Do you look like your mother?

I just watched a news video on Yahoo's front page today.

Way back during Vietnam, a soldier went off to war. There, he received a Dear John letter from his girl friend. She was breaking up with him, and she was pregnant. But she was going to give the child up for adoption.

Apparently the man came home and tried to find his child, to no avail.

Until two weeks ago, when they did find each other.

No DNA test needed.

There was video of them together - and they looked exactly alike. The 40 year old son was balding, his dad was bald. The 40 year old son was in law enforcement. After getting out of the military, dad had gone into law enforcement too.

And both of them were overweight. 60 year old and 40 year old had the exact same paunch!

Just goes to show that genetics plays a key role in one's weight. If your parents are overweight, chances are you will be too.

And not necessarily because you eat too much - although in many people that is a factor, of course.

But because of a genetic tendency to overweight. Especially for people with big frames. Women with wide hips will typically weigh more than women with small bones and narrow hips.

That's just the way it is.

But if you're a wide-hipped woman who looks at a thin-hipped woman longingly and thinks, "I wish I had her body," don't wish too hard, you might get it.

This happened to me as a teen. I got a job at a McDonalds. A girl started there, a couple of inches taller than me, small breasts and hips (as opposed to my large breasts and wide hips) and I wished I had her body... until I found out that she was an epileptic - she had a seizure one day, right in the store - and found myself all of a sudden very happy that I was me and not her.

We can not change our bone structure. We can not change our metabolism. (Any attempt to speed up our metabolism by taking some kind of over the counter pill is very dangerous - all that does is speed up your heart rate - not healthy.)

We must know ourselves, and work within ourselves to achieve our ideal weight and our ideal health.

Let's do that in 2012.

Eye candy everywhere...for the guys

I saw a Jenny Craig commercial yesterday. Some girl singer - she's well known but I dont' pay attention to any singer after the 1980s so I can't tell you her name - was the "spokesperson." Or rather, spokes-singer.

She was dressed in a very revealing outfit. Black scarf over her tiny breasts, black Tarzan like loin cloth on her hips, showing off her flat stomach and belly button.

And of course she was standing with one hip canted, in a pose that most men find sexy, I guess, and she'd cant her upper torso this way and that to show off those non-existent breasts, and she'd make a broad gesture with one arm and run a hand through her long tresses in another gesture which apparently guys find sexy...

As I watched it (I had the sound turned down so I don't know what she was singing - probably some kind of song demanding that a guy come and have sex with her) I found myself thinking - all she needs is a pole and she could be up in a "gentleman's club" getting lots and lots of guy s excited...and having their respect of herself as a human being? Why, no, I don't think so.

Not that I don't think women should dress sexily for their significant other (and vice versa, of course). I just think such things should be reserved for that significant other, not spread around for all to see, as if that's the only reason why they exist.

I was channel surfing today and caught a glimpse of one of the Aliens vs Predators movies... all the guys in the scene were dressed in military gear. The sole woman? A white cling-fitting sleeveless t-shirt and short shorts. Now, I don't know about you...but if I'm going after aliens, or predators, I'm going to be dressed in full survival gear, and if that doesn't show off my hips or breasts to best advantage, that's just too bad!

Still Working on that Ham

After several decades of doing Christmas dinner, you'd think we'd be better able to gauge how much everybody eats and plan accordingly. It's one thing to have enough left over food for one lunch and one dinner... it's another thing to have left over food to last a week!

I'm sick of ham and I'll be eating it for lunch and dinner for two more days! At least!

Anyway, it's now the 28th of December, 3 more days to the new year.

Have you started planning your New Year's Resolutions yet?

Most women seem to make New Year's Resolutions... most guys, not so much.

The problem with New Year's Resolutions is that they are set, they are broken once, and then they are abandoned.

New Years' Resolutions are like everything else - they are a process. You have to work up to them gradually.

Don't make it a resolution to give up chocolate completely - cold turkey. If you feel that that is a worthwhile goal (and it is if you can't control your chocolate craving, and a small snack turns into ten or eleven small snacks!) don't expect that you can just wake up on Jan 1 and never take another bite of chocolate again. Not if you're used to having several candy bars, or even one candy bar, a day.

As with all things, gradualness is the key.

Make your goals to be time sensitive:

By the end of this month I will have cut back to one Pepsi a day.
By the end of this month I will have cut back to half a bowl of ice cream a night.
By the end of this month I will have started walking at least thirty minutes a day.

Give yourself time to get acclimated to your new goals. Don't set yourself up to fail by not giving yourself time to get truly started and used to your new resolutions.

Ham, Ham, Ham

We hosted Christmas dinner yesterday afternoon (my old parents - I'm my mom's caregiver and live with them) my sister and her husband and their 13 year old son.

We had a large ham - and so half of it is left. My dad has already cut it up into thick slices - we have enough slices for breakfast, lunch and dinner for today and tomorrow.

Which is too bad, because ham isn't my favorite food. Nevertheless, I shall eat it.

One of the reasons why we have so much ham is because my nephew barely ate anything. As is his custom, he snacked before he came, ruining his appetite for the meal. This is not so bad when he's coming over to someone's house, but when he does it before going out to a restaurant, it does get annoying. The more so because of course he will either order a large meal, or fill his plate full if it's a Chinese restaurant, and then eat a couple of bites. The rest of the food, and the money his parents have to spend to pay for it, are wasted.

He's done this often enough now that I've come to expect it, but either his parents haven't cottoned on to it.... or they just don't care.

I think it's that they don't care. Whatever makes their young son happy, why, that's completely okay.

I know this because last night, my sister told us (she was seated next to me and her son at the time), that she was going to church today, and did he want to come. He of course said no. I teased him about having gone to a religious school when he was a very young kid, and he said that he had found it boring. And his mom had said, "Oh, I'm sorry."

Apologizing to him for the fact that 7 years ago, when he was 6, she'd made him go to a school that he'd found boring!

She does that a lot, my sister. On the previous times when he's filled his plate and not eaten anything, she'll say, "Oh, that's okay."

We can be playing scrabble (okay, his dad will tell him to do things he doesn't want to do, like play a game of scrabble with his mother, aunt and grandmother - but I guess the dad can't make him do it with a good grace) and he can be tapping his fingers incessantly, acting bored, playing 3-letter words, and his mom won't say anything.

(However, it would not surprise me if all he can spell are three-letter words. He's not a big reader...)

But back to the food thing.

It turns out - me deducing from what I heard - is that the parents and the kid don't have a set breakfast or lunch time. The only time they get together for a meal is for dinner. At all other times they just go and get food whenever they want, and so the boy snacks all day long. If he had a slow metabolism instead of a fast metabolism he'd be extremely tubby right now, but he does have a fast metabolism, so he eats all day - expect for dinner - and never learns to do otherwise.

All this rant is a long way of saying that yes - it is important to instill good eating habits in kids. Have, if at all possible, a set time for breakfast, lunch and dinner and don't let him stuff himself (or herself) in between! Teach kids that wasting food is wasting food and money!

Well, on a lighter note...its the day after Christmas. 6 more days until a new year, January 1.

Are you one of those many folks who don't start anything new until the new year, and then make your New Years Resolutions?

Well...for you to keep your New Year's Resolutions, you've got to start preparing to do so now.

More on that in tomorrow's post.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Regular blog postings begin on DECEMBER 26, Monday.

Aroma plays a big part in appeitite

When you're sitting in the living room watching TV while the turkey and all the other food is cooking in the oven, the aromas are wafting your way and increasing your appetite.

One way to prevent an attack of the munchies is to have fans blowing the aromas in the opposite direction from where you're sitting.

There's a website called AromaPatch that talks about aromas and how it can help decrease overeating. I present it for your information:

http://www.aromapatch.org/aroma.htm
Specific aromas can deprogram overweight people whose normal response to the smell of rich, unhealthy foods like chocolate, doughnuts and pizza was to become hungry and overeat. Scientists tested the benefits of food odors to suppress appetite rather than stimulate appetite, and found that there seemed to be certain smells that caused overweight individuals to reduce their cravings, and therefore eat less.

In scientific research, people preferred sweet smells, and strongly sweet scents such as chocolate often triggered feelings of hunger and led to overeating or binge eating, while “neutral” sweet smells actually curbed appetite. To test this theory, researchers asked 3,193 overweight people (mostly women) aged 18-64 to inhale a variety of “neutral” sweet smells, including banana, green apple, vanilla, and peppermint, three times in each nostril whenever they were hungry. After six months, the participants in his study lost an average of five pounds a month, or 30 pounds in total. Source: J. Neurol. Orthop. Med. Surg., 1995; 16:28-31.

Similar research has been done at the Human Neuro-Sensory Laboratory in Washington, D.C. and this research fully supports earlier findings. Researchers there studied eighty people who were given one of two inhalation devices. One contained a combination of specially selected scents; the other was a placebo (neutral un-detectable scent). All of these subjects were asked to inhale the scents three times five to six minutes before and after eating a meal. At the end of the six-month trial, those participants who used the selected scents lost an average of 19 pounds, while the placebo group only lost an average of 4 pounds.

Worried About Your Weight? Thnking of Going on a Diet

This post is not for my regular readers, but for any newbies who are showing up because they are getting bombarded every day by news reports and emails and ads warning them about the the horros of overeating during the holidays and of being overweight in general.

And my message is... if you do want to lose weight, December is not the time to start. (Unless you're of a religion that doesn't celebrate Christmas, in which case, go for it!)

Traditionally, there are Christmas parties, and holiday parties, throughout the month, in which people have tons of food available and typically eveyrone "overeats" - either on real food like turkey and so on, or on snacks like pies or candy.

Supposedly the average person gains 5 pounds during December.

Big deal.

It's a once a year thing... Thanksgiving and Christmas... once a year...

Now I'm not saying that's a license to pig out... I'm saying don't be ashamed if you do pig out!

The thing is, if you've just now decided to try to lose weight, December is a bad month because of all the temptations put in your way. It's soooo easy to be tempted, to eat, and then to think your willpower sucks and that you'll never be able to lose weight because you can't stop eating.

As I've said to my regular readers, that's not true. Willpower is a muscle and can be exercised and strengthened like any other muscle.

But if you don't have willpower - as evidenced by the fact that you're overweight and are coming to Weight Loss Without Tears to find out how to lose weight that you haven't been able to lose - then don't sabotage yourself by trying to start a diet in December. You're bound to be tempted by some type of food, stuff yourself with it, and then beat yourself up even more for having no willpower - vicious circle.

