Eastern Europe and California---I Love You!

Day Two:

Projected Food Intake:
Soup and Vegetables

Actual Food Intake:
Cheerios, Leftover burrito, fruit, and perogies.


I've always wondered where we got our sterotypical Eastern European folk men and folk women. The tubby lil' cherubs with the ruddy faces, paisly headscarves and accents that sound as though they're speaking with a moutful of marbles. And fudge. But now I have the answer.
Perogies.
The buck stops here, diet-wise. Frankly, the whole idea of dieting and all that has always sounded vaguely stupid in my head. During Spring Break, with a lot of time on my hands, I figured I might as well try it before I knock it.
I have tried.
I will now knock.

This was one of the most singularily stupidest ventures I have ever set out upon. All I succeeded in doing was adding more roughage (sp?) and liquids to my diet while eating smaller portions at dinner. This is good. What is not good is that I have a huge stainless steel pot half full of soup sitting in my downstairs fridge.
Now in this case, it would be optimistic to say that the pot of soup is indeed, half EMPTY, rather than half full.
This soup is good, and I will eat it. But no amount of weight I could ever lose would make up for the self-imposed guilt I felt over eating the foods I liked. I did not stuff my face with greasy mounds of pizza and hamburgers and deep fried ice cream (which btw actually exists and is okay in moderation from this Mexican restuarant in town.) The point is, there's nothing horrendously wrong with the way I was eating before. If this 'diet' has made me do anything differently, it's been that instead of having pretzels or copping out for nachos with cheese, I am now reaching for fruit. I like fruit. And drinking lots of water. This is good. This is a good thing. Now comparitively, it's horrible; because I SHOULD be eating soup and nothing but soup and feeling miserable.
I find that I don't give a shit how I SHOULD be feeling about all of this. The fact is, I feel good. Great, in fact. I have made minor changes in my life that will affect me far better in the long term than crash dieting will in the next seven days. I am forming good habits rather than getting into the cycle of yo-yo dieting (which I have never experienced, as this was my first true attempt at any kind of established dieting scheme,) which I hear is really, really awful, and less healthy than consistant work.
Is it better that I should sit, feeling miserable because I'm eating soup, guilty because I ate a burrito and a handful of perogies over the last 48 hours; or, should I sit and feel happy because I like fruits, veggies, water, cranberry juice and skim milk and could very easily fit these things into my life on a regular basis to eke out the other good stuff I consume as opposed to existing solely on them for the next week?
Personally, I'd rather feel happy, eat what I like in moderation, and enjoy the diverse yet healthy fare that the planet has to offer. Don't even start with the chemicals and pestecides covering the juicy plum I'm about to bite into. If I can't see it or taste it, it might as well not be there. If I get cancer when I'm 50 or 60, so what? Hpefully they'll have cracker cancer treatments by the time I've consumed enough DDT-laden California strawberries to induce a tumor. If not, at least I'll have eaten a helluva lot of good strawberries.
Except, well, no offense California, but your strawberries suck. They have no taste. They are, however, very, very pretty, and look very well in pasteries and stuff with their size and colour. There are other things about you that I love, California. Your amusement parks are the cleanest I've seen anywhere; redwoods are kick ass trees (BC wins the Awesome Tree Race hands down, though;) Hollywood has put out some good stuff over the years, (also some shitty stuff but that's all a matter of opinion and we won't open that can of worms until we hit the GG and SB Awards;) and getting lost with my family while on vacation and circling through Inglewood in a rental car full of white Canadians was a scary thrill ride I'll never forget. To this day, I lock my doors when I drive, and I live in a town that can rival Florida for retirees per capita.
So thank you, California. And thank you, Eastern Europe, for making perogies and borscht accessible to the world.


Note: The Golden Gun and Silver Bullet Awards are coming soon! The Emmys were taken and the Jackies sound like something weird covered in body paint from a drink-sodden frat house Down Under, so here we are with the GGs and SBs! The lists are being tweaked up until the last minute before posting, so send us your comments and thoughts on who or what you think should be given either award. (GGs are on Santa's Nice List; conversely, SBs are on the Naughty.) And unless Andy stops bugging us about it, he will be stricken from the list of remote possibilities of receiving either award.


"Hiya kids, to thine own self be true, neither a borrower nor a lender be, and remember, drinkin' and drivin' don't mix!" (Actual quote from a hilarious radio play known as the 6 Minute Hamlet.)

Anyhow, catch you all on the flip side (where ever that is, I'll probably be there after last call at your local bar,) and remember to think of Em and Jackie for your everyday bitchy satire and pms-ing needs!
(Seriously, with this website, all you need is a blow-up doll with a caustic expression on her face and a mouth full of razor blades and you've got yourself a bonafide girlfriend.)