While I wait for my Tridec appointment at the Women’s College, my doctor has recommended I get the book The G.I. Diet for a good base of diabetic recepies and tips. I was really hoping for the book to be about getting a random snog from some bellbottom wearing stranger on the street. Sadly, no. It’s a borderline Adkins-esque diet guide that just happens to be all about Sugar/Fat-free eating, which we should be doing anyway. In a nutshell, you eliminate all sugars as best you can from your diet and at major meals you reduce your usual 1/3rd meat and carbs down to 1/4 each and increase leafy veg to 1/2.

Which has made me quite musical.

Especially after the Mixed Bean salad.

Coupled with going to the gym 4 times a week (doc says 5. Pffft!), I have lost 10 lbs in the last 15 days. And that ain’t water folks. I allow myself only one diet coke every 3 days or so and drink at least 3L of water a day now. No juice. Boring. I’ve boosted my vitamin intake and suddenly I am wearing pants I gave Sharkboy last year. Ta daaa!

Yesterday I was on the streetcar behind someone with a McDonalds bag. It was probably the closest I have ever come to nearly physically yearning for something other than sex. Well that or that Big Trak I wanted back when I was 15.

And then I saw the trailer for Fast Food Nation. I haven’t read the book, mind you and coupled with the only thing I remember from Supersize Me (the non-decomposing french fries from the extras disc), I think that I shall never eat McD’s again.

Easter pics of family from either side. Enjoy!

I’m noticing that my Doc and I use the same wireless mouse. Nice. He squints at the flatscreen as he calls up my blood test.

My last Doc took off in November to Africa to heal sick Africans, the bastard (*), and my new Doc, a thin wisp of a man, pushes himself back from his desk with downturned eyes and a sigh. The kind of sigh that rips through your memory and lands on the moment when one of your parents decided that it was time to tell you about the birds and the bees, or why your pet goldfish is swimming upside down. Yeah. One of those sighs.

“The numbers suggest that you are diabetic,” he says looking to me and back to the monitor. He flips the page up and down, reciting numbers and blood acronyms that don’t register with me. I’m in “aaaw goddamn it” shock. “There’s no real border line here, really, it’s just that your blood sugars have topped and stayed over the limit where we consider someone diabetic.”

I’m thinking back to the time when I was a manager of a traveller’s hostel in Ottawa and had keys to the pop vending machine. With reckless abandon, I would open the damn thing and suck back 3, 4, 5 cans a day. I also had keys to the chocolate bar display. Long nights behind the counter were ticked off with Kit Kats, on the hour. Successful calls to the difficult Executive Director was rewarded with a Mr Big.

“There is a great program at the Women’s College for nutrition and diabetes. I’m going to fax them right now and get you signed up,” his fingers fly over his keyboard.

I’m remembering bartending and how I would mainline syrupy Coke and Ginger Ale from the pop taps to keep my energy up and be nice to the customers after midnight, my usual bed time. I think about the little extra snacks I would have before bed at 3am, after a rough night at the bar.

“The waiting list for this program can be a bit long,” he makes an apologetic ‘woopsie!’ face.

I am thinking about that ice cream maker my brother gave me last year for my 40th birthday. I used it once! I swear!

“…but it’s the best around. Worth the wait.”

I’m thinking about pasta.

“Two months, I should think.”

I think about my foot falling off. I think about going blind. I think about my heart stopping. I stop tinking about that.

“Can I get your blood pressure? I haven’t done that in a while.”

So now I’ve become a statistic and a further burden on Canada’s envious health system. I think about how in the last 5 years I have used food as an emotional crutch. Eating has become my drug, evident in the wild fluxuation of my weight. And now I’m in a K(raft Dinner)-hole of sorts with the time come for me to pay the pusher.

This evening, find me googling Type 2 Diabetes and defiantly swilling red wine. Expect a maudlin post not much longer after that.

(*) okay I don’t begrudge my old Doc for leaving. It was just “good” between us, you know? I could make him laugh at inappropriate things like the growth on my toenails. This new one reminds me of a bank loan manager and the few times I’ve tried, I get panicked looks shot back at me

Sharkboy and I discover a lost world just outside Cornwall. Rarrrr!

Its why I love him.