So - keep reading this blog, and prepare to go on a diet on January 2!

For those who have been following my program for a while.. if this is your first December, take it carefully. The idea is to never feel guilt, never feel despair, never give up.

Remember, it's all about knowing yourself.

It's all about learning about yourself.

If you've reached that level of caloric intake where you're eating small portions of food and losing one to two pounds a week... if you suddenly eat double what you're normally used to... how does that effect you? If you've been successful in eating only half a Snickers bar as a treat a day, and you have a whole Snickers bar...or you eat a pecan pie or a pumpkin pie... how does that effect you.

Are you able to maintain that slight increase in food? Does one piece of pecan pie spur you to want another one immediately, or do you start craving another piece in the middle of hte night?

But the main thing to find out is after Christmas is over. After the relatives have left and all the food and the leftovers have been eaten.

Have you gained weight? If so, how much?

Don't worry - you can lose it - the question is, how long will it take.

Can you go back to your pre-Christmas (and Thanksgiving) eating habits with no problem, or do cravings kick in and is your willpower to resist them wobbly. (And is this exacerbated by the fact that tere's so much snow on the ground that you can't get out for walks?)

If you can get back to your pre-Christmas eating habits...do you lose a pound or two after that first week? If not, no problem, your body simply has to get back to that state of caloric imbalance that you'd been in before. Spend another week eating "normally" (everything you want, just smaller portions, as you had been doing) and by that second week, a pound will have come off.

Then, just continue on as usual.

OT - Email Scams

I got an email today from someone I know - it was her email, not a fake one.

The title of the email was Help! and in the body of the email she said that she and her husband - and she gave the name of her husband and it was the correct one - had gone to London (they are in the Air Force and currently stationed in Italy) and been mugged, and they needed money.

Well - the email was her email, but I knew it was a fake.

In the first place, we are mere acquaintances...if she'd really been mugged and needed money there are dozens of people she'd email before she'd email me.

Secondly, she did not address me by name.

Thirdly, she signed her name in full, but this woman always signs her name with a diminuitive.

But, I thought to myself... if you've been mugged and aren't thinking clearly, these things might go by the board.

So I sent an email back - "Sorry to hear about your troubles, of course I'll help, but first, tell me the name of our mutual friend the hairstylist. (For we have a mutual friend who is a hairstylist).

"She" sent an email back immediately, and did not answer my question, merely proceeded to give the London address where I should send some money via Western Union. (And again did not call me by name).

So yet more confirmation that it's a fake.

I know this scam has been around for a while. I've heard on the news...somewhere...where it's normally relatives of teenagers who are targeted...they say they've been arrested and need money to get out of jail or something of that nature. (So why do their relatives think they could possibly have access to an email account in a holding cell?)

Anyway, I phoned our mutual friend - who knows the phone of these folks in Italy - and told her to tell them that their email account had been hacked.

I contemplated calling the police and arranging some kind of international arrest warrant - I'd send money, and cops could be at the Western Union on the other end ready to arrest whoever came for the money... but then I decided that the cops probably wouldn't be interested in arranging such an event - for as little money as I was prepared to send (even though what she was asking for was $1,000.) (I've read other people complaining about similar things. One guy on a message board said that someone had created a fake credit card with his number and was buying stuff at a Walmart in a state several states away from him...he tried to call to have the guy tracked down and arrested but neither the Walmart involved in the theft, nor the police in that town, would do anything about it. HIs own credit card company gave him a new card...and that's all that they did.

So, to cut a long story short, here's some lessons to be learned.

1. If someone emails you asking for money because of a family tragedy - verify that it's the truth! Are they people who should be using your first name, do they sign their name properly, etc. and etc.)

2. Everyday, check your SENT folder to see if someone is sending emails in your names!

Who can you trust?

I'm 50 years old, and I've been drinking milk for breakfast, lunch and dinner - and snacktime - forever. (When I was drinking Pepsi as a steady diet, that was in between meals. When I ate, I always drank milk.)

On the few times I traveled over to Europe, I was always surprised to see that I could never get milk in a restaurant. (Or if I could, it was some horrible heated stuff.)

It was finally made clear to me that the rest of the world doesn't have a National Dairy Council... or whatever Council it is that does the commercials that say Got Milk? or encourage people to drink milk because you get calcium from it.

I'm not sure how the rest of the world gets their calcium - presumably in their cheeses or broccoli or what have you. We have "fortified" orange juice, for example...not sure if Europeans do.

In any event, the thing is that everyone in the US thinks they have to drink milk to get calcium - because of the advertisement that says so - no one in Europe thinks so.

It's all advertisement.

We've also got the Beef commercials - it's "what's for dinner". That's not quite the same thing, the advertisements don't say that beef is necessary for you, just that it tastes good. But funnily enough...those commercials are paid for from the Natinal Beef Board- or whatever their name is. But the thing is... the governmetn pays for those commercials too (indirectly, through subsidies to the National Beef Board)!

We've been told for years, by "them," that eggs are bad for you...give you high cholesterol. That news hadn't made it to Europe, where apparently they've done some kind of study that shows that people who eat eggs are able to lose weight more frequently than those who don't.

http://lifestyle.in.msn.com/health/article.aspx?cp-documentid=5617814

Here's the thing - we don't know who is paying advertisers to effect our eating habits. We don't know who is paying the scientists who endorse that this food is good for you and this bad.

The solution is simple. Eat whatever you want - the foods you like - just eat them in moderation!

Some things are common sense. There's no nutrition in chocolate - it just tastes great and gives you energy! So obviously you can't subsist on chocolate for more than a day! Fruits and vegetables - bursting with vitamins. Eggs - taste good, give you protein. And so on.

So don't get all het up over the latest study. If you like certain foods - eat them. In moderation.

What to do while watching football?

This is the kind of rowing machine I have - with independent arms. You can get a cheaper version with a pully system, but that makes you use both your hands at the same time. With independent arms, you can alternate your hand positions to get a bit of variety, and so on.

I've spent the whole day watching football... 11 am for the first game, 2 pm for the 2nd, and then after dinner, and what I'm watching right now, Giants vs Cowboys. (And I have to tell you...I watch football to watch football, not some guy doing air-humping in the end zone (in this case Brandon Jacobs) and then some swivel hip action like he's trying to adjust his cup, before running to the sideline. Act like you've been there before, you moron!

Anyway...for those of you who spend too much time watching football and not enough time exercising, consider getting a rowing machine. You could get a stationary bicycle, but frankly I prefer a rowing machine. You sit on it and exercise your arms and legs and belly at the same time. Indeed, if you've got a little pot belly, there's nothing better than a 30 minute row every day to get rid of it, as well as tone up your arms.

Time Keeps On Slipping Into the Future

Sorry for the dearth of posts recently...I've been working on a project, wanted to devote all my time to it, and kept telling myself...it'll be done today so I can get back to blogging here tomorrow.

The next day it was... okay, it's definitely going to get done today....

Well, today it is done... so back to posting here on a daily basis tomorrow. (With the first post appearing tomorrow afternoon while I'm watching football!)

Thanks for your patience.

Food is Love

I recently read a book called Love, God and the Art of French Cooking, by James Twyman.

It's a book that may not be for everyone, as there's rather a Christian element involved. The author is staying at a chef's B&B in Canada, they get to talking about food and the chef (Roger Dufau) talks about food and religion.

As an atheist, I had no problem with this. (One can be "spiritual" without believing in a God.. one believes in one's own spirit).

In any event, for those of us who used to just eat because food tastes good or we are hungry, this book opens a new window on the meaning of food.

It'll probably be available at your local library, so check it out.

Can't Sleep? Read A Book!

During the day, and even to a certain extent at night, we are most active. But once we try to go to sleep (or are awake when most other people are sleeping), ah..that's where the danger lies.

How many of us suffer from insomnia, or are just night owls. It's late at night, we're in our homes...we can't sleep...what do we do?

Too many eat. Especially if they can't sleep, but want to sleep, the frustration just builds up until they say to hell with it, get up and have a bowl of ice cream or a bag of popcorn. Or eat up the leftover food you were saving for the next day's lunch.

It is important to not let frustration and anger rule your thoughts - either late at night or at any other time.

If you can't sleep, just accept it and try to read a book instead. (More helpful to you than watching TV!) Drink a glass of water to quell any hunger pains...or of course have a few carrots - nothing more than that.

I'm not adverse to anyone having a small bowl of ice cream up to about 8 pm, but after that, you don't want to indulge.

IF you do suffer from insomnia, try all sorts of natural remedies before trying artificial sleep aids. Sleeping pills can be habit forming, and may have side effects.

One thing to do is cut out your caffeine. Drink regular coffee to wake up, and decaf after five or six. Experiment with this to see how early you have to stop drinking caffeine for it to stop effecting your attempts to sleep.

Try meditation just before it's time to go to bed. Write out your frustrations or thoughts in your diary - if you've got thoughts racing around in your head that have you so wired, express them to your journal. That can help calm your mind.

I have also found that working out just before I go to bed, gets me ready for bed. For some people, exercise stimulates brain activity. For me, it helps calms me and gets me ready for sleep.

You need to find out, through experimentation, what's best for you.

Trading one addiction for another?

I subscribe to Will Brink's newsletter - he's a champion body builder.

A couple of days ago he provided a link to an article written by a fitness champion who had suffered from anorexia for many years, until she discovered weight training.

http://www.brinkzone.com/articles/to-hell-and-back-my-battle-with-anorexia/

But as I read the article, it seems to me more that she's merely exchanged one addition for another. Although I will say that being addicted to keeping fit is a helluva lot healthier than being addicted to being skinny.
Here's a few excerpts:

The following day began as usual. I hung around my 13 year-old peers, giggled my way through class, and turned in assignments late. Then lunchtime rolled around and I simply sat there. “I’m just not hungry,” I told everyone. The truth was, that friend from yesterday was sitting too close for my comfort. I couldn’t let him see me eat.

