Eight Week Plan Side Effects

Starting spring cleaning without dish-washing gloves was a bad idea. The skin around my fingernails is red and sore, weep weep. This morning before I touch another dish or counter I will hie me away to Tesco to buy some Marigolds.

Meanwhile, I am surviving my 800 calorie a day diet. Besides falling asleep thinking about cake, the only symptoms are hunger, pimples and wanting to look at fashion magazines. Being well past adolescence, I don't get pimples. But, lo, there has been one on my forehead since Monday and now there is one on my nose. A quick check of the internet suggests a diet high in dairy, gluten, caffeine, alcohol and peanuts can lead to adult acne, but apart from Greek yogurt I haven't had much dairy and I certainly haven't had any gluten, alcohol or peanuts. Maybe it's the increase in coffee.

Poor B.A. came home last night exhausted and cranky and immediately began to rummage about for for a bag of crisps. Of course there were no crisps. I suggested he have an apple. 

"I need carbohydrates," he snarled. 

"Apples are high in carbohydrates," I observed. 

"I need something crunchy!"

Apples are also crunchy, but I saw I was on dangerous ground so I stopped everything I was doing and made dinner around B.A.  Not having found anything flat and crunchy, he was boiling a pot of white, glutenous pasta. He cheered up after dinner, which I understand is normal for good husbands who have just had a trying day. To paraphrase the co-dependent movement, never let your husband become too thirsty, hungry or tired. There was even a Picnic bar (a kind of British candy bar) in the cupboard when he asked plaintively if there was one, so the evening vastly improved. 

The maddening thing about B.A. is that he is thinner than ever, having stopped drinking wine. His family runs to thin, but then Scotsmen seem to be thin. Outside Toronto's Pearson Airport, I saw a short and fat young lady with a tall thin young man, and I pronounced, "They're Scottish." Sure enough, they queued up for the Glasgow flight. Whatever it is in the British air that contrives to make all women fat, it does not affect the as many men. 

Well, let's be honest. It's not the air; it's white wine and cake. 

Update: The National Health Service does not like Very Low Calorie Diets, by the way. I promise to end it on Holy Saturday. Also, I will be eating half a pączek on Thursday and very likely a scone with whipped cream on Saturday, followed by a glass of red wine.  (Hen party [i.e. bachelorette].)