Left for work early again today, drove Beta to the train station. Light was good, days are getting longer, it was nice to be able to see things on the way to the office again, like fields covered in snow, patches of fog, a sky freezing cold and nearly white, tail end of a sunrise fading from purple to orange, icicles a meter long (that’s about 39 inches for those of you etc etc) hanging from the freeway overpasses.

Yes, it’s been good icicle weather. Damn, icicle is one of those words, the more you look at it, the more it looks like a spelling error.

Icicle, icicle, icicle, icicle. Icicleicicleicicleicicleicicleicicle.

It’s fasting season, so everyone is eating herring here today, except me. My sweetie is out of town for a week, it’s just me and the kids, and the grandparents. Oh and the cats. Mother-in-law emphasized last night, then emphatically reiterated, the importance, the essential necessity, that I not pack the kids any meat products or by-products in their school lunches this morning. So they got bread-and-butter, and strawberries (you’d think strawberries out of season would be more luxurious and non-fasting than bologna) and carrot sticks, because they always get carrot sticks. Gamma feeds them to her friends in school, or trades them for sweets. Not sure what Beta now does with hers. In grade school she also distributed them. I kept her entire class in carrot sticks.

Kids who distribute carrot sticks are high up in the pecking order in Austrian schools, or something. They also buy friends with the chocolate chip cookies I sometimes bake.

So anyway, no bologna so God is happy. Or at least my mother-in-law. Is there a difference?

Id: Woo! Woo! Woet! Yes!
Superego: Ssshh!

Ego: Relax, both of you. The windows are up. Anyway, she’s wearing a coat. What’s with you, Id?
Id: Under the coat she’s naked!
Superego: You’re disgusting.
Ego: She’s wearing jeans and a sweater under the coat.
Id: The jeans were faded, did you see that? They were faded in a way that suggests she has a butt.
Ego: Everyone has a butt, except maybe for that actress who was in, what was that movie called? Speed?

Superego: Sandra Bullock has no butt?
Ego: I remember her saying that in an interview. What do I know?
Id: Ha! You said butt!
Superego: Grow up.
Ego: You know what? I’m tired of both of you. [Stops car at red light.] Both of you, in the back seat right this minute. Gestalt, get up here in front.

Gestalt. Heh.
Superego: But without me you’d do something you regret.
Ego: The only thing I regret is paying any attention to your prissy, wet-blanket party-pooping fear-mongering warnings all my life.
Id: Hah! You the man! But without me you’d have no fun.
Ego: Fun? What fun? You think you’re so bad, but what trouble have you gotten me into? What fun have I ever had on account of you? All my youth, there I was, surrounded by cheap booze, fast cars and beautiful interesting people and your idea of fun was to find where my dad hid the nasty magazines he found on the bus.
Superego: Under the mattress.

Ego: Where else?
Superego: Did you ever find the quirt in the dresser?
Ego: No fooling?
Gestalt: Heh. Look at the big picture, man.
Id: But…
Superego: But…

Ego: Forget it. From now on, I’m driving.
Superego: The Id’s on my half.
Id: Am not. Go run for President, why don’t you.
Ego: Pipe down back there, I’ve had it.
Gestalt: Heh. Where’s the Sepultura CD?

Ten years ago I lost fifteen pounds without dieting, and kept it off for a long time. Beta, who was then four, had a medical condition which required that she abstain from eating anything containing various ingredients including primarily white flour, yeast, and sugar. We decided to support her for the several months she ate like that by eating that way too. We could eat as much as we wanted, as long as it didn’t include this list of ingredients.

Have you ever read the list of contents of anything you buy in the store? Everything contains sugar and yeast. It was like raw carrots for us, and one or two other things. But very healthy.

So that’s what I’m going to try again. Sometime soon. The idea of processed food is increasingly repugnant to me anyway. The food that I eat, I think, ought to be something simple. Like, food. Not some industrial product.

Like, besides the fact that my kids hate it, the idea that consuming tobacco supports rich subsidized monopolists who willingly trade the health of millions for more money makes it easier for me to refrain from smoking.

One could, I think, come up with political diets. The no-grain diet, in protest of those vast fields of wheat. The no-corn diet. The no feedlot meat diet. Whatever.

I’m cutting down on sugar, yeast and white flour, and you won’t catch me eating tobacco either.

Gamma had two friends over so when I got home late last night the house looked as if… imagine faeries are having a war and are going off to war, or are going away for a long time for some reason like to college or off on some faery quest and they have a big paerty beforehaend to say good bye to their faemilies and fraends and shag their sweethearts senseless in all sorts of constellations in one, potentially final, huge bash with faery lights hovering around and a gigantic punchbowl full of some delectable intoxicating nectar-like liquid pulsating like disco lights and glitter, glitter everywhaer. That’s what the house looked like. I thought, eh, little girls at play. I even had glitter on me and I had only been home five minutes. From the upstairs, clear down to the cellar, glitter tracks.

And Gamma was tired.

And we went to bed.

And this morning, wind and sand blowing in from the Sahara. Pretty sunsets.

Cats sleeping here and there. Glittering cats.

I’m cranky as hell. Cynical and sarcastic and nasty.

Gamma stood beside me. Placed one hand on my back, one hand on my stomach, and said, “whoa, dad,” in a serious tone. I’d read that if you want to lose weight, best way is to eat 5-6 meals a day instead of just 3 or heaven forbid, fasting. Maybe they should be smaller than average maels. I’ll have to try that next week.