And so began the beginning of my dark days. As the months rolled by, I continued to skip lunch. And as I began to drop weight off of my already-petite frame, the compliments started rolling in. You’re so pretty. You’re so skinny. How do I get a body like yours? I loved it. No – I relished it, and I craved more. My breakfasts soon consisted of a few quick bites of whatever was on the table, and dinner was cut in half. My stomach growled on a constant basis, but that only made me feel strong. I have the power to resist the food; I can do anything.

and

Fast forward to six months later, and I was sitting at 92lbs. I ran into a friend’s mother who hadn’t seen me in almost a year. She gasped in delight, cooing over how much more attractive I’d become. “You’d look better if you dropped just a little more weight,” she said. “Maybe another five pounds or so.” My heart dropped. What I was doing was not enough. People were still not happy with me.

and

I think something went off in me that day, and I went just a little bit crazy. I cut my food even more, and my exercise regimen became obsessive. I worked my way up to 300 pushups and 5,000 sit-ups. I spent my Friday evenings peddling away for a full three hours on the bike instead of hanging out with my friends like I so often had done. After all, it was the perfect opportunity to burn more calories, right? I was a social butterfly no more. I stopped laughing, I stopped smiling, and my thoughts revolved exclusively around food and the next time I could exercise. I went from being a mediocre student with the occasional C’s to straight-A perfectionist. Everything had to be exactly the right way; everything had to be planned out in advance, practiced until flawless.

and

My body was royally pissed off at me. I wanted to continue starving myself, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. What happened to my will power? Was I getting weak? I felt defeated as I slowly increased my exercise even more to compensate for the food I was inhaling. Although I was purging on an almost-daily basis, my face, my legs, my entire body started to fill out again as I slowly began to put the weight back on. I felt constantly bloated and the shame was never-ending.*

and

One day during my second semester of 12th grade, I stumbled upon Oxygen magazine. I know it’s cliché, but where else are you likely to find a flock of athletic, lean women? At first I fell for a lot of the typical hype out there: eat bee pollen, plié squats only, take X Y Z enzymes, these fat burners, and this specific protein powder. I combed through The Eat Clean Diet** as though it was the bible and sucked in every word. I’d come across something that I’d never heard of in my life: you can eat food and not feel guilty or get fat? You can exercise and actually enjoy it? I’d long since given up on the idea that that was feasible, so to read about women who were doing it – and doing it well – shook my entire world.

Almost overnight, my mindset switched from starve, run, binge, purge, starve, run, binge, purge to lift, eat, lift, eat. I spent every minute of my free time devouring information on bodybuilding.com and other fitness websites. I designed my own training programs (poorly made at the time, mind you) and began to lift on a regular basis. I cut down on my cardio, increased my protein intake, and was no longer afraid to eat healthy fats. Oatmeal became a staple in my diet, as did brown rice, fruit, chicken, protein powder, fish oil, nuts, and vegetables.

Well, lift, eat, lift, eat is better than binge, purge, binge, purge... but it still seems to be .... obsessive.

Of course - if you want to be a champion - and the author of this piece, Shona Lee is a compeitor in the National Physique Committee series of contests - then dedicating yourself to eating right and lifting weights is the way to go.

But for people who simply want to be healthy and fit, it's not necessary to eat and train, eat and train, eat and train. It's necessary only to eat healthy portions, ride a bike or jog for half an hour, and do simple weight training three times a week - using light weights to tone, instead of heavy weights to build mass.

Only the morning after matteres

One gluttonous day down, one to go.

Thanksgiving is over, Christmas is yet to come.

Did you overeat on Thursday? Are you feeling guilty now? Ashamed? Swearing that you won't eat anything for a week to make up for your shameful lack of willpower?

Well, don't.

What you do on Thanksgiving, or on Christmas - food wise - doesn't matter.

What you do the day afterward matters.

Remember that every day is a learning process - especially if you've just begun your weight loss program - and you need to learn how you react to certain stimuli.

So, what happened yesterday? Was your goal to just eat small portions of everything, and did you succeed? Very good. Something to be proud of.

Was your goal to eat small portions...but then did you just say, to heck with it and start gong back for seconds and thirds?

If you did, you learned something... that you can't have so much food around and be able to resist it. So ... don't try.

Again, the day after is what's key. Don't over-react because of over-eating yesterday, if you did indeed do so. First off, hopefully you were able to split left-overs amongst your family, so that you don't have a lot of food left in your kitchen for you to snack on for the next few days.

Second, accept the fact that you may have slowed down the process of losing weight by a couple of days. Not a big deal. You've got a month to get back into "weight loss mode" and lose a couple of pounds, before Christmas comes.

Then, you're faced with the same decision - stint yourself, or don't stint yourself.

And be aware that after Christmas, you've got a whole year to lose 52 pounds (at most).

In other words, you've got time.

So don't let the fact that you're going to be inundated with warnings about gaining weight over the next month or so, from people who just try to take the pleasure out of life!

Just continue to keep your journal, continue to learn how you react, cravings-wise, to certain foods, certain advertisements, as the month goes on.

Knowledge is power. By the end of December, you'll know all you need to know to be successful next year, from the first day of Jan until the end of December.

A new year of opportunity is almost upon us. Let's go out and enjoy it.,

Now the Wall Street Journal is getting into the act

I always thought the Wall Street Journal dealt with...you know...investing stuff. Money. Banks. News.

Today, they published an article about how dangerous Thanksgiving Dinner is.

And I'm like ... Jee-sus. "They" want to take the fun out of everything.

ALready most girls and women go into anxiety attacks when they sit down to a meal... is this going to make me fat... I might gain a whole 6 ounces if I eat this and that's just too awful to contemplate, ya da ya da.

It's just soooooo frustrating to see this crap permeating everything. A kindergartner can't go to school these days without being warned against eating too much. Of course fat kids have always been teased unmercifully by their peers, but now teachers and principles are getting into the act - not stopping the bullying but getting in on it themselves.

Yes, this blog exists to encourage people to obtain a healthy weight and maintain that weight, by exercising portion control and exercise. But I am just so sick of these bullying tactics... people have the right to decide for themselves how much they want to eat, how overweight they want to be - we do own our own bodies, right?

There's a plate that tells you to slow down if you're eating too fast

Everyone should be at a healthy weight...sure...but does the government - any government - have the right to force people to get thin?

Because that's what we're heading for.

Believe it or not, in Sweden, some scientists - whose time could have been much better spent working on a cure for cancer, IMHO - have come up with a plate that has sensors in it. If the food on the eater's plate disappears too fast... the plate will speak, and tell the eater to slow down!

Hallaleuhah!

The plate costs $1,500.

Now, I don't know about you, but if I was too stupid to know I was bolting my food, I could hire some kid at $5 an hour to sit beside me while I ate and tell me I was eating too fast.

This is just ridiculous - and scary.

I heard this while listening to Rush today, but I've just done a search on it...and it's been available since 2010.

Note the headline from Gizmodo:
Talking Dinner Plate Tells You to Slow Down, Fatty

Pretty cool idea: This Mandometer plate has a scale underneath which measures how fast weight (food) is disappearing, and compares it to a pre-set rate of consumption. If you eat too fast, it'll actually speak up to admonish you.

As embarrassing as it'd be to actually own this thing, its heart is in the right place: If you slow down your chomping, your body will register as "full" and you'll eat less. I'm not going to buy one—I don't need some uppity plate telling me that no human being should eat an entire San Francisco burrito in seven minutes—but I appreciate the effort.

"I'm not hungry, but I can't stop eating."

That's what my new client said to me today.

She is, unfortunately, pretty much homebound. She's in her 60s, can't movie very well, and is about 100 pounds overweight.

The only way she will be able to lose any weight is to control her eating habits. But, as you might expect, being homebound, she's not the happiest of campers, and indeed is fighting a bit of depression (normal depression, not clinical depression.)

And when people are bored, or depressed, they eat. If you are home bound... can't just pick up and leave whenever you want to, dependent on others for your transportation...that leads to feelings of helplessness...and the desire to comfort yourself, and the easiest way to comfort oneself is to eat.

So I'll be working with her on these issues.

One's mental attitude is 90% of the weight loss/maintenance battle.

Who knew?

I used to watch Taxi many years ago. Many, many years ago,. It's on our local nostalgia station here in Cheyenne, and I watch it occasionally now...my Tony the taxi driver wore tight pants.

On the other hand I've always disliked the character Jim, even though apparently that character was very popular and shot actor Christopher Lloyd to stardom. The character's brain is fried from too much drug use during the 1960s. I would've thought that that would be a salutory lesson to everyone watching, but apparently not so.

(In the same way, an actor named Jan Michael Vincent. I can remember, as a young girl, getting a crush on him as Nanu in The World's Greatest Athlete. But apparently he was an alcoholic for decades and now when you see him he can barely talk, let alone think - although that might be due to the car accident he was in - driving while under the influence. Just a tragedy to see these folks waste their lives, and pretty damn irritating to me. I've got a cousin who has had MS for decades and is now in a wheelchair... what she couldn't have done with her life if not for this disease which she got through no fault of her own....then I look at these people with their self-inflicted diseases, whining about how tough life is, and I just want to kick them. Several times.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. Marilu Henner, the actress, is one of 20 people in the world with "super memory" - to use the layperson's term for it. She can remember everything that happened in her life from a young age. And she's a consultant on the show Unforgettable, which has a character that can do that too, and she apparently has a role as a relative of the lead character, who has Alzheimer's. (And what a horrible disease that is.)

So I was checking her out on Wikipedia, and turns out she's written 6 diet books. Of course she advocates a non-dairy regime, which I think is a bit extreme, but here's the relavant bit from her entry:

Henner has written eight books on diet and health, the most prominent being Total Health Makeover, in which she explains the virtues of a non-dairy diet in conjunction with food combining and exercise. She leads monthly classes on her website, www.marilu.com, designed to help people integrate these steps into a healthier, more active lifestyle. Both of her parents died in their 50s, which prompted her to lead a healthier lifestyle.

Check out her webiste at http://marilu.com

The Melting of Molly Chapter 4

Chapter 4 - SCATTERED JAM
Sleep is one of the most delightful and undervalued amusements known to the human race. I have never had enough yet and every second of time that I'm not busy with something interesting I curl up on the bed and go dream hunting—only I sleep too hard to do much catching. But this torture book found that out on me and stopped it the very first thing on page three. The command is to sleep as little as possible to keep the nerves in a good condition,—"eight hours at the most and seven would be better." What earthly good would a seven-hour nap do me? I want ten hours to sleep and twelve if I get a good tired start. To see me stagger out of my perfectly nice bed at six o'clock every morning now would wring the sternest heart with compassion and admiration at my faithfulness—to whom?

