Today’s fare is a feast compared to yesterday’s lunch, which was non-existent. You know those stupid people who say stupid things like, “Oh, I was so busy I forgot to eat!”?

I hate those stupid people. But I was one of those stupid people yesterday.

Here’s the thing with vacation: You should stay gone forever or never go. What you return to when you get back to “real life” sucks. Piles of work everywhere and no food in a house that looks like an episode of “Hoarders” because stuff is scattered everywhere.

On vacation, there was fresh fruit waiting for me every morning. Someone came in and cleaned my room, made my bed and left me fresh towels. In real life I have to do that shit for myself. And a husband, three dogs and tyrannical cat.

So yesterday, without so much as a morsel of food in my stomach, I had to stop at the grocery on my way home.

BTW — People look at you like you are a fucking freak if you stand in the middle of Kroger and yell, “I WANT ALL THE THINGS! ALL THE FOOD THINGS! IN MY BELLY NOW!”

My husband, you see, is the Mr. Moneybags financial guru for Kroger, and he told me there was about $200,000 worth of edible inventory in the store and that our credit card doesn’t have that high of a limit. So even if the store were inclined to actually sell me all the food instead of escorting me out, I couldn’t afford to pay for it.

WTF, platinum card?

So I had to be selective, which is not easy when you are so hungry you are trying to decide if security will stop you from licking that grape you squished off the wheel of your shopping cart.

It would have been so easy to hit the bakery HARD CORE. I was tempted to grab a couple of deep fried chickens and make them MY BITCH.  I wanted to stuff every mayonnaise-based deli salad down my face like I was PAULA FUCKING DEEN with a raging case of PMS.

But I didn’t.

I bought a roasted chicken (it was late and we were having my daughter and her boyfriend over for dinner so I needed something pre-cooked), salad, fresh fruits and veggies. I did get enough deli potato salad for four people (we had leftovers, thank you very much) but I passed by the fresh baked double chocolate chip cookies (OM NOM NOM said my inner Cookie Monster) and grabbed a couple small loaves of fresh bread, some whole grain chips and peach mango salsa.

For dessert? Watermelon.

I am sure lack of food yesterday contributed to this pounding in my brain today, but I am glad I had this nectarine and these early-in-the-season clementines today. Raw food just sits better in my stomach when my head is all fizzy and foggy. And I am giving myself a huge gold star for being famished at the grocery and not going crazy with the calories.

This diet thing, much like real life, is really tough, you guys.

I did bring a frozen something to work, but I need to get out of the office for a while.

Sometimes working through lunch is helpful, because other than taking 10 minutes to write these entries, I stay productive at my desk.

But sometimes I need to escape, breathe a little fresh air and have a real moment of mental rest.

Let’s just say that for the last four years with my current employer, my holiday season revolves around one specific project, and that project sucks all the life and joy out of me.

So that’s going to be my primary excuse for not posting here all week. That and the fact that I am ashamed at how much bad food I’ve eaten this week. So ashamed that I am contemplating hiding the bathroom scale.

My preferred hiding spot: The recycle center.

Here’s the part where I whine that it’s just sooooo haaaaaard to eat right when you are so busy at work you can barely breathe and it’s also the holiday season when fabulously fattening food is practically stalking you.

Wah, wah, wah.

I know very well that with a little planning I could be eating better. I know that if I absolutely have to have that Caramel Brulee latte from Starbucks (and I really do HAVE TO HAVE it) I could at least order it with non-fat milk.

I could order a Happy Meal if McDonald’s is my only lunch option.

I know all this. But that’s the thing about weight loss. What you know (as an educated person with a triple digit IQ) to be true just doesn’t always make the conversion to appropriate behavior.

And with every passing day, I keep hoping my boss won’t ask me why I am wearing jeans to work every day. Because the answer is that none of my pants fit anymore.

She may draw the line if I start showing up in my sweats. Please let her draw that line.

Democracy survives.

So since I work for a news-gathering organization, I will be working late. Mostly I will be working late making sure people who actually gather the news are fed. Because they are waaaaaaay to busy to do that for themselves.

How they manage to take in nutrients the other 364 days of the year is beyond me. They should all be really skinny.

First one that complains about the dinner I am hauling in here gets kicked in the junk, I swear to Baby Jesus in his johnny jumper.

But since I pledged to myself to post to this blog every single day this month, I decided to bang one out quickly while at work.

Who doesn’t like a quick bang now and then? Especially at work. I know my hubby does.

