Lately I've been making MR lots of giant side salads to go with his dinners. This is in part due to the fact that it's hot again (which in no way interferes with my anticipation of fall -- I'm with you on that, Amy!) but also because I misread the grocery list and overbought spring mix salad greens. "You love salad," I told him.

So I have been making him salads in advance and then leaving the dressing on the side to marinate all day in a dish without watering down the veggies. Here are a few dressings on the side that I thought you might like to try. You can mix them up in pretty much any amount you want... since the ingredients are all practically calorie-free, I just throw them together without measuring. Then add the oil and be sure to measure that.

Sunny Citrus Curry Dressing:

1 part lemon juice
1 part lime juice
big shakes of garlic powder
big shakes of curry powder
dash of half or no salt
1 tsp olive or flax oil per person

Basic Italian-ish Vinegarette

1 part red wine vinegar
1/2 part lemon juice
capers and caper juice
dried basil and oregano, or you can use Italian spice mix
garlic powder
1 tsp olive oil per person

Chipotle lime dressing

1 part cider vinegar
1/2 part lime juice
garlic powder
cumin
Chipotle Tabasco

Ginger Lime Dressing

1 part lime juice
1 part rice vinegar (not seasoned)
fresh grated ginger or ginger powder
garlic powder

All of these do best if you let them marinate all day in a dish and then add to your salad right before serving.

Don't worry, I'll write something substantial soon. I've just been very busy and had a lot of things flowing around in my head. They'll congeal into a goopy mess soon enough.

We have a traditional not-marriage in a lot of ways. He handles outside matters, such as taking out the trash, engaging someone to mow the "lawn" (as it turns out if you don't, the little township eventually threatens to fine you $200) and dealing with any and all things that go wrong with the house (such as a flooded basement.) I deal with most things inside the house, like vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom, and cooking dinners. However, he washes the dishes because he doesn't think I do it well enough (oh darn!!! Try this at home ladies... it might work for you too!) and he cleans the counters because the scrubbing requires Alpha Male greater physical strength (try this one too, ladies, it may work for you especially if you have old counter tops that really do require hardcore scrubbing) When there is a bug in the shower, he takes it outside. He is, after all, the man. I may make less important decisions, such as in what country to live, but on really important matters, I defer to the Man of the House. Which is why even though I think that Labor Day weekend is the ideal time to put up the Halloween decorations, I wait until the MR approved first of October.

Without my Halloween decorations, I have to show my appreciate for fall in different ways. One of these ways is through scents. I'm busting out the apple spice, cinnamon and vanilla candles this weekend. I'm putting on the Bath and Body Works "Warm Vanilla Sugar."

Another way of showing appreciation for fall is through food! And nothing says "fall" to me like pumpkin!

Now I hear that there may be a pumpkin shortage on this fall, and I am going to worry about that shortly, but for the moment let me enjoy my pumpkin recipes.

A favorite that I've probably published before but that may be either a new variation or at least new to new readers is Curried Pumpkin Portabellas.

You will need:

x number of portabellas
4x 1/4 cups of canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix -- eeeeew!)
garlic powder
curry powder, preferably good stuff from an Indian grocery
4x tablespoons nonfat ricotta (lowfat will do too)
about a quarter of a large tomato per portabella
.25x tsp flax or olive oil (flax tastes better)

Can you tell that I recently took the GRE? Brushing up on algebra after almost 20 years was a bit of a challenge, but thanks to some very competent pre-test tutoring I did well enough to not inspire a chorus of laughter that could be heard all the way from Center City to Conshohocken... I think.

Take the stems off the portabellas, leaving the caps intact. Microwave the caps for about 1.5 minutes if you're using the microwave for this recipe, or not if you're baking. Sprinkle the caps with garlic powder, then spread on the canned pumpkin and top with a liberal layer of curry powder. On top of that place a tablespoon of ricotta and smash it down a bit so it forms a vaguely sunny side up inverted look on the pumpkin on the mushroom. Top that with diced tomatoes, and cover with a tiny dash of decorative paprika. You can also top the entire thing with nonfat, low fat or regular mozzarella. Heat in the microwave for 2 to 3 minutes, or bake for about twenty minutes on some heat or other (I rarely use our oven anymore so I don't really remember.) *After removing from heat* (you know who you are!) add the oil, just about a quarter teaspoon per porta. Serve piping hot to choruses of "Wow!" "Yum!" Curried orange fall delight!

