Diet update: The good news is the scale said 174.

The bad news is the scale I used is the lying-sack-of-shit bathroom scale that I estimate is off by six pounds.

So I'll say I weigh 180. I'm actually relieved. Somehow I pictured myself as having gained every one of the 18 pounds I lost back. Mind you, that would have involved spending my Christmas vacation eating something like 3,000 extra calories a day, which, while not impossible, takes some doing. Training, even. You know, like someone getting ready to enter a pie-eating contest.

You know, I thought I was being whimsical when I typed that last sentence, but on second thought, I'm not. For a real eye-opener, check out this week's People magazine--the January 14th issue with the people on the cover who had lost half their weight. There's an article where they show what these people used to eat on a typical day, and what they eat now. Teresa Williams used to weigh 310 pounds. And Teresa Williams really did used to eat 10,000 calories a day. Want to know what that would entail? From Page 97:

Breakfast: 6 cinnamon rolls and a large chocolate milk

Lunch: 1 entire box of Lucky Charms and a half-gallon of milk

(OK, so at least she didn't have to worry about getting enough calcium. Plus, let's face it: when you weigh that much, simply walking around is weight-bearing exercise.)

Dinner: 2 Taco Bell half-pound burritos, 2 Reeses Peanut Butter Cups

Snacks: 2 brownies, 8 fried mozzarella sticks, 12 jalapeno poppers with ranch dressing, 1/2 gallon ice cream

At 5' 8", Teresa Williams now weighs 150 and is a size 8. I do not, and am not.

But I'm still down 13 pounds from when I started Weight Watchers. I don't have to panic that I've given away a lot of my size 16 clothes.

Basically, I'm only a few bowls of oatmeal--and 10,000 hours on the treadmill--away from my goal.

The Wednesday Weigh In that wasn't

You can imagine how enthusiastic I felt about heading to my Weight Watchers meeting this morning.

I just knew the meeting would be packed with all the people whose New Year Resolution was to lose weight. I knew the news from the scales was going to be bad, bad, bad. How could it not be bad when I spent the last month sitting on my ass, drinking champagne, eating chocolate, and watching House, M.D., where, for some reason, no one ever seemed to be dying of obesity-related illnesses like diabetes or hardening of the arteries or stuckinthebathtub-itis.

My weight gain? Hugh Laurie's fault. Damn him and his stubble-faced wonderfulness!

And then, at 8:00 or so this morning, when it came time to pack my daughter's backpack for school, I found a bunch of homework sheets that she had not done. So there I was, still in my pajamas, trying to get some of her homework finished and properly slotted away into the binder ... grumpy past all my abilities to describe, yet trying to sound cheerful and loving and not like the kind of mother who stomps all over her daughter's self-esteem, minces it, dips it in flour, deep fat fries it, and EATS IT.

So I sent her off to school, not in tears or anything like that. Yay. But at that point, I really didn't want to go to my meeting.

Mind you, I do want to get to the gym. I do want to re-lose the weight I just finished losing, for God's sake. I do want to be back on track. Why, on Sunday, I had sushi for lunch. On Tuesday, I had a grilled shrimp salad. Yesterday I spent 90 minutes on my new treadmill watching Bringing up Baby.

But baby steps for now.

So I'm wearing one of those god-awful Juicy Couture knock-off velour track suits. I'm going to make the beds, clean up the kitchen, and pack the van with a nice selection of rummage. If I have time, I'll get on the treadmill. (Maybe watch House, M.D.) And I will not drink champagne while I'm on it.

Tomorrow I will weigh myself on my friendly (i.e., lying sack of shit) bathroom scale. And I will post the number.

Honestly, what I do for my darling Hugh you people.

And I thought the way my wrap skirts fall off was embarrassing

I took a "which presidential candidate should you support" quiz at GoToQuiz. No, I won't link to the quiz. I won't do it that much of a favor. I'm pissed off at it.

OK, I found it on Belinda's blog. If you want to take the quiz, stop by her place for the link. Tell her I said hello.

Or don't. Because I just found out I'm a pariah. It turns out that I, a card-carrying donation-making Democrat, do not support Hillary Clinton. (Well, of course I don't. Bitch is married to my boyfriend.) Hillary was in the number two spot, though. Guess who was number one?

No, not Barack O'Boyfriend.

John McCain. JOHN MCCAIN. Who is a REPUBLICAN.

