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.

Id: Woo! Woo hoo!! Baby!!
Superego: Please. Sshh. Have a little class.
Ego: It’s okay. The windows are rolled up.

Id: Man, did you see that leather miniskirt?
Superego: [Rolls eyes.]
Ego: I’m trying to drive. I’m concentrating on traffic.
Id: Walking up those stairs there. Woo!! Woo! Check that one out.
Superego: You’re terrible.
Gestalt: You’re all looking at it from the wrong perspective.

Ego: Who invited you?
Superego: You’ll have to leave. We don’t understand anything about Gestalt.
Id: Who gives a damn? Neither do 99% our readers. They’ll just think we’re smart.
Gestalt: You can let me out at this light.
Id: Baby! Look at those boots.
Superego: Sshh.

Id: Seventeen is such a hot age.
Superego: Sshh!

For instance:

1. He gets up early to pack lunches, empty and/or load the dishwasher, make coffee. When she gets up a few minutes later, he pours her coffee and all she has to do is look at him and he pours her milk too. No, not that milk, the other milk. That milk is past its expiration date, although it still tastes fine.

2. When he gets home from work and feigns shock (seriously, only feigns) that he has to serve himself and a kid dinner, the kid explains it like this: “Well, you’re the man, aren’t you?”
3. He knows which cat prefers which catfood. Like, they both eat the expensive gourmet stuff out of the foil astronaut envelopes designed to get catfood juice on your fingers, and both will eat the chunky stuff, although one prefers it with gravy and the other in aspic. The dead cat preferred the pat
   

Maybe now “President” Bush’s liberal critics will finally shut up about whether he ever went to the dentist while “serving” in the National Guard. Picture here.
(We must admit, however, that it does leave open the question of whether he flossed, not to mention did he regularly apply one of those little rubber pick things).

My question, though, is: What’s up with George Will’s toupee?