Yes, it was the day after poor Mr. Carter's funeral that Aunt Adeline moved up here into my house and settled herself in the big south room across the hall from mine. Her furniture weighs a ton each piece, and Aunt Adeline is not light herself in disposition. The next morning when I went in to breakfast she sat in the "vacant chair" in a way that made me see that she was obviously trying to fill the vacancy. I am sorry she worried herself about that. Anyway, it made me take a resolve. After breakfast I went into the kitchen to speak to Judy.

"Judy," I said, looking past her head, "my health is not very good and you can bring my breakfast to me in bed after this." Poor Mr. Carter always wanted breakfast on the stroke of seven, and me at the same time, though he rarely got me. Judy has two dead husbands and she likes a ginger-colored barber down-town. Also her mother is our washerwoman and influenced by Aunt Adeline. Judy understands everything I say to her. After I had closed the door I heard a laugh that sounded like a war-whoop, and I smiled to myself. But that was before my martyrdom to this book had begun. I get up now!

But the day after I came from the city I lay in bed just as long as I wanted to and ignored the thought of the exercises and deep breathing and the icy unsympathetic tub. I couldn't even take very much interest in the lonely egg on the lonely slice of dry toast. I was thinking about things.

Hillsboro is a very peculiar little speck on the universe; even more peculiar than being like a hen. It is one of the oldest towns in Tennessee and the moss on it is so thick that it can't be scratched off except in spots. But it has a lot of racehorse and distillery money in it and when it gets poked up by anything unusual it takes a gulp of its own alcoholic atmosphere and runs away on its own track at a two-five gait, shedding moss as it goes. It hasn't had a real joy-race for a long time and I felt that it needed it. I rolled over and laughed into my pillow.

The subject of the conduct of widows is a serious one. Of all the things old Tradition is most set about it is that, and what was decided to be the proper thing a million years ago this town still dictates shall be done, and spends a good deal of its time seeing its directions carried out. For a year after the funeral they forget about the poor bereaved and when they do remember her they speak to and of her in the same tones of voice they used at the obsequies. Then sooner or later some neighbor is sure to see some man walk home from church with her or hear some old bachelor's voice on her front porch. Mr. Cain took Mrs. Caruther's little Jessie up in his buggy and helped her out at her mother's gate just before last Christmas, and if the poor widow hadn't acted quick the town would have noticed them to death before he proposed to her. They were married the day after New Year's and she lost lots of good friends because she didn't give them more time to talk about it.

I don't intend to run any risk of losing my friends that way and I want them to have all the good time they can get out of it. I'm going to serve out mint-juleps of excitement until the dear old place is running as it did when it was a two-year-old. Why get mad when people are interested in you? It's a compliment after all and just gives them more to think about. I remembered the two trunks across the hall and hugged my knees up under by chin with pleasure at the thought of the town-talk they contained.

Then just as I had got the first plan well-going and was deciding whether to wear the mauve meteor or the white chiffon with the rosebud embroidery as a first julep for my friends, a sweetness came in through my window that took my breath away and I lay still with my hand over my heart and listened. It was Billy singing right under my window, and I've never heard him do it before in all his five years. It was the dearest old-fashioned tune ever written and Billy sang the words as distinctly as if he had been a boy chorister doing a difficult recitative. My heart beat so it shook the lace on my breast like a breeze from heaven as he took the high note and then let it go on the last few words.

"If you love me, Molly, darling,

Let your answer be a kiss!"

A confused recollection of having heard the words and tune sung by my mother when I was at the rocking age myself brought the tears to my eyes as I flew to the window and parted the curtains. If you heard a little boy-angel singing at your casement wouldn't you expect a cherubim face upturned with heaven-lights all over it? Billy's face was upturned as he heard me draw the shade, but it was streaked like a wild Indian's with decorations of brown mud and he held a long slimy fish-worm on the end of a stick while he wiped his other grimy hand down the front of his linen blouse.

I lifted him into my arms.

"Say, Molly, look at the snake I brunged you!" he exclaimed as he came close under the sill, which is not high from the ground. "If you put your face down to the mud and sing something to 'em they'll come outen they holes. A doodle-bug comed, too, but I couldn't ketch 'em both. Lift me up and I can put him in the water-glass on your table." He held up one muddy paddie to me and promptly I lifted him up into my arms. From the embrace in which he and the worm and I indulged my lace and dimity came out much the worse.

"That was a lovely song you sang about 'Molly, darling', Billy," I said. "Where did you hear it?"

"That's a good bug-song, Molly, and I bet I can git a lizard with it, too, if I sing it right low." He began to squirm out of my arms toward the table and the glass.

"Who taught it to you, sugar-sweet?" I persisted as I poured water in on the squirming worm under his direction.

"Nobody taught it to me. Doc sings it to me when Tilly, nurse, nor you ain't there to put me to bed. He don't know no good songs like Roll, Jordan, Roll, or Hot Times or Twinkle. I go to sleep quick 'cause he makes me feel tired with his slow tune what's only good for bugs. Git a hair-pin for me to poke him with, Molly, quick!"

I found the hair-pin and I don't know why my hand trembled as I handed it to Billy. As soon as he got it he climbed out the window, glass, bug and all, and I saw him and the red setter go down the garden walk together in pursuit of the desired lizard, I suppose. I closed the blinds and drew the curtains again and flung myself on my pillow. Something warm and sweet seemed to be sweeping over me in great waves and I felt young and close up to some sort of big world-good. It was delicious and I don't know how long I would have stayed there just feeling it if Judy hadn't brought in my letter.

He had written from London, and it was many pages of wonderful things all flavored with me. He told me about Miss Chester and what good friends they were, and how much he hoped she would be in Hillsboro when he got here. He said that a great many of her dainty ways reminded him of his "own slip of a girl", especially the turn of her head like a "flower on its stem." At that I got right out of bed like a jack jumping out of a box and looked at myself in the mirror.

There is one exercise here on page twenty that I hate worst of all. You screw up your face tight until you look like a Christmas mask to get your neck muscles taut and then wobble your head around like a new-born baby until it swims. I did that one twenty extra times and all the others in proportion to make up for those two hours in bed. Hereafter I'll get up at the time directed on page three, or maybe earlier. It frightens me to think that I've got only a few weeks more to turn from a cabbage-rose into a lily. I won't let myself even think "luscious peach" and "string-bean." If I do, I get warm and happy all over and let up on myself. I try when I get hungry to think of myself in that blue muslin dress.

I haven't been really willing before to write down in this torture volume that I took that garment to the city with me and what Madam Rene did to it—made it over into the loveliest thing I ever saw, only I wouldn't let her alter the size one single inch. I'm honorable as all women are at peculiar times. I think she understood, but she seemed not to, and worked a miracle on it with ribbon and lace. I've put it away on the top shelf of a closet, for it is torment to look at it.

You can just take any old recipe for a party and mix up a début for a girl, but it takes more time to concoct one for a widow, especially if it is for yourself. I spent all the rest of the day doing almost nothing and thinking until I felt lightheaded. Finally I had just about given up any idea of a blaze and had decided to leak out in general society as quietly as my clothes would let me, when a real conflagration was lighted inside me.

If Tom Pollard wasn't my own first cousin I would have loved him desperately, even if I am a week older than he. He was about the only oasis in my marriage mirage, though I don't think anybody would think of calling him at all green. He never stopped coming to see me occasionally, and Mr. Carter liked him. He was the first man to notice the white ruche I sewed in the neck of my old black taffeta four or five months ago and he let me see that he noticed it out of the corner of his eyes even right there in church, under Aunt Adeline's very elbow. He makes love unconsciously and he flirts with his own mother. As soon as I've made this widowhood hurdle—well, I'm going to spend a lot of time buying tobacco with him in his Hup runabout, which sounds as if it was named for himself.

And when that conflagration was lighted in me about my début, Tom did it. I was sitting peaceably on my own front steps, dressed in the summer-before-last that Judy washes and irons every day while I'm deciding how to hand out the first sip of my trousseau to the neighbors, when Tom, in a dangerous blue-striped shirt, with a tie that melted into it in tone, blew over my hedge and landed at my side. He kissed the lace ruffle on my sleeve while I reproved him severely and settled down to enjoy him. But I didn't have such an awfully good time as I generally do with him. He was too full of another woman, and even a first cousin can be an exasperation in that condition.

"Now, Mrs. Molly, truly did you ever see such a peach as she is?" he demanded after I had expressed more than a dozen delighted opinions of Miss Chester. His use of the word "peach" riled me and before I stopped to think, I said: "She reminds me more of a string-bean."

"Now, Molly, don't be mean just because old Wade has got her out driving behind the grays after kissing your hand under the lilacs yesterday, which, praise be, nobody saw but little me! I'm not sore, why should you be? Aren't you happy with me?"

I withered him with a look, or rather tried to wither him, for Tom is no Mimosa bud.

"The way that girl has started in to wake up this little old town reminds me of the feeling you get under your belt seven minutes after you've sipped an absinthe frappé for the first time—you are liable for a good jag and don't know it," he continued enthusiastically. "Let's don't let the folks know that they are off until I get everybody in a full swing of buzz over my queen." I had never seen Tom so enthusiastic over a girl before and I didn't like it. But I decided not to let him know that, but to get to work putting out the Chester blaze in him and starting one on my own account.

"That's just what I'm thinking about, Tom," I said with a smile that was as sweet as I could make it, "and as she came with messages to me from one of my best old friends I think I ought to do something to make her have a good time. I was just planning a gorgeous dinner-party I want to have for her when you came so suddenly. Do you think we could arrange it for Tuesday evening?"

"Lord love us, Molly, don't knock the town down like that! Let 'em have more than a week to get used to this white rag of a dress you've been waving in their faces for the last few days. Go slow!"

"I've been going so slow for so many years that I've turned around and I'm going fast backward," I said with a blush that I couldn't help.

"Help! Let my kinship protect me!" exclaimed Tom in alarm, and he pretended to move an inch away from me.

"Yes," I said slowly and as I looked out of the corner of my eyes from under the lashes that Tom himself had once told me were "too long and black to be tidy," I saw that he was in a condition to get the full shock. "If anybody wakes up this town it will be I," I said as I flung down the gauntlet with a high head.

