The Queen of Indulgences

Well, I survived Valentine's Day. Hubby was very sweet and had half a dozen roses sent to my office. When I got home there was more in store: two cards (he always gets me one funny one and one mushy one), ear muffs like his that I had been coveting, the box of peanut butter meltaways, and a pair of beautiful earrings with pearls and little teeny diamonds. That wasn't all: he helped Mabel get me a cute card and a necklace with three pink topaz hearts. "They stand for me, you and Daddy," she told me. Very, very sweet.

And let me tell you I never opened the candy and put them away in the spare bedroom closet where they will be out of sight until the weekend.

I have to confess here that I did a bad thing. When it came to my Valentine's gift for Hubby, I behaved; I got him the wooden tool box he had been drooling over (to put his fly tying paraphernalia in), and since he's on his low-carb diet, a couple containers of smokehouse almonds. But when I took Mabel shopping, she wanted to get Daddy something sweet, candy or cookies. She wound up picking out the double stuffed Ore0s, his favorite cookie. When she was picking them out I tried to tell her that Daddy's on his diet and his next free days aren't until next weekend, so it was kind of mean to give him sweet stuff. Her reply? "Aw, come on, it's Valentine's Day, give him permission to eat them!"

I love the fact that she thinks I'm the diet disciplinarian in the house. The Queen of Indulgences: I sit on my throne and decide who can eat junk food and when. In a way it's true; when it comes to Mabel I do make the rules about eating healthy food first, and then having a treat. She must assume I should take on the same responsibility with Daddy.

I did have the power to tell her no, no cookies for Daddy. But I didn't. I let her get them for him, and when she gave them to him yesterday, he couldn't stop himself and ate some. But after a few he pushed them away and said if he didn't stop he'd eat them all. So I packed them up and hid them with my candy.

Was I giving him a little bit of his own medicine by doing this? A little revenge for all the temptations he waves under my nose? In some passive aggressive way I think I did, and I'm not very proud of it. I did do my best to try and redeem myself by helping him hide them, but they really shouldn't have been in the house in the first place.

As for the rest of the day, again I really struggled with the food. At supper I ate more vegetables than I really should have: caramelized shallots that tasted like heaven, and an Au gratin spaghetti squash that Hubby made and wasn't crazy about, but I liked it. He used some of my Egg Beaters, a little parmesan, some Dijon mustard and some low fat buttermilk, and I really liked it. A little too much. I find myself trying to rationalize this behavior because it's vegetables and not meat or bread, but I still ate until I was full, not simply satisfied.

And once again I hit my dark chocolate stash. Like last night it was a controlled portion, 4 pieces of my Special Dark miniatures and about 200 calories total, but it still felt like I was teetering on the edge of oblivion.

As for exercise, it was below zero with the wind chills this morning and I chickened out on going out to my treadmill or bike. I did the stability ball again, and then I busted my hump big time shoveling a path from the house to my car. The snow was heavy and deep, and by the time I came back inside to get Mabel, I was panting and sweated through. So although I feel guilty about not getting myself out to work out, I know I'm still getting some physical activity in other ways.

I don't feel good about my impending weigh in on Saturday, though. Like last week, I feel like I'm not putting in enough exercise, but this week the food has been a lot sloppier. It's my PMS week on my new pills, so maybe that has something to do with it. Along with the time of year, the horrible weather, the chocolate-laden holiday, dealing with my and Mabel's illnesses. If I'm lucky I'll maintain again, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was up a pound or two. I don't know, because once again I've not been weighing myself daily. I'll just have to wait until Saturday and see what happens.

Could it be the lack of weighing that's leading me to sloppy eating? Because I don't have that number floating in my head every morning, maybe I'm not as driven to resist the urges to overeat? It's an interesting thought.

I'm on call all day today waiting for the Sears guy to come and do yearly maintenance on my exercise bike. It's bad enough that you're told they're coming sometime between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., but in my case the bike is still in the garage at the old house, so it makes it even more complicated. The guy is supposed to call me on the cell phone when he's on his way, and he better, or this is going to be one major screw-up. Oh well, just add it to the list of other screwed up things.