Note: if your dinner guest is not already slightly orange, this will not make him or her orange. For that effect, you have to actually finger paint the person with canned pumpkin. Which you are welcome to do, but I'd prefer you not tell me about it.

dash paprkia is cute too

It is not big secret that I am a fan of teeny pop. It was a revolution when one day MR came down the stairs while I was preparing dinner to discover that instead of being assaulted with the music of Miley Cyrus, his ears were treated to a lecture on very low carb diets for metastatic cancers.

"In this kitchen, it's either Miley Cyrus or Gene Fine," I announced. Probably the only time those words have been strung together, I'd guess.

Other favorites of mine include Rhianna and Ke$hsa. Yes, yes, "Your love your love your love is my drug," and "Come here rude boy boy," can frequently be heard streaming from my iPod. But by far my favorite is Katy Perry.

I love all of Katy Perry's songs. From "I Kissed A Girl" to "Waking Up In Vegas" to "California Gurrls," I can listen to Katy Perry on continuous repeat for weeks on end. (Leading, as you might expect, for MR to beg for the lecture on VLCD for cancer to come back on the speakers. "Can we please have Gene back now?" "Yes, we can have Gene back now. But only because you asked so nicely.") My current song of repeat continuity is Katy's new single, "Teenage Dream." I strongly suggest that you download it to accompany your reading of this post.

I was in the midst of a great deal of contemplation of the issue of aging when Katy's "Teenage Dream" first hit my radio waves. Not contemplating biological aging: it's already been established that we oppose that, and are doing everything we can to slow it down both through calorie restriction (the only intervention proven to slow biological aging in mammals! I can repeat like a tape recorder) and through SENS research (that's MR's job, and what he writes books about) But contemplating chronological aging, which is a different thing all together in its implications, even though those implications often include various aspects of biological aging.

This round of contemplation was brought on by Stephanie Dolgoff's My Formerly Hot Life, which has finally arrived at my door thanks to the magic of amazon.com, and lots of discussions with people of all ages (including you, dear readers) about what happens to our perspective as we age.

Stephanie Dolgoff, who is 43 and to my taste extremely hot herself, reflects on all manner of ways in which things change as you get older. Well, yeah. But I'd have to say, I find the characterization of 35 - 50 as "formerly hot" not so much offensive as silly. I loved the way that women and men alike came out of the New York Times comment section woodwork to describes themselves and people their age as quite hot enough, thanks so much.

Call me a freak, and you wouldn't be the first one to do so, even just today, but I was never all that entertained by being "hot" in the way that one is in one's twenties. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy male attention just as much as the next straight chick, if not more so. I was quite flattered last week when my male co-worker who is well-known for only dating thin women in their twenties with perfect bodies stopped his motorcycle while crossing the bikepath where I was walking to check me out... before he figured out that it was me and was duly horrified because he thinks of me in the sister category. We had a good giggle about that.

But actually being a twenty-something had a lot of disadvantages. I was what Edward would call a "very serious person" (and did, in fact, call that... which is why he hired me eight years ago) in my twenties, extremely focused on my career organizing nurses, and I had little time for the kind of partying, drinking and "finding oneself" that seemed to occupy so many of my age appropriate compatriots. My college friends were genuinely distressed that I would not go out with them late at night because my vision of 5 am was not a good time to be leaving an after-party but the logical time to be stopping by the office for a recharge on union literature before heading out the the morning shift change meeting with nurses. I distinctly remember one Sunday morning in 1999 when I was 25 watching the sunrise over the Delaware River as recently drunk people (not to be confused with formerly drunk people, who are a hell of a lot more fun) streamed out of a club in various states of sun-dazed confusion while I looked for a parking place so I could run up to my office, which happened to be in a building just off the Philly club district, before I headed over to the McDonald's in Camden to meet Cooper nurses coming off of shift. "What am I doing with my twenties?" I asked myself, but I knew full well that the party existence of your normal twenty something didn't appeal to me. I loved being serious about my job, a job that has been more than worth the sacrifices of sleep and social life that it required, and as I got older I enjoyed the benefits of being more experienced than others of my age who had messed around for a few years before getting down to work.