"Here, Molly, here are the keys of my office, and the spark-plug to the Hup; you can cut off a lock of my hair, and if Judy has got a cake I'll eat it out of your hands. Shall it be California or Nova Scotia? And I prefer my bride served in light gray tweed." Tom really is adorable and I let him snuggle up just one cousinly second, then we both laughed and began to plan what Tom was horrible enough to call the resurrection razoo. But I kept that delicious rose-embroidered treasure all to myself. I wanted him to meet it entirely unprepared.

I was glad we had both got over our excitement and were sitting decorously at several inches' distance apart when the judge drew the grays up to the gate and we both went down to the sidewalk to ask him and the lovely long lady to come in. They couldn't; but we stood and talked to them long enough for Mrs. Johnson to get a good look at us from across the street and I was afraid I would find Aunt Adeline in a faint when I went into the house.

Miss Chester was delightfully gracious about the dinner—I almost called it the début dinner—and the expression on the judge's face when he accepted! I was glad she was sitting sidewise to him and couldn't see. Some women like to make other women unhappy, but I think it is best for you to keep them blissfully unconscious until you get what you want. Anyway, I like that girl all over and I can't see that her neck is so absolutely impossibly flowery. However, I think she might have been a little more considerate about discussing Alfred's London triumph over the Italian mission. As a punishment I let Tom put his arm around my waist as we stood watching them drive off and then was sorry for the left gray horse that shied and came in for a crack of the judge's irritated whip.

Then I refused to let Tom come inside the gate and he went down the street whistling, only when he got to the purple lilac he turned and kissed his hand to me. That, Mrs. Johnson just couldn't stand and she came across the street immediately and called me back to the gate.

"You are tempting Providence, Molly Carter," she exclaimed decidedly. "Don't you know Tom Pollard is nothing but a fly-up-the-creek? As a husband he'd chew the rope and run away like a puppy the first time your back was turned. Besides being your cousin, he's younger than you. What do you mean?"

"He's just a week younger, Mrs. Johnson, and I wouldn't tie him for worlds, even if I married him," I said meekly. Somehow I like Mrs. Johnson enough to be meek with her and it always brings her to a higher point of excitement.

"Tie, nonsense; marrying is roping in with ball and chain, to my mind. And a week between a man and a woman in their cradles gets to be fifteen years between them and their graves. I'm going to make you the subject of a silent prayer at the next missionary meeting, and I must go home now to see that Sally cooks up a few of Mr. Johnson's crotchets for supper." And she began to hurry away.

"I don't believe you'll be able to make it a 'silent' session about me, Mrs. Johnson," I called after her, and she laughed back from her own front gate. Marriage is the only worm in the bud of Mrs. Johnson's life, and her laugh has a snap to it even if it is not very sugary sweet.

When I told Judy about the dinner-party [93] and asked her to get the yellow barber to come help her and her nephew wait on the table she grinned such a wide grin that I was afraid of being swallowed. She understood that Aunt Adeline wouldn't be interested in it until I had time to tell her all about it. Anyway, she will be going over to Springfield on a pilgrimage to see Mr. Henderson's sister next week. She doesn't know it yet; but I do.

After that I spent all the rest of the evening in planning my dinner-party and I had a most royal good time. I always have had lots of company, but mostly the spend-the-day kind with relatives, or more relatives to supper. That's what most entertaining in Hillsboro is like, but, as I say, once in a while the old slow pacer wakes up.

I'll never forget my first real dinner-party, as the flower girl for Caroline Evans' wedding, when she married the Chicago millionaire, from which Hillsboro has never yet recovered. I was sixteen, felt dreadfully naked without a tucker in my dress, and saw Alfred for the first time in evening clothes—his first. I can hardly stand thinking about how he looked even now. I haven't been to very many dinner-parties in my life, but from this time on I mean to indulge in them often. Candle-light, pretty women's shoulders, black coat sleeves, cut glass and flowers are good ingredients for a joy-drink, and why not?

But when I got to planning about the gorgeous food I wanted to give them all, I got into what I feel came near being a serious trouble. It was writing down the recipe for the nesselrode pudding they make in my family that undid me. Suddenly hunger rose up from nowhere and gripped me by the throat, gnawed me all over like a bone, then shook me until I was limp and unresisting. I must have astralized myself down to the pantry, for when I became conscious I found myself in company with a loaf of bread, a plate of butter and a huge jar of jam.

I sat down by the long table by the window and slowly prepared to enjoy myself. I cut off four slices and buttered them to an equal thickness and then more slowly put a long silver spoon into the jam. I even paused to admire in Judy's mirror over the table the effect of the cascade of lace that fell across my arm and lost itself in the blue shimmer of old Rene's masterpiece of a negligée, then deep down I buried the spoon in the purple sweetness. I had just lifted it high in the air when out of the lilac-scented dark of the garden came a laugh.

"Why Molly, Molly, Molly!"

"Why, Molly, Molly, Molly!" drawled that miserable man-doctor as he came and leaned on the sill right close to my elbow. The spoon crashed on the table and I turned and crashed into words.

"You are cruel, cruel, John Moore, and I hate you worse than I ever did before, if that is possible. I'm hungry, hungry to death, and now you've spoiled it all! Go away before I wet this nice crisp bread and jam with tears into a mush I'll have to eat with a spoon. You don't know what it is to want something sweet so bad you are willing to steal it—from yourself!" I fairly blazed my eyes down into his and moved as far away from him as the table would let me.

"Don't I, Molly?" he asked softly, after looking straight in my eyes for a long minute that made me drop my head until the blue bow I had tied on the end of my long plait almost got into the scattered jam. Even at such a moment as that I felt how glad old Rene would have been to have given such a nice man as the doctor a treat like that blue silk chef-d'[oe]uvre of hers. I was glad myself.

"Don't I, Peaches?" he asked again in a still softer voice. Again I had that sensation of being against something warm and great and good like your own mother's breast and I don't know how I controlled it enough not to—to—

"Well, have some jam then," I managed to say with a little laugh as I turned away and picked up the silver spoon.

"Thank you, I will, all of it and the bread and butter, too," he answered, in that detestable friendly tone of voice as he drew himself up and sat in the window. "Hustle, Peaches, if you are going to feed me, for I'm ravenous. It took Sam Benson's wife the longest time to have the shortest baby I ever experienced and I haven't had any supper. You have; so I don't mind taking it all away from you."

"Supper," I sniffed as I spread the jam on those lovely, lovely slices of bread and thick butter that I had fixed for my own self. "That apple-toast combination tires me so now that I forget it if I can." As I handed him the first slice of drippy lusciousness I turned my head away. He thought it was from the expression of that jam, but it was from his eyes.

"Slice up the whole loaf, Peaches, and let's get on a jam jag! Come with me just this once and forget—forget—" He didn't finish his sentence and I'm glad. We neither of us said anything more as I fed him that whole loaf. I found that the bite I took off of each piece I had ready for him when he finished with the one he had in hand satisfied me as nothing I had ever eaten in all my life before had done, while at the same time my nibbles soothed his conscience about robbing me.

His teeth are big and strong and white and his jaws work like machinery. He is the strongest man I ever saw, and his gauntness is all muscle. What is that glow a woman gets from feeding a hungry man whom she likes with her own hands; and why should I want to be certain that he kissed the lace on my sleeve as it brushed his face when I reached across him to catch an inquisitive rose that I saw peeping in the window at us?

The Melting Of Molly Chapter 3

Chapter 3: MONUMENT OR TROUSSEAU?

Men are very strange people. They are like those horrible sums in algebra that you think about and worry about and cry about and try to get help from other women about, and then, all of a sudden, X works itself out into perfectly good sense. Not that I thought much about Mr. Carter, poor man! When he wasn't right around I felt it best to forget him as much as I could, but it seems hard for other women to let you forget either your husband or theirs.

I know now that I really never got any older than the poor, foolish, eighteen-years' child that Aunt Adeline married off "safe", all the time I was the "refuge" sort of wife. I would sit and listen while the other wives talked over the men in utter bewilderment and most times terror, then I would force myself to a little more forgetting and poor Mr. Carter must have suffered the consequences. But all that was a mild sort of exasperation to what a widow has to go through with in the matter of—of, well I think hazing is about the best name to give it.

"Molly Carter," said Mrs. Johnson just day before yesterday, after the white-dress, Judge-Wade episode that Aunt Adeline had gone to all the friends up and down the street to be consoled about, "if you haven't got sense enough to appreciate your present blissful condition somebody ought to operate on your mind."

I was tempted to say, "Why not my heart?" I was glad she didn't know how good that heart did feel under my tucker when the boy brought that basket of fish from Judge Wade's fishing trip Saturday. I have firmly determined not to blush any more at the thought of that gorgeous man—at least outwardly.

"Don't you think it is very—very lonely to be a widow, Mrs. Johnson?" I asked timidly to see what she would say about Mr. Johnson, who is really lovely, I think. He gives me the gentlest understanding smile when he meets me on the street of late weeks.

"Lonely, lonely, Molly? You talk about the married state exactly like an old maid. Don't do it—it's foolish, and you will get the lone notion really fastened in your mind and let some fool man find out that is how you feel. Then it will be all over with you. I have only one regret, and it is that if I ever should be a widow Mr. Johnson wouldn't be here to see how quickly I turned into an old maid, by the grace of God." Mrs. Johnson sews by assassinating the cloth with the needle, and as she talked she was mending the sleeve of one of Mr. Johnson's shirts.

"I think an old maid is just a woman who has never been in love with a man who loves her. Lots of them have been married for years," I said, just as innocently as the soft face of a pan of cream, and went on darning one of Billy's socks.

"Well, be that as it may, they are the blessed members of the women tribe," she answered, looking at me sharply. "Now I have often told Mr. Johnson—" but here we were interrupted in what might have been the rehearsal of a glorious scrap by the appearance of Aunt Bettie Pollard, and with her came a long, tall, lovely vision of a woman in the most wonderful close clingy dress and hat that you wanted to eat on sight. I hated her instantly with the most intense adoration that made me want to lie down at her feet, and also made me feel like I had gained all the more than twenty pounds that I have slaved off me and doubled them on again. I would have liked to lead her that minute into Doctor John's office and just to have looked at him and said one word—"string-bean!" Aunt Betty introduced her as Miss Chester from Washington.

