The end of the world as we know it

I thought that with all the accidental traffic to my blog, I should write something important (like the 300th post message to home-wrecking sluts wasn't important enough). So, I've decided to say a bit about a book I recently read about surviving disasters.

Sadly, though I just read the book a month ago, I've already forgotten the name of it.

But, that doesn't matter much, and maybe I'll remember it and add it in later. It was a very general overlook, and if you are worried about a particular kind of disaster, you should get another book (or many books) specifically for that. Cause if you have a plan for surviving a world of mostly blind people that has been overtaken by man-eating triffids, that probably won't be as helpful in surviving nuclear bombs or anything else involving radiation. More than half of this book was about storing emergency food in case something happens, probably something that involves the electricity being cut off.

There was a lot of stuff, even for a very general book. The author made a couple of points that I thought I'd mention. One of them was about having a portable kit with stuff to survive for three days. Most of the book talked about nutrition and calories and make sure you have enough of this and enough of that, etc.... But, for the three day emergency pack, most of that goes out the window (except for obvious things like pack plenty of bottled water). Unless you have an allergy or diabetes or some other medical condition that requires you to eat special food every single day, don't worry about too much sugar and not enough veggies and such. Pack something that you like that you will eat for three days, stuff that needs no refrigeration, stuff that needs no preparation, and maybe stuff that requires little preparation but no electricity (and make sure that you pack whatever is needed for food preparation and maybe some paper plates and plastic sporks.)

In other words, pack peanut M&Ms.

Okay, maybe not just that. Pack energy bars and granola and raisins. Pack cans of tuna and a can opener. Pack a jar of peanut butter. Pack crackers to put the peanut butter on, and maybe some store bought cookies. (Crackers and store bought cookies will go stale, so every couple of months you'll have to eat those and buy new ones to pack.) Pack banana chips and other hydrogenated snacks that you've been told are bad for you. Pack nuts, even if they have salt on them. Maybe pack some canned pineapple (just remember that it isn't as important as important as the canned tuna, so if you haven't got room for both, stick with the tuna). And if you think you can get hot water (remember that you probably won't have electricity), maybe pack a bowl and spoon and some of that instant oatmeal with too much sugar and ramen noodles with too much fat and salt.

With the stuff that's been in the news lately, I wonder if packing for a whole week might be better. Except that I'd never be able to carry a week's supply of water on my back, so I don't guess that I'd be doing that.

The other really good point made by the author was that you probably don't want to buy someone else's prepackaged emergency food. You would probably pay too much for it and/or not like the food. It might be low quality stuff that couldn't be sold for profit at places that you would normally buy food, but after it's been repackaged for "emergency supplies" not only do people buy it, but now they pay extra for it. And the calorie count is probably lower than what you would need in an emergency, so you'd probably have spent all this money and then still not have enough food. So then there's all these tables and charts (most of which I did not read, cause I'm not going to go out tomorrow and buy all of this stuff) suggesting that you might need this much of something and that much of something else, and how to store it, and canned is probably better than dehydrated if you have the space, though you probably want to try a bit of both.

There was a whole chapter about frozen food. I'm not sure why. In most disasters we'd be preparing for, there would be no electricity, the freezer would stop working, and then you'd probably be stuck with a lot of food that would thaw out and then go bad. Have you even seen this type of disaster movie with the electricity and everything still working?

Night of the Comet. Maybe? Flip a few switches at the mall, and the lights came on, music played, and the escalators worked. Maybe a week later, the traffic lights still worked. This never made any sense to me. I'm assuming that when whatever it is comes that without the guys going to work at the power plant the electricity will soon go off, and there will be no traffic lights, no music at the mall, and no working freezers.

Okay, there might be a few working freezers. There might be some rich "green" people who have totally switched to solar and wind power, and they will have working freezers. And there will be a few people who bought gas powered generators for Y2K who will have working freezers and other things until they run out of gas. But for most of us, our freezers probably aren't going to work. Little is said about this in the book, just if you have a bunch of frozen stuff and the power goes off, you'd better have a plan to store the food some other way, like drying and canning. I'm not sure how to can a frozen steak, so I'm probably better off just buying Spam and canned tuna to begin with.

Anyway, you're supposed to store enough food for about two years, and then not everything you want to store will last for two years, so you'll have to store a lot of different things. And then before the two years are up and you're out of food, you'll have to do stuff like learn to plant corn. And so you'll also have to store three years worth of garden seed, cause you're first attempt at gardening might not be what you hoped for, and the second year there might be a drought and/or a late frost, and so forth. You'll always need to store several years worth of extra seed, just in case of one year's crop failure.

I read this book and thought it was all a good idea, though even with all of that it would only work for certain disasters. A few months ago, I read One Second After, about trying to survive following an EM pulse, and I think that it would really help for that (and maybe the world taken over by triffids), but I don't think it would help much in a nuclear attack (unless I knew ahead of time where the attack would be and moved all of my supplies someplace safe). I think that I'm too far inland to worry about tsunamis, but if I were hit by one I guess that my supplies would get all wet and ruined, or at least scattered and/or buried under debris. Also, if terrorists poison the air, I'm not sure what I'd be able to do about that, unless again I knew ahead of time and were able to leave the area being attacked, or maybe do some short-term thing involving gas masks and/or oxygen tanks. And if there's an outbreak of smallpox, I'm unlikely to be in the minority who survive.

Two years supply of food and three years supply of garden seed won't help me survive either poison or plague. In the unlikely event that I survive either of these things while the majority of other people die, I won't need to worry about my own emergency supplies, cause I'll just take stuff that used to belong to the dead people. So again I'm back to thinking that this plan is mainly good for surviving after an EM pulse (or maybe survive hiding in the basement from people infected with Rage, except that I don't have a basement to hide in anyway).

So after reading this book, I'm thinking that I need that three day emergency supply pack for short-term emergencies, and that if I want to prepare for a long-term emergency, I'd better decide which emergency to prepare for, probably the EM pulse.

Only just before I started writing this, I made an attempt to find the name of the book I just read last month, and I came across a website that reminded me of the other emergency I should be planning for.

The Tribulation is coming.

Not that I'd really forgotten about it, just that I wasn't specifically thinking too much about it when I was reading through this book decided what might be useful. So that might be similar to the plan for surviving the EM pulse, except that I'd need seven years of supplies in someplace so remote that I'd never see any other people. So I guess if I win the lottery I'll be buying a bunch of "green" stuff and moving to an underground bunker in someplace like Montana.

I think I'll buy a Spam cookbook.

...and technically Utah

Saturday, I was supposed to move things around in the living room and scrub the floor and get everything ready so that the thing could be moved out of the back room and the living room floor could be painted. As it turned out, I wasn't going to get everything done that I wanted, so I decided to not do much of anything. It would have been nice to have it all done and have the final bit of paint drying while we were both out of the house, but I was nowhere near that. If I had known sooner that I was going out of town, maybe I would have done some of the other stuff faster, but I didn't. It can wait.

So, other than wash dishes and try to get things packed, I went to run an errand, and then I didn't do much of anything. I thought about what knitting project I could take with me, and then I decided that I wouldn't take any knitting. I was going to spend one day in a motel in Colorado, and then three more in New Mexico, but then we were told that one of the days in New Mexico was probably going to be cancelled. So that was only going to be three days in motel rooms, and it didn't seem worth the effort of going to get yarn and such.

Anyway, the almost cancelled day in New Mexico got uncancelled, and the schedule might change even more after that, leaving me alone in motel rooms for even more days without much to do, so I'm really wishing that I had packed some yarn, or at least a loom or something so that I might go buy some yarn later.

Anyway, tomorrow I was planning to spend the whole day in Durango. Now it looks like we're maybe planning to have lunch in Durango before we have to be somewhere else.

Sunday was a very long drive to Albuquerque, but we left at 6 in the morning as planned and it really didn't seem all that bad.

The next morning we took some pictures and went to ride the Sandia Peak tram. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but that meant that we had a late start on everything else. Scenic drives and lunch and a slight detour to look at some ruins and then another slight detour to go to the Four Corners Monument.

Only we got there at 5:30, about an hour too late to do anything, and about half an hour too late to even get in. So we drove past some more really interesting views and checked into our motel, which did not have an indoor hot tub as advertised. But dinner was great. Didn't really want yet another Mexican restaurant (third already this trip), but we really didn't want to go looking for something more interesting, and this place was practically in the motel parking lot.

This morning we woke up early, and we went back to Four Corners. I didn't know that Four Corners was a flea market, or I would have brought more money. But we had enough money for fry bread, and we bought a few things, mostly a couple of necklaces from a woman who agreed to take a check.

I have eaten too much. Might be just as well that I don't have a hot tub. It probably isn't a good idea to get in the tub after eating too much.

So I've now added Colorado and technically Utah to the list of states I've been in. So that makes 42 of the lower 48.

It's been a busy few days.

Week five

Okay, I'm getting sick of this diet stuff.

First week, I lost weight. Fine. Great.

Second week, I lost weight, just not as much as the first week. Or maybe I just read the scale wrong the first week. But there was definitely weight loss. Fine.

Third week, I can't really tell if I've lost weight, but if I have it wasn't that much.

Fourth week, again, I can't really see any difference in the scale. So then, what is the point? But I had made something to eat that had broccoli in it, and I had overcooked the broccoli, and I really hate overcooked broccoli. But, I made it, so I should eat it. And there was ice on the roads and all of that. It just wasn't a good time to waste food.

