My shoe size has gone up; I keep shopping for long sweaters and baggy skirts; people no longer ask me if I’ve made a mistake when I accidentally wander into the “plus size” section.  It’s time to face the truth: I need to go on a diet (again).

I have heard of people who can eat whatever they want and never gain a pound.  I’m pretty sure these types of people don’t really exist, if only because the rest of us have hunted them down and locked them up in Hostess factories until they develop double chins and saddle bags.

I hate dieting.  HAAAATTTTEEE it!  (And that, for you aspiring writers out there, is how you translate whining to paper.) I hate the idea of eating LESS and exercising MORE.  None of that sounds like fun.  But, as I’ve spent the last four months eating more and exercising less (and lets face it, I was darn close to sedentary to begin with), I have managed to put on 9 pounds in four months.  This may not sound like much, but since I had already put on 7 pounds in six months before that, I’m up almost 20 pounds in less than a year.  

I’ve tried many diets.  I was a big fan of Atkins, since it allows me to eat lots of cheese and bacon, but when I was on it I found myself having dreams in which I would swim in seas of pasta, which just freaked me out.  Plus, my cholesterol shot through the roof, so Atkins is out.

Ditto for South Beach, mostly because their frozen meals taste like cardboard topped with chunky vomit.  Dr. Phil’s diet is also off the table, because he requires you to work hard, make fresh meals every day, and hold yourself accountable for your failures.  That sounds likehard work.  I already am not happy with my weight – why do I want to feel bad about my life choices, too?  No thanks, Phil.  

I’ve decided to return to Weight Watchers, since I’ve done it before and I know it works.  I signed up online this morning, and immediately found that the points system I’d had memorized is completely obsolete.  They’ve completely revamped their program.  AND the coffee with non-dairy creamer (1 PointsPlus for the creamer) and handful of brazil nuts (30 PointsPlus, 5 points for each nut) I’d already eaten this morning had caused me to burn through my entire points allowance for the day, plus some.  Sigh.

The good news is that all fruits are now zero points in value.  Which is very good news for me and my beloved Hostess fruit pies! See, dieting can be fun if you just get a little creative with it…

We have a tradition in my family.  Every year on Good Friday, we all pile in to our cars and head over to Mom’s house to make koulourakia, a Greek Easter cookie.  It tends to be a little dry, and if you leave it exposed to the air for more than 30 seconds, it turns hard as a rock, but hey, tradition is important.

Okay, maybe tradition isn’t that important.  My mother, over the years, has made a few alterations to the recipe.  The year she dumped cocoa powder into the mixing bowl, for instance, while heralded among my immediate family as genius, earned scorn and general disdain from my great-aunts.  They believed that if it didn’t taste like sawdust and you couldn’t crack a tooth on it, it wasn't really koulourakia.  (Their sister, my grandmother, didn’t have a problem with the chocolate koulourakia.  She was also known as something of a gourmand in our family, and knew progress when she tasted it.)

This year, it was Mom, Dad, my Aunt Joanne, my sister Kim, my two nephews, and I  all gathered around the kitchen table to roll out the dough.  Mom always has high hopes that everyone will help mix up the dough, and every year, it’s her and her sister Joanne in the kitchen stirring and measuring while the rest of us pig out on peanut butter eggs and peeps in front of the television.  Eventually, Mom will announce that the dough is ready to be shaped into cookies, and we’ll scramble to the table to create our masterpieces.  See, I’ve mentioned that Mom is Greek.  My father, however, is Italian.  We Italians, of course, are great artists.

Koulourakia is traditionally shaped with a loop at the top, the two ends twisting together to form a plump stem (see picture below).  But after you roll out three or four of those, however, it gets kind of boring. That’s when we let our creative juices flow.

My nephews started creating remarkable works of art like a basketball, a burrito, poo (wait – that might have been me), and what appeared to be a likeness of President Obama.  Me, I like to dabble in animal portraits.  I fashioned a bunny rabbit, a rattlesnake (let’s face it – snakes are the easiest thing to roll out of dough, but I’ll admit, the rattles were tricky) and a giant chocolate tick.  I made the tick for my Dad since they tend to crawl from miles around just for a chance to chomp in to him.  See?  I’m always thinking of others.

The dough went fast, and soon we had tray upon tray of warm cookies.  The second part of this tradition was upon us.  We all proceeded to stuff our faces until we were sick.  Our Good Friday celebration was complete.  