The natural result of being a "very serious person" in my twenties was that I dated older guys. I had no time for men without real jobs, serious thoughts, and their own cars. I had no expectation that men would buy me things (and still don't... I'm very comfortable with my status as primary bread winner in our household. Or should I call it something else, considering that we keep a low-carb household? Kale-winner???) but I found most guys in their twenties to be, frankly, losers. They weren't interested in a girl who didn't do drugs, didn't go to clubs, and wanted to be in bed by ten pm. Of course I over-generalize, and no doubt Philadelphia was simply crawling with serious intellectual men who just hadn't hit thirty yet, but I bet you most of them were locked up in med school or grad school or some such, preparing for a career where they would turn out to be hot later. (I apologize to everyone out there who was locked up in law school in your twenties, but I can't find lawyers hot. Some of my best friends are lawyers, and I have tremendous respect for lawyers, especially labor lawyers, but I just can't find lawyers hot. I like geeky science boys, what can I say? Have you met my partner? It doesn't get much geekier and science-y-er, at least not without going to MIT. I don't like rock stars either.)

So I dated guys who were quite a bit older, and that had advantages (like they could pay for their own dinner and generally knew how to clean their own bathroom) but also disadvantages, such as the fact that their friends made fun of them for dating such a young woman. "She's a very serious person!" a man might protest, but still, there was a social barrier to dating women who were in that time of life that Stephanie Dolgoff equates with "hot." I remember how one guy I was quite seriously involved with, to the point where we both thought it not entirely unreasonable that I was looking at wedding dressings with more than just academic interest, who got so sick of hearing that he was some sort of dog for dating a woman of 28 that he just lied and said I was 30.

But far worse than any implications for my dating life was the career aspect. As I said, I started organizing very young, at 21. So by the time I was 26 I had five years of experience, which is old in an organizer (it's the kind of profession, like professional football, that tends to eat people alive within a few short years, rendering them suitable for little other than the scrap heap or law school. At fifteen years of frontline union organizing, I am as rare as a fully functional Commodore 64.) I was frequently asked by nurses, "Are you old enough to be doing this?" to which I learned to reply, quoting my good friend Lisa, the greatest organizer I ever met, "Well, no one else is coming." My youth undermined my credibility in a way that no amount of talent, experience or credentials could make up for.

As I got older and nurses got younger, this problem became less of an issue, but I re-visited it at 30 when I first started CR and lost forty pounds. At 102 and 30 years old, I looked a lot younger than I had at 140 and 29. And once again, the "Are you old enough to be doing this?" question, which I hadn't heard in years, started to resurface. Our culture (mistakenly) equates thinness with youth, so just being very thin and extremely healthy was enough to convince folks that yet again, they should just wait for my supervisor to show up before talking about anything important.

I actually really like getting chronologically older. I think I do get wiser with every passing year. And the benefits of being in great shape, while no longer accidental, do seem to improve as you can not help but compare yourself with those of the same age who don't work quite so hard at it. (Ooooooooooh the nasty comments are going to come in from that one, I can feel it now... and you're all invited to my Iyengar yoga or Pilates class, or to eat exactly what I eat for a few months and see what happens.)

That being said, I definitely had my formerly moment. It was about two years ago when I was still pre-formerly according to Dolgoff's definition, but had reached the top of my organizing career (where I remain perched more comfortably than you would think at the apex of the triangle) and was surrounded by a tribe of twenty-somethings whom I supervised. They were lovely girls, some of them downright stunning, who all thought I was well beyond the age where anyone could be considered hot. Back in those days my motorcycle riding, twenty-something friend, Davy, and I used to work closely together and while we were always coming and going in the same car and giggling together over private jokes, no one ever suspected us of having an affair. "They don't think that people our age even have sex anymore," we'd laugh, and enjoy the imperviousness to gossip our senior status granted us.