I can't remember the last time I voted for a Republican. Actually, I don't think I ever have.

I have no idea how that happened. None. But I blame the quiz. Because the questions are all about "hot-button" issues. And hot-button issues don't really interest me.

Like immigration. My ancestors immigrated a long time ago, so even if there was some law-breaking going on at some point--even if old Isaac Stearns shaved a year off his apprenticeship and got the right to vote illegally--my nose is clean. I get grandfathered in. (Get it? Grandfathered?) So who am I to act high and mighty about the current crop of law-breakers?

Abortion? Look, if people would stop having sex all the time, there wouldn't be so many unwanted pregnancies. Honestly, what's with all the fucking? What are you, people, anyway--animals?

Health care? Hey, going to the doctor sucks no matter who's paying for it.

Iraq? Well, yes, what an international diplomacy love-fest that's been. But now that we're in up to our armpits, do I have a solution? No, I do not. And therefore, I think it's unfair for me to expect all those Presidential candidates (and really, who the hell are these guys, anyway?) to have one.

But John McCain? You know who supports John McCain?

MY MOTHER.

Poppy writes a prescription

I'm not a doctor, but I know a sure cure when I see one.

So I'm going to pretend to be a doctor, and write a prescription for my readers, many of whom, (through some amazing coincidence) happen to be mothers generously blessed in the humor department.

If you're having a bad day, go read this. It's from finslippy's blog. Check out the comments.

I was ready to type in an entry today. My subject was going to be the combination of the two females of this household, a deadline, and a dearth of properly-working computer software and peripherals.

Why the good lord has been unusually lavish, even for Him, in the area of computers (six at last count, in a household with only four inhabitants--which, yes, seems excessive) yet doesn't see fit to bless me with a working copy of Microsoft Word or a printer that actually prints, I do not know. I was therefore planning on exploring these matters in a blog entry, the working title of which was "The Permission Slip Follies." The entry would have featured an accurate portrayal of a certain grimness, seasoned with anxiety and panic, and would have ended with both parties bursting into tears.

However, I have now read every single one of the over 160 comments to that entry of finslippy's, and now I don't need to vent.

Check it out. In fact, bookmark it. I'm the doctor, and finslippy? Is the pharmacist.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig

OK, so yesterday we flew from New Hampshire to Chicago. The flight was fairly uneventful, except for the part where the guy sitting next to me practically exploded giving vent to the world's biggest sneeze--the kind where you can just picture the tiny droplets spreading rapidly through the entire plane--in slow motion--starting with where I was sitting. 

To make matters worse,  the flight attendants had just served our beverages. And I was really, really thirsty. 

So I had to make a decision: skip the water, or drink it and maybe die, like Myrna Loy in The Rains Came. This was not an easy decision to make. The Rains Came is kind of a silly melodrama about a woman redeeming her misspent youth by helping out in a hospital during a cholera epidemic in India. Eventually she forgets about the general germiness of life in India during a cholera epidemic, lifts a glass of water to her lips, and drinks. I'm all "MYRNA! Don't drink that!" but she does anyway. And you just know she's going to die.

Admittedly, I don't think raising my children to say "please" and "thank you" exactly qualifies as a nursing-the-cholera-patients level of self-sacrifice. But the glass of water with the sneeze juice in it seemed just as deadly as Myrna's.

At this point it's probably a good idea for me to mention that I spent my Christmas vacation watching marathon amounts of television episodes on DVD. And that in the space of three days, I watched the entire first season of House, M.D. And that is why I knew for sure that that sneeze COULD HAVE BEEN DEADLY.

And yet I drank the water anyway. I know, ew. But I really was thirsty. And I'm still alive!

Of course, when I walked into my house with its Christmas decorations all over the place, suitcases needing to be unpacked, laundry to do, plants needing watering, the turtle needing fresh water ... by the way, have you noticed that "thirsty" is today's secret word?

I leave you with two thoughts: this house is going to kill me. And I think I'm going to go get a drink.

On the Twelfth Day of Blogmas, my true love gave to me

11,


Ten,

Nine,

Eight,

Seven,

Six,

Five,

Four,

Three,

Two,

and a.

A shout out thank you note to my homies the nice people who link to me

If I made New Year's Resolutions, and I don't, one resolution I'd make would be to catch up on my correspondence.

At this point, I'm 12 or 13 years behind. This means I'll never catch up on the thank-you notes.