Saturday, when my husband came home, we went out and had Mexican food to celebrate surviving the week. I even had a regular Coke. This was the first caffeine I'd had in about a week, and the first regular soda I'd had in more than a month.

Sunday was the Superbowl, and I'm not into football, so I wasn't going to do much anyway. My husband made salsa and guacamole, so I had some of that and some chips. He went to my brother's place and they ordered a pizza.

Monday I had leftover pizza, and then we also had some hot wings cause there was all this leftover Super Bowl food marked down at the grocery store.

My husband is about at the end of his six weeks because a.) he started the week before I did, and b.) his plan wasn't really about losing weight, so he can say that's enough whenever he wants. So I guess that his six weeks were over Saturday, though technically I think that was closer to five weeks.

So I expect we're back to "let's go out" and "let's get ice cream" and such as that, though other than this last weekend I don't expect a big rush to do that, just that eventually things will go back to the way they were. I had hoped/expected that during the six weeks he was on his diet that I would lose about twelve pounds on mine, and that would make me feel better and I would want to keep going with it. But I haven't lost twelve pounds. I might have lost eight pounds, or, I might have read the scale wrong and just lost six pounds. Either way, most of that was the first week, and a bit more was the second week, and I can't tell that I've lost much if anything after that.

I wonder if it is some mental thing, and you lose five pounds or so just because you say that you're going on a diet, and then that's the end of it. Or, was I really doing something different that first week? Or did it have something to do more with what I did the previous week?

I must admit that almost every week I've had something come up so that I did not eat at home just one time. But I didn't do anything really crazy. When I went to Burger King with mom, I only ate half, and when we went to Outback Steakhouse I ordered the smallest steak and veggies and this tiny thing of seafood and salsa that just didn't look that bad. And on the day of the convention I had something called a Dutch Baby for breakfast, but again I only ate half so it would not be just tons of calories all on the same day.

You would think that I would lose a pound a week or so just from giving up regular sodas, even if I didn't do any other diet stuff. But that doesn't seem to be happening.

I think that it is unusual for an American woman to get to be my age without trying a bunch of diet pills and such. I really have not done that, except for buying some Slimfast bars and shakes, but that really wasn't about trying to lose weight, that was about having some emergency food that did not need refrigeration when were were traveling.

Okay, so I've gone to the drugstore and bought some snake oil. Not really, but I did buy some "detox" stuff (which is not really about losing weight it just sounds like a good idea anyway), and some other stuff that I think is mostly overpriced vitamins and caffeine. I haven't tried the caffeine stuff yet, and I might never try it, but it was on sale and I figured that I would go ahead and get it just in case. I was disappointed that there weren't more instructions inside the box, just how many pills were recommended. I thought it would say something like best results with certain types of diets. It doesn't even say much about eating sensible meals, just when to take the pills.

Okay, so I'm not trying the pills yet, but I'm just wondering if the first week's weight loss had something to do with all the Cokes I had the week before. Maybe a caffeine pill would do some good, when I'm totally giving up Cokes. So maybe I'll try them in a few weeks, when I'm not even having diet sodas. But not right now.

Anyway, I just feel like I've wasted the last three weeks (other than trying to clean the house and going to the convention). Between all the stuff in the frig and the party on Saturday, I'll mostly be taking a week off from the dieting. Though I do think that I'm going to try this detox thing and maybe eat some more yogurt.

Week three

Okay, so at the end of week one I was trying to keep myself from jumping up and down, that I'd had some weight-loss but probably not as much as it seemed. But that first week was pretty much perfect, with me eating only what I was supposed to eat and not drinking any regular sodas.

The next two weeks were not perfect. By the second week I should have been doing the whole eight glasses of water per day thing, and then on the third week I should have been paying more attention to the whole 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables thing. Well, I'm only just now getting around to the drinking enough water thing. I have lost some weight, but either it isn't much more than that of the first week, or else I just read the scale wrong the first week. I've stayed away from the regular sodas, but it has been a while since I've written down what I was eating. And in an attempt at keeping my husband from going totally nuts with the food, about half the time I eat what he is eating. And his diet isn't about losing weight, so sometimes this is bad.

Sometimes he eats something that is in the 200-300 calorie range, and that's fine and I eat that too. Other times he eats something that is more than 500 calories, plus it has side dishes that aren't very low-cal either. The first few times this happened I ate half a serving of his food, and that seemed to go okay. But the last few days have been bad. We had this little fish, which I thought would be good, but I guess there was something high calorie on the fish, and then the fish came with potatoes. It was small already, so eating half didn't work. And then after that there was this small Asian chicken salad, and it was just too small, but it still had about four hundred calories. So not only did I eat the tiny salad, but then I was still hungry and ate a cereal bar. So that probably didn't do the diet much good.

After getting upset and having this discussion about the expensive food that he would probably end up throwing away, we have gone shopping again, and I guess he just doesn't get it. Yesterday we threw out what looked like a pound of spinach. And the frig is full of food, and I doubt that he will cook most of it before he heads out of town again.

Also my mother took me to Burger King, cause we hadn't seen each other for a bit and she had this coupon. The coupon was buy one get one free stuffed Whooper. The stuffed Whooper is 600 calories. My mother wants to lose weight too, so she asked for the sauce on the side.

A stuffed Whooper with sauce on the side is still a stuffed Whooper.

Anyway, at the time I was still being very good with the diet, so I ate half of the Whooper and took the other half home for breakfast the next day.

I think that soon I will have to stop eating stuff from my husband's diet, but the social stuff is still going to be a problem. There is a lot of stuff coming up soon. Saturday, I might go to a convention, and I guess that I'll have to pack lunch, and then there might be a dinner after and I have no idea where so I can't prepare much for that. Sunday is the annual meeting. I'd totally forgotten about the annual meeting, and of course I will be going, and I'm pretty sure that I will be eating, and it will be pizza this year.

More about the annual meeting on a later post.

Then there is the usual monthly stuff next month, plus a party, plus another party. Two parties. Two parties where the main thing I do is eat.

Here is how we ended up with two parties, and I forgot that it was two parties.

Some friends had a party in February. I don't think it had a Valentine theme or anything, but it was in the middle of February and there's dancing and dressing up and such (though this is a group of Trekkies, and our idea of dressing up is a bit different). The second year they invited more people, and I went either the second year or maybe the third year. And then one year they had scheduling problems and the party ended up being in August. I thought August was better anyway. So they've had this party four or five times and I've been to two or three of them.

In this group of friends there is C. One year C had his fiftieth birthday party at the same place as the other party. I think that his actual birthday is in January, but they decided to have the party a bit later so that it was on the same day as his son's birthday party, and that way they could just rent the room for the whole day and the kids could have their party at noon and C's adult party would be in the evening. For C's party we were asked to wear black. C had such a good time that the next year he had the "Goth Ball" again.

So it was pretty much the same group of friends at the same place, but they are two different parties. But now the first party has moved from February to August and now back to February. So now C's party is the first weekend of February and the other party is the second weekend. Somehow in my mind I'd forgotten that they were two separate parties, and that C's party wouldn't necessarily be cancelled just because the other party was the same month. And the other party is partially a fund raiser for a local charity, and you have to buy tickets, and I've already bought one, not realizing that I'd be going to parties two weekends in a row.

And this is in addition the usual stuff the weekend after that.

Also, there is the crew dinner, which is the day after one of the parties. I don't always go to the crew dinner, but this one is in Irving, and it is at Souper Salads, and they are pretty much expecting those of us on diets will want to go.

Maybe not so much.

I am sure that you can go to Souper Salads and eat something very sensible, but I never do. I can eat something sensible that tastes better and cost less money at home. My husband wanted to go there last week, which we did, but I really didn't see the point. He mostly ate sensible stuff that we already had at home. I ate a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I ate much less that I normally do, but I still still think it was way too many calories. After we got home I looked up the nutritional information. Some of the prepared salads were like a hundred calories per serving, but sometimes the serving was listed as 1/3 cup. I'm pretty sure that I didn't eat anything that small, and I had at least four salads. And that was me trying to be good, instead of eating what I usually eat, which also involves bread and dessert and seconds of everything.

Anyway, for the next four weekends, I have something to do socially, sometimes more than one thing, and probably all of the things will involve me buying and eating food with too many calories.

After that will be the end of my husband's six week experiment, and if he quits he'll be back to suggesting we go out for ice cream and such.

I'm going to have to give this whole diet thing some thought.

Water is being cut off again

That will happen today, in a couple of hours. But at least we had a little warning this time. Soon I will have a bath and all of that, and then I will fill empty plastic jugs with water, and then after that I will fill the bathtub. So it is still a bit inconvenient, but not so much as last time.

My husband just woke up, which is good, because I forgot to ask him when he wanted to get going, and it would have had to be by eight or so cause I have to be finished with the water by nine. Anyway, he has to go out of town today, but only for the one night, and he's already done all of the cooking he needs to do so it shouldn't be the big hassle that it was before. Of course, we will have to do it all again for Monday, but I will worry about that Sunday.

Despite having a bit of help yesterday, there still isn't much of the cleaning done yet (and I just found out yesterday afternoon that about the water being cut off today so I don't imagine getting it all done today either), so I think going on the trip is out now. Almost for sure about that. I just don't think that I would get everything done Sunday, even if I have some help on Sunday, and even if I skipped stuff I plan to do Saturday, and I don't plan to skip anything on Saturday.

As for what I'm going to eat on Saturday, I still haven't decided. I'm planning to go to both restaurants, though I'm starting to wonder if I should just skip the second one. I'll see what happens. Once in a great while someone else cancels, and then someone else cancels, and then we all decide not to go. Except when it is Miss Allergies who cancels first, and then the rest of us pick a different restaurant and go someplace that we never go to when she's around.