"Oh, my dear Mrs. Carter, how glad I am to meet you!" she said as she towered over me in a willowy way, and her voice was lovely and cool almost to slimness. "I am the bearer of so many gracious messages that I am anxious to deliver them safely to you. Not six weeks ago I left Alfred Bennett in Paris and really—really his greetings to you almost amounted to steamer luggage. He came down to Cherbourg to see me off, and almost the last thing he said to me was, 'Now, don't fail to see Mrs. Carter as soon as you get to Hillsboro; and the more you see of her the more you'll enjoy your visit to Mrs. Pollard.' Isn't he the most delightful of men?" She asked me the question, but she had the most wonderful way of seeming to be talking to everybody at one time, so Mrs. Johnson got in the first answer.

"Delightful, nothing! But Al Bennett is a man of sense not to marry any of the string of women I suppose he's got following him!" she said. Miss Chester looked at her in a mild kind of wonder, but she went on murdering Mr. Johnson's shirt-sleeve with the needle without noticing the glance at all.

"Well, well, honey, I don't know about that," said Aunt Bettie as she fanned and rocked her great, big, darling, fat self in the strong rocker I always kept in the breezy angle of the porch for her. "Al is not old enough to have proved himself entirely, and from what I hear—" she paused with the big hearty smile that she always wears when she begins to tease or match-make, and she does them both most of her time.

But at whom do you suppose she looked? Not me! Miss Chester! That was cold tub number two for that day, and I didn't react as quickly as I might, but when I did I was in the proper glow all over. When I revived and saw the lovely pale blush on her face I felt like a cabbage-rose beside a tea-bud. I was glad Aunt Adeline came out on the porch just then so I could go in and tell Judy to bring out the iced tea and cakes. When I came from the kitchen I stepped into my room and took out one of Alfred's letters from the desk drawer and opened it at random, as you do the Bible when you want to decide things, and put my finger down on a line with my eyes shut This was what it was:

"—and all these years I have walked the world, blindfolded to its loveliness with the blackness that came to me when I found that you—"

I didn't read any more, but shoved it back in a hurry and went on out on the porch, comforted in a way, but feeling some more in sympathy with Mrs Johnson than I had before Aunt Bettie and her guest from Washington had interrupted our algebraic demonstration on the man subject. You can't always be sure of the right answer to X in any proposition of life; that is, a woman can't!

And, furthermore, I didn't like that next hour much, just as a sample of life, for instance. Aunt Bettie had got her joining-together humor well started, and right there before my face she made a present of every nice man in Hillsboro to that lovely, distinguished, strange girl who could have slipped through a bucket hoop if she had tried hard. I had to sit there, listen to the presentations, watch her drink two tall delicious glasses of tea full of sugar and consume without fear three of Judy's puffy cakes, while I crumbled mine in secret over the banisters and set half the glass of tea out of sight behind the wistaria vine.

It was bad enough to hear Aunt Bettie just offer her Tom, who, if he is her own son, is my favorite cousin, but I believe the worst minute I almost ever faced was when she began on the judge, for I could see from Aunt Adeline's shoulder beyond Miss Chester how she was enjoying that, and she added another distinguished ancestor to his pedigree every time Aunt Bettie paused for breath. I couldn't say a word about the fish and Aunt Adeline wouldn't! I almost loved Mrs. Johnson when she bit off a thread viciously and said, "Humph," as she rose to start the tea-party home.

That night I did so many exercises that at last I sank exhausted in a chair in front of my mirror and put my head down on my arms and cried the real tears you cry when nobody is looking. I felt terribly old and ugly and dowdy and—widowed. It couldn't have been jealousy, for I just love that girl. I want most awfully to hug her very slimness and it was more what she might think of poor dumpy me than what any man in Hillsboro, Tennessee, or Paris, France, could possibly feel on the subject that hurt so hard. But then, looking back on it, I am afraid that jealousy sheds feathers every night so you won't know him in the morning, for something made me sit up suddenly with a spark in my eyes and reach out to the desk for my pencil and check-book. It took me more than an hour to figure it all up, but I went to bed a happier, though in prospects a poorer woman.

It is strange how spending a man's money makes you feel more congenial with him and as I sat in the cars on my way to the city early the next morning I felt nearer to Mr. Carter than I almost ever did, alive or dead. After this I shall always appreciate and admire him for the way he made money, since, for the first time in my life, I fully realized what it could buy. And I bought things!

First I went to see Madam Courtier for corsets. I had heard about her and I knew it meant a fortune. But that didn't matter! She came in and looked at me for about five minutes without saying a word and then she ran her hands down and down over me until I could feel the flesh just crawling off of me. It was delicious!

Then she and two girls in puffs and rats came in and did things to a corset they laced on me that I can't even write down, for I didn't understand the process, but when I looked in that long glass I almost dropped on the floor. I wasn't tight and I wasn't stiff and I looked—I'm too modest to write how lovely I really looked to myself. I was spellbound with delight.

I was spellbound with delight.

Next I signed the check for three of those wonders with my head so in the clouds I didn't know what I was doing, but I came to with a jolt when the prettiest girl began to get me into that black taffeta bag I had worn down to the city. I must have shrunk the whole remaining pounds I had felt obliged to lose for Alfred and Ruth Chester from the horror I felt when I looked at myself. The girl was really sympathetic and said with a smile that was true kindness: "Shall I call a taxi for madam and have it take her to Klein's? They have wonderful gowns by Rene all ready to be fitted at short notice. Really, madam's figure is such that it commands a perfect costume now." Men do business well, but when women enter the field they are geniuses at money extracting. I felt myself already clothed perfectly when that girl said my figure "commanded" a proper dress. Of course, Klein pays Madam Courtier a commission for the customers she passes right on to him. The one for me must have looked to her like a real estate transaction.

I spent three days at the great Klein store, only going to the hotel to sleep and most of the time I forgot to eat. Madam Rene must have been Madam Courtier's twin sister in youth, and Madam Telliers in the hat department was the triplet to them both. When women have genius it breaks out all over them like measles and they never recover from it; those women had the confluent kind. But I know that old Rene really liked me, for when I blushed and asked her if they had a good beauty doctor in the store she held up her hands and shuddered.

"Never, Madam, never pour vous. Ravissant, charmant—it is to fool. Nevair! Jamais, jamais de la vie!" I had to calm her down and she kissed my hand when we parted.

I thought Klein was going to do the same thing or worse when I signed the check which would be good for a house and lot and motor-car for him, but he didn't. Only he got even with me by saying: "And I am delighted that the trousseau is perfectly satisfactory to you, Mrs. Carter."

That was an awful shock and I hope I didn't show it as I murmured: "Perfectly, thank you."

The word "trousseau" can be spoken in a woman's presence for many years with no effect, but it is an awful shock when she first really hears it. I felt funny all afternoon as I packed those trunks for the five o'clock train.

Yes, the word "trousseau" ought to have a definite surname after it always and that's why my loyalty dragged poor Mr. Carter out into the light of my conscience. The thinking of him had a strange effect on me. I had laid out the dream in dark gray-blue rajah, tailored almost beyond endurance, to wear home on the train and had thrown the old black taffeta bag across the chair to give to the hotel maid, but the decision of the session between conscience and loyalty made me pack the precious blue wonder and put on once more the black rags of remembrance in a kind of panic of respect.

I would lots rather have bought poor Mr. Carter the monument I have been planning for months to keep up conversation with Aunt Adeline, than wear that dress again. I felt conscience reprove me once more with loyalty looking on in disapproval as I buttoned the old thing up for the last time, because I really ought to have stayed over a day to buy that monument, but—to tell the truth I wanted to see Billy so desperately that his "sleep-place" above my heart hurt as if it might have prickly heat break out at any minute.

So I hurried and stuffed the gray-blue darling in the top tray, lapped old black taffeta around my waist and belted it in with a black belt off a new green linen I had made for morning walks, down to the drug store on the public square, I suppose. That is about the only morning dissipation in Hillsboro that I can think of, and it all depends on whom you meet, how much of a dissipation it is.

The next thing that happens after you have done a noble deed is, you either regard it as a reward of virtue or as a punishment for having been foolish. I felt both ways when Judge Wade came down the car aisle, looking so much grander than any other man in sight that I don't see how they stand him ever. At that minute the noble black-taffeta deed felt foolish, but at the next minute I thanked my lucky stars for it.

It is nice to watch for a person to catch sight of you if you feel sure how they are going to take it and somehow in this case I felt sure. I was not disappointed, for his smile broke his face up into a joy-laugh. Off came his hat instantly so I could catch a glimpse of the fascinating frost over his temples, and with a positive sigh of rapture he subsided into the seat beside me. I turned with an echo smile all over me when suddenly his face became grave and considerate, and he looked at me as all the men in Hillsboro have been doing ever since poor Mr. Carter's funeral.

"Mrs. Carter," he said very kindly, in a voice that pitched me out of the car window and left me a mile behind on the track, all by myself, "I wish I had known of your sad errand to town so I could have offered you some assistance in your selection. You know we have just had our lot in the cemetery finally arranged and I found the dealers in memorial stones very confusing in their ideas and designs. Mrs. Henderson just told my mother of your absence from home last night, and I could only come down to the city for the day on important business or I would have arranged to see you. I hope you found something that satisfied you."

What's a woman going to say when she has a tombstone thrown in her face like that? I didn't say anything, but what I thought about Aunt Adeline filled in a dreadful pause.

Perfectly dumb and quiet I sat for an awful space of time and wondered just what I was going to do. Could a woman lie a monument into her suit case? It was beyond me at that speaking and the Molly that is ready for life quick, didn't want to. I shut my eyes, counted three to myself as I do when I go over into the cold tub, and told him all about it. We both got a satisfactory reaction and I never enjoyed myself so much as that before.

I understand now why Judge Wade has had so many women martyr themselves over him and live unhappily ever afterward, as everybody says Henrietta Mason is doing. He's a very inspiring man and he fairly bristles with fascinations. Some men are what you call taking and they take you if they want you, while others are drawing and after you are drawn to them they will consider the question of taking you. The judge is like that.

In the meantime it tingles me up to a very great degree to have a man use his eyes on me as it is the privilege of only womankind to do, and I feel that it will be good for his judgeship for me to let him "draw" me at least a little way. I may get hurt, but I shall at least have an interesting time of it. I started right then and got results, for he stopped under the old lilac bush that leans over my side gate and kissed my hand. Old Lilac shook a laugh of perfume all over us and I believe signaled the event at the top of his bough to the white clump on the other side of the garden. I'm glad Aunt Adeline isn't in the flower fraternity or sorority. Suppose she had seen or heard!

