Food

It's certainly not news to anyone that the holidays are generally bad for our waistlines, but this year has been a bit much. You know when you buy a skirt halfway through December and have to worry about whether it will fit by New Year's Eve, you're in trouble. Mind you, it's not like I go out and buy junk food with which to stuff my face. And yet, on my desk at this moment are: two dozen homemade shortbread cookies, a bowl full of holiday-wrapped candy, a gift bag of granola, a tin of assorted cookies and fudge, and a shipped assortment of something I know is food and therefore am afraid to open. In addition to the actual food I've received this year, I also got a number of gift cards - all to restaurants.

I could interpret this one of two ways:

1) I have grown so fat that people assume I will not enjoy anything so much as more food; or,

2) I am not yet fat but people are conspiring to make me so.

Either way, kind of disturbing.

Of course, it doesn't help that I've become a lazy, cold-fearing slug who hasn't gone running in a month. I am so averse to being outside right now that I briefly considered buying the AbCircle, which may be one of the most absurd exercise devices I've ever seen. I would have bought it, too, if it had really been only $14.95, as advertised. The nearly $40 shipping and handling charges must be in the small print on the commercial. So, no circling abs for me, which is unfortunate, because if I ab-circled, I might be able to justify another one of the shortbread cookies that is staring at me.

On that note, a poem for the day.

"The Goose" by Muriel Spark

Do you want to know why I am alive today?

I will tell you.

Early on, during the food shortage,

Some of us were miraculously presented

Each with a goose that laid a golden egg.

Myself, I killed the cackling thing and I ate it.

Alas, many and many of the other recipients

Died of gold-dust poisoning.