so many American adults are overweight. The weather..

When it's sunny and bright and warm, it's easy to get outside and play.

When it's cold and dark and dismal, it's easier to curl up on the couch, eat ice cream and bake brownies.

Which is why I weighed 135 lbs. in Hawaii. And here I have JUST gotten under 200 for the first time in a year.

But wait a minute, I live where it is normally sunny and bright and warm.

Damn, yesterday I actually had a good excuse.

DIRTY JOBS

I am trying to come up with unusual ways to curb my appetite.

An old adage is don't keep food you like to eat. With me, that doesn't work - my standards just keep lowering.

So tonight - let's watch "Dirty Jobs" on the Discovery channel and see if that can turn my stomach off.


Hmm... Mike Rowe is still hot enough that I can watch the garbage and still have a bit of an appetite.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION DIET TIP OF THE DAY

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens - and I quote from page 184 of the Barnes and Noble Classics edition:

"All the women knitted. They knitted worthless things, but, the mechanical work was a mechanical substitute for eating and drinking; the hands moved for the jaws and the digestive apparatus ; if the bony fingers had been still, the stomachs would have been more famine-pinched."

Welcome to Weight Watchers Plus Knitters Anonymous.

ON THE PLANE AGAIN

My last official day of vacation.

Tomorrow I have that ridiculous flight home - six hours of a very, very dark plane, drawn window shades, showing a movie you would never have paid money to see play on 57 different 3 x 5.5 inch mini-screens, all of which you don't want to watch, and definitely do NOT want to hear the 39 people who are watching it laugh at the same moment at something that you can't understand unless you are listening on the headsets (only $10 each, no cash, only credit and debit cards accepted - honestly, cash is not welcome)...

All the while you are trying to read your book-club selection of the month by a 25 watt light-bulb six feet above your head but operated by a switch right next to the emergency call button you are not supposed to push until you are giving birth or experiencing heart attack symptom (and in both of those cases, they will calmly advise you to wait until the plane lands and taxis to the terminal before you call 911 on your cell phone).

This is all to keep you from focusing on the fact that you are flying over 2, 251 miles of very lonely, very open and very DEEP Pacific ocean with nothing for miles and miles and miles in any direction (a coincidence that they never show "Lost" episodes on planes? I think not).

But at least they don't feed you on airplanes anymore. Or at least don't feed you anything you could possible want to eat. You can enough caffeinated sodas to keep you awake and running to the broom closet-size toilet every hour on the hour, and I carry a carry-on bag large enough to sneak a small bakery or candy store on board.

But even chocolate will only do so much.

Today - yogurt, Subway sandwich, home-made cannoli (two, actually), popcorn.

And I rode a bicycle tonight - proving that it is true you don't forget things like that. Although I did forget to wear shoes - and the bottom of my feet are more than a little tender tonight.

Tomorrow - all diet bets are temporarily off. I will eat like a junk-food addict, I will drink more Diet Coke that the state of Louisiana produces in a month, and when I finally get into Phoenix right around midnight, I will go to the closest greasy-spoon truck stop and eat nothing but pie.

COUGH SNEEZE WIPE DRINK COUGH SNEZE WIPE DRINK

Starve a cold and feed a fever.

Or is it feed a cold and starve a fever?

And how can you tell if you actually have a fever when your air conditioning breaks and it's 91 inside the house?

Could it force your cold into bulimia since you cannot keep any food down with the constant coughing, and your fever into anorexia since you don't feel like eating?

My personal view: just eat what you can eat, and drink a lot of fluids.

Yesterday this was Vanilla Wafers, Diet Coke, and Crystal Lite. But as my daughter keeps reminding me, I'm still on vacation, so none of the late-night ice cream binges count.

You agree, right?

IS THERE SUCH AS THING AS SWINE COLD?

Illness is a good thing.

Our bodies have incredible methods of self-defense, and if allowed, can defeat life-threatening aliments by using their own resources.

I kept telling this to both my grandchildren as I was wiping their running noses, pouring juice down their throats, and being spat and coughed on repeatedly.

And having a cold does keep one of my big-bad-meanies at bay.

Nothing tastes good.

However, I still ate a McDonald's Quarter-Pounder (with artificial cheese substitution), Taco Bell soft tacos, and four sugar cookies.

(If you are only going to have a little food while you are fighting an illness, make it as bad for you as humanly possible.

SUGAR ON TOP OF SUGAR ON TOP OF SUGAR

I'm not a sweet freak. I mean, sugar is nice, but CHOCOLATE is the main reason for life on this planet.

My daughter baked enough sugar cookies this afternoon to feed a small African nation in preparation for a Christmas-decorating class that she does not want to even attend let alone teach at a church function tomorrow.

More negative emotions have been sown in these cookies than all the opponents in the Republican party of Obama's health-care proposal.

Rather than have the kitchen implode with sucrose and stubbornness, I suggested that we refrigerate one sample of the frosting overnight (so perhaps the rest could be prepared early tomorrow rather than at the demonstration).

I had momentarily forgotten that I gave birth to the second most competitive person in Northern America, who insisted that the refrigeration would not change anything, and advance preparation would be impossible.

Game on, girlfriend.

The winner will be announced tomorrow.... if I live that long after posting this entry.