Even though I actually had a much more fit and in shape body than any of these twenty-somethings, there was no mistaking that men in bars checked them out before noticing me. It was particularly hard when some people who had given me quite a bit of attention in my twenties seemed to move onto this new crop of younger ones. What am I, chopped organizer? Old news on the front page of cuteness? FORMERLY HOT?

Then, as though on cue, the moment came.

We were at a conference with our sister union, a very big union indeed, and several of us were meeting with two of their higher ups who would be working on a project with us, a project of great importance. At this high level meeting I was in my function as Director of Organizing, dressed professionally, being myself. The two men we were meeting with were *very serious dudes* in their fifties or so.

In spite of the presence of beautiful, in fact stunning, twenty-somethings in the room, these two gentlemen paid no attention to anyone but me. They were paying attention to what I had to say because *the future of our organizations depended on it.* Here I was, a very serious person in the company of very serious people, who just happened to be men.

No longer was I written off for my youth and the inexperience and insignificance this is taken (even if wrongly) to imply. I was a grown up. And, ladies and gentlemen, it rocked. Formerly huh???

Grown-up-ness has continued to rock pretty much solidly from that moment on. I get taken quite seriously by persons of all ages, some of whom even call me ma'am, and I love it. There is no more expectation that I will giggle or bat my eyelashes, and when I do giggle, it is more of a low voiced ironic giggle that says, "Isn't it fun that we can be kids together and no one will ever know about it?"

And no one looks straight through me as though I weren't even there.

MR and I ended up in a rather long conversation about the social construction of aging today over our lunch (black bean stew and megamuffin for him, eggwhite fritatta with Italian blend veggies and flax oil for me) and we disagree on some points. We argued about the relationship of age to sexual attractiveness.

"Age, at least in so far as it affects sexual attractiveness, is socially constructed," I pronounced. In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you (before my mother does) that as a very small child I made a pet of my mother's copy of The Social Construction of Reality and carried it around and even tucked into bed a couple of times. "A hundred years ago, at 36 I would have been considered very old and unattractive. Now, I'm doing just fine..."

MR disagrees. Apparently people really did age faster in those days due to pathogens, hard labor, pollution, etc. "What is sexually attractive doesn't change much across cultures," he said and pointed to studies that show this. Slight variations in ideal weights, body shape, facial features, etc. But a basic general idea that that which is most indicative of fertility is attractive.

While he loves me for my mind and personality (not to mention my ability to make the most awesome stuffed eggplant you can imagine in ten minutes flat) he is still attracted to the various indicators of biological fertility that aging has definitely not worn away.

"In a culture where fertility is no longer as important, however, isn't it possible that we won't be quite so influenced by those things?"

Perhaps so, perhaps not. We agreed to disagree in the end, and I pointed out that he is lucky that I have the tastes I have: I genuinely prefer slightly older skinny men, preferably with glasses, though I can forgive the lack of glasses if, as in my partner's case, his wrists are small enough. As MR ages, albeit at a slower rate than everyone else, I will probably just find him more and more attractive. (Don't worry Aubrey, I won't let it distract him from his work!)

I am intrigued by the question of how people will handle aging as the biological possibilities for health and productivity expand. At a few months shy of forty, MR is biologically in incredible shape and really just starting his career. I'm in the best shape of my life and at the top of one career and just getting started on a whole set of other interests. I don't look at the next twenty or forty or even sixty years as any sort of denouement or epilogue. "Bright College Years" may be a moderately cute song that was sung at Yale, but it does not describe the best years of my life. I expect to be young and healthy and vibrant and productive and I act in ways that make that possible. How would I act if I were convinced that at thirty-six I were somehow washed up? Would I put as much effort into my diet and exercise? Would I be spending so much time on intellectual efforts that are not directly affected to my paying work?

FORMERLY HUH???

I'm not making any plans to give up on anything.

"You make me feel like I'm living a teenage dream..." says Katy Perry.

She also makes reference to skin tight jeans, which I would have not felt like I could wear before CR and now could definitely pull off.

What will it mean to be sixty or seventy or eighty or ninety or more as we make scientific advances such that people are biologically younger as they get chronologically older? Will there be more time to live more and more teenage dreams?

