Sunday Girl

Why, why, WHY are all British male war correspondents charming and adorable – and married?

Thursday night I went rather grudgingly to some journalist drinks hosted, in part, by an acquaintance from The New Yorker, my pipe-dream employer.

I knew I wouldn't know anyone else at the drinks, and I barely know N. I knew I was likely to feel out of place, which would be a binge trigger – especially because I was having a hungry day anyway. But I knew I had to at least stop by. Three new people or an hour is my rule, and I fully expected to have to use it.

It was super awkward at first: N. sort of nodded my way, and I felt – as I'd expected – crazily out of place and seriously low-brow in the clutch of journalists from The New Yorker, NPR, This American Life, and the New York Times. (My mood – and ability to chat – wasn't helped much by my lack of fondness for my job.)

But I soldiered on. When I finally escaped a torturous conversation with a couple of radio producers, I spied a familiar face from London, now a reporter for the New York Times. I hadn't seen him in at least four years. We chatted for a while to his editor, who did nothing to allay my feelings of inadequacy.

Editor: My daughter used to work in [my former employer's] LA office.

My friend the reporter: So she's a reporter then, too?

Editor [rolling his eyes and snorting]: If you call that reporting.

Anyway. Editor did at least laugh at a bunch of my stories before moving on. (I'm glad I didn't know until after I Googled him that night just how important he is at the newspaper.) Which left me and Mr. NYT to chat. Mr. NYT – a nice if far-too-religious-for-my-taste Jew who I considered flirting with for about five minutes four years ago (just couldn't do it) – introduced me to a handful of guys he knew from Baghdad. Among these was a guy we'll call Great Scot. (No points for guessing that he's Scottish.) His first conflict – which he's written a book or maybe two about – was Kosovo, but he's spent time in multiple war zones.

We broke off from the rest of the group and chatted for an hour, easily the best conversation I've had with any guy in months. Le sigh. I know from experience that cute, charming male war correspondents generally are extremely willing to cheat – at least when they're actually in war zones – but I don't go there. Ever.

PS Before you suggest it, Mr. NYT Jew is in a relationship (he's 42 years old and gave me a torturous account of changing his Facebook status, hence the language) with a woman he met on JDate, and wanted my advice on where to go in Venice to propose this spring.

***

Despite spending the weekend in the middle of a Cold War between my sister and her husband (a tension I haven't felt since my BN2 days) – and waking up at 6 am to feed babies, plus feeling oddly, cranky-inducing hungry both days myself – I haven’t binged for 22 days. Weight on my sister's scale Saturday morning: 163.2 (11 stone 9). While I'm still not delighted by the number, it is at least no longer in the overweight range. And it's 13 pounds (just under a stone) away from 150 – the original weight that a couple of years ago I'd promised my binge eating counsellor I wouldn't go beneath.

Of course, I know perfectly well it could take me all year to lose that stone – and even then, some of my very favourite clothes still won't fit. I'm working on accepting it – and 3 weeks without a binge has done quite a lot for my mood. So has a more focused workout schedule: I've been running again (training for the half marathon I'm doing in March), trying to get to yoga at lunchtime twice a week (I have so far), and trying to do some kind of weight lifting twice a week (gold star for that, too).