Note to my subconscious

And I don't understand the part where I lost my pants, then discovered that my shoes didn't match.

But whatever it is, I got the message. Thanks. Now please leave me the hell alone, just for one night. OK?

Thanks. I appreciate it.

It's almost April, which means it's time to think about taxes once again.

He thought about it for a minute and said "not much." J. and his wife have two young children and a mortgage. They both work. They definitely fall into the middle-class American family that politicians are always talking about. Most of my friends don't, either becuase they're single or have no kids.

Now, I didn't really expect that he'd say they got a lot out of the tax cuts, but I thought it would be something more than "not much." He's smart enough to know that the so-called rebates were a lie, and the cost of childcare is so high that the credit doesn't make any real difference for them. Yes, even with two children it doesn't make a difference.

So the next time you hear somebody talking about abolishing the Bush tax cuts and starting over, as Gov. Dean did, don't be so quick to dismiss that as a bad idea.

I still can't figure out who the middle-class tax cuts were supposed to have benefitted.

Praying for rain

The ravers were louder, but I liked their music better, and they went out some nights, so they weren't always in the back yard talking until the wee hours of the morning.

Right now they're discussing Jennifer Anniston's movie career and listening to some random female singer that's not doing anything for me. It might be Beyonce, but I'm not sure. It could just as easily be somebody who's like Beyonce. I'm trying to listen to Aphex Twins, and it's not working.

I miss the last neigbors -- the ones immediately before these people and after the ravers. Mike and Natalie were nice, quiet, and liked the neighborhood so much that they bought a place about two blocks away whem they decided to move.

Anyway, these folks have been here about two years, and I'm thinking that it's about time for them to move.

Watching Myself

I'm not going crazy, but I am eating carbs. As soon as I started doing this, I started losing weight. Coincidence? Probably.

Now, the strange thing that's been happening recently is that I have had dreams set in places from my past. The situations in the dreams are not remarkable, except that there is a person from the present in them. I am aware of the time discrepancy as I remember the dreams, but in the dreams, the person from the present stands out because of his coloring, not because I think he's not supposed to be there.

Also, just an observation, Most of my dreams are like films, as if I'm watching them. I usually don't see dreams as if I'm seeing with my own eyes.

But not always.

Note to This whole rah-rah business

Second, I am still on the diet. My progress is still unremarkable. I will give it another week or so, during which I will try to eat more so my body doesn't mistake the diet for a famine. The headaches have subsided into a general feeling of malaise, so maybe that's a good sign.

The South Beach web site is not alll that helpful so far. The people on the message boards seem to be nice, but the atmosphere in which one is only there to talk about a diet plan is surreal, to say the least.

Either you don't buy in, or you do. I haven't, which means that I don't have a table with my start weight and my goal weight, and how long I've been on the diet. That would be mortifying, like rolling your eyes instead of saying the pledge in third grade.

I'm sure the devoted pledge-sayers are all better people than I am, but it didn't stop me from thinking the whole ritual was -- there's that word again -- surreal.

Anyway, this all ties together, but I have a nifty project for today: I'm recaulking a bathtub! So I have to go to the hardware store to procure caulk, without which my project will go uncompleted for one more day. And that would be bad.

Is this Monday or Tuesday?

This is probably true. So I'm going to see if I can't modify the meals they suggest so I eat a little bit several times a day rather than actual full meals that fill me up and make me not want to eat.

Of course, I know if I continue not to eat much, I will lose weight, and at some point I'll start losing weight very quickly, but that's not what I wanted. That would fall into the making myself very sick category, which would be bad.

In other news, I have a project to work on, and it makes me very happy. Not going to talk too much about it except to say that if I end up having to do all the work myself, it may never get done. So I need to recruit some helpers, but I'm not to that point yet.

Summing up the weekend

The good part is that my headaches went away. So I'm starting again in the morning, and I'm going to try to stick more closely to the recommendation rather than doing my own thing so early on. In retrospect, that was a bad idea.

I didn't fall hard, I didn't gorge myself, and if after a concerted effort for two weeks I still can't manage to keep my blood sugars at acceptable levels, I'll try consulting a nutritionist, but I want to have a good baseline before I do. I need to find the contact information for the nutritionist I worked with when I was first on dialysis. She was my attending endocrinologist's wife, but she didn't have the same name. I can probably find his office number, though.

