Weeks of working on my coping skills to get to the point that I could find peace in something other than chocolate went up in smoke in the last few days. Most of the gnawing  anxiety is work-related, so I won’t go into detail because:

• I’m a a professional
• The details are boring to anyone but me
• I like being employed

So let’s just go with work-blah-blah-blah has been rough and so Friday night I bought cookies. And a wee bit of ice cream. And caramel apples with nuts because that is my seasonal Kryptonite.

And then Halloween happened and there are all these fun size candy bars that the little beggars didn’t claim that I may or may not have consumed for breakfast this morning.

And today, after I wasted 30 minutes stuck in a drive-thru bank lane behind some asshole in a beat-up pick-up who must have been refinancing his house, I *tried* to order a low-WW-Points sandwich from a drive thru.  But the surly chick at the window got really rude with me because I pointed out she was charging me for the wrong order and so I did what I always do when I’m mad: I left without buying any food.

Hello, Burger King double cheeseburger. You were convenient, fast and the young lady at the window was sweet, smiling and has been the brightest spot of my shitty lunch hour.

In other words, I haven’t done much toward the weight loss goal in the last seven days.

But shit happens. I didn’t pile on all this weight in a matter of days the first time, I can’t lose it all in the same amount of time. You cannot buy coping skills on Amazon or eBay, because I’ve looked, and old habits are hard to break. And caramel apples with nuts are just wonderful and they really do make it all better. At least for a few minutes.

I may need to seek professional therapy and a personal trainer before pecan pie season, which starts today, is more than I can resist.

Hard day at work, husband out of town, dogs bouncing off the ceiling, cat being a dick.

You know, the typical stuff.

While I have been almost boastful of my resistance to eating my emotions lately, I folded like a seven-two-offsuit hand of Texas Hold ‘Em last night.

I totally grabbed a spoon and went face first into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Boston Cream Pie ice cream.

One bazillion calories later, I was still stressed. But damn. That was some very good ice cream.

It rained all day here yesterday, which I gather is a rare thing in October in Southern California. Um, so yeah, all you Californians who laughed that our 5.6 earthquake in Virginia last month was barely enough shaking for a martini? We don’t call it a “weather event” when it rains. We just call it rain. We don’t like it. We avoid going for walks. But we keep calm and carry an umbrella.

Anyway, my vacation goal to plan each day around the equation of eating less plus moving more, which is supposed to equal less fat on my ass, was set back a wee bit because it was too wet to walk toward the ocean (more irony, I guess.) So I ended up walking on the fitness center treadmill. I really hate treadmills because it makes walking a chore.

I ended up trying to calculate how many miles I had to walk to earn a pineapple martini. I decided it was two miles. I am not going to show my work.

Anyway, my husband decided to skip dinner with his colleagues at the Cheesecake Factory (I know, right? WTF? We’re in California and they want to go to the shitty Cheesecake Factory?) and we went to a place down the street, Killer Shrimp.

And I had a “killer” margarita (it was sublime) and a bowl of lobster mac and cheese. If my calculations were correct, to walk that bowl of creamy sin away I owed that treadmill 26 more miles. Uphill. At marathon pace.

So I only ate about a third of it. It was maybe one of the finest tasting dishes I have ever had, but it was so rich, that a third was plenty.

I am not going to mention that Phil and I figured out if you combined lobster mac and cheese with french fries, you get the most wonderful thing on the planet. Patent pending.

Much better view than CNN on a treadmill television.

All has returned to normal here in L.A. this sunny morning, so I walked about two miles around Marina del Rey. Much more pleasant than a shitty treadmill.  When Phil is done with his meeting, we plan to hit the Getty Center and Old Town Pasadena before dinner with his family. Since I am uber self-conscious about eating in front of his relatives, I am hoping for a calorie deficit for the day.

Moving more. Eating less. Is this really me?

I wonder sometimes about my inner dialogues and just how many fucked-up voices there are inside my head.

For example, when work was done yesterday I should have headed straight to the pool for a water aerobics class. But my the voice in my head that helps me make shitty decisions came up with some really compelling arguments to skip the gym and go home to the couch.

• It was overcast and gloomy. Who wants to swim when it’s damp outside?
• The instructor is a creepy retired gym teacher, resulting in flashbacks to the 1970s, where all my troubles with physical fitness began –gym class PTSD.
• The hillbilly family would likely be there, and hillbillies are very hard to drown.
• I swam laps on Sunday and my body still ached from it. Hello, I never said I was Diana Nyad.

Diana Nyad > me

Despite the fact that I know I always feel better after I workout, and my inner optimist tries to rally me on, my inner cynic always coddles me into making bad choices.

It’s like there is a two-party debate continually raging in my brain.  My inner Progressive whispers to get fit and stay positive, but my inner Reactionary always shouts that and makes that sound like a sissy idea from a pansy ass.

Even though I know that’s a completely false, I fall for it almost every time.

It’s all very noisy, the rhetoric is endless and at the end of the day, nothing gets done. Just like Congress.

I gained a pound. After a waging a week-long battle to NOT to dive face first into gourmet cupcakes. Up a pound.

"I'll bet you haven't been tracking, you fat ass! BWHAHAHAHA!"

And the Weight Watchers counselor asked me what I could have done better.

How about nothing, bitch. NOTHING! I didn’t do anything wrong.

You would think after decades of counseling fat people trying to drop weight, this organization would have better stock responses when a client has a NATURAL setback.  Instead, they add to the discouragement by throwing it back in your face.

As I was trying to leave with my dignity intact, the counselor whispered to me that maybe I should eat more protein.

At that moment, I gave her a protein shake by repeatedly bashing her to the ground yelling “DIE SATAN’S WHORE, DIE!”

In my unstable mind of fantasy, of course. If I had done that in reality, I wouldn’t be typing now because being handcuffed makes that really difficult.

Don’t ask me how I know that, but it’s true.

Anyway, I am not going to let that wench get the better of me. I am going to channel my burning desire to punch someone (specifically her)  into a few good workouts this weekend, and think of her ugly face every time I bite into a veggie.

Bite me, bitch.

I took my lunch to work, a Healthy Choice chicken & rice dish vaguely disguised to taste like something with some kind of pseudo-Asian sauce. I had two of these Jello mousse-pudding cups – awesome, fat-free and 60 calories, score!

Then I had to deal with the IDIOTS at the service department where I leased my car, the JACKASSES that took in my car on Saturday morning and told us they wouldn’t even touch it until Monday, the same LYING BASTARDS that then actually performed the service on Saturday but then NEVER CALLED to say it was done, the very same MORONS that left my car sitting on their lot all weekend and all day today and still NEVER CALLED to tell me it was ready, the identical DIMWITS that never returned my two phone calls during the day asking when my car would be ready, and the same GINORMOUS TWATBURGERS that charged me $89 for an oil change.

And you know me and my lack of coping skills.

So off to Starbucks I go.

But I did order a skinny vanilla latte, even though the sweet, tempting voice in the drive-thru box tempted me greatly with the offer of a caramel brulee latte.

So I had that going for me.

Then I came home and had a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner and could not possibly make myself go back out in the sub-freezing temperature to hit the gym.

There’s always tomorrow.