Another Saturday Night

Last night, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I passed up a party.

I never miss parties. I don't always feel like going to them, but in the end I'm almost always glad I've made the effort. Factor in that I'm single and new to a city and you can see that skipping one is a huge waste of an opportunity.

I met a friend visiting from France for dinner, and we sat around chatting until about 10.30 pm. My contacts were bothering me, I knew I'd need to change clothes, it was cold, and I was exhausted. Plus I had to be up at 8 this morning.

I left the restaurant, bought some drain unclogger and some diet root beer, and headed home. I debated taking a picture to show you a wild night in Bethville, debating removing my eye makeup (neither of which I did), and then climbed into bed, thinking the noise from the bar beneath my flat was even louder than usual. I felt vaguely sorry for myself.

Despite the early(ish) night, when I left the office this afternoon (yes, on a Sunday), I was so tired I thought I might cry. There are times in my life I've gotten a whole lot less sleep than I'm getting now, but there is something so unbelievably exhausting about the combination of the current job (and its gazillion little moving pieces) and the constant effort I feel like every part of my life requires (still in transition as it is) – and how soul-destroying it feels to think, whether true or not, that I am letting far too many things slide, and that they are the wrong things. Crossing 42nd Street en route to the subway to meet a friend for tea, I wanted to sit down in the middle of the road. Not because I wanted to be hit by anything, but just because I literally couldn't decide what I needed, and what to do next. I thought briefly about cancelling, but knew I'd feel better once I saw a friend (and I did).

I find it almost unbelievable that in the middle of this carnage, I'm sitting on 36 days without a binge. At tea today I paused to marvel at just how much more impossible handling my life would be if I were bingeing. It's something worth remembering.

***

This week I lost four pounds.

Well, I think I did. It's hard to tell with my scales. (Funny, the American version of that – scale – sounds wrong to me!)

Anyway, I've definitely lost weight. I don't fear my jeans splitting with each sudden movement, and I could zip a dress that was too tight.

How did I lose four pounds?, you may wonder. Last week I started testing a "Drop 10" diet that will be published in my magazine's April issue. (Well, I'm following the principles of it – a good 75 percent of the food they suggest I don't like or am too lazy to make.)

I'm going to be blogging about it on my employer's web site for the next five weeks, and I hope you'll check it out. (Link to come later this week, when it goes live.) I'll probably be posting here rather less often during the time period, though as this is a private blog with a much longer history, there are things I'm sure I'll want to say here and not there. Please feel free to comment on the public blog (I hope you do!) and even pass it along if you think it's worth reading, but – and I'm sure this goes without saying – please keep the two blogs separate.

Thanks, as always, for sticking with me. It means a lot.