And it didn't take many minutes for me to slip into old summer-before-last—also for the last time inside of those buttons—and run through the garden, my heart singing, "Billy, Billy," in a perfect rapture of tune. I ran past the office door and found him in his cot almost asleep and we had a bear reunion in the rocker by the window that made us both breathless.

"What did you bring me, Molly?" he finally kissed under my right ear.

"A real base-ball and bat, lover, and an engine with five cars, a rake and a spade and a hoe, two blow-guns that pop a new way and something that squirts water and some other things. Will that be enough?" I hugged him up anxiously, for sometimes he is hard to please and I might not have got the very thing he wanted.

"Thank you, Molly, all them things is what I want, but you oughter brung more'n that for three days not being here with me." Did any woman ever have a more lovely lover than that? I don't know how long I should have rocked him in the twilight if Doctor John's voice hadn't come across the hall in command.

"Put him down now, Mrs. Molly, and come and say other how-do-you-does," he called softly.

It was a funny glad-to-see-him I felt as I came into the office where he was standing over by the window looking out at my garden in its twilight glow. I think it is wrong for a woman to let her imagination kiss a man on the back of his neck even if she has known for some time that there is a little drake-tail lock of hair there just like his own son's. I gave him my hand and a good deal more of a smile and a blush than I intended.

He very far from kissed the hand; he held it just long enough to turn me around into the light and give me one long looking-over from head to feet.

"Just where does that corset press you worst?" he asked in the tone of voice he uses to say "poke out your tongue." So much of my Tennessee shooting-blood rose to my face that it is a wonder it didn't drip; but I was cold enough to have hit at forty paces if I had had a shooting-iron in my hand. As it was the coldness was the only missile that I had, but I used it to some effect.

"I am making a call on a friend, Doctor Moore, and not a consultation visit to my physician," I said, looking into his face as though I had never seen him before.

"I beg your pardon, Molly," he exclaimed and his face was redder than mine and then it went white with mortification. I couldn't stand that.

"Don't do that way!" I exclaimed, and before I knew it I had taken hold of his hand and had it in both of mine. "I know I look as if I was shrunk or laced, but I'm not! I was going to tell you all about it and show it to you. I'm really inches bigger in the right place and just—just 'controlled', the woman called it, in the wrong place. Please feel me and see," and I offered myself to him for examination in the most regardless way. He's not at all like other people.

The blood came back into his face and he laughed as he gave me a little shake that pushed me away from him. "Don't you ever scare me like that again, child, or it might be serious," he said in the Billy-and-me tone of voice that I like some, only—

"I never will," I said in a hurry; "I want you to ask me anything in the world you want to and I'll always do it."

"Well, let me take you home through the garden then—and, yes, I believe I'll stay to break a muffin with Mrs. Henderson. Don't you want to tell me what a little girl like you did in a big city and—and read me part of that London letter I saw the postman give Judy this afternoon?"

Again I ask myself the question why his friendliness to Alfred Bennett's letters always makes me so instantly cross.

Don't forget to drink water after meals

I've shared this little tidbit many times, but one can never share it too often.

Nothing depresses the appetite quite like filling your belly with liquid - water for choice.

You don't want to drink a large glass before a meal - because that will depress your appetite. Yes, you won't eat as much, but you'll get hungrier quicker.

But if you eat a regular - appropriately portioned breakfast, lunch or dinner, and then drink afterwards, this can prevent you from snacking inappropriately between meals.

So work on getting into the habit of drinking water for an additional dessert after every meal.

Golfing

I'm watching the Australian Open... Tiger Woods had been in first place at start of play today... he's now dropped down to third or even fourth. ha ha ha ha ha!

Well, it's not quite winter yet, technically speaking, but it sure feels like winter.

Over the summer I'd been getting my exercise by hitting tee shots with my driver. In probably any other state I could be doing the same thing during the winter - but not here in Cheyenne, Wyoming because the wind here really picks up during the winter - the wind chill is brutal.

I'll be getting my exercise, therefore, by trotting up and down my stairs a few times a day... and occasionally driving into town to walk in the mall.

I'm not a skier - but if you are... either snowshoeing or skiing...time to get out there and start getting busy!

Be of Good Cheer

For the next two months, I'll be referencing Thanksgiving and Christmas quite a bit. Yes, those are the danger days. People with lots of family will have lots of food and eat a lot, either out of solidarity or because they are under the stress of making sure the family occasion goes well. People who have no family and who aren't happy about it may be depressed and eat a lot, and so on.

I don't want you to stress out over these holidays. Do your best to stick to your smaller portions routine, and if you have an extra candybar or calorie-rich dessert at some kind of party at work or whatever, don't stress about it!

Do not be afraid to gain a pound or two in November, and a pound or two in December. Obviously, you do not want to gain more than that.

The thing is to be realistic. Many people on a diet, who go off that diet on an uncontrollable binge, will give up on their diet completely afterwards, feeling like, "what's the use."

Therefore, allow yourself to have a snack. Do not think of it as you breaking your diet, think of it as you accepting the fact that in November and December, you're going to allow yourself to eat a bit more so you don't get all stressed out by denying yourself food when everyone else around you is over-eating.

If you are jut a few months into your weight loss/weight maintanance program, approach these two months in a scientific manner.

Make sure you keep your journal completely during these two months, to learn how you react to eating extra portions of various foods at a time when you are still supposed to be losing weight, as opposed to maintaining it.

Are there certain foods you eat that trigger an urge to eat more? (No one can eat just one potato chip or one pistachio - for example. It's the salt that doees it.)

Or, let's say you do have the willpower to not eat while everyone else around you is. How do you feel about that - no issues, a bit resentful, etc.?

These are all questions about yourself that you should answer - the most important thing any person can do - regardless of what they are trying to do in life - is know themselves.

Fiction: The Melting of Molly Ch 2

CHAPTER SECOND

A LOVE-LETTER, LOADED


The very worst page in this red--red devil--I'm glad I've written it at last--of a book is the fifth. It says:

"Breakfast--one slice of dry toast, one egg, fruit and a tablespoonful of baked cereal, small cup of coffee, no sugar, no cream." And me with two Jersey cows full of the richest cream in Hillsboro, Harpeth Valley, out in my pasture!

"Dinner, one small lean chop, slice of toast, spinach, green beans and lettuce salad. No dessert or sweet." The blue-grass in my yard is full of fat little fryers and I wish I were a sheep if I have to eat lettuce and spinach for grass. At least I'd have more than one chop inside me then.

"Supper--slice of toast and an apple." Why the apple? Why supper at all?

Oh, I'm hungry, hungry until I cry in my sleep when I dream about a muffin! I thought at first that getting out of bed before my eyes are fairly open and turning myself into a circus actor by doing every kind of overhand, foot, arm and leg contortion that the mind of cruel man could invent to torture a human being with, would kill me before I had been at it a week, but when I read on page sixteen that as soon as all that horror was over I must jump right into the tub of cold water, I kicked, metaphorically speaking. And I've been kicking ever since, literally to keep from freezing.

But as cruel a death as freezing is, it doesn't compare to the tortures of being melted. Judy administers it to me and her faithful heart is so wrung with compassion that she perspires almost as much as I do. She wrings a linen sheet out in a caldron of boiling water and shrouds me in it for the agony--and then more and more blanket windings envelop me until I am like the mummy of some Egyptian giantess. I have ice on the back of my neck and my forehead, and murder for the whole world in my heart. Once I got so discouraged at the idea of having all this hades in this life that I mingled tears with the beads of perspiration that rolled down my cheeks, and she snatched me out of those steaming grave-clothes in less time than it takes to tell it, soused me in a tub of cold water, fed me a chicken wing and a hot biscuit and the information that I was "good-looking enough for anybody to eat up alive without all this foolishness," all in a very few seconds. Now I have to beg her to help me and I heard her tell her nephew, who does the gardening, that she felt like an undertaker with such goings-on. At any rate, if it all kills me it won't be my fault if anybody has to lie in saying that I was "beautiful in death".

But now that more than a month has passed, I really don't mind it so much. I feel so good and strong and prancy all the time that I can't keep from bubbling. I have to smile at myself.

Then another thing that helps is Billy and his ball. I never could really play with him before, but now I can't help it. But an awful thing happened about that yesterday. We were in the garden playing over by the lilac bushes and Billy always beats me because when he runs to base he throws himself down and slides along on the grass on his little stomach as he sees the real players do over at the ball grounds. Then all of a sudden, before I knew it, I just did the same thing, and we slid to the flower pot we use as a base together, each on his own stomach. And what did Billy do but begin right there on the grass the kind of a tussle we always have in the big rocking-chair on the porch! Over and over we rolled, Billy chuckling and squealing while I laughed myself all out of breath. I'm glad I always would wear delicious petticoats, for there, looking right over my front fence, I discovered Judge Benton Wade. I wish I could write down how I felt, for I never had that sensation before and I don't believe I'll ever have it again.

I have always thought that Judge Wade was really the most wonderful man in Hillsboro, not because he is a judge so young in life that there is only a white sprinkle in his lovely black hair that grows back off his head like Napoleon's and Charles Wesley's, but because of his smile, which you wait for so long that you glow all over when you get it. I have seen him do it once or twice at his mother when he seats her in their pew at church and once at little Mamie Johnson when she gave him a flower through their fence as he passed by one day last week, but I never thought I should have one all to myself. But there it was, a most beautiful one, long and slow and distinctly mine--at least I didn't think much of it was for Billie. I sat up and blushed as red all over as I do when I first hit that tub of cold water.

"I hope you'll forgive an intruder, Mrs. Carter, but how could a mortal resist a peep into the garden of the gods if he spied the queen and her faun at play?" he said in a voice as wonderful as the smile. By that time I had reefed in my ruffles around my feet and pushed in all my hairpins. Billy stood spread-legged as near in front of me as he could get and said in the rudest possible tone of voice:

"Get away from my Molly, man!"

I never was so mortified in all my life and I scrambled to my feet and came over to the fence to get between him and Billy.

"It's a lovely day, isn't it, Judge Wade?" I asked with the greatest interest, which I didn't really feel, in the weather; but what could I think of to say? A woman is apt to keep the image of a good many of the grand men she sees passing around her in queer niches in her brain, and when one steps out and speaks to her for the first time it is confusing.
Of course I have known the judge and his mother all my life, for she is one of Aunt Adeline's best friends, but I had a feeling from the look in his eyes that that very minute was the first time he had ever seen me. It was lovely and I blushed some more as I put my hand up to my cheek so I wouldn't have to look right at him.