Happy Birthday Da!

I know you’re sad that we don’t come around to borrow the car anymore.

And our last visit all Sharkboy and I did was snark at each other in your doorway.

And that you make me happy by hanging that gaudy piece of art in your livingroom that really doesn’t go with the Waterford crystal, but yet it’s hanging up there all proud n’ stuff.

And that I might have chased off that last guy you were “dating” but he was totally not your type. You need a guy who is confident, sure of himself, calm and intelligent. We should clone you so you could date you.

And that you have bailed me out of scrapes and near misses so many times in the past. Remember that time in Kitchener, when I made dinner for that guy who never showed up, my first ever stood up date, and you sat with me and ate it with me and said that this would probably happen again in my lifetime? That was you being a really good parent and friend.

Anyway, it’s your birthday and I’m all happy for you! (guy punch in the arm) Mozeltov!

I`m in the lobby of the Comfort Inn somewhere south of Montreal on a friggin French keyboard that keeps on making ««« things.

Have a great weekend peeps!

Here’s my Half Naked Thursday picture. Turkey arms and all.

Last weekend at the massive dinner provided by Brother Mike (imagine all 5 sister/brothers except one, with all their spouses and one niece, and both parents acting civil to each other!) we’re all mingling and catching up (the family is scattered across two continents and three different time zones so these dinners are a bit concentrated with face-time) when I return to Sharkboy’s side with a refill of wine.

His face is pallid. He’s been talking to Mom.

“I didn’t say anything or do anything or suggest anything…” he sputters, hands up in the universal defensive Don’t Hit Me signal.

“You need a car!” Mom says, directed to me.

I look at Sharkboy with the universal What The Hell Have You Done? facial signal. I get the universal Nothing! shrug.

“You can borrow my car for the summer!” Mom continues.

“Guk!” I respond. Sharkboy repeats the universal symbol for Don’t Hit Me and I Know Nothing! over and over again.

See, we were putting serious pressure on Da to buy his ’92 Bonneville which is still running fine ( the old girl sat 5 years in a heated garage unused, looked after by a professional mechanic at one of his butlering gigs) and Da was being stubborn. “Never sell a car to a relative,” he would repeat, like a mantra. I get the feeling there’s a story in there somewhere, especially when his father was a pack rat of all things combustible engine-y. Grandfather had 14 lawnmowers in his 4 car garage when he passed. Plus he had a wicked cool moose head but I digress.

So I’m listening to Mom’s reasons as to why we should take her car for the summer (“The insurance is paid up until October!”) and Father-implanted alarms are going off. But it’s attractive. It’s there and Mom is offering.

We say yes. But we offer rules and regulations. As I type this I am sure Mom is waiting on the rules and regs from her insurance provider.

Last night, after a massive gas attack (I make a mean guacamole – I mean MEAN!), I’m lying awake in that zone not quite sleep, not quite awake and I realize that Da might be upset that we’re not asking to borrow the car from him again. I wonder if I’ve upset him by saying yes to Mom and making him worry he won’t feel needed or some bizarre parental concept.

Then I think that he’s probably glad to be rid of our constant begging.

So on Easter weekend, Sharkboy and I might be picking up an environmentally destructive 2001 Honda Civic.

Sharkboy is making the universal God I Love Your Dowry hand signal.

I’m too young to have searing back pain!

I guess I pulled my back while I slept. I hate the fact that I didn’t (consciously) experience the thing that made me feel so stiff right now. I feel like a walking back pain ad.

I dreamt it was the day after what I knew to be a failed one night stand. The guy I slept with was totally into me and I was totally trying to gnaw my arm off to escape. I’m sure you’ve experienced the “I should have cut and run but I passed ou/fell asleep instead of getting dressed and going home and now I have to have breakfast with him/her” syndrome. It was kind of nightmarish to see myself try to make excuses to go. And in the dream I kept finding things in this person’s room (a composite of a childhood friend and a certain Muddy York rugby player) that was setting off alarm bells: dirty laundry, weird torn posters and roommates sleeping in the same room.

Then the dream changed and I was a record producer trying to sign a alien lizard act to my company. We were dancing on elevated platforms and mine went 30 stories too high. I think thats where my back went out.