Pumpkin seeds for dinner

For dessert, actually. And I guess technically it wasn't really a pumpkin, but more of a pumpkin-like dark orange very hard winter squash, with stripes. In any case, I ate some of it for dinner and while I was eating that I roasted some of its seeds, and I ate some of those after dinner.

As it turns out, dark orange winter squash is something I can still eat with no scary numbers appearing afterwards ... for which I'm very grateful, because it's one of my favorite things in all the world to eat.

Yesterday and for a few days prior to that I've been eating the remains of a gigantic spaghetti squash I baked on Sunday afternoon. One cup of it, mashed, has only 10 grams of carbohydrate. It's not the yummiest kind of squash I know of but it does pair well with many different kinds of amendments and since its carb count is so low I feel pretty free to amend away. Olive oil, toasted pecans, dried cranberries, a few fine shavings of Parmesan, butter, fresh cracked pepper .... yow.

I did celebrate Halloween today, just barely, by wearing an enormous handlebar mustache to work. The packaging proclaimed it to be made of real human hair, and insists (the sentence appears twice) that it will "drasticly disguise you appearance." I was inspired by a large portrait of the founder of the company I work for – my old boss's however-many-greats-grandfather. Almost nobody was able to guess the object of my homage, even though the portrait is prominently placed in an important person's office. The mustache was so itchy I had to take it off before the afternoon was over.

Halloween has always been my least favorite of all the major holidays, but one thing it has going for it is that as soon as it's over, that means it's time for my most favorite holiday – Dia de los Muertos. This afternoon at work I found myself thinking about the people I've lost this year, in particular a friend who at this time last year was getting ready to take the last trip of her life, to Italy, before returning home to get down to the business of dying in earnest. I was listening to a mix CD she sent me not long before she died and this song sort of struck me as having captured a certain feeling that I remember feeling last year, thinking of her and all the lives she must have imagined living, that she knew she would never get to live. It sort of makes me cry to hear it, but it makes me happy too, because she did have such a great imagination and a big heart and an ability to really live the life she had, even when she knew it wasn't going to be a long one. And I'm glad I got a chance to know her.

She's also the one who turned me on to this site where you can upload music to share with friends, for free. I put a copy of the song up there in memory of her today. Go listen to it here, and send out a good thought for Jill. I miss you, friend.

It's another beautiful day

Someone wanted to know what I've been reading during those long and literary breakfasts on the deck, all zipped up in a fleece hoodie and black long underwear, with my feet in slippers tucked under Tater's side (he likes to lie on my feet) and the book propped up in front of me.

Lately I am kind of revisiting my old Gertrude Steinian thing. I started by wanting to look up a receipe in the cookbook Alice Toklas published in the 50s. It's a cookbook but it's also a memoir, so I got wrapped up in some of the stories she wrote about her life with Ms. Stein in France in the early 20th century. From there I re-read a kind of chatty but interesting biography of Gertrude Stein, and now I'm delving back into her actual work again.

I'm enjoying reading this stuff again from the perspective of a fully grown up woman approaching middle age (?!), rather than that of a 22-year-old English major with a fascination for the weird. Then, it all seemed so glamorous to me – living in Paris and knowing all those famous people! All the art, all the parties, all the drama appealed to me a lot. But now that I'm 20 years older than most of the people in those stories, somehow now it all seems much more normal and mundane – like stuff your little brother might tell you on a trip home from college. People going to openings, getting drunk, fighting with lovers, etc. The people she tells about are famous now, but they weren't then. They were just a bunch of kids in their early 20s hanging out in a beautiful city and doing their art. Just like people I used to know, and some that I still do, except none of us has so far become as famous as the people in Gertrude Stein's stories. Anyway, it gives a good feeling for what it feels like to be in that time of your life. Some of it is almost touching. And very funny, too, which I don't think I clued into the first time I read it.

Like I just read this paragraph from the Autobiography that I think shows Gertrude Stein to have a sense of humor I would have enjoyed. Purrmann is a guy who thinks Gertrude Stein is weird, and is always taking Alice Toklas (the narrator) aside to try to get her to admit she's only humoring Gertrude about all the strange paintings:

He never dared to criticize anything to her but to me he would say, and you, Mademoiselle, do you, pointing to the despised object, do you find that beautiful.

Once when we were in Spain, in fact the first time we went to Spain, Gertrude Stein had insisted upon buying in Cuenca a brand new enormous turtle made of Rhine stones. She had very lovely old jewellery, but with great satisfaction to herself she was wearing this turtle as a clasp. Purrmann was dumbfounded. He got me into a corner. That jewel, he said, that Miss Stein is wearing, are those stones real.

