Festival of A Thousand Peaches

Ciao from Venice, where I seem unable to stop consuming peaches.

I’m not kidding. I debated lying about this, but I may in fact have eaten nine today. Yes, nine rather amazing peaches, some of them perfect white ones. I’m trying to remind myself that this used to be the city where I was unable to stop consuming ice cream – which is a whole lot worse (diet-wise, anyway) than peaches, but I am concerned about my inability to stop eating anything. It’s not a healthy behavior.

In my defense – and apologies for the brain dump; I’m just trying to write this out – I haven’t been eating proper meals, just lots of grazing (mostly on yogurt, fruit, nuts, and lower fat cheeses like mozzarella and ricotta). But I also haven’t been starving when I’ve been chain-eating the peaches, which is the worrying part.

I am rather edgy. For reasons I detailed last year, I’m on my guard in Venice, and this year is no exception. The lack of actual access to celebrities here – despite their proximity – makes me anxious, especially because I feel like there is an increased focus (for positive reasons I won’t get into) from New York and Los Angeles on me and the job I’m doing. It’s like suddenly falling out of the tree pose the second the yoga instructor looks at me – nothing like performing poorly only when one is being scrutinized!

And – shallow as this sounds – it hasn’t helped today that my face is broken out and I walked around today in a I-look-homeless outfit of a fairly shapeless black summer dress with a green hooded sweatshirt zipped over it, plus sequined red sandals (picked up in a Paris supermarket, so not exactly glam). It’s not exactly a look that screams I-belong-in-the-suite-next-door-to-George-Clooney-at-Cipriani. (Dude, what's up with my outfit? Venice during the festival is always about 100 degrees, and was last week. So I decided this year not to bring jeans, as I’ve never once worn them here. Classy sandals were because my ballet flats slide over the rain-soaked Venice streets as if they were iced, and my sneakers would put me firmly in the American tourist category, where I refuse to go. As for the hoodie: it was given to me for free today and is a lot warmer than my windbreaker.) Nor did it help that in one shop the woman eyed me and asked if I were a UK size 16 (and looked doubtful when I said I was a 14), and in another, the woman asked: “Medium or large?,” and didn’t wait for an answer before handing me the large. Sigh.

Oh, and did I mention Date Two apparently was also the final date?

I have managed to exercise here so far, and I even tried to do these yoga and Pilates DVDs that came free with my newspaper several months ago. (The DVDs were a wash – too slow and, um, talk-y, for lack of a better word.) But still I feel… fat. And not far from a binge. Today I stopped in a shop to buy a drink, spotted an apricot crostata, and thought briefly – very briefly – about buying an entire one (they’re pie-sized) and taking it home and eating it. Well, probably I wouldn’t make it back to the hotel with it – it would be long gone.

So… my goals for tomorrow: Try to sit down and eat at least one proper meal. And only buy one peach at a time. Yes, I know – but now is no time for lofty goals, especially when it’s 1 a.m. and I’ve got miles to go before I sleep.