"About the loveliest day that ever happened in Hillsboro," he said, and there was still more of the delicious smile, "though I hadn't noticed it so especially until--"

But I never knew what he had intended to say, for Billy suddenly swelled up like a little turkey-cock and cut out with his switch at the judge.

"Git, man, git, and let my Molly alone!" he said, in a perfect thundertone of voice; but I almost laughed, for it had such a sound in it like Doctor John's at his most positive times with Billy and me.

"No, no, Billy, the judge is just looking over the fence at our flowers! Don't you want to give him a rose?" I hurried to say as the smile died out of Judge Wade's face and he looked at Billy intently.

"How like John Moore the youngster is," he said, and his voice was so cold to Billy that it hurt me, and I was afraid Billy would notice it. Coldness in people's voices always makes me feel just like ice-cream tastes. But Billy's answer was still more rude.

"You better go, man, before I bring my father to sic our dog on you," he exploded, and before I could stop him his thin little legs went trundling down the garden path toward home.

Then the judge and I both laughed. We couldn't help it. When two people laugh straight into each other's eyes something feels dangerous and you get closer together. The judge leaned farther over the fence and I went a little nearer before I knew it.

"You don't need to keep a personal dog, do you, Mrs. Carter?" he asked, with a twinkle that might have been a spark in his eyes, and just at that moment another awful thing happened. Aunt Adeline came out on the front porch and said in the most frozen tone of voice:

"Mary, I wish to speak to you in the house," and then walked back through the front door without even looking in Judge Wade's direction, though he had waved his hat with one of his mother's own smiles when he had seen her before I did. One of my most impossible habits is, when there is nothing else to do I laugh. I did it then and it saved the day, for we both laughed into each others eyes a second time, and before we realized it we were within whispering distance.

"No, I don't--don't--need any dog," I said softly, hardly glancing out from under my lashes because I was afraid to risk looking straight at him again so soon. I could fairly feel Aunt Adeline's eyes boring into my back.

"It would take the hydra-headed monster of--may I bring my mother to call on you and the--Mrs. Henderson?" he asked and poured the wonder smile all over me. Again I almost caught my breath.

"I do wish you would, Aunt Adeline is so fond of Mrs. Wade!" I said in a positive flutter that I hope he didn't see, but I am afraid he did, for he hesitated as if he wanted to say something to calm me, then bowed mercifully and went on down the street. He didn't put on the hat he had
held in his hand all the while he stood by the fence until he had looked back and bowed again. Then I felt still more fluttered as I went into the house, but I received the third cold plunge of the day when I reached the front hall.

"Mary," said Aunt Adeline in a voice that sounded as if it had been buried and never resurrected, "if you are going to continue in such an unseemly course of conduct I hope you will remove your mourning, which is an empty mockery and an insult to my own widowhood."

"Yes, Aunt Adeline, I'll go take it off this very minute," I heard myself answer her airily to my own astonishment. I might have known that if I ever got one of those smiles it would go to my head! Without another word I sailed into my room and closed the door softly.

I wonder if God could have realized what a tender thing He was leaving exposed to life in the garden of the world after He had finished making a woman? Traditionally, we are created out of rose-leaves and star-dust and the harmony of the winds, but we need a steel-chain netting to fend us. Slowly I unbuttoned that black dress that symbolized the ending of six years of the blackness of a married life, from which I had been powerless to fend myself, and the rosy dimpling thing in snowy lingerie with tags of blue ribbon that stood in front of my mirror was as new-born as any other hour-old similar bundle of linen and lace in Hillsboro, Tennessee. Fortunately, an old, year-before-last, white lawn dress could be pulled from the top shelf of the closet in a hurry, and the Molly that came out of that room was ready for life--and a lot of it quick and fast.

And again, fortunately, Aunt Adeline had retired with a violent headache and black Judy was carrying her in a hot water-bottle with a broad grin on her face. Judy sees the world from the kitchen window and understands everything. She had laid a large thick letter on the hall table where I couldn't fail to see it.

I took possession of it and carried it to a bench in the garden that backs up against the purple sprayed lilacs and is flanked by two rows of tall purple and white iris that stand in line ready for a Virginia reel with a delicate row of the poet's narcissus across the broad path. I love my flowers. I love them swaying on their stems in the wind, and I like to snatch them and crush the life out of them against my breast and face. I have been to bed every night this spring with a bunch of cool violets against my cheek and I feel that I am going to flirt with my tall row of hollyhocks as soon as they are old enough to hold up their heads and take notice. They always remind me of very stately gentlemen and I have wondered if the fluffy little butter and eggs weren't shaking their ruffles at them.

A real love-letter ought to be like a cream puff with a drop of dynamite in it. Alfred's was that kind. I felt warm and happy down to my toes as I read it and I turned around so old Lilac Bush couldn't peep over my shoulder at what he said.

He wrote from Rome this time, where he had been sent on some sort of
diplomatic mission to the Vatican, and his letter about the Ancient City on her seven hills was a prose-poem in itself. I was so interested that I read on and on and forgot it was almost toast-apple time.

Of course, anybody that is anybody would be interested in Father Tiber and the old Colosseum, but what made me forget the one slice of dry toast and the apple was the way he seemed to be connecting me up with all those wonderful old antiquities that had never even seen me. Because of me he had felt and written that poem descriptive of old Tiber, and the moonlight had lit up the Colosseum just because I was over here lighting up Hillsboro, Tennessee, with Mr. Carter dead. Of course that is not the way he put it all, but there is no place to really copy what he did say down into this imp book and, anyway, that is the sentiment he expressed, boiled down and sugared off.

That's just what I mean--love boiled down and sugared off is mighty apt to get an explosive flavor, and one had better be careful with that kind if one is timid; which I'm not. As I said, also, I am ready for a little taste of life, so I read on without fear. And, to be fair, Alfred had well boiled his own last paragraph. It snapped; and I jumped and gasped both. I almost thought I didn't quite like it and was going to read it over again to see, when there came a procession from over to Doctor John's and I laid the bombshell down on the bench.

First came the red setter that is always first with Doctor John, and then he came himself, leading Billy by the hand. It was Billy, but the most subdued Billy I ever saw, and I held out my arms and started for him.

"Wait a minute, please, Molly," said the doctor in the voice he always uses when he's punishing Billy and me. "Bill came to apologize to you for being rude to your--your guest. He told me all about it and I think he's sorry. Tell Mrs. Carter you are sorry, son." When that man speaks to me as if I were just any old body else, I hate him so it is a wonder I don't show it more than I do. But there was nothing to say and I looked at Billy and Billy looked at me.

Then suddenly he stretched out his little arms to me and the dimples winked at me from all over his darling face.

"Molly, Molly," he said with a perfect rapture of chuckles in his voice, "now you look just as pretty as you do when you go to bed; all whity all over. You can kiss my kiss-spot a hundred times while I bear-hug you for that nice not-black dress," and before any stern person could have stopped us I was on my knees on the grass kissing my fill from the "kiss-spot" on the back of his neck, while he hugged all the starch out of the summer-before-last.

And Doctor John sat down on the bench quick and laughed out loud one of the very few times I ever heard him do it. He was looking down at us, but I didn't laugh up into his eyes. I was afraid. I felt it was safer to go on kissing the kiss-spot for the present, anyway.

"Bill," he said, with his voice dancing, "that's the most effective apology I ever heard. You were sorry to some point."
Then suddenly Billy stiffened right in my arms and looked me straight in the face and said in the doctor's own brisk tones, even with his cupid mouth set in the same straight line:

"I say I'm sorry, Molly, but damn that man and I'll git him yet!"

What could we say? What could we do? We didn't try. I busied myself in tying the string on Billy's blouse that had come untied in the bear-hug and the doctor suddenly discovered the letter on the bench. I saw him see it without looking in his direction at all.

"And how many pounds are we nearer the string-bean state of existence, Mrs. Molly?" he asked me before I had finished tying the blouse, in the nicest voice in the world, fairly crackling with friendship and good humor and hateful things like that. Why I should have wanted him to huff over that letter is more than I can say. But I did; and he didn't.

"Over twenty, and most of the time I am so hungry I could eat Aunt Adeline. I dream about Billy, fried with cream gravy," I answered, as I kissed again the back of the head that was beginning to nod down against my breast. Long shadows lay across the garden and the white-headed old snow-ball was signaling out of the dusk to a Dorothy Perkins down the walk in a scandalous way. At best, spring is just the world's match-making old chaperon and ought to be watched. I still sat on the grass and I began to cuddle Billy's bare knees in the skirt of my dress so the chigres couldn't get at them.

"But, Mrs. Molly, isn't it worth it all?" asked the doctor as he bent over toward us and looked down with something wonderful and kind in his eyes that seemed to rest on us like a benediction. "You have been just as plucky as a girl can be and in only a little over two months you have grown as lightfooted and hearty as a boy. _I_ think nothing could be lovelier than you are right now, but you can get off those other few pounds if you want to. You know, don't you, that I have known how hard some of it was and I haven't been able to eat as much as I usually do thinking how hungry you are? But isn't it all worth it? I think it is. Alfred Bennett is a very great man and it is right that he should have a very lovely wife to go out into the world with him. And as lovely as you are I think it is wonderful of you to make all this sacrifice to be still lovelier for him.

I am glad I can help you and it has taught me something to see how--how faithful a woman can be across years--and then in this smaller thing! Now give me Bill and you get your apple and toast. Don't forget to take your letter in out of the dew." I sat perfectly still and held Billy tighter in my arms as I looked up at his father, and then after I had thought as long as I could stand it, I spoke right out at him as mad as hops and I don't to this minute know why.

"Nobody in the world ever doubted that a woman could be faithful if she had anything to be faithful to," I said as I let him take Billy out of my arms at last. "Faithfulness is what a woman flowers, only it takes a man to pick his posy." With which I marched into the house and left him standing with Billy in his arms, I hope dumfounded. I didn't look back to see. I always leave that man's presence so mad I can never look back at him. And wouldn't it make any woman rage to have a man pick out another man for her to be faithful to when she hadn't made any decision about it her own self?

I wonder just how old Judge Wade is? I believe I will make up with Aunt Adeline enough before I go to bed to find out why he has never married.