That just made me laugh out loud. "With great satisfaction to herself she was wearing this turtle as a clasp." As someone who has been known to seize upon some unseemly or embarrassing article of clothing with utterly unwarranted enthusiasm and wear it every day, day after day on end, until Mr. A pleads with me to put on something – anything – different, I appreciate that sentence. I also love her ability to zero right in on that guy's particular brand of conventionalism and snobbery – he knows she has reprehensible taste, and yet he can't quite believe anyone could be that perverse. He has to reassure himself: "Are those stones real?"

It's such a great detail. Everyone has known so many people like him.

I also have been reading her accounts of living in France during the occupations in both world wars, since the United States (in case anyone might have forgotten) is currently at war again and likely to remain so for ... well, probably forever, if GW&Co. get their way. I've been interested in all kinds of war writing lately – the unofficial stories of war, not from soldiers or journalists but from regular people on the ground. Her writing is very un-political and in fact a lot of it is almost blog-like, concerned mainly with the plain nuts and bolts of everyday life in a country in upheaval – finding food, getting from one place to another, trying to communicate with loved ones far away. I love her descriptions of the quiet in the countryside during times when no trains were going in or out, and nobody had fuel for their cars (or if they did, they couldn't drive them anyway, because then everyone would know they'd been holding out fuel they were supposed to have surrendered). Even bicycles had been given up for the war effort (I would have found that unbearable) and so everybody just walked everywhere, and I've often fantasized about how peaceful it would be to live in a town completely without cars ... although doing without things like art supplies and good, fresh food would be a real hardship for me.

For awhile their meat ration was only a quarter pound per week, and there was no fresh produce available at all. For a person like me, who can't really eat bread, rice, potatoes, pasta or any of the other good, cheap, filling and easy-to-store kinds of food, but depends mostly on fresh vegetables, protein and good fats – I wonder what a diabetic person would have done during a time like that. Probably they would have just deteriorated that much faster, and died earlier. Another unacknowledged casualty of the war.

Anyway. That's what I've been reading.

Other details of note:

1. I did in fact chip a corner off my left front tooth a few weeks ago, and suffered the discomfort and humiliation for a total of four days before the dentist could see me. Not my own dentist, who wanted me to wait FOUR WEEKS before he had an opening, but Mr. A's dentist, who kindly agreed to meet us at his office the first weekend after it happened. I had not realized until I met him in person that he's over 90 years old, and while I was grateful to have been fit in on short notice, and I know he has been a great dentist all these years – and still teaches at the dental college in the city – I was nervous when I saw how unsteady his hands were, and when I got home and really had time to check out the repair (I had been too embarrassed to look that closely at his office, not wanting to seem not to trust his work) I realized it was not what I'm sure he would have at one time considered his best work. So I spent twenty minutes working it over with an emery board until I got the shape back to how it's suppposed to be, and kept the appointment with my original dentist three weeks later, where I had the final touches done. I'm happy with it now and even, if it's possible, a little more convinced than I already was that having good, healthy teeth is something I'm very grateful for and must never take for granted. For example, by using my teeth as a bottle opener. Or to pull a needle through several layers of heavy cloth. Or even to bite off a hangnail. Not that I've ever done any of those things with my beloved teeth.

2. Tater has a weird, weepy, scabby sore on the back of his neck that is grossing me out quite a bit, though the vet didn't seem to think it was much to worry about. I do get so scared, though, every time something happens to that poor dog's body; seeing his dear little face turn white, and knowing that we're already more than halfway through the time we're going to have together, it breaks my heart a little bit every day to think of it. But as I saw in the sympathy card section the other day, "Don't think of him and think how sad he's gone, think of him and think, how wonderful, he was here." Or something like that.

I somehow think I've already written about this not so long ago.... In any case, I've often had the thought recently how beautiful and mysterious it is to share a life with a being like that, someone whose relationship with you operates under such different rules than relationships with other humans can. It's incredibly satisfying and liberating to know there's someone in the world who knows you as well as your dog knows you, and who adores you without reservation, no matter what. Someone who follows you into every room or anywhere out in the yard or field, just because he like being with you. Yeah, he's just a dog, but it's still flattering as hell and to me, extremely satisfying. Also extremely mutual, because I adore him without reservation too. I would do anything for that dog.

