Sexier than Ryan Lochte

The blues crept in this morning and started unpacking, slowly taking over like an inconsiderate houseguest.

It started so small: A brief exchange this morning where I was trying to do something nice for a not-quite-friend who happens to be an editor, who thinks she might want a job at my old employer. We were musing about who would be best to send her resume to (she'd already sent it to the one person she knew) and I offered to introduce her to someone else.

"Oh, I know her," she said. "I actually called her to ask her to do a story for me recently but she said she 

wasn't available."

Ouch, I thought. You've never asked me. (It's a women's magazine, she edits the types of stories I have been known to write, so it's not like, say, she works at somewhere that is a stretch for my name to appear.)

And on it went from there. These days – some days – it honestly doesn't take much. A few hits in the same day – a friend who knew perfectly well how incapacitated I am at the moment, yet suggested meeting somewhere in Brooklyn that would have been a haul for me to get to, for example -- and suddenly the picture darkens even on things that made me happy hours or days before; my own moody Instagram filter.

If there is any plus side to this it is that I recognize what's happening, and know that sometimes the smallest things can also lift me up. (Exercise sometimes does, but the kind I can do right now does not.)Today I kept falling, and then two encounters with total strangers, one after another, lifted me up just enough so that the hem of my dress was no longer in the water. (One a guy who stopped to commiserate about my cast, and the other a family visiting from Manchester I saw studying a map and so stopped to ask if I could help.)

I'm starting to recognize that on days like today I am always going to contemplate food. It's insidious: It's not like I think seriously about bingeing. What I do is start considering various options I don't usually consider: Buying a box of ice cream sandwiches and keeping them in the freezer so I can have them for snacks, as I did this morning. Or as I did this afternoon: hmmm, what is this random chocolate pie (of the packaged Hostess kind, except not a brand I recognize), and how many calories is it? Let's see, shall I have this Starbucks protein box?

None of these things are terrible on their own, of course. But one thing I think I've learned is that when food looks sexier than Ryan Lochte to me – when I start thinking if I can just hit on the perfect thing to eat maybe that, at least, will cheer me (or maybe, make me feel like I'm not messing up the rest of my life) – that is exactly when I need to keep my food as (relatively) boring as possible. To stick to things I know I like and that will fill me up, so that there is no wondering – as there sometimes is when I try something new – whether I could/should have more.

My dad always insists on eating in the most exotic restaurant he (or likely the person he's with – he does not ever do the legwork) can possibly find, whether or not it is any good or even owned by people of the nationality whose food it purports to serve. This can mean, for example, that while in France he will be disappointed to eat plain old French food – didn't we pass a Lithuanian restaurant a couple of hours ago?

I have sometimes mused (never to him) that perhaps his life is dull, so his food needs to be exciting. And here I am doing the same thing.

Day 31.