But in the last two weeks I've suddenly felt a crushing sense of guilt over anything I put in my mouth unless it's salad or fish. This weekend I had garlic bread and beer, and the resulting whammy of negative points depressed me to the point of tears. "Nine points! How could I have done this? I'm NINE POINTS OVER BECAUSE OF GARLIC BREAD!" And let me tell you, eating one single order of garlic bread for dinner isn't exactly pigging out but you would have thought I'd eaten an entire large pizza by myself. Last weekend it was a cheeseburger and a patty melt the same day, racking up something like 40 points when I'm supposed to be sticking to 27. O woe! O despair! And yet I still lost a pound. So there's clearly not a direct correspondence to overeating one day and undoing the good work of an entire week. Why am I castigating myself mentally for making a mistake with one meal here and there?

Stress, probably. It's hard to keep positive when there are so many battles to manage at once, and I'm just now coming out from under a tough set of weeks. Bad habits are hard to break and this is an old familiar friend, the negative voice that turns every mistake into a federal case and immediately casts it as failure and proof that I can't do anything right.

My current answer is to go to the gym faithfully. Exercise makes me feel strong and self confident. I went today, Sunday, because John was going to Fry's to get a 60 gig firewire hard drive for a backup system. I grabbed a ride to the blessedly empty gym and ran ten minutes on the treadmill, sandwiched by twenty minutes of fast walking on an incline. Ten minutes is half a mile. I am so excited! I owe it all to 'N Sync, A-Teens, the Spice Girls, and No Doubt who keep the beat while I pound along at 3.5 miles an hour. My exercise notebook says that's only moderate running but jeez, I can't run 5 miles an hour. I'm not in a race, I'm in it for the stamina. I never could run fast. When Denise and I used to run on our lunch hours we called ourselves the Tonga Tart Running Club: built for comfort, not for speed.

Half a mile. Take that, nine points.

I spent an hour talking to Teresa Nielsen Hayden on AIM last night. She was up late because of illness, I was refusing to go to bed at a sensible time on a Saturday night, just as a matter of principle. We gossiped, talked about books, and had the most wonderful discussion of the afterlife. My afterlife, actually, in which I marry all the men I have ever had crushes on but who wouldn't give me a second look in this life. Also, in my afterlife everyone goes around again but does it right this time. The most useless attributes and bad habits are dropped and new, useful ones added. It was hilarious to recast our friends' lives and pick out what we would wish for most next time.

Sure, she's religious and I'm an atheist, but it was still hugely entertaining. Who doesn't have fantasies of getting everything right and having no crippling physical or mental issues holding one back from heading straight for the things that make one happiest?

Teresa has a weblog that is less frequently updated than one could wish but is well worth reading for her savvy, knife-edged commentary masked by her elegant prose. More frequently updated is her husband Patrick's weblog which I highly recommend to political news junkies and fans of intelligent, well-honed critical thinking.

I feel fortunate to have had them as close friends for the last twenty years. Truthfully, I marvel at how many incredibly intelligent, clever, kind, and generous friends I have. Surely this speaks well for me that such people find me worthy of friendship (and marriage). I don't have to wait for the afterlife. I think I've got most of what I ever wanted right here, now. And knowing that, how can I worry about garlic bread?

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