So I worry when I think there might be anything causing him pain, or seriously the matter with him. But we have some medicinal spray I am applying to the area three times a day, and it seems to be scabbing up and hopefully soon it will be all cleared up. The vet also said that for a dog his age (nine years) he's in outstanding physical condition – he gave him a 4.5 out of 5 points. He said most dogs he sees over five years old are morbidly obese with awful teeth and many ailments.

The other dog news is not so outstanding, although I guess on the other hand it isn't necessarily a "bad" thing either – just a part of life. The part at the end of it. There's really nothing concrete I can put my finger on, but I can just sort of feel him starting to withdraw, mentally, emotionally, spiritually .... It's gradual. Physically he's starting to have more and more troubles too, like when he falls trying to get up the step into the kitchen, or when he slips on the kitchen floor and can't get back up. A few weeks ago Mr. A went into the kitchen at 5 in the morning and found the Jeeps stuck half in and half out of the dog door. He had tripped when he wasn't able to lift his back foot high enough to clear the bottom of the dog door, and was not strong enough to get himself back up again. So there he lay, stranded, until someone came to get him out. Who knows for how long, or why he didn't bark or whine for some help. It's a small house – we would have heard him. Maybe he couldn't get his breath.

He's still shitting in the house occasionally, but luckily so far at least it's never been anything we couldn't pick up with paper towels without leaving any kind of stain or evidence it had ever been there. They're dry, which is great if they're happening in the house, but not so great when they're trying to get out of your body. So we're a little worried about that, too.

Hey, you asked for details!

Anywho. He still has a good appetite and seems to be enjoying life, and until that changes our plan is to just go on as usual. It seems a little unreal to think that by the end of the winter he will probably be gone. But there's no reason to dwell on that. I just try to acknowledge it when the thought arises, and give extra special attention to him while he's still here.

I've found out from this that I do have a fear of aging and decay. I had always thought I was pretty much okay with all that, and theoretically and in person I am – meaning I'm okay with the idea of death, and I'm sure when I have to deal with it myself I will find my way through it just fine, one way or another – so I'm okay with thinking about the idea of death, but I am not okay about thinking about Really Dying. Or watching someone else do it. That's the part I don't think I need to think about until we have to think about it.

Urrgh. Can you tell I've been reading Gertrude Stein? I feel like this whole post reeks of her.

3. As at least one of my faithful readers knows, I went mattress shopping today. I'm the most relentlessly thorough comparison shopper on the planet when it comes to important items I use every day, and I'm sure I more than exhausted the poor sales people we talked to today – and then left without buying anything. But I plan to go back and buy one from them, just as soon as I figure out exactly what I want. The one I liked the best at the shop was a mid-range memory foam mattress for about fifteen hundred bucks. It was by far the most comfortable bed in the place. But I've been reading about them online all afternoon, and so many people are reporting the most horrendous health crises resulting from the offgassing of toxic chemicals from these and even other supposedly top-of-the-line conventional mattress brands ... And now I don't know what to get. Flopping down on my own tired old oversprung used up mattress when I got home this afternoon convinced me that I have to get something though, as soon as possible. So now I'm reading all about organic latex foam, cotton, wool ... bleah.

What kind of mattress do you sleep on?

Speaking of bedroom trauma, the other night I was trying to get some of the dog hair off my comforter cover without resorting to taking the whole bed apart to launder it. I tried various methods – shaking, brushing, wiping with tape, etc. – and nothing was working. It's a brown cotton comforter cover from Ikea, pretty but made of the cheapest fabric imaginable, so the hair just seems to stick to it no matter what you do. Finally, I had the bright idea to run the vacuum over it. I've done it before, once when Tater left a pile of walnut shells littered across the bed, and it worked great. On this night though it was already long past my bedtime and I was too tired and cranky to exercise the self-control required to do a good job of it. Suddenly: TTTHHUK! The end of the comforter was sucked into the vacuum. With the vacuum still going, I grabbed the middle of the thing and gave it an angry yank. Feathers everywhere, and little white clusters of down floating through the air like those light, powdery snowflakes that are so dry they almost make you sneeze.

I don't miss living where it snows but I did used to love those snowflakes.

Super snore

That's basically what my life is like these days ... a big zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Not that I'm complaining. Last time I started thinking everything was getting just a leeetle bit boring – if you'll recall – and feeling like I might be ready to take on some new kind of challenge or change ... the next thing I knew I was being diagnosed as diabetic.