The boys suckered - whoops! - convinced Auntie Joanne to play broom ball with them, while my sister and I passed out on the couch, fully ensconced in sugar overload.  Dad settled in to the recliner to pop ticks off his leg, and Mom was left to clean up the mess – egg shells in the sink, sesame seeds under the table, and a glob of chocolate cookie dough that had somehow magically gotten stuck to the ceiling.  (It was Kim.)  (Keep in mind, when I was a kid, I used to write “Kim was here” on the walls thinking that my mother would actually believe it.  I spent a lot of time in ‘time out’.)  My knee is still weak, so Mom made Kim stand on a chair and scrape the dough off the ceiling (snicker!)

Eventually, Kim loaded the kids in the car, and Auntie Joanne selected some cookies to bring to my Great-Aunt Demi for Greek Easter.  Won’t she be surprised to see the koulourakia President Obama that the boys made for her? You bet she will.

Some people like to spend Good Friday doing last minute egg shopping, while others spend it in religious reverence.  In our family, we eat.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Knee surgery was Wednesday.  I remember very little of the day, except for the anesthesiologist asking me what my hobbies were, at which point I told her I was a horror writer.  She asked me if I have ever met Stephen King (the answer: yes), at which point (I thought) I passed out.  When I woke up, my knee was bandaged up and the anesthesiologist was thanking me for keeping them all laughing with my stories. As God is my witness, I have no idea what stories I told.  It's nice to know, however, that even when I am unconscious, I can still be entertaining.
I spent the night on the couch, as I can't do stairs, and Jason spent the night on the air mattress  next to me, which I found very romantic.  He dropped me off at my parents' house the next day, so they could watch me while he went to work.
Dad and I spent the day watching crappy television.  The pain was pretty bad, so I took my Vicodin regularly, but I was really starting to feel sick.  I was dizzy, I threw up a little bit, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't just due to the "When Good Animals Go Bad" documentary on TV.  Over dinner, my mother became alarmed when my face broke out in hives, and she made me call the doctor.  Turns out that I'm allergic to Vicodin!
The doctor called in a new painkiller, and I've been much happier ever since.  My knee is puffier than Lindsay Lohan's eyes after a hard night of drinking, and I'm back to the point where I can't sit up by myself.  But between my husband, who surprised me with a Holstein-themed gift basket, my parents, who have been waiting on me hand and foot, and my sister, sister-in-law, and mother-in-law, who are all aware of Jason's culinary limitations and are making sure we don't starve to death, I have a really great support network.  I have received phone calls, tweets, emails, and facebook comments wishing me well, and my aunt is on 24-hour emergency call should I need a pint of Ben & Jerry's.
So I can't walk.  Luckily, I have lots of people to lean on!

How does one prepare for knee surgery that will leave one immobile for several weeks?  Well, if you’re me, you make a list, and start checking it off. Here we go!

1. Clean the house.  I had every intention of thoroughly dusting, scrubbing, organizing, and repainting the whole house before surgery.  I started in the bedroom.  Jason had left his dirty laundry on the floor.  I didn’t feel like doing laundry, so I pushed it under the bed.  Then I didn’t feel like dusting, so I laid kitty treats on the dresser with the hope that the cats would jump up there and dust with their fur while they were snacking.  Then I was tired, so I quit.
2. Teach Jason to cook.  I will not be able to stand in front of the stove or microwave, so hubby needed cooking lessons, pronto.  However, I quickly learned that Jason is easily distracted by his phone, the cats, a random rabbit in the back lawn, and dust.  His first lesson on how to cook Ramen noodles without burning them was a disaster.  So I added a new item to the list…
3. Buy a bunch of frozen dinners.  This was much more successful.  Now we won’t starve!
4. Promote Malicious Deviance.  This is an anthology about evil people that just came out this week, and I have a story in it.  Buy several copies now by clicking HERE!
5. Spend quality time with Duran Duran.  My sister and I have our tickets to see them Saturday night.  Have I mentioned yet that we met them once?  We're always hoping they'll recognize and remember us and call us on stage and swear their undying love to us, so we try not to miss a concert.  (What?  It could happen!)
6. Bark at Jason repeatedly.  I seem to be doing this non-stop this week.  Call it worry over the upcoming surgery or blame it on the fact that I had to hide his dirty laundry under the bed, but I actually yelled at him today for breathing too much of my air.
7. Buy a cute new jogging outfit.  I wanted something stylish yet functional to wear while parked on the couch.  This way, if any joggers go by the house and see me through the window on the couch, they’ll see my snazzy jogging suit and think I injured myself performing some sort of amazing athletic feat.  It’s all about appearances, folks.

I can’t promise a regular schedule next week for blogging - I had to do this week’s blog a day early so it wouldn’t interfere with Duran Duran.  I hope to update everyone once the surgery’s over and the pain medication wears off!  Or not.  If the blog is totally incomprehensible next week,  at least you’ll know why.