The Dieter's Lament

It's January, which means I am on a diet.

Incidentally, I hate all of you.  It's not your fault, necessarily.  It's just that my kids get to eat more than I do and that makes me really cranky.  Of course, if I spent my day running from one thing to the next and jumping up and down for no reason, I could eat more too, but who wants to take responsibility for their own actions?  Aren't we still supposed to be blaming Bush?

Sunday night David made my most favorite oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (For the recipe, click here.  We leave out the nuts and double the chocolate chips to 2 cups).  After starving myself for half the afternoon to allow myself a more satisfying treat than "If you are a good girl you can look at this candy bar in its wrapper for a whole five minutes" David carefully measured and calculated that each little 2 tsp. cookie was 82 calories.  I ate seven.  He swore he would take the rest to work the next morning.  Instead, he left for work and there they were, staring at me from the counter.  At 8:49 AM I received a text from him:

"Dang.  I forgot to bring the cookies.  And that screw."

"And now I have a kitchen full of cookies," I replied.  "Talk about screwed."

Which brings me to a question: why can't cookies be healthy and celery be like, a thousand calories per stalk?  Because I never get tired of baked goods.  Celery, on the other hand... all I have to do is open the fridge and I've had my fill for the next seventy years.  Yeah, I know normal people get tired of sweet stuff, but if I were one of the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness and manna tasted like brownies, by the time everyone else started complaining about wanting something else to eat I'd be like "Nah, I'm good.  Are you going to finish that?"

Brownies... how I miss you.

Actually, you know what I miss most?  Milk.  I LOVE milk.  I would drink it all day if it weren't for the fact that water was all snooty and calorie-free.

The good news is that I don't have to pull that old "There are starving children in China" bit when it comes to getting my kids to eat their dinner.  I can just yell, "Your mother is starving right here at this table, and you don't want to eat?!"  Then I can burst in to tears while they finish their broccoli in stunned silence.

What?

I said I was cranky.