Sugar Challenge, Part II: Bordeaux

Did you know you can buy Pepperidge Farm Bordeaux cookies online, at Amazon? I didn't either – who would buy cookies from a website? Especially these cookies, which are everywhere. Everywhere! Which is exactly the problem, and the reason I had to go to Amazon to find a picture of them to go with this entry: because over the last 48 hours I've eaten a whole bag of them, and it made me so sick – both to eat them, and to see myself being unable to stop eating them – that I've decided to renew the Sugar Challenge and stop eating sugar altogether again.

Well, except for fruit. Fruit I can handle. But those cookies! It's like I imagine an alcoholic must feel when they think they can have just one little drink ... I can't stop until the bag is empty. Then the nausea, realization, self-loathing, bargaining, etc. – it all begins again. Bleah.

Anyway. I've been feeling the need to be online lately, even though I have nothing much to say. Mr. A is somewhere in the middle of the continent right now and I haven't heard from him in a couple of days, which is starting to worry me just a bit. He's usually very good about keeping in touch.

Also, I've been having the strangest lucid dreams all week. All night long I toss and turn, narrating the action to myself and contemplating its meaning as I go – "Okay, now here's a door – what's going to be behind it?" and imagining a variety of possibilities, and then deciding to let that go and enjoying the surprise when the door is opened – asking myself, "Hmm, now I'm in the basement of a parking garage – dream buildings represent the self – but why a parking garage? The basement might possibly indicate I'm exploring the hidden depths of the psyche - or is it the body? Maybe it's more of a chakra-based system? Hmm, and there are big dust bunnies drifting around against the walls ... Do I need some kind of deep cleansing? Psychotherapy? An enema perhaps? Or should I pick them up and pet them? Bunnies ... hmmm ... " They just continue to get more and more bizarre, with many levels of consciousness and deliberation ... Interesting and kind of fun to watch, like a movie, but not exactly restful.

When I first learned how to "do" lucid dreaming, I thought it was kind of cool. Now I'm thinking it would also be cool to learn how to shut it off.

Yesterday at work I was given a new computer that has (among many other amazing features) a built-in camera for videoconferencing. So of course I've been watching myself all day, and there's no doubt about it: jowls are beginning to form. Also, just the slightest suggestion of baggy under eye-ness, as well as several new silvery hairs I did not notice until I went into the bathroom just now to inspect the jowls. Damn. I guess it really does happen. Somehow I never quite believed I would ever get old. But I'm looking at the evidence right now on my web cam. If you're very nice to me maybe I'll post some of the snapshots I took ... man, this thing can do everything. Except make me look 25 again!