But will save that story for another day.

Apparently, I don’t suck that much since here I am banging out this useless entry.

I had to work entirely too hard today. And I cannot tell you how much I *hate* to work too hard. I don’t mind going balls-to-the-walls for a good cause, but this day was your typical everything-I-touched-turned-to-a-golden-pile-turd days.

For example, my boss asked me to make five copies of a report she brought back from some useless damn conference she attended last week. Now, few things make me appreciate my student loan payments more than being asked to make copies, so I was in just a chipper damn mood right from the get-go.

I should be able to use the copier in our department, but that fucker has been broken for a while now. I called X company last week to ask for service, because unfortunately making calls like that is also in my job description, and they said they would mail me the part needed to repair it and e-mail me the directions on how to replace it.

Because everything I learned earning my bachelor’s degree in journalism totally prepared me to replace the guts in a fucking copy machine.

Any old hoo, I never even opened that damn e-mail and the spare part has been sitting on my desk mocking me for a week. Except now I actually need the copier to work and it won’t work cause it’s broke and, shit, now I have to go to another department and use their machine to make copies of this worthless report that nobody will read but its very existence totally justified my boss going to this conference.

So I went to a neighboring department to make my copies, and yes, I took a ream of my department’s copy paper with me because I am just that fucking thoughtful, and I start to make my two-sided-to-two-sided-copies aaaannnnnnnd…Santa Claus on a fucking pogo stick…that machine breaks, too.

Fuck. My. Life.

So I had to call X company AGAIN.

And later I really did feel sorry for Jacob or Jake or Jasper or whatever Anglo name they decided to assign this poor guy in India so he won’t scare off the xenophobic Americans when they call to rage about copy machines like homicidal maniacs.

I told Jeffery, my new bestie in Mumbai, that replacing the gears in a copy machine was NOT something I felt comfortable doing but if he absolutely insisted I do it then I was NOT going to be responsible for the remodel I was about to do on this piece-of-shit machine. It’s gonna get UGLY up in here, Jerry, and I mean U*G*L*Y!

And since I pay for a maintenance contract, Joey, eventually your service dude is just going to have to figure out what I fucked up so you might as well send him on out here now before I disembowel this hunk of junk, m’kay?

I then think I heard Jared cry just a little. Something about how his fucking Ph.D. should mean he didn’t have to listen to some crazy, spoiled American biznatch whine about a damn copy machine she probably broke in the first place.

Actually no, I didn’t break it in the first place, spank-you-very-much. And while I certainly feel your pain, suck it up, Jeremiah. In this shitty global economy, we are all under-employed.

The good news is the service dude is coming out tomorrow to fix my copy machine and the one in the other department, too. Praise Baby Jesus in his punkin seat.

Almost shed a tear about an hour into it but I hung tough. Yeah, if I had balls they would be big. And hairy.

Totally not a sexy visual.

Any old hoo, at 1 p.m. I went to a benefits meeting because it is the holly-jolly open enrollment season and employees all over America are celebrating by going into conference rooms and having HR Santa explain all the changes they can expect for the new year.

And then we decorate the benefits tree and smugly sing insurance caroles because we thank the Baby Jeesus in his little holiday feeted jammies that we are blessed enough to have employer-sponsored health care, amen.

Except somebody forgot to tell our HR Santa that this is supposed to be a joyous occasion and she went all HR Grinch on the whole party. And by Grinch I mean snotty biznatch.

Typically I blow these little soirees off because I never make changes to my insurance for fear of angering the HMO Gods. All I care about is knowing how much my premiums and co-pays will increase and you can totally get that schedule on the Intranet and in the packet they mail to my house. But we are changing carriers this year and I anticipated this meeting would actually have useful information and the opportunity to ask questions.

It’s the last part that upset the HR Grinch. And I can totally see her point because why would anyone have questions about health care these days? Nope. HR Grinch had a script and by Dog, she was sticking to it.

And I found it highly amusing to watch HR Grinch lose. her. shit. whenever anyone dared to ask what seemed to them (and the rest of the horrified onlookers) a valid question.

For example: She explained that on one of our new plan choices, a family’s deductible is $300 annually. Insurance benefits kick in when the primary insured and one member of his/her family meets the $300 deductible.

Keyword here: AND. As in two people. No insurance benefits are paid until two people shell out at least $150 each in non-covered payments. Folks, that is a quote. And I am a trained journalist, they teach us this shit in college and stuff.