Otherwise, good weekend. I did a transport for four Maine Coon cats on their way from a kill shelter in Georgia to their foster or forever homes. Today Rob and I went out for Burmese food and then out to IKEA in College Park. He got a stuffed spider; I got waste baskets, wood coat hangers (six for $3.49, what a deal!), and some wall pockets to help me organize papers.

Plus, the basketball was exciting. Still having a hard time believing that Kentucky and Mississippi State are out of it, but Nevada is still in. Go figure. There are usually a few surprises, but most years they happen on Thursday and Friday, not so much on Sunday.

Mmmm. Wooozy.

Tomorrow is a long day, and it will be my toughest challenge. I have a meeting in the morning and a cat transport in the afternoon/early evening. No time at home between these, so I'll be eating away from home all day. I guess I'll pack plenty of snacks and hope I make it to dinnertime.

Wish me luck.

Oh, and here's a shout out to Sue, Pam, Charlotte and Adam. Without them, I would almost never have comments.

Thanks y'all. The rest of you check in to say hi, OK? I don't know who most of you are.

My not-exactly adopted home state

Go Vermont! I'm not sure why CBS hasn't switched us from watching Duke pulverize Alabama State, but then I don't understand CBS during the tournament. One year I managed to get through to their control room to complain about it, but I don't think my call made any difference.

Another boring diet update

The bottom line is that I'm pretty healthy, even carrying 30 extra pounds. i'm just not happy about it. I wouldn't mind carrying 10 pounds over what I consider my ideal weight, which is about 135 unless I manage to build some muscle, but 30 puts me on the brink of fat, and I don't want any part of that.

I don't want to be a coatrack, I just want to look and feel like myself.

Anyway, I'm doing all right on the diet. I didn't cook myself breakfast, instead I had coffee with cream and a couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter. I have also tried the fairly new carb counter's chocolate milk, and it's not bad. Thanks to Sue for that suggestion.

I'm not following the diet all that closely, but I'm not going outside the parameters, either. That's OK for me. I'll make myself a good lunch, eat my snackss, and take this slowly, because it took more than two years for me to gain back the weight I lost being sick, and I don't want to do anything stupid like making myself sick again, and I know that's a possibility.

Still, I'm cleared to diet, and that's a good thing.

What becomes an American Idol most? One shudders to think...

No indication what the stuff actually smells like. I'm kind of afraid to ask. Maybe it's the Love's Baby Soft of its generation.

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Diet Things

I've been trying to stay busy so that I don't think about food, and that's working fairly well.

The issue I'm trying to manage is not carb craving, because I'm not really having those. I need to learn to eat before I am feeling hungry. That's not something I would naturally do. During lunch yesterday I was eating this tuna salad, I was almost finished. I felt full, but not really satisfied because the body takes longer to metabolize good food than the junk I've been eating.

My greatest challenge so far will come tomorrow when I have to drive past the Krispy Kreme twice to get to the nephrologist's office. I am a real-life Homer when it comes to doughnuts, particularly the hot ones at KK. If they don't have hot glazed, I'm happy with a chocolate-iced-with-sprinkles.

So we'll see what happens. I'm about to go out into the cool wet day to run a few errands.

Bottom line, I can't tell that I have lost any weight between yesterday and today, and I don't feel any different. (I didn't expect to lose any weight, but I thought I might feel different. Oh well.)

OK, I'm looking at the picture, and I've got news for this girl.

I followed a link from my friend Marc's blog, clicked around a little bit and found myself staring at a bottle blond who apparently turned down a role as Cameron Diaz' ugly sister.

Well, you be the judge. I'm thinking she could have pulled it off.

Warning: Boring entries next 25 miless

I'm doing the South Beach diet, which seems as sensible as anything. I like that it becomes, essentially, a balanced diet once you've lost whatever you want to lose. Not so crazy about the insistance that one should eat low-fat cheese, though.

Seriously, I have too much respect for cheese to eat the low-fat variety. I'm also not so sure about the egg substitute. What i've read online is that people get really sick of eggs, but I like eggs. I'd have to say that eggs are among my favorite foods, so I really think I'll be OK.

My challenge is going to be staying away from convenience foods. Actually, my main goal aside from losing 20 or so pounds, is to steer clear of hyper-processed food. i spent the last three months eating the most bizarre array of food products. Not as weird as Ed, who says he will eat anything that's free, but still pretty weird. (Different Ed, not Fedward. I believe that Fedward would resist the temptation of some of the stuff I've seen Ed eat.)

Anyway, I warn you that there may be boring times ahead. I am not yet craving carb-ish food, but I do need to eat something soon.

before - after