Of course, if we go someplace else, I will have no idea what to order. I have ideas of what I could order after studying the nutritional information area of our usual restaurant's website, but if we go someplace else I'd totally have to start over. The stuff that you'd think would be low calorie sometimes isn't, and they usually don't tell you that on the menu. And even the lower calorie stuff usually isn't as low as I would eat at home. It usually isn't meant to make you lose weight, just that maybe you wouldn't gain much of it back.

Anyway, I can't decide. I'll just see what happens tomorrow.

Other things going on now

The bug guy is coming a week from Wednesday, which means that I have major amounts of cleaning to do. So far, most of it isn't getting done. The whole diet thing seems to get in the way. There's always more dishes to wash, and there's all these groceries and I have no idea where to put them, so there are just all these bags of stuff on the floor.

Last week I felt good about the cleaning, having finally gone ahead and scrubbed off whatever sticky stuff was on the kitchen floor. Not that you can tell that now. We had some interesting weather and a couple of times we had to dash outside and deal with the pump, and afterwards we just tracked more dirt into the house. So the floor will have to be cleaned again, though I doubt that it will be as difficult this time, with just the dirt and not so much whatever the sticky stuff was.

Anyway, I haven't much made a dent in the backroom, the living, the bedroom, the bathroom. Except for the sticky stuff on the floor, the kitchen and dining area are worse than before I started. And of course my husband has done little or nothing in this room or the bedroom. It just seems to require mental energy that we don't have to spare after the whole dieting thing. It isn't like you can work until you get hungry and then go take and break and eat pizza. No, you can't start anything, especially in the kitchen, that might interfere with whatever you are supposed to be eating the next meal.

Sometimes I can eat something from his diet (or maybe half of something from his diet), and once he ate something from my diet. But most of the time he's eating something that I'm not, and then we both have to take turns in the kitchen, there's just not room for us both at the same time. And then there's a mess that has to be somewhat cleared away before one of us can cook the next thing.

And of course when we are cooking in the small kitchen we have to make use of the space on top of the washing machine, which means that until the cooking and cleaning is done we can't do the laundry.

But I must get on with it anyway, cause the bug guy is coming whether or not the place is clean and/or the diet is going as planned.

The other thing that is taking up my mental energy is deciding about social things and possible travel plans. I've never done much of either while I was trying to lose weight. So I'm trying to decide what to do about Saturday, and whether or not I should go on a trip next week.

Of course at this point I can't seriously think about the trip next week, because the house has to be clean before that Wednesday, and I would have to leave that Monday, so not only would I not be here to see the bug guy (and I don't suppose that is actually necessary, but it does make me feel better to be here and see that it is done with for another three months) but I would have to have the cleaning all done by Sunday, and I'm already feeling rushed to get it done before Wednesday.

Anyway, if I go on a trip, if I want to lose weight I'll have to keep it up even on the trip, which means that I won't be doing things that I would normally do on a trip. No restaurants. No sodas. No snacks (or at least, not the usual ones). No Starbucks type high calorie drinks. And then I'd have to cook food ahead of time and take it with me, as he will also have to do, and then we'll try and stuff everything into a tiny motel frig, and we won't even be eating the same food so I'm not sure that there would be room for my stuff anyway. We'll probably have to pack the electric cooler, which means that there won't be much room for my knitting, and without the knitting to keep me busy it is usually a really boring trip.

So that probably isn't going to happen anyway, but I haven't totally made up my mind.

But I do have to decide about Saturday, and then I have to decide about every other third Saturday, and a party next month, and maybe a family dinner (date unknown at this point). Saturday we are going to two restaurants. The first restaurant I had already decided did not have good enough food for me to waste my money on, and I now that I'm counting calories I have another reason to not want the food. But I do usually buy and drink a lot of soda while I'm there. So now I have to decide should I go there and not buy anything, not even a soda, which seems a bit rude. Or, should I buy a regular soda and just attempt not to drink much of it. I could drink diet soda, if I brought something to put in it, but I'm wondering if that might be messy. Or I could even attempt to drink diet soda as is, but I would probably give up and end up replacing it with regular soda.

The second restaurant as not my favorite either, but sitting there and not ordering anything seems even more rude, as we do not have a private room for me to hide in there. And the food is even more expensive. I had found something to my liking that didn't cost too much, but it wouldn't fit in with the whole dieting thing. I could spend more money to buy something that I like less, eat half of it, and take half of it home. Or, I could spend even more money to buy something that I like a bit better, and again eat half of it and take half of it home. Or I could buy this weird tuna thing, which sometimes is pleasant and other times almost makes me ill. Not that the food is sometimes prepared different, just sometimes I feel different about eating it, and I never know until I actually try some of it. Getting something that I know I'd like either is expensive and/or very high calorie.

Maybe just once or twice a month I should say the hell with it and not think about the calories. But even if I was going to do that, I'd rather save that for something I'm really dying to have (like cookies), instead of whatever looks good at this particular restaurant (which we have to go to because of Miss Allergies).

Next month there is a party, and I don't dance, and right now I'm not doing much in the way of dressing up, so that leaves eating weird food being the main thing that I would normally do at the party, and there's no way of figuring out the calories there. My main healthy option there would be to bring several things I know are safe and only eat those. But that sounds boring, and it would cost more money than I had planned to spend.

I'll have to decide this stuff at least once or twice a month, sometimes more. Should I be good, or should I just say the hell with it and have a good time?

So far the lack of regular sodas hasn't gotten to me, and I haven't eaten any cookies, and I don't think I've even had any chocolate, and the just plain being hungry bits haven't been that bad. So in some ways, the diet is going better than I expected. It just sometimes isn't as easy to deal with as I had imagined, and I wonder if the social stuff will turn out to be the main problem.

First week

My husband is on some weird diet, and I am trying to lose weight. I officially started on the 4th, while he started a bit earlier than that. I choose the 4th to make sure that a.) I got to enjoy the New Year's Eve party and then eat whatever I wanted afterward to recover from it, and b.) starting on the 4th I had a few days to myself, and these things are always easier for me without other people around trying to get me to eat things other than what I have picked out. When my husband is around, he offers me food from his diet, and since his diet isn't really about weight-loss, it isn't always a good idea.

Anyway, I'm going to say that the first week was a success. I've had no regular sodas or other regular sugary drinks. I've had no cookies. I don't think I've had any chocolate, or if I had it was one square of dark chocolate, but I think the last time I even did that was before the 4th. I've not gone to any restaurants or eaten any fast food. I try to write down everything that I eat or drink, and then I write how many calories I think I've consumed. I think most days I'm just right around 1200, which is what I wanted. And I think that I've had three servings of lowfat dairy everyday, with one of the servings always being a cup of no sugar added yogurt.

And I think that I've lost a few pounds, though I doubt that I've lost as many as it seemed this morning. I think that it's just hard to read regular bathroom scales (unless they are digital, which mine is not), and there might be some other factors at work, like maybe weighing first thing in the morning is not accurate, or maybe I was wearing too much clothing during the first weigh-in but not enough now. But I'm not trying to do anything silly, only two pounds or so a week, and maybe even a steady one pound per week would be okay for a bit. So I think that I've at least done that much, and I can be happy about that.

One thing that I did not get done this week was the whole eight glasses of water per day thing. I'll try to work that in later.

The other thing that did not get accomplished this week was a neat and tidy frig. I had imagined the thing being half-empty, with about thirty things in containers just waiting for me to eat, and a few other things waiting for me to cook, and then a gallon of skim milk and the diet drinks and the V-8 and a few bottles of things like mustard and ketchup. Well, even after the cleaning, there's still a lot of bottles of stuff, some of which we are using right now, and some of it we expect to be using soon, and just other things that we like that we don't want to throw out cause we'll need them eventually.

And that's just my side of the frig. I tried to divide the frig into stuff I'd mostly be using on one side and stuff that he'd mostly be using on the other. But now it's a total mess again, and we squeeze in things wherever they will fit.

And then there are all these vegetables, which I hope will get eaten, but some of them won't. We haven't actually thrown out that much yet (a couple of pears and some watercress and chives), but that's mostly because I ate a few of his things when he was away, and then when he got back I just started pulling out stuff and asking him what he intended to do with it, and then he'd cook something.

Of course, cooking something usually meant that we needed yet something else from the store, so as soon as I get rid of something it is usually replaced with something else. But that did keep most of the cauliflower from being wasted, and yesterday we ate the zucchini and the eggplant. Still, I think that today or tomorrow I'll be trying to rearrange the whole thing again.

I remembered it being much easier before. But of course, last time I had the place to myself for most of three months.

It's called women's work cause men aren't bright enough to do it

I think that I've mentioned before about the difference between how most men cook and how most women cook. It isn't that men literally can't cook. They can cook most things that do not require mixing ingredients, like, they can fry bacon and sausage, etc.... And they often can do some big production thing like barbecue. And maybe they can fix about three things if they had to cook dinner once in a while.

This is different from the day to day cooking that most women learn to do. Women figure that they'll have to make breakfast, lunch, and dinner, day in and day out, often for themselves and for their men and for their children (who complain about everything put in front of them). No big production stuff here. Just figure out how to get everyone fed in a reasonable about of time. Most women probably know how to cook lots of different things, depending on the occasion and how much money they have and how much time it takes to prepare, etc....

