Doesn’t the Bible say something about pride going before a fall????? Tsk. I was feeling so danged virtuous up until yesterday. I mean, despite the unsightly midriff bulge reflected back at me in the mirror, I dared to believe that getting rid of it was just a matter of a few week’s time (oh, alright…a few months, then. Picky, picky…). It all started Saturday night. DH and I, after our long heart-to-heart, decided to hunker down and watch a movie at @ 9:30 or so in the evening. I know, I know. Bound to keep us up until midnight, but hey, once in a while, you just have to throw caution to the wind and live it up a bit, right? Of course, we didn’t have a clue what movie to watch. Ended up with that oldie-but-goody, “Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil”. I’d seen it years ago, but DH had never seen it, and I knew he’d like it, which he did. We paused it halfway through to get our Weight Watcher’s ice cream sandwiches out of the freezer, and went back right afterwards (Gotta love technology even while you mostly don’t like to be bothered) finally ended up getting to bed sometime after midnight, actually. Puttered around with washing up and brushing teeth, etc. By the time I finished with that, I was practically asleep on my feet. I actually woke up at 5:30 Sunday morning (5:30 is the time I get up on weekdays) and since I KNEW it would be disastrous to go through the day with only 5 hours or so of sleep, I crawled right back into bed, thinking I’d try for at least another hour or so. When I woke up, I was flabbergasted to see that it was already 10:00!!!! The day was STILL as gray as it had been on Saturday, despite the weatherpeople’s predictions about our having a sunny Sunday after that rottenly rainy week last week. Well, good sleeping in weather at any rate. I had a huge beef roast that I’d told the kids (my two local daughters) I’d be cooking for dinner, and everybody ought to come on over and eat with us. Taking it out of the freezer at 10:00 was less than optimum. It still wasn’t completely thawed by 3:00, never mind roasted. The kids came by after church as expected, and I was red-facedly dinnerless. Not any kind of problem, of course - the troops decided to order pizza instead of waiting for that recalcitrant roast. Oh, dear. DH had the good common sense to order a chef’s salad, while I threw caution (and common sense) to the wind and ordered a small pizza with “everything” - everything, in this case, meaning several different meats, onions, peppers, mushrooms, and some other stuff (I don’t know). Now, it tasted pretty good. The pizza from this particular place always does taste good, which may or may not be at least in part, a function of all that grease. Yup. Grease with a capital “G’, fersure. I knew, when I saw all that warm grease puddled on the bottom of the box that this wasn’t a great idea, but I ate it anyway. Figured I deserved a “little treat” after having done so well for so long, right? Well, I ate HALF of it, and it was a small pizza after all. (see how I rationalize?)

So, that was the big faux pas of the month for me. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it.

I got my little treat, alright. A couple hours after eating that stinking thing, I took up residence in my bathroom and was in and out of there about every fifteen minutes up until almost 10:00 at night. (The kids left at 7:00).

Looks like my system doesn’t handle grease like it used to. Maybe because I’ve trained it to work well if I eat fruit, veggies, whole grains and not much meat - and ZERO grease? Maybe. But also, probably, age. (Oh, no!) I mean, all the time I was growing up, and as a young(er) adult, I remember OLD PEOPLE saying they couldn’t eat like they used to…couldn’t eat the highly seasoned, or greasy stuff anymore. Back then, I could digest just about anything - I was pretty sure that there was some goat in my family tree, in fact. Anyway, my body seemed determined to rid itself of that godawful pizza one way or the other, and didn’t care which. So, I guess from now on, I’ll be watching what I eat in order to lose weight, but ALSO to avoid feeling sick.

I do want it on the record that I’m not very PLEASED with this turn of events. I mean, I accept it, and all that (what other choice is there?) but this betrayal by my very own body is a tad annoying, and that’s the truth. It’s one thing to be dieting by choice, but when it’s pretty much imposed on you, it’s something else entirely. Does this mean, for instance, that I won’t be able to have an entire tunnel-of-fudge chocolate cake for myself for my 75th birthday? I mean, I’ve always felt that when I turn 75, being slim and svelte won’t really matter anymore, and I can have a whole cake to myself to celebrate. Now it looks like I’ll be stuck with a bowl of oatmeal or something, doesn’t it? Soooooooooooo not fair!!!!!!!

On a more pleasant note, DH installed the punched tin panels on one of my kitchen cabinet doors yesterday, and it looks amazing! We found them online in an architectural antique catalogue and ordered them for our cabinets. He’s going to work on them again today - and will get them all done this week, I guess. I’m SO glad we had that little heart-to-heart!

The sun is out today finally, although it’s still quite chilly. It’s supposed to get warmer later in the week. Whether it does or not remains to be seen.

Hugs to all,

Z