So someone, and by someone I mean the most senior manager in my department, holds up his hand and says, whoa, hold the phone. Are you saying that if I choose this plan and then I get into a terrible car wreck on Jan. 2 and end up with a $1o,000,000 hospital bill, it’s not covered because another member of my family hasn’t met their half of our family deductible yet?

And HR Grinch says yes. And tries to move on.

And then someone points out this rather absurd loophole would mean that you should keep your family in a bubble until you can get them to the doctor in early January and run up as many procedures as possible so you can pay your $300 up-front and actually have, you know, insurance.

And she says, “We can play “what if” all day, but we will never get through all this if you keep playing “what if.” Insurance has changed. We need to accept it and move on!”

And then she had her goons haul off the instigators and had them tortured in the hall. For really reals. We could hear their screams. It was a brilliant move on her part to quell the voices of opposition so she could explain how we would need buy a bigger wallet for all the cards our new insurance overlords were going to mail us. BWHAHAHAHA!

One of our reporters turned to me in horror and mouthed “WTF” Except she didn’t use the acronym. Ah hell yeah. She was scared. They were ALL scared.

Except one dude who clearly wasn’t paying attention and felt compelled to point out, using the InterWebz on his iPhone, that there were several options for plans on the dental insurance Web site that the HR Grinch had in her Power Point presentation and could she please clarify which one we needed to select.

When they dragged him away, they all just sat there in their silence and soiled underwear. And no one will ever hear from that mouthy little mo-fo or his damn iPhone again.

It was totally glorious in its evil injustice. And I just laughed and laughed (silently to myself of course, so as not to attract wrath) because I can switch to the hubby’s insurance and we’ll probably save a bit of money.

And we can invite his HR Grinch over to our house and get him shit-faced on good wine and ask all the questions we like because we have totally done that before and no one has ever gotten hurt. Unless you count the hangover. Which you should because that was wicked.

So yeah. BEST INSURANCE MEETING EVER!

And it totally made an otherwise shitty day memorable.

I am dressed and ready to go. And I am just not, you know, going.

Maybe fear of the baconic plague will keep the assholes out of my office today. Highly unlikely. This group doesn’t fear anything. I’m half tempted to hang garlic and a crucifix over my office door to see if that would keep the sanity-suckers out.

A gun loaded with silver bullets would be strictly against company policy.

Any old hoo, I need to put down the computer and leave. Now.

Still here.

DAMN IT!!!!

I suck.

I can always come up with a million reasons why I feel the need to eat food that is not good for me. Currently, my favorite indulgence is caramel apples. It is fall, after all, and what says autumn joy more than a perfectly healthy, fibrous fruit that is swathed in sugary, buttery caramel and dotted with tiny nuts?

Oh caramel apples, I wish I could quit you.

Then there is my perpetual love affair with Starbucks and it’s liquid candy bar known as white chocolate mocha. And I have been spamming @Starbucks on Twitter begging for the return of the salted caramel hot chocolate. Because one addiction is just not enough.

This week I have been laid out flat with the bacon plague. And so of course, there were no trips to the gym or walks outside enjoying the fresh air. Instead, I inhaled an entire package of tiny chocolate cupcakes and ordered a pizza.

I will be the only person in America to contract H1N1 and gain weight. Seems like there should be a prize for that, or at least a guest spot on the Today show.

But all my excuses are lame, and I know what I need to do. Tomorrow I will return to my unsatisfying job and be buried under a week’s worth of work and I will feel overwhelmed and ready to cry and I will reach for comfort food, self-anaesthetising with calories like I always do when I just can’t cope.

Or, I can just decide right now not to do that.

I can go in to my office tomorrow, put in my photo assignment straight away, and then start sorting through my inbox, one item at a time. I can just smile and tell people that I will be with them as soon as I can, that I will deal with their problems, needs, wants, etc. as soon as it is appropriate, set my priorities and stick with it.

And as soon as I am finished with my late afternoon reporting assignment, I can just go home or to the gym for a bit of light exercise.

I can start to put myself first, and if it disappoints people, so the fuck what? I hate my job. Why do I give a rat’s ass what they think of me? I have been killing myself emotionally for almost four years to earn respect I will never get. Screw them. All of them.

It’s time to get an attitude check. I will do my best every single day until I don’t work there anymore, which I hope will be next year. And in the meantime, I will do what’s best for me. I will stay focused on the goals that make me happy, that fulfill me creatively and physically. And I will always put myself first.

Every. Single. Day.