It seems like my dad knew how to cook about three things. I forget what one of them was. The thing that he cooked most often was pancakes. Mom usually didn't have to cook on Saturday mornings, cause dad made pancakes. If ever mom wasn't there or mom didn't feel well, dad could make a few other things. I don't remember this ever happening, but if mom had been sick for more than two days and unable to cook dinner, I'm pretty sure that on the third night we would have had pancakes, probably with a side of bacon or sausage.

So it isn't that men can't cook. We've seen plenty of men cook things that are perfectly edible. We've even seen them cook things that we look forward to eating. It's just that most of the time they aren't motivated to do much of it. My husband can cook. My husband can open a cookbook and follow a recipe and cook something nice. Recently, my husband made fudge and divinity. And not just desserts, he can cook regular food too. It's the mundane kitchen stuff that causes him to drag his feet, like making Hamburger Helper, or even opening a can of soup to put in a bowl and microwave.

And of course before one does any cooking, one has to go to the store and buy groceries. If this isn't their regular thing, men can be pretty clueless. They don't know where things are, they don't know how much things are supposed to cost, etc.... But the really baffling thing is that when they can't figure out when/if you've run out of something and to go buy more of it. I don't drink coffee, I don't make coffee, and I usually don't put limes on everything I drink except coffee and so forth. My husband likes coffee, and he really likes limes, while I rarely touch either of those things. So I would think that he would know when we've run out of those things rather than me. Also, he seems to be under the impression that I buy groceries so that I can hide them from him. I'm like "I bought this for you, and when you get hungry, eat it" and then I put it in the frig and it rots because he never eats it cause he never looked for it.

Sorry, the frig didn't come with neon signs. You have to look around for stuff.

Anyway, we've both decided that we need to go on diets, though we are not doing the same diet for the same reason. His has something to do with getting rid of wheat and dairy. Mine will be about trying to eat smaller portions and lowering fat and calories, etc.... To get started with this, I've cleaned out the frig and we've thrown away a lot of stuff, and I'm trying to even divide the frig so that stuff he mostly uses is on one side and my stuff is on the other side.

I haven't paid much attention to his diet, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do about mine. I bought a diet cookbook. I didn't really need another cookbook, and I even didn't really need another diet cookbook. But, briefly, I had it in my head that I was going to follow the six-week plan in the front of the book. The plan has a daily calorie intake of between 1300 and 1400 calories, plus there are a lot of veggies and some fruits that you can have extra of and not count. I'm guessing that the six-week plan would take you through most or maybe all of the recipes in the book and that after that you would pick your favorites and keep eating those. Or, maybe, someone went through and decided that this six-week plan would have a near perfect mix of everything. But I'm not going to follow the plan, cause I found a couple of problems with it.

Well, the calories aren't the problem. I'm thinking if I could get down to 1200 that would be better, but this stuff is not that far off. If I'm going to go on a diet, I think that it needs three servings of dairy a day, and that at least one of those servings has to be yogurt. I see that the plan has one or two dairy a day, and maybe if I really looked and added everything up it would be three a day, but rarely is one of the three yogurt. So, I would either have to take out one of the dairy to replace it with yogurt or else I would have to add a yogurt which would add around a hundred calories a day.

The other problem is the shopping. I'll give you an easy example that is not in the book or in my planned diet or his. Let's say that on day one of the plan you are supposed to eat half a grapefruit and a piece of toast. Breakfast on day two is different, and day three is different again, etc.... By the time you're supposed to eat another half of a grapefruit, the one you had has gone bad and you've tossed it out. And what about that piece of toast? You have to buy a whole loaf of bread to make that one piece of toast, and even if you had a piece of toast everyday for breakfast that would only add up to seven pieces of bread by the end of the week, and then the rest of the loaf is moldy and you have to throw it out. And I have tried freezing bread, and it usually doesn't work very well. So, if I did this, for day one and meal one, I would have bought a grapefruit and a loaf of bread, at least half of which will be thrown away. And then most of the recipes in the book aren't for one serving, but usually more like four to six. So if I followed the plan I'd be throwing away several servings of food with most lunches and dinners, as well as a couple of servings for breakfast.

I feel bad enough about the food I already waste without intentionally buying tons of groceries that I know I won't eat. But I'm probably not the target audience for the book, and probably they weren't thinking of single people either. Probably most people who buy this book have a spouse that will eat the other half of the grapefruit and at least seven slices of bread per week, plus they have children or other family members who will eat the three or more servings of leftover pasta.

But I don't have that, and for the most part all the food cooked will be eaten by me and just me. So for lunch and dinner I'll be making maybe mac and cheese and some other pasta thing and maybe a soup and then maybe a sort of Chinese thing or maybe Mexican, and then I'll rotate leftovers until it's time to cook something else.

Okay, no six week plan for me.

I guess my husband didn't think all of this stuff out the way I did.

So, he has a book (which I didn't really look at after I found out it wasn't what I wanted), and the idea is to get rid of wheat and dairy and a few other things and see if you feel better because maybe you have an undiagnosed allergy. And then you are supposed to add healthy Omega 3s and stuff like that. It isn't much about calorie reduction and it isn't much about weight-loss, other than what would come about just because you've stopped going out for ice cream.

Anyway, in this book, there's another six week plan. And there's a shopping list for the first two weeks. So my husband prints out the shopping list, and we head for several stores and spend lots of money, mostly at Central Market, cause we went there to get a few things that I'm not sure are easily found at the places we would normally shop at. Some of what we purchased were whole grains and other dry goods, and that's fine, but we also bought fruits and vegetables and fresh herbs, etc....

We're not Martha Stewart. We don't usually buy fresh herbs, except for a lot of cilantro, which is cheap at Mexican markets, and the rare bunch of parsley, which tends to cost about twice as much as the cilantro. That day we bought cilantro and two kinds of parsley and basil and bay leaves and watercress and a couple of other things and fennel.

I have never before bought fennel. Fennel seeds, yes, but not fresh fennel. I have no idea what one does with fennel.

After having bought fresh herbs and vegetables and fruits and dry goods and fancy cooking oil and tofu and a number of other things and filled the frig so that I cannot tell that I just cleaned it out, we were about to go shopping again for meat and fish, and it seemed to me that we really had a lot of stuff already, and that it seemed like he was planning to buy a lot of meat and fish for just a week or two.

And it was then that I saw the recipes that he was going to make, which were mostly recipes for four servings, and that we did not need anywhere near that much food.

Lets do the math again.

If you are one person, and you need breakfast and lunch and dinner, that's three meals a day, which would be twenty-one meals per week, or forty-two meals for two weeks. If you make recipes that are four servings, and you make a different one each meal, that's twelve servings a day, and if you make different things everyday, that's eighty-four servings per week.

So he was buying everything on the two week list, which would have made about one hundred and sixty-eight servings.

And he wasn't even going to be home for the second week, so I don't know why he was buying that food at all.

And in addition to the extra servings there's that whole thing about the wasted half grapefruit and most of the loaf of bread. Not that he bought either of those things, but he did buy that fennel, which cost four dollars, and you only use a fifth of it in one recipe.

At least I caught on in time to not have a frig full of rotting meat. But we do have watercress going limp, and pears going mushy, and then he bought sprouts and other things to take with him, which he forgot and left in the frig.

It was a big hassle getting him off to work for the week. It is always a bit of a hassle, but we've gotten used to it. And if you forget anything you can always buy something while you're away. Except, if you're on a diet, you aren't supposed to eat out and on this diet he isn't supposed to eat wheat or dairy, so no stopping at fast food places, not even Subway, and he can't even buy a loaf of bread. So I'm trying to get him to think about what he needs to take with him, to cook things ahead of time and such, and he just drags his feet. This isn't the fun cooking that he likes to do, and he waits til the last minute to do it.

I'm still finding food in the house that I think I should get rid of, but I don't want to until I know if he's only going to do this for six weeks or if this is going to be a long-term thing. I hate to throw out food that we could eat after the six weeks are up, cause we'll just have to go out and buy more stuff anyway. If I stick to my little project, I think it would be a minimum of five months, but probably longer. We'll just have to wait and see if I can handle that.

Happy Thanksgiving

Okay, so it's six something in the morning, and I'm wondering if it is too early to get in line at the cafeteria.

Probably.

Anyway, despite there being like four turkeys between us, we've decided that we will eat out, probably at Furr's, though I probably haven't been to Furr's in years and don't know what to expect, other than some really long lines. There will only be four of us, as the rest of our group have made other plans with in-laws and such. Mom isn't much into the cooking and such anymore, and this year in particular she just doesn't feel up to it. Either my brother or I could do the turkey itself (I see no problem just doing a very basic turkey and had already made one for myself, and my brother had other ideas and practiced two of them early this month), nobody is quite up to making mom's stuffing (or grandma's stuffing, depending on how you look at it), and while I like a plain basic turkey to make other things with, it isn't much of a Thanksgiving turkey without mom's stuffing. Also missing is grandma's (other grandma) potato salad and a number of other things. So it would have been my brother making a turkey and me attempting stuffing and potato salad, and then not much else interesting, and mom didn't seem that interested in the turkey anyway.

Still, I think my brother did an excellent job on the two practice turkeys, though one of them did turn out too salty. But, then, that is the point of doing practice turkeys, so you can figure out that kind of thing.

I was just this close to buying a roaster this year, cause I'd heard that it could also be used as a slow cooker. But then I heard that a.) this isn't really a good idea, and b.) the roaster that was on sale was not digital, which means that it wouldn't automatically switch to warm after it finishes cooking. So I did not get one, though I might look again. But I did find a rack that folds up when you're done, and it fits in the cheap aluminum pans, which I like cause I can be lazy and toss when I'm done with them. And I really don't have room for a roaster anyway, which I suppose is the reason I did not buy one some previous year.