And actually, things are not so much boring, as they are just stressful and unpleasant. Work is killing me for reasons I can't really discuss here, and I've started having anxiety attacks again, which I haven't had in several years. So now I have to give up my diet Pepsi Jazz habit, which is the only thing that's been getting me through the afternoons ... as well as all other caffeine, which I've done before, and which I know is not that hard to do – not even so hard that I'm worried about doing it, except that I don't want to do it – I want to keep drinking the damn soda, and the green tea, and dammit, I know it isn't good for me and it doesn't even make me feel good, but what's really left to me now if I can't drink a freakin caffeinated beverage every once in awhile? I can't just eat nothing but meat and vegetables all the time for the rest of my life, can I?

I need to make an appointment with the other diabetes nutrition expert – not the one who hands out free samples of 26-carb "nutrition" bars and coupons for "diet" tortillas and "heart-healthy" whole-grain cereal in a General Mills-logo gift bag, but the one who has been supporting another diabetic friend in his commitment to eating no more than 50 carbs a day ... I need to start figuring out some new things to eat. I think she'll be able to help me with that.

My next appointment with my doctor is in a week and a half and I'm realizing again that this is something I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life – obsessing about my diet, and wondering what my next round of tests is going to say. Not a bad thing, necessarily, but different from how I lived before.

Another thing that is feeling sad to me this week is that on Monday a 16-year-old kid was murdered in the park Mr. A is always telling me I shouldn't ride my bike in ... right in a spot I always ride my bike right through the middle of. It was the first gang-related murder we've had in town. I don't like seeing things go that way, and I also don't like it that one of my first thoughts when I heard about it was, "I'm so glad I declined the invitation to join that board of directors ...." because instead of being the kind of person who is strong enough to get in there and try to help kids find alternatives to violence, I am instead the kind of person who is afraid of people who shoot each other in the face. I'm the kind of person who wants to back away and pretend to be safe. I feel guilty for not wanting to get involved. But right now, I just don't feel up to it.

And really, the caffeine isn't the only reason I'm having these anxiety attacks, I think, though it surely can't be helping much, either. I feel angry, stagnant and decayed right now, and kind of powerless, unsure of what I ought to be doing with my life and lacking any confidence at all in my ability to make a good decision about that. Usually when I've felt this way in the past, my solution has been to pack up only as much as I could carry and get the hell out, start something new, or go somewhere else. Right now, for example, I keep thinking – go back to school! But for what purpose? How would I pay for it? What would I do afterwards? And anyway, how can I ever quit my job now that I have a permanent pre-existing condition?

Usually I don't like to write here when I'm feeling this negative. I guess that's why I haven't been writing much lately.

On the up side, the world – separate from all the hateful, murderous humans who live on it – I'm talking about the planet itself, the land we all walk on – still and always makes me happy enough to want to stick around and see how it all comes out. The last week has been breathtakingly beautiful, every single day of it. The colors, the temperature, the clarity of the atmosphere – plain old physical beauty still has a lot of power to keep my heart open, even when I really want to just shut it all down. Getting out into it every day is the main thing that's still working well for me right now.

And ugh – I hate how dramatic this all sounds! I'm not dragging myself around sighing and weeping or anything like that. I just feel anxious, unclear and insecure, and I don't like it. So until it passes or I figure out something else to do, I am just trying to let it flow on by.

Today I was sitting at a cafe with a friend I hadn't seen in awhile – one of my "commiseration buddies," in a way – and he was telling me some of his stuff, and I was trying not very successfully to find a positive spin to put on some of mine – when up walks this other guy we both know, who is a semi-famous (at least locally) musician from India or Pakistan or somewhere. He sat down with us and started telling a story about some sadhu-type uncle of his who has nothing and just sort of wanders around in his loincloth ecstatically sniffing mangoes and joyously exhorting his fellow humans to savor the bliss of each moment ... and I found myself thinking some rather cynical thoughts along the lines of, "am I supposed to think this is some kind of profound Eastern wisdom or something?" But then I started really looking at him and I realized, he may be telling a story of the kind I've heard a million times before, but that doesn't mean he's full of shit. He seems genuinely happy. Or at least trying.

Seeing that made me feel lonely for my own happiness. I've been missing it lately. I had kind of gotten used to having it around. But it was good to see someone else expressing a sense of peace and well-being, even if I wasn't able to tap into it much myself in that moment. I felt glad to see him feeling good. I'm sure I'll come around to it again myself before too long.

