What the doctor should have meant: dishery.diaryland.com

Science *what*?! Yesterday I heard Dr. Carpool talking to one of the nurses about all the research she has on her plate and she mentioned that the last time she sat down and read a book for the sheer pleasure of it was in the summer of 2001. Granted, Dr. Carpool spends a lot of what to me is could-be-reading time ferrying her spawn around to tennis, riding, music, art, French, etc. lessons, but if that�s how hard you have to fight (yourself) and how much you have to lose merely to distinguish yourself as a capable practitioner of science, well, I hope this does not reflect badly on my intellect or abilities but fuck that shit. Related inquiry, and I pose it academically: how does one have kids and not resent them? This is the part I can�t get around, and, having spent my childhood on the receiving end of that equation, I promised myself when I was maybe six that I would never have children if they were going to come at the opportunity cost to me that I did to my father, because I did not want to put anyone else through the shame and guilt and wishing I�d never been born. But that�s what kids are: an opportunity cost, an irrevocable decision in favor of one thing at the expense of a host of others. In "Cheaper by the Dozen," which, ha ha, I probably read around the same age, there�s a bit where the Gilbreth paterfamilias tacks up a square of graph paper on the wall, a thousand by a thousand squares, to give his brood a sense of a million of something. One of them asks him if he has a million dollars. He says, No, I have a million children instead, because somewhere along the line a man has to choose.

Not to bum anyone out or anything, mais non, because today is Friday and nothing is ever as bad as I think it is and I spent part of yesterday afternoon in such a fit of benevolent industry that this morning before 10:30 I had one e-mail saying I can�t thank you enough for your help and another one that insisted, in 22-point Arial with exclamation points, that I rock. Why thank you. Also, Dr. Blahblah was dropping the ball so often with respect to one of his research projects that I finally wrote a memo to the administrator in charge asking her to correspond with me from now on, and I put it in front of the blustery doc and he signed it � you might think that this amounts to my taking on work, but on those terms it�s really a wash because I will no longer have to cover up for him and find all his lost files, and you can also think of it as me having given myself a little on-paper promotion. And I saved the Wife of Bath�s bacon a few minutes before five when she called down frantic for a file that I happened just to have finished organizing, oh, and earlier in the day I proposed and got myself on the hook for managing an intranet project that will make her look like an ace manager, so I have to write a low-level spec this weekend. Nothing is ever as bad as I think it is. The pay is lousy but I�ll get out sooner or later even if I have to go to school in a capacity to be named later in order to do so, and in the meantime I�m living in a slacker�s paradise, where minimal effort equals maximum gratitude. Don�t congratulate me on this attitude, though � merely maintaining it without losing my self-respect is tenuous enough; let�s not add self-consciousness to the mix. I thank you in advance for your consideration.

I have eaten sweetbreads. For those not in the know, that�s the thymus glands of a cow. I had only ever read about them in Julia Child, but they were on the appetizer menu of the place Steve and I got dinner Wednesday (typo: "Wendy") night and I told him what they were and we sort of dared each other. "Tastes like chicken," I said. "Like Chicken McNuggets," he clarified. Now you know. And did that put me in a chicken frame of mind? I hadn't made the connection, but last night I stayed in and baked and saut�ed and roasted, and in that last category poultry does come into play � I roasted it and cut it up, and I�ll figure out something to do with it tonight or tomorrow. Did you hear that the new chicken-bacon-whatever specialty salad that McDonalds now offers as the hallmark of its new ostensibly healthier menu to appeal to the Dr. Carpool crowd actually has more fat than a Big Mac? I think that is very funny. I�m still tweaking my own workday eating regimen � I�m not going to call it a diet because for us females there�s all kinds of bad juju associated with that word and also because that�s not how I think of it: I�m only trying to maximize nutrient consumption during the early part of the day, so that if I fall off the wagon later or fall under the spell of bovine thymus glands it�s not so bad. I look at the USRDA of servings of fruits, vegetables, protein, calcium, and it seems impossible that anyone with a normal-sized stomach and a normal-sized appetite could get it all in, even if that person never once filled up valuable gullet space with cheese or a donut or several vodka tonics. I am never going to get an A in eating and I should just face up to that. I can try for a B, however. The latest iteration involves a Tupperware container of plain yogurt and some kind of fruit item for breakfast, then at least two vegetable items at lunch and a concerted effort all day to keep the carbs in check and also � isn�t this brilliant? � to avoid what�s on the conference-room table as a breakfasty-type item unless someone has baked it and consequently her feelings would be hurt by my refusal. Oh, and lots and lots of water, of course. I think I�m getting paranoid that one of these days I�m going to wake up and be huge. My old work pal D, who�s a few years older than I am, once told me how every woman she knew got her metabolism�s ass kicked during her late twenties to the tune of about twenty pounds, how that's when you thicken up and there�s nothing you can do about it. I am not anorexic but I do not want to thicken up. Have I dodged a bullet, or did my genetics somehow qualify me for an extension, and, in the latter case, what�s my deadline? Sorry if I sound vain, but no, I�m not even sorry, I�m less a victim of the sadistic male-dominated fashion media than I am of the good old biological human condition. Vanessa and I watched a documentary called "Breasts" on Tuesday night and that is pretty much what it was about, women sitting around mostly with their shirts off being interviewed about their mammaries. It was informative and entertaining and right-on-sister and I would be lying to you if I pretended that we didn�t also discuss the interview subjects other than in the spirit of solidarity, if we didn�t cast an evaluative eye and compare ourselves to them. But this kind of criticism � to the extent that it�s criticism � is not a violent act. Is that maybe a reasonable paradigm for other things? To me, a diet is what you call it when it crosses that line and becomes an act of violence against yourself in some way, even if only as it implies tacit indictment or accusation. As long as it doesn�t, it�s something else.

What I�m doing tonight I ain�t got planned past the laundry in my trunk and a trip to Fred Meyer during the wash cycle. I woke up this morning with an inexplicable dreadful feeling about the race on Sunday and now I�m torn � this doesn�t make any sense, but bad things have happened to me in the past when I�ve let logic override gut. Matt P. is in Tokyo for two weeks. I may finally register a domain name that I get around to doing something with and keep a blog-type thing there in addition to the diary. In this week�s New Yorker, there�s an Adam Gopnik piece on the Matrix movie, I cannot even imagine. I despise the Gop and his fey literary pointillism and the way he screechingly gins up a tone of naive wonderment and the faux petit-bourgeois values he flaunts and I know that the article would act on me like pure liquid testosterone � I never did read the one on Willie Nelson � or the "tempestuous vibe" to the tenth power, so I am trying not to let myself think about why-god-why the editors let him near a topic like that in the first place, and I will avoid avoid avoid. And speaking of appalling writing, did anyone else�s mouth drop open at Elvis Mitchell�s review of the same film? "Currant-scented voice" and "relentless love" are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Woo-hah, I got you all in check.

Not feeling particularly incisive today so I�ll quit here. While I wrote this, I ate a carrot and a whole bunch of broccoli, and I finished my tea and drank about eighteen ounces of water. See, that's what I'm talking about.