Later I will be looking over the ads, but as far as I can tell I really only want one thing and from one store. Or, rather, I only want the one type of thing, and the big sale is at one store. The last few years I've gone to Walmart to get jeans for myself, and try to get a few other things, and while I'm there I look through the sale DVDs. Anyway, this year I did not lose any weight, I gained the weight back somewhat, which means that I probably don't need any jeans because I'm wearing those that I bought a year and two ago, and if I lose a bit of weight I'll be wearing the jeans that I bought last time. So now I have to decide if I want to maybe buy just one pair just in case I should lose more than that.

I really don't want to buy any larger clothes just in case I gain. My husband is planning some sort of diet the first six weeks of the new year. Not that he's really planning to lose weight, just that he's thinking he should get a few things out of his diet. This would be a good time to go on a diet too, though not the same diet. I want a lose weight diet. I want to look pretty and maybe have lower blood pressure. But, if I go on a diet while he's doing his thing, at least for the first six weeks I won't have him constantly suggesting that we go out for ice cream and such.

Anyway, without needing to buy jeans, I don't have much excuse for going out early Friday morning, except for buying DVDs. I'm wondering if I'm going to buy that many, or if maybe I should just try to get them online. Other than that, I'm thinking of going to Half Price Books, and I've heard that Racetrac has free coffee. I don't have any plans to camp out in hopes of getting a TV or any of that.

Lately I've been trying to find a certain diet cookbook. I don't know why. I don't need another diet cookbook, I probably just need to take one I already have on the shelf and cook stuff. But, I saw this one, and I keep bidding on it on ebay. But I don't want to bid much more than five dollars (cause with say ten dollars and shipping, I might as well just buy the book new in the store), so I don't have the thing. And then I had the idea of borrowing one at the library, cause I might not even like it that much, but for some reason I can't get the computer and the library computer to talk to each other. I already know that the two libraries I use most don't have it, but if I really want something I go to Fort Worth, which is a bit of a drive, and I'd rather not go all the way there if I'm only going to look for a book that the computer won't even tell me if they have.

That's enough for now. I'll probably post again later.

Double Coke

So we bought a membership to the Dallas Arboretum, cause I told myself that we were going to go and walk around and get some exercise and such. We haven't. We have been one time since the day we bought the thing. It is just too hot. It isn't near my house, so we tend to stay a long time if we bother to drive over there, and then we come home really tired and don't go back for a while.

Of course, any health benefits we get from walking around are now negated by the other recent purchase of the unlimited refills at Racetrac (til the middle of September anyway). So every time we go anywhere we stop for a free soda or Slurpee (called Numb Skull at this company), and then on the way back we might stop and get another one.

I have found that you can get Coke flavored frozen drink, and then you can pour regular Coke over that instead of over ice cubes. Double Coke. Cool.

Endless free sugar water. Lots of calories. But I'm not really thinking about that now. And it's not like I've done anything about my plans to eat better, so why not have a few more Slurpees. It's hot here. Sometimes it is really hot here.

The bedroom has not improved. The dishes have not been done. And I have not even looked at the rest of the house.

However, I did do a bit of work on two garden projects. I've bought more cinder blocks for the pathway that will keep my feet out of the water if ever I have to go out in the rain to deal with the pump. It doesn't look particularly nice right now, but I have enough of it done that I could walk over the main part of the problem if I had to. The other thing I've been doing outside is digging a big hole where someday there will be a fruit tree (probably fig). I had earlier abandoned the project for the season because of the heat and because without rain the clay just is too difficult to work with. But after getting just a bit of rain I decided to try it again, and having gotten started on it I would like to finish it. It is slow, shovel a bit, then go back in the house and have a drink and rest, then go back out and shovel a bit more. I have a large hole now. Not large enough or deep enough to bury a person, but almost big enough to make a tree really happy. Not quite finished yet, and then after it is dug there will be the work of working with the soil and putting it back in the hole, but I will not do as much work with that part as I do with the vegetable beds. I don't think that trees need as much of that as annual plants do, and I don't think that this particular tree will need any sand.

Anyway, it rained again last night, which is nice, but it might have rained too much for me to work on the hole today. I'll look at it later.

And, while I would like to stay home mostly (except when we are going to a park or getting a Slurpee), we are seriously making the rounds at thrift stores. Today we are even going to go and look for one we've never been to before. My husband has some project, and he's looking for stuff to aid his photography. I'm not sure that his plan will work, but we will see. And while we are out, I find things, and he finds other things, etc....

Yesterday, I found another piece of black costume that I had to have. Not that I will be able to wear it if I keep drinking the Slurpees, but I have it now anyway for sometime in the future. I recently bought three or four things of yarn, but that's a lot less yarn than I found. I ended up not buying most of it.

We found most of another Aerogarden, but I didn't buy it cause I still haven't found replacement parts for the other one. This one had one bulb (they use two), but the light didn't come on, so I don't know if that means it doesn't work or if it just means that the bulb needs to be replaced. Anyway, I didn't get it. And I didn't get the Makin' Bacon still in the box (not that I need another one right now, just that I thought they are so great I should get it in case someone else needs it), and I did not get the GT Xpress 101 (little cooking appliance that makes chicken and omelets and such), but I did find one of those up-side-down tomato things fore about half-price (don't think that they really do anything great but I can find out now), and I bought that and yet another kitchen appliance that will probably not get used very much.

The thing was six bucks, and it makes soy milk. And then, in theory, you take the soy milk and make tofu. And then, in theory, you eat stuff that is good for you.

That's the theory. In practice, I'm not sure that I'll ever want to eat that much tofu, and he won't want to eat any at all. But it was only six bucks, and when will I ever find one of those again? In theory, someday, I might have a group of friends and we might all want to eat health food together, and then they will really appreciate the gizmo that makes soy milk.

They will also appreciate the gizmo that makes peanut butter, and the other gizmo that grinds flour, neither of which I have even tried yet. We did use the pasta machine (which I'm guessing would be too difficult to clean even if I remembered where it was now), and my husband used to really enjoy the juicer. We had both of those a long time, maybe he even had them before we got married. But most of this other stuff didn't get used much, it was just too weird to pass up when we find stuff at such low prices.

Who knows what we will come home with today.

And I suspect that there is going to be a stop at Double Dave's Pizza for lunch, as it is something that we hardly ever do, and it is in the general direction of the thrift store that we've never been to before. And it's a bit of a drive, so we can stop and get a Slurpee first.

Mystery Meat

So, my husband is going here there and everywhere, but no place particularly interesting is scheduled, just middle-of-nowhere Texas and Oklahoma. I have been to middle-of-nowhere Texas and Oklahoma many, many times. While I maybe have not gone to some of these particular places before, there doesn't seem to be anything in them that I need to see, and we don't have tons of money to make it into anything really fun anyway.

And there's still tons of stuff to do here, and I usually get more done while he's away, so, I should stay here and try to get something done. And I couldn't leave for very long anyway, unless I make arrangements for someone else to water the plants, and most times the someone else doesn't do a good job with that anyway. But, depending on the weather, I can sometimes leave for a day or two without anything bad happening, and I did think that just one night away might do some good. And the schedule was written just so that he was going away for one night and then coming back for one night before heading out again for a couple more nights.

And this particular place that he was going for the one night was not that exciting and not that far away, but it did have a motel with a hot tub that we like, so one night there would probably be a nice thing, as I could really use a hot tub right about now.

Still, whenever we get ready to go anywhere, I start to get nervous, and I sometimes get so nervous that I even change my mind and stay home, or else I stay nervous during the whole trip and might as well have stayed home. So I was starting to get nervous and wanting to stay home, cause the whole getting nervous thing is worse when the house is really messy, which it was, and I have this fear of people coming in the house when it is like that. Not that I have any real reason to believe that someone would come in the house, as the stuff that needs to be repaired has been neglected for about two years now, and I don't think that they will suddenly decide to fix it anytime soon. But still, I worry about it so much that I cancel trips and stay home and do nothing.

Okay, so I decided that I needed to go out, even if it was just for one day, even if the house did look like a tornado hit it, because we needed to do the whole bug fogger thing. And I know that we had bought stuff to do that, just in case an opportunity like this presented itself, only the night before we are ready to go I cannot find the things. So, I decided that I would go if we either found the things or had time in the morning to go out and buy some more, or else if we didn't I would just stay home.

So we didn't find the things, but we did get up in time to buy more. So we put stuff in the car and began the process of fogging the house, and then I have no choice but to get in the car, cause no matter what you think you might have forgotten, you can't go back into the house.

Having gone to this particular place several times before, and having gone out in the general direction many times, we have this place that we like to stop that is a bakery, and we usually get jalapeno and sausage in a roll for breakfast, and then either kolaches or cookies, and then we look for discounted focaccia or beer bread. So off we went, and we got our traditional breakfast thing, though I'm trying to be good and not load up on cookies and kolaches. And we looked for the focaccia and beer bread, but there was none on the discount rack, and I did not want to spend four dollars each getting them at regular price. And then we noticed the four dollar bags of what looked like a six-pack of the sausage and jalapeno things, and six-packs of other similar things, probably roast beef. And while these are a good discount, somehow I didn't think it was a good idea to buy something that contained meat off of the discount rack. But we decided to get just one bag, and off we went.