Season of the nut

I've got another big bowl of walnuts going lately, about a hundred, maybe more. They started falling several weeks ago, and Tater started collecting them and bringing them into the house. I take them away when I find them – they're toxic to dogs when they get moldy, as most of them are by now, and they stain everything they touch. He has brown stains on his chin from chewing the hulls off.

The other morning I rolled over in bed and ground one right into the middle of my back. He sneaks them in at night and hides them everywhere.

These days I am not feeling like being amusing here. I've gone to such effort to clear my life of extraneous stresses that right now it's feeling like not much is left – not much I can talk about here, anyway. I feel quiet and still and open, like I'm seeing everything happening around me but not really participating in it. I still go to work every day of course, still enjoy my rides and my dogs and my relationships, and the beauty of this place. I've also started running – tentatively and not very well, but yeah, running. Yow. Sometimes I feel so full and happy that it almost makes me want to cry. Sometimes I feel this vague dissatisfaction, as if I'm missing out on something I can't quite put my finger on. But that isn't unusual, and there isn't anything specific happening, nothing that seems worthy of mention. It's just my life.

And yet I have this compulsion to document my day-to-day ... and so I keep checking in every once in awhile to write.

Pleasure is a favorite topic – counting blessings, &c. I've been involved in some Slow Food stuff lately and came across this, from some Italian guy connected with the movement: "Those who suffer for others do more damage to humanity than those who enjoy themselves. Pleasure is a way of being at one with yourself and others." That sounds right to me.

One of my main pleasures currently is breakfast – a meal I had not eaten regularly for years – decades, actually – and which I now make for myself every day without fail. It's pretty much the same every time: one egg, one slice of 6-carb flax seed toast, one-half cup of 2% milk. I write it in my book: 1 egg, 1 toast, 1/2 C 2% = 14 carbs. Sometimes I'll have a couple of slices of smoked salmon if there is any, or make a little veggie omelette and skip the toast, or have two eggs, if the eggs are small. I have my whole routine worked out down to the second, so that everything will be done at the same time and I can serve it all up in pre-heated plates and cups and carry my tray and my book out onto the back patio and sit and eat and drink and read and wake up in exactly the same way every day, at more or less exactly the same time every day ...

Maybe that's why I'm getting this unreal feeling of time standing still. Maybe I should shake up my routine a little.

But then, why shouldn't I follow this routine for awhile, at least until it starts to feel like it wants changing? Why does everyone seem to think it's so important to change things up all the time? Isn't life changeable enough already, just as it is? Without me trying to make things happen, or not happen?

Life goes a lot slower when I stick to routines, speak as little as necessary, and avoid electronic appliances (like computers and televisions) as much as possible. There's still the same amount of time as ever, but it feels like more. It feels like forever. I kind of like it. But I do find it disturbing too.

Partly I guess this is because I feel guilty for "wasting" all this precious extra time I've managed to find. I'm producing very little at the moment except for my regular work, and even though I know that's okay, I still somehow feel like it isn't. I don't feel inspired to make or do anything but rest and absorb the light and the air (we had the first real soaking, restoring, nourishing rain of the season the other night and I stayed awake until 4 a.m. just to listen to it and breathe in the smell of all those trees and plants coming back to life – it was magnificent) and it feels very good to do so, but I'm also aware of my own disapproval ... this feeling that I "should" be doing something ... not sure what.

Engaging more with other people, certainly. I do get into these moods where I just don't want to be bothered, and sometimes I feel like it's important to my mental health to let myself withdraw for awhile. But then I have to keep an eye out for the moment when taking a time out turns into hiding and avoidance, which are not healthy and restorative but maladaptive and even, I think, damaging in some ways ... Not to mention, I do have gifts to share, and I want to share them – if for no other reason than that there have been so many wonderful people in my life who have shared with me, and it made me feel good, and I want to spread that feeling around.

Happy, healthy, functioning people don't do evil, incomprehensible things to other people. This is why we all benefit by helping each other be as happy as possible – even, and maybe especially, the people we don't like, people who have done horrible things, people who don't "deserve" to be happy. This is why it's important, maybe even a duty (though I don't like that word or concept), to be willing to engage, to reach out to each other, even when it's more comfortable to turn away, or to turn only toward people we like, people who remind us of ourselves. People we think we understand.

That is my biggest challenge right now, I think. Basically, I feel like I just don't like very many people. Is this because I don't like myself? I don't think so. I don't know. It's something I'm contemplating. But I don't think that's it. I think it's more just that there are so many ... well, just kind of terrible people in the world. What to do with that unpleasant reality? If anything can be done. I'm contemplating that, too. And trying not to let myself back too far away from the world, no matter how much I want to.