The weird thing is, I collect etiquette books. And I'm not just the president of Hair Club for Men; I'm a client. I read those etiquette books. I know the rules. I realize I should be writing thank-you notes for presents and dinner parties and such.

But I'm so organizationally-challenged that finding a pen that writes, some pretty writing paper, and stamps with the right amount of postage is well-nigh impossible for me. Just ask anyone who got a Christmas card from me.

How many of you received a card from Poppy? How many received it before Christmas? How many of you noticed that your card had a 37 cent stamp on it? (With some penny stamps added.) Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.

Anyway. If you were supposed to send thank-you notes for Internet favors, I would owe these fine bloggers a note. Because I checked out my stats. And the following are the top twenty wonderful bloggers who keep sending the clicks my way.

1. Mamarazzi (but that doesn't really count, since I'm one of the writers.)
2. Badger at Badger Meets World. This is very cool, because she's the one who got me into blogging in the first place. Yay Badger the enabler!
3. Susie Sunshine, who, alas, has gone pro and no longer posts to her delightful blog. One of the first "big name" blogging gals who linked to me.
4. RW formerly at Chasing Vincenzo, now at 1stepbeyond. A fellow Chicago blogger with a deservedly big fan base.
5. Joke at Same Thing But Different. Another long-time internet pal from way back when Usenet was big. Before blogging. Before FaceBook. Can you hear my knees creaking, children?
6. Sarah at lemon life. Another Chicago blogger, who chucked life in the la-dee-dah North Shore and moved to Colorado.
7. Blackbird at Say La Vee. Incredible blogger--blogs almost daily, so I stalk her. We have partied in real life. She has wined and dined me at her eponymous restaurant in Chicago. She has met my husband. Also my brother HENRY.
8. Jen Lancaster of Jennsylvania. OK, this is where I get incredibly dorky. I spotted someone holding a copy of Bitter is the New Black when I was boarding a flight at Midway airport and totally humiliated my son by saying, loudly, "I know her! She's a friend of mine!" I could have added "and she links to me," but people were beginning to stare. So I'll say it now. SHE LINKS TO ME.
9. Elizabeth of Suburban Cupcake and the late, lamented Preppy Cafe. She isn't blogging much these days, but she's still sending people by. I hope she starts blogging again soon. In the mean time, I'm sending her pink and green thoughtwaves.
10. Spring at Serenity. Oof, what a year she's had. Let's hope 2008 is lots more fun.
11. Nobody comments more than Flutter at Flutterby me Garden. Just watch out for her when you're on your way to the DMV.
12. Sarah Louise at pink sneakers n'at--a librarian h great taste in books who still finds the time to read me, bless her.
13. Boomama, who runs an annual Christmas tour of homes. I'd never read her blog, but when I found out about the Christmas tour, I ran over there and added my link. Like the shameless attention whore I am. And what a response! I mean, hello, she only starting sending people over here in December, and she's in the top 20 for the entire year. You should check her out--she's a great, self-deprecating writer, and her blog is a really fun read.
14. Jennifer at Jen on the Edge whom I heart for so many reasons, but especially because we're both going through an insane fix-up-the-house period. If you've ever tried to redo your kitchen and not pop for new cabinets, you need to read this post.
15. Diesel at Humor Blogs, a site I joined way back when, based on a fundamental misunderstanding on his part: that this is a humor blog. Unfortunately, this is more of a Poppy Cracks Herself Up blog, so I'm not very active over there ... but Diesel, I'll be back reviewing any day now. Just as soon as I finish writing my thank-you notes.
16. Denise at Do You Have That in My Size? writes about many of the things that drive me crazy, too, like our shared tendency to be plumper than we'd like.
17. jessalogic at Days Go By is freezing her ass off in Nova Scotia! It's cold and dreary and Christmas is over. Send her some love!
18. Now that I'm addicted to House, M.D., I have even more respect bordering on reverence for anyone doing a hospital rotation. Especially one who who just had a baby. Hello? I'm still recovering form childbirth, and my youngest is 10. Therefore, I am honored to be getting clicky love from the kilowatthour.
19. Kim from Sydney at All Consuming. Her blog is home-like, yet exotic. And when she writes about food, it's drool-worthy.
20. Diesel again, this time at his main blog, The Mattress Police.

Thanks and Happy New Year to all of you!