And then there was the problem of where to eat for lunch. It was too early by the time we reached a certain bbq place, so we went on to the motel and got our room. And I thought that we would just get something cheap at KFC, only that one didn't have either the Monday special or the value menu, so we ended up at Whataburger instead. If we were going to spend that much money on lunch, we should at least go someplace one of us really wanted to go, and that is one of his favorite places. We bought him something for lunch (half of it went to waste cause he thought he was supposed to leave half for me, and I was just planning to eat one of the jalapeno sausage things), and then he went to work, and I stayed in the room and knitted for a bit. I also tried reading a certain book, but this part of the book maybe is going over my head a bit, and while I'm getting the general idea, right at the moment it isn't a real page turner.

But of course there was the hot tub bath in the room, and you can sit in it all day if you want to. In fact, you can turn the tv just a bit so that you can watch while sitting in the tub, so that you only have to get out of the tub to eat and such. Not that I stayed in that long, but when I got out I found that I had somehow managed to burn myself, and I have these two perfect circles on my back from all the time I spent in the tub.

The burns are not that bad, and I would be back in that tub right now if we were still there. I love hot tubs.

Okay, so then I was on the computer a bit, trying to decide what we would do on the way home the next day. I am always wanting to go to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, but we never seem to be in the area at the right time of year when we have time to be tourists. So this is the right time of year (not perfect, as the bluebonnets in my yard have flowers, but those south of us are mostly at the stage of making seeds), but about an hour and a half in the wrong direction. So that would cost gas and three hours of drive time in addition to the time and money actually spent at the place, and we decided against it. In Waco there is an exhibit of a wooly mammoth, and it opened to the public a few months ago, so we thought that we might do that. Only on Tuesdays it doesn't open til eleven, which would have left us just waiting around in Waco for an extra hour or two looking for something to do (and probably spending money for it) and also that would mean that we would need to eat lunch there (and the particular place that I wanted to eat lunch was more money that we should spend right now). Anyway, we were both rather tired already, which didn't make any sense as it was early and we hadn't yet done anything to get tired, but we decided to skip the whole thing and just head home (except for stopping at that bakery again). The wooly mammoth has been there a long time, and Waco is not that far away, and we can see him another time.

So, on to the bakery, where we bought sodas and again looked for focaccia and beer bread on the discount rack, and again did not find them, but found more six-packs of meat in a bun, though they were not marked and this time we could not tell just by looking which meat was in which bag. We made a guess and bought two bags anyway, so we now have about a dozen left, and he will take most of them to have for breakfast.

Anyway, we tried some that we were guessing to be roast beef, but they turned out to be pepperoni, and I rarely turn down pepperoni, so that was good.

So that was it. I guess it was a bit of a dull trip, but it was really good to get out so that we could deal with the bugs. So I will spend much of the day dealing with dead bugs, which I am much happier to do than deal with unwanted live bugs.

Trying to eat what is good for me

Someone I know is going to try going on a diet. He's ordered two weeks of frozen dinners, and if he eats nothing but these dinners and some snacks that are included, he'll lose weight. I wonder how long this is going to last.

About a week ago I had the place to myself and tried to do the dollar a day thing for a bit. I usually am able to do this and have both yogurt and a small cola every day. This time a few prices went up, and I had to skip the yogurt. Not that I've been eating the yogurt for a while now anyway.

But I must start eating right, and I would like to stop spending so much money, and I would like to lose weight. The one time I did lose weight (safely), I ate a lot of spaghetti with a lot of veggies. And I ate yogurt. And I ate popcorn and drank V-8.

I've been reading a blog by someone who is trying to eat on a dollar a day for a year. She's a vegetarian. Her plan is to buy a lot of basic stuff and then after she has the rice and flour and such she would spend a certain amount every week or two on fruits and vegetables. Since she's a vegetarian (and almost vegan), she doesn't have much else to buy that needs to be bought fresh and kept refrigerated. Sometimes she might add some tofu and soymilk. Everything else is kept in the pantry and possibly bought in bulk.

I am not a vegetarian. Last week I tried writing down what I thought that I should be eating (plus a few sort of splurges that I tend to eat when I am not feeling great). I didn't write down the cost of veggies, cause those prices tend to change with the seasons, so I'd never really know what that would cost until the week of purchase. Still, there is almost always something I like on sale, so I didn't think that should add too much.

I was disappointed that after I added everything up I didn't have much that could be kept in the pantry except for spaghetti, and that what I wrote down added up to more than sixty a month. That is with the new low price store that just opened. I'm surprised how much I take for granted that they didn't have. They have a great price on milk, but they don't have 1%, so if I buy the milk there I will have to mix skim and 2%. And they have a great price on eggs, but I didn't see anything like Eggbeaters. They had sodas, but no diet cola. No sugar free pudding mix. Other things were good deals, but not really great deals. My plan for one-stop shopping isn't going to work here.

Okay, so with the what I think I'm supposed to eat plan (which is not vegetarian but has one vegetarian meal everyday), I'm spending sixty dollars a month plus veggies (the thing that I'm supposed to eat the most of), and I forgot to add popcorn and V-8 (another thing that they don't seem to have at the new store), and this is before I go to the added expense of buying any special diet stuff or substituting stuff like Eggbeaters for eggs.

I think that I'm going to try this on Monday, for about a week (except that I'm going to see about getting free breakfast at Subway on Tuesday). We've already had junk food this week, and I don't think that we need more. But we'll see how it goes.

Sorry I have not posted

I have started a couple of posts, but then not finished them.

I have had the place to myself for a few days. I debated on going, but then decided that I could get a certain thing done better by myself, even if I did not get anything else accomplished.

You wouldn't think this would be something I would want to do by myself, but there just doesn't seem to be room for me and the junk and other people, so other people are out.

I told him that there would be a surprise for him when he got back. I didn't tell him I would be moving furniture, but that did kind of commit me to do something impressive while he was away.

It would have been better to clear away some space in the backroom first, and I did sort of try that for a bit, but I gave up on that about halfway through. Friday I needed to deal with the bedroom, thinking that I would get halfway and need the halfway point to be Friday night when I went to sleep. But I got to that point earlier than I thought, and managed to get the furniture moved Friday night.

Of course then most of Saturday was spent in bed watching TV. But I have moved furniture from one wall to the opposite wall, and also removed everything from another bookcase so that I could clean behind it and spray for bugs. And I threw away a lot of stuff. Now all I have to do is move three more pieces of furniture, clean under the other side of the bed, and throw away more stuff.

Okay, not even done with one room. But this is a big deal, that I was able to move the furniture by myself (should have just done the one piece and left the other, as the other piece had to be lifted instead of just dragged to the new spot, but I managed), and that half the room is the way it is supposed to be, and the other half should be easier (no furniture needs to be lifted, and most of the actual trash is gone).

I am about out of certain cleaning supplies, so I can tell myself I took a break because of that and get right back on it Monday.

So my husband came home to his surprise and said that is just how he would have moved things, if he weren't so lazy.

Anyway, after all the complaining about not having enough work, this week stuff has been added from another division so that he has six things scheduled. He is starting to whine a bit about stuff that might happen at the other division, but I am thinking that a total switch might be best. It might have most of the advantages of having a new job, without the stuff like losing our health insurance.

Today we will probably go out (though I'm not sure where), and then after lunch we will go to my brother's and watch Riverworld. While they are hoping that it is better than the last one, I had never read the book and thought the last one was okay. Anyway, it is a two-parter, which usually means that they have put more work into it than the usual SyFy movies. We will see.

Well, I did manage to do one thing yesterday. I made yogurt, which if I did it right should be ready to use just about when I finish writing this. I didn't do any special measuring or take temperature readings or anything. No fuss. I just decided to accept that everything done last time was correct and try doing it without the thermometer. If I'm going to do this on a regular basis, that is the way it will have to be. If I have to spend all day checking on it then it becomes a serious chore and I'll make excuses for not doing it. This way I'll have no excuse.

Also, after today, I plan to eat what I am supposed to for the rest of the week and compare that to the dollar a day thing. So we'll see how that goes.

Now back to the usual stuff, like whining about cleaning and such.

Last week's dollar a day thing

Okay, so Monday's total was $0.79, Tuesday I got sick and had a total of $2.11, Wednesday's total was $0.62 (because my mom bought me a sandwich), and Thursday's total was $0.63. Plus I twice ate popcorn for breakfast, which I have yet to figure out what that cost, and I had a bunch of crackers, which again I'm not sure how much that cost but I think it was twenty-five cents.

I did not make the rest of the quinoa, only the third of a pound that I have already listed (which I got on sale so only cost $0.34 for what I ate the two days). Friday and Saturday I ate spaghetti instead. I know that whole grains are supposed to be better for me, but I really like spaghetti.

On Friday, my brother gave me half of his hamburger for dinner. On Saturday I drank most of the remaining orange drink, and I had spaghetti twice.

Friday
(?) popcorn
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
.04 orange breakfast drink
free half of hamburger
total
.46 (plus popcorn)

Saturday
.16 egg
.04 orange breakfast drink
.14 diet cola
.17 pasta
.17 pasta
free asparagus
.06 more orange drink
total
.74

Now, I can't really figure in the little bit of oil or the sprinkles of Parmesan cheese or the salt, so I'm just not going to count them. If I count twenty-five cents for the crackers and another twenty five cents for the popcorn, the total is $5.85, or just a bit under the six dollar goal. But if the popcorn turns out to be fifty cents, then the total would be $6.10, and I've gone just a bit over.