This is the kind of vague, nonsensical crap you get from me when I start writing only to scratch my itch and not because I have anything of real value to say.

In other news, I was going to attempt a humorous "fashion" post about a recent trip to REI, during which I confounded the sales staff by trying on every kind of long underwear they had in the place in hopes of ascertaining which type or types, or combination of types, I ought to be wearing this winter along with the rest of my new seasonal uniform ... That post was meant to cheer up a friend who is suffering something that is not mine to write about here. But as information emerged ... it suddenly seemed like I ought not to write anything at all for awhile. Anything I could say would sound frivolous and wrong, unworthy of this thing that has happened. And of my friend's pain.

I did get the underwear though. It's starting to get cold. And winter is on its way.

Though as they say – and I know it's too early to say this but under the circumstances I will say it anyway – if winter's here, can spring be far behind?

Persimmon pancakes for all!

That's my new motto, and I'm sticking to it. Because persimmon pancakes ... ooh, they are so good. And can I eat them? No. But maybe you can. And I hope you will! Because they're delicious. And you deserve to have some serious deliciousness in your life, now that it is fall. Any time, really.

I also re-opened my archives, for your back-story reading pleasure. Enjoy!

So – I'm sure it's boring as hell to everyone but me by now, but this whole business of re-figuring out how to eat and exercise has really been holding a lot of my attention lately. Basically, my attitude has begun to suck, and I've come dangerously close on more than one occasion to just throwing in the towel and saying, "Goldurn that old glucometer anyway, I'm eating some brownies." Actually, on Saturday I did say that – and followed through by going ahead and eating the brownies. Five of them, in fact – though they were not full-sized ones but the kind where each brownie is just one bite (otherwise known as "brownie bites").

I should never have bought them in the first place, but they were homemade, and so pretty, and there were only five in the package, which was sitting on the world's purest, most innocent paper lace doily next to the cash register at the upscale Marin market where I had just purchased an otherwise irreproachable repast of broiled shrimp on a crouton-free caesar salad, a few slices of very expensive smoked salmon, and a diet Coke. Plus, they were so small. Bite-sized! I'll just eat one, I told myself, and save the rest for Mr. A.

Yeah, right. All the way home I kept sneaking glances at the clear plastic container – well, actually, not at the container, but at the four remaining brownie bites inside. And then suddenly there were only three. And then two. And then I went insane in the brain and could not refrain – I ate the last one (right after I ate the second to last one).

So let this be a lesson to me. I have very little willpower when it comes to these things. Which is not to say I should never eat brownie bites ever again, but that IF I'm going to be around them, I should have a plan, and someone upon whom to foist the four that remain after I eat One Only.

In this case I found myself alone with the brownies, and caved in to desire. But I did have a plan: to eat the brownies, and then run on the treadmill for as long as it took to bring my blood back to normal. It would also be interesting, I thought, to see just how long it would take to do that. If it wasn't that big a deal, maybe I would be able to eat more brownies again sometime in the future.

But no. It took 2.5 hours on the treadmill, in half-hour increments interspersed with half-hour breaks. Every time I got off the treadmill, it had gone back down under 100 (that's good). But after another half-hour of digestion, it had shot back up over 140 again (that's not so good). So altogether it took me 4.5 hours to offset the effects of eating five brownie bites – basically, one hour per bite.

They were good, but they weren't THAT good.

Anyway. Enough of my food obsession! That's really the part that was pissing me off this week, now that I think about it – not "being diabetic," exactly, but just letting it sink in that I will NEVER be able to just relax and have an easy attitude about food, ever again, for the rest of my life. I feel like I'm already obsessive/compulsive enough as it is, without having this new thing to think about all the time – which, unlike a lot of the other things I aimlessly obsess about (like today, when I spent my 10-minute break arranging other people's frozen boxed dinners by color, and then alphabetically, and then by color AND size of box in the freezer at work), will actually have serious negative consequences if I stop paying attention to it.

So: I've decided to treat this as an opportunity to let myself off the hook in some other area where it really doesn't matter whether I obsess or not. Just to lighten up in general. And also, to lighten up about this obsession in particular – try not to focus so much on the drama (amputation! blindness! dialysis!) and just incorporate it into my life along with everything else I do to take care of my body, like flossing.

Probably at some point soon I will start feeling more positive about things again. I am looking forward to that.