Wednesday, May 28, 2008

In which I consciously choose self-torture

Oprah is doing a 21 day vegan cleanse and I decided to join in. No animal products, no caffeine, sugar, alcohol or gluten.  I know it is a bit extreme, but I have been struggling really hard with my weight for the last few months, dieting during the week and then bingeing on the weekends.  It seems so out of control that it feels like it is some kind of disease, the symptoms of which include eating an 1800 calorie quesadilla and sitting in front of the tv with my head all the way inside a bag of candy.  It's tragic, really.

I know that it is sick to say it, but sometimes I think it would be better if I were anorexic.  At least I'd be thin. But I know it would just be a different side of the same problem.  The eating disorder I really wish I could cultivate is exercise bulimia.  It seems like a reasonable disorder, you get to eat, and then you get to exercise.  A lot.  The only problem with it is I hate exercising, so I suppose that renders my candidacy moot.    

Another reason I wanted to do the cleanse is to see if I might have some food allergies.  I think that I may  have a wheat sensitivity, because when I eat a lot of bread and other wheaty things, I tend to get very congested the next day and also my eczema acts up.  Charming, no?  Maybe this cleanse will help me figure that out.  Or maybe it will drive me into a family size bag of Cheetos and a bottle of Prosecco.  We'll see.

Monday, May 12, 2008

In which I obsess

As a resident of southern California, I recently decided it might be prudent to care about earthquake preparedness.  Now, the building I live in was built in 1941 and seems to be in fairly decent shape, so I'm not really concerned about that.  Check! 

I'm not worried about food - I have enough gorgonzola and 5 year gouda to keep me busy for a couple of days, and after that, I won't have to worry about going to the bathroom.  So, check, check!  

The one thing I am worried about is water, so on Sunday I purchased the requisite one gallon per person per day for three days = three gallons of water. When I got home, the dilemma began.  The logical place to keep them is the kitchen, but where in the kitchen?  In the cabinets above the counters or down below?  What if I put them up top and then the ceiling caves in and I can't get to them?  What if they are in the bottom cabinets and those get blocked by debris?  What if I can't get into the kitchen at all?  Should I keep the water in a different room - what about the bathroom - in the closet?  Maybe I should get six more gallons of water, three for the closet, three for the bathroom.  Keep some under the bed.  Right.  Pretty soon my apartment, filled with plastic jugs of water, is going to look like some bizarre art installation in Chelsea.  One day I won't show up for work and they will find me prostrate on my living room floor buried under the nine hundred water bottles of water I had to store on the bookshelf JUST IN CASE.

These are the kinds of things I worry about.  And this is me medicated, folks.

Last night, I watched Nightline and they were recapping the day's events in China where thousands of people, including many children, were killed in an earthquake.  After that report was over, I finished reading Elie Wiesel's Night and then laid there thinking how lucky, lucky, lucky I was, even if it was only for that moment, to be safe, warm, comfortable and hydrated in my own bed.