In either case it doesn't matter, as my husband came home sooner than expected, and we went to Burger King. Now, I had already eaten my spaghetti, so I didn't need to eat anything myself, but I did go with him (and steal some of his french fries) and I ordered a very small Coke, which was a dollar, so that puts me at either just under or just over seven dollars for the six days, and ten dollars for the whole week.

You'll notice that my husband was only home for two meals this week, and we ate out at both of them.

So while I don't really think that I could live on a dollar a day for more than a couple of weeks, I can do a lot with that amount of money, and I can really do a lot with about twice that amount of money. But I can't do anything social (except when other people buy me stuff, or when it is just bringing homemade foods), and I can't do it at all if we don't actually stay home and eat what is in the frig.

In the past experiments I have had homemade yogurt, which I did not make this time, partially because I didn't think there was enough money left to do it, partially because some of the things cost more now than they did last time I did the experiment, and partially because the area of the kitchen where I would make the yogurt is currently a big mess and I can't deal with it right now. Anyway, I've been bad and haven't been eating my yogurt anyway, so I didn't see that it was totally necessary to have that as part of the experiment this time. But if I were doing it for real, for a long period of time, the yogurt would have to be in.

I had no dairy to speak of this time. I had planned to eat six eggs this week, but with the upset stomach once I thought ramen noodles would be better, and two other times I ate popcorn instead. Not the best of choices. And except for the sprinkles of Parmesan I didn't have any milk or anything made from milk. As a woman, I am supposed to have three servings a day, and I think what I ate might count as half a serving a day. The price of milk has gone up, so I think a cup of milk would have cost at least nineteen cents, and the homemade yogurt would have cost at least twenty-five cents. If you have those three times a day, that takes up most of a dollar.

I did not spend the whole week wishing I could eat a lot of meat (maybe this has something to do with being given a sandwich on Wednesday and half of a hamburger on Friday), but I was surprised how bad I wanted a pickle. (There's a song about wanting a pickle, but we won't get into that.) And olives. I want olives. Things like pickles and olives would add up, and I didn't have any this week, except for those on my sandwich and half hamburger. That would get annoying, to either give up little things like that or else have to make them part of the budget and have to count every little pickle and olive and pepper and such.

And of course, there's very little stuff like chocolate. I bought some clearance Easter chocolate, but I didn't eat any of it, it is saved for next week. I almost went the whole week without any, except that I took some asparagus to my mom and she gave me half an ounce or so.

There would hardly be any snacks, except for popcorn, unless it was something that came out of the garden.

I'm sure that I am going to go someplace for lunch. But later I will eat something at home and eat pickles and olives, and later this week I expect to bake something, probably cookies. I have had no cookies for more than a week. That's a long time for me to go without cookies.

The week so far

Okay, Monday I got a lot of work done. Tuesday I felt a bit sick and really didn't do anything except run a couple of errands. Wednesday I got a bit of work done, but not as much as Monday, and then Mom called and said she wanted to buy me a sandwich. Thursday, about all I did was paint some boards, which is some work, but mostly is a lot of time waiting for stuff to dry. Still, at the end of the day I am quite worn out, so the painting is more physical work than I am aware of while I'm doing it.

Tuesday, I went to mail the tax returns. I almost put the thing in the mailbox without a stamp (the census forms did not need stamps). We had stamps in the house, but they turned out to be old, and I couldn't find any that were forty-four cents. So I had to go to the post office. The machines were taken out of the post office, because they were getting old and they didn't have replacement parts for them. So I had to stand in line a little bit to buy one stamp from a real person.

I had to pay sixty-four cents. Apparently the envelope provided for the tax returns counts as an over-sized envelope. So not only do we have to buy a stamp (when you think you wouldn't have to since the envelope is going to the federal government), then you get charged twenty cents extra cause the federal government selected a large envelope. But I guess that it was good that I had to talk to a real person, or else I would have bought a regular stamp and maybe had the thing returned to me for insufficient postage.

On Wednesday my mom called and asked if I wanted to got eat something with her. She had a buy one get one free sandwich coupon, so I could have a free sandwich. Sure, why not. And it actually was a pleasant meeting, and she did not try to guilt me into doing anything or discuss anything that I told her was off limits.

My husband has not called recently. He sent me an email saying that the phone didn't work. (Odd that there was no phone but at some point there was a computer.) Anyway, if you are reading this, someone called about camera equipment and craigslist. I wasn't really paying attention, and I'll have to listen to the message again.

Here's my latest attempt at the dollar a day thing.

I was going to start Sunday, but I didn't, cause we went to McDonald's. I suppose I could say that someone bought me stuff at McDonald's and not count it, but I don't think it is in the spirit of the thing if it's my husband doing the buying, as it is the same money that I would be spending if I were buying something myself. The rest of Sunday I ate leftovers. So the dollar a day thing was shortened at least to six days, which would then start on Monday instead of Sunday.

Monday
.04 orange breakfast drink
.16 egg
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
.17 quinoa
free asparagus
total
.79

Tuesday
.04 orange breakfast drink
.15 ramen noodles
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
1.00 chocolate milk
.50 half a package of mac and cheese
(?) popcorn (I will have to look this up later)
total
2.11 (plus popcorn)

Wednesday
.04 orange breakfast drink
.16 egg
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
free sandwich and coke from Mom
total
.62

Thursday
.04 orange breakfast drink
(?) popcorn
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
.17 quinoa
free asparagus
total
.63 (plus popcorn)

Plus I have eaten a bunch of crackers, which I'm not sure how much they cost, but I'm guessing about twenty-five cents. But you can see that at this rate I'll go a bit over six dollars, unless my mom gets me another free sandwich or something. And this is for feeling a bit sick and spending an extra two dollars, instead of getting what I really wanted that day--pecan sandies, ice cream, and Chinese takeout.

Substitutions

Tuesday, I just didn't feel well. Not quite actually sick, but just not feeling right. At times I would think that it wasn't going to be so bad, and I might as well get up and do something. And then I would get a twinge and think, no, that's not a good idea. I'm going to get worse. I'm really going to be sick and I might as well get used to the idea and do something so that it won't be so bad.

I thought about what would make me feel better. Eating a whole lot of cookies makes me feel better, but that isn't really good for me. But I was thinking that I could make a whole lot of cookies out of this cake mix I got on clearance (not this year, and not even last year, and I still have lots of it left) and all I would have to do was add a half stick of margarine and two eggs. That would cost about fifty-five cents. Then I could eat cookies. I could probably eat cookies instead of eggs for breakfast. Maybe I could even eat cookies for dinner. I could eat cookies and still do this dollar a day thing.

But the dollar a day thing isn't important. I was going to drink less soda this week, have less sugar, and here I was thinking that eating cookies for breakfast might be the thing to do.

Probably not a good idea.

I gave up and went to the dollar store for some over the counter meds, and while I was there I bought mac and cheese and a pint of chocolate milk. So I have so far spent an extra two dollars that I had not planned to spend. And I think that I will just have to say that I've gone over six dollars and leave it at that.

I keep thinking of something I saw, maybe with John Hirsch, maybe in Taxi (though I really can't remember and I never did watch much of Taxi). Anyway, there is this man at a restaurant that he probably can't afford. And he keeps trying to make it work out that he can eat there. He keeps asking the waiter what comes with what and can he make substitutions. And then he ends up saying something really silly, like can he substitute another meatloaf for the sprig of parsley.

So I keep thinking that maybe I can substitute something and still only use six dollars for the six days. But I should give up on that. The chocolate milk and the mac and cheese did make me feel a bit better, and without most of the added sugar of eating a whole bunch of cookies. Spending less than a certain amount of money isn't really the important thing this week. Not being sick is important. Getting some work done is important. Maybe not ingesting a lot of sugar is important.

It may not always be that way. I think that if I don't want to do eat what I have planned to eat, I don't have to. There are other things in the house to eat, and if I really wanted to, I could spend ten dollars or so and go buy Chinese food, or a pizza, or ice cream, or something at a bakery. I could do something like that to make myself feel better.

If I really only had four hundred dollars to spend on food for the year, and I spent a dollar a day, and then I didn't feel well and went out and spent ten dollars, I could do that, once. I could do that a second time and a third time. The fourth time I wouldn't quite have ten dollars left, and I would maybe look around on the ground for someone's dropped change. The fifth time I would just be out of luck, unless I happened to find a ten dollar bill that someone dropped.

Anyway, I felt good again yesterday, but this morning, not so much. We will have to see.

And now I'm going to be sick

Of course I'm going to be sick. Whenever I feel like I'm almost going to get something done, something happens. So I'm not feeling good.

Okay, so on the one hand I have gardening to do, and cleaning to do, and I usually get more of that done when I have the place to myself, which is what I have this week, so I should be getting stuff done. And then I thought I'd do this dollar a day thing, and maybe I'd save some money, and maybe I'd lose a couple of pounds.

I think I got a lot done yesterday. I think that I might have done more, but the main thing that I wanted to do was empty and move a planter, which I did, so that's good. After doing that much work, I don't feel well. Doan's pills really do a lot for me, so my back doesn't feel like it did, but the rest of me still hurts.

Anyway, I woke up last night after only being asleep for about an hour, and I saw a few bugs. And I recently bought this "green" bug spray, which doesn't quite smell as bad as regular bug spray. So I chased away a few bugs. I'm not sure if "green" bug spray kills as much as regular bug spray, but it got rid of those.

And then I tried to go back to sleep. Only now there's this smell of "green" bug spray, which isn't as bad as regular bug spray, but still it bothered me a bit, and I couldn't sleep. So with the smell of bug spray and not getting as much sleep as I hoped for, I feel a bit nauseous.

So now I'm just mostly staying in bed watching Star Trek DVDs. Now I wonder if I drop the whole dollar a day thing and eat something that would make me feel better, would I feel good enough to go back to work and get everything done? Or, should I go ahead an ate what I had planned? It might be that I'm just not going to feel better either way, and I should just stick to what I was doing, go back to bed, and watch more Star Trek.

Another thing I could do that would make me feel better but would really not be good for me is to eat a lot of cookies. And, oddly enough, I could get some really cheap cookies and still spend less than a dollar. But that is tons of sugar. Here I had bought diet cola, and I'm thinking of making cookies.

Okay, I'll decide later. Back to Star Trek.

A dollar a day week

I found another blog about trying to spend only a dollar a day for food. Only this one is a bit more ambitious. She's trying to do this for a whole year.

Well, most of a year. She cheats once in a while. And, since it is for the whole year she isn't totally cancelling her social life either. If someone wants to make or buy her dinner, she will let them.

So I was going to do the dollar a day thing with her this week. I have the house to myself for a bit, and I should like to save some money, so this is a good time to do it.

Okay, yesterday before my husband left we went to McDonald's. I had breakfast off of the dollar menu, but still, that adds up to three dollars and tax. So yesterday doesn't count. I ate leftovers the rest of the day.

Okay, so I'll do six days instead of seven.

First thing I always do is make black bean soup. I went to the store and spent $5.13, $1.49 was for two rather sad looking onions. Onions, even at my cheap produce place, have gone up to $1.29 a pound. While I usually make twelve cups of the soup for less than three dollars, this time it cost $3.38.

Still, it isn't too bad. About a week ago I found some quinoa on sale for a dollar a pound. It is usually more like three or four a pound, so I bought ten pounds. I keep wondering if I should have bought more, but I had an image of greedy little me emptying the shelves, spending a lot of money, and then having something happen resulting in either me not cooking or the grain getting spoiled some other way, so I decided that ten pounds was enough. I don't usually eat the stuff on a regular basis. Maybe I'll get tired of it before the ten pounds are gone.

Where was I? Oh, yes, I've measured out about a pound of the quinoa, which cost me $1.03. And I bought a dozen jumbo eggs, after being surprised that the large eggs weren't on sale for Easter. The eggs were $1.89 a dozen, and I plan to eat half of them. And I plan to eat half of the soup. And I plan to eat asparagus with the quinoa. And I spent $1.10 on my special diet cola, and then thirty cents on some diet breakfast drink I got on sale quite a while ago but forgot to make.

So that's $1.69 for the soup, $1.03 for the quinoa, $0.95 for the eggs, and $1.40 for the drinks. And I'm getting the asparagus out of my garden for free, so that's $5.07. I don't know how to figure in a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese or herbs, but I should think that it would be less than the $0.93 I have left. I'll probably add something to this, like popcorn. And I'll make a note if I decide to eat more of the soup or an extra egg or something.

And, like the new blogger, I reserve the right to quit if I should win the lottery, become ill, or find some other good reason. And if someone should invite me to lunch, I will probably accept.

The first day of asparagus

There was asparagus in the back yard today. Not just tons of it, but I cut six stalks of it. I have enough that I will either eat it with pasta tomorrow for lunch, or maybe I'll eat it later today.

I mostly write this as a note to myself, so I'll know what day it was, so I'll know what day to expect it next year.

I didn't like asparagus until rather late in life. I must have been nearly thirty. I only like it if I cook it. Everyone else overcooks it or makes stuff with canned or frozen. I don't like any of that. Anyway, I decided to plant lots of asparagus where I used to live. And then when it was growing enough to eat it, I had to move away.

Maybe now I'll have to move away from here too.

I think it would be nice if there were all different kinds of asparagus, different flavors, different growing times, different colors. It would be nice if there were chili pepper flavored stalks that just grew out of the ground without having to plant it every year. Or tomato flavor. Or squash flavor.

I like my garden, but I don't like the work. Asparagus is a lot of work, but once it is done, it's done, and you can just enjoy it for ten years or more. Except for fruit trees and rhubarb, I can't think of much else that works that way.

The cabbage soup diet

I am writing this just after lunch on Tuesday. Before that, I had not eaten any meat since lunch on Saturday.

I guess that everyone has seen the magazine headlines for odd diets that promise to shed so many pounds or so many inches. Some of them sound good, some of them sound awful, and I guess that I just don't believe what most of them say anyway. The cabbage soup diet is supposed to help you lose up to ten pounds if you do it for a week.

The diets all say "up to" some amount. Losing zero pounds would be included in the "up to" ten pounds, right? So that would probably be what I would get for my efforts. Zero weight loss. Or maybe like two pounds of weight loss that I would put back on the next week.

And cabbage soup just sounded awful anyway.

A while back, my husband made some cabbage soup. Not a diet cabbage soup, just a soup that happened to have cabbage in it. It was pretty good. I thought maybe I had misjudged cabbage.

I was thinking that I should start eating better. Well, I am always thinking that, and never doing it. My husband was going out of town for a few days. It is easier to eat better when he isn't here. And, if I were ever going to try one of these stupid sounding diets, that would probably be easier to do when he isn't here.

So, I had pretty much decided to do this silly cabbage diet for a week, just to see what would happen. Ten pounds of weight loss sounded unreasonable. Maybe would it be five pounds. Five pounds would be worth the effort, right?

And then my husband's trip out of town got cancelled, but I decided to do some of it anyway. Maybe starting Sunday. Saturday we had lunch at Whataburger, and I had a fish sandwich. Fish isn't bad for you, but the ton of mostly mayonnaise sauce probably isn't too good for you.

Saturday night I went out with friends, and somehow we ended up at a Greek place instead of the restaurant we had agreed on earlier. It was more expensive than places I normally go to. I spent thirteen dollars on a vegetarian plate. It wasn't quite the cheapest thing on the menu, but it was the cheapest thing that I didn't have to pay extra for a side of hummus, and I like hummus. I had some fun talking to my friends, and I took half of the food home with me. It was good, just maybe not thirteen dollars plus tax and tip good.

Okay, now it is Sunday, and I'm supposed to start this diet, and I make some soup. Only then I remember that I have these leftovers from the Greek restaurant, and I have to eat them for lunch or the food will go to waste. And I'm not going to waste food that cost me thirteen dollars plus tax and tip. Besides, I like hummus. So the diet could not officially start on Sunday, so I also ate a couple of cookies and some nuts, but mostly I ate leftovers and a bowl of soup.

Okay, so then it was Monday, and I'm officially going to try this diet, sort of. I made this soup. I'm surprised that there's all this other stuff in the soup and only half a head of cabbage. I am missing a few things that were supposed to be in the soup, like a bell pepper and mushrooms and I didn't quite have enough tomatoes. And I didn't have Lipton's onion soup mix, so I substituted a ramen noodle seasoning packet. Close enough, right? The idea is to eat a soup that has no meat or added fat and just has a lot of veggies. I did that.

Well, even with only half a head of cabbage and all of this other stuff in the soup, the soup mainly tastes like cabbage. And it is nothing like the soup my husband made. For one thing, my husband's soup had potatoes and lots of this fancy bacon stuff. This soup doesn't have either of those. And when my husband made the soup, he didn't add the cabbage until right before serving. So I should have made the rest of the soup and then just added the cabbage right before reheating, but I forgot, so the first bowl of soup had nice fresh crisp cabbage, and all of the rest had regular mushy cabbage that I don't care for.

On the cabbage soup diet, you make this soup, and you eat as much soup as you want, and then you eat this other stuff, depending on what day it is. So on the first day, you eat soup and you drink water, and you eat all the fruit you want except you can't have any bananas. Okay, so on Monday I ate some of the soup and some pineapple and an apple. By Monday night I really hate the soup, even though I've only had about three bowls of it.

I am thinking that the point of the cabbage soup diet isn't really about however much you might lose that week, but how much you would appreciate other foods after you get done eating this awful soup. You would be just so happy to eat skinless chicken breasts and broccoli and fat-free salads and anything else you're supposed to eat as long as it isn't this cabbage soup.

I think that I am there already. I don't need to torture myself for the rest of the week. Boring skinless chicken breasts and broccoli sound really good.

Still, I spent money on this stupid idea, and I'm not going to waste the food. I'm going to eat the rest of this soup. I didn't make that much of it, and what I did make I have eaten half of it. I will eat the rest and try to make something better tasting with the rest of the veggies. I will try to eat the rest of the cabbage too, maybe if I remember not to overcook it.

The second day of the diet you are supposed to drink plenty of water, eat as much soup as you want, and eat as much veggies as you want but not have any fruit. And as far as veggies go you are supposed to stay away from beans and peas and corn. Avocados aren't mentioned, but I'm assuming that you stay away from them during the whole diet.

I remember that a friend mentioned getting a free sandwich from Jack-In-The-Box on Thursday. Maybe I can do this diet thing until Thursday.

I look on the computer and find out that the free sandwich thing is today, Tuesday, not Thursday. Happy to have an excuse, I go to lunch with my husband and get a free sandwich after buying a giant soda. I wonder how many calories were in the sandwich? I think that I drank about two hundred calories of soda, and then I put the rest in a bottle and into the fridge for later. Drinking the whole soda was probably close to eight hundred calories. I don't need it. Not today.

Okay, diet experiment over. Bad idea. I will force myself to eat the last of the soup later today, and tomorrow I might think about eating only veggies tomorrow. But then after that I'm going to eat a nice sensible low fat chicken. And I've already bought the chicken, so there's no way that I'm not going to eat it.