It would be quite optimistic to think that I will make it long enough to take advantage of this kind of biotech. CR is crude and weak medicine, but it's probably all I have, which is all the more reason for being serious about it. I wish I had started earlier. I wish I had been more serious when I did start. But there's no point in regretting the past: there are dreams to be lived, papers to write, skin tight jeans to be worn (though not to class, work, or in any professional context or in any situation where to do so might endanger health of self or others.)

We can dance until we die
You and I we'll be young forever

Or at least we'll act we are.

And other things that should be labeled, "Why do we continue to express surprise?"

Today I left my 7 am yoga class expecting to feast on my traditional post-yoga breakfast (you can not eat before Iyengar class oh no you can not) which is 2 pieces of Weight Watcher string cheese, 30 grams of almonds, and 15 grams of pumpkin seeds, all packed by the loving hand of MR into a cute little Hello Kitty cooler that my mom gave me.

I thought I had extra nuts-n-seeds bags in my backpack.

I was wrong.

So I ate my string cheese and went to work, and proceeded to have a very busy day, filled with filing labor charges, a visit to the eye doctor because my eye problem is not quite resolved though improved (I will spare you the tale of my misadventure with antibiotics, which reminded me of why I very rarely take antibiotics and only in the most dire of circumstances) and working out the logistics of an upcoming conference on workplace violence against nurses. I had a quick lunch of 1 cup of my new lima bean and tomato stew plus 1 cup of cottage cheese with flax oil. Then later on in the day I had a grapefruit and two small green apples because sure enough I was hungry for something sweet.

Fast forward to the end of the night. I realize that I have had way too little fat. My day is overall very low calorie (was under 1200) but way, way too low fat.

Fast forward to after my brief evening walk (I try to get in a walk every night before it gets too dark if I'm not out for work, something I really enjoy in summer) and sure enough, after walking hills in my hilly old mill town where the houses get fancier the further up the hill you get (we are one block past the flood plane of the river, which tells you that our house is definitely not fancy, though it is rather huge especially for what we paid for it, as I like to remind my New York friends who couldn't buy a storage cubicle for what I got my three story house for so HA!) with glycogen somewhat depleted, and BANG!

Massive sugar craving.

Now of course I can't eat sugar (gives me anxiety) so I had something I've had an awful lot of these days: a banana. A true Freudian would have a field day with the fact that I've loved bananas as of late, especially whole not very ripe ones but also all flavors of things banana, including yogurt. One of my favorite things is a banana dipped in vanilla yogurt, or even better, strawberry banana! Super banana! Go ahead, think whatever it is that you think. Bananas are relatively high carb but since I am neither overweight nor diabetic nor having trouble controlling my calories, that is not a worry for me.

Now the banana was lovely and my calories are still well under 1400 for the day, which is quite fine and will guarantee the consistent slow weight loss I've had the last few months, dripping back down to my CR ideal weight whatever that may be (calculations based on my old CR fighting weight of 102 - 104 confounded by the fact that back then I had no muscle and exercised none, whereas now I have rock solid yoga and Pilates muscle and exercise at least daily.) But I hate having sugar cravings. And there is no question why I had the craving because it never fails: not enough fat = a sugar craving that is darn near impossible to ignore.

So one banana and one South Beach Diet bar later I say to you: eat your fat, even if you are recovering fat phobic nineties girls like myself. You may think you're "saving calories" by avoiding all the calories in fat, but those calories will get you in the end.

MR is making me new bags of nuts-n-seeds now. What a wholesome little pair we make.

While we're taking sugar cravings, my dear friend Allswellinhell sent me this story about a woman whose cupcake truck was confiscated in Philly. Of course this from a city that arrested over 100 people just for making puppets in 2000... but anyhow.

Needless to say, I have no interest in conventional cupcakes, as that amount of sugar would give me an anxiety attack the size of Love Park. But... she says that she will do special orders, and that no request is too outlandish. So... the following email exchange ensued:

Hi,

April Smith

and the prompt response!

We do not make sugar free cupcakes at this time. We hope to in the future thought.

Thanks for your interest.

Oh well. Maybe we can generate enough of a market for sugar free low carb cupcakes here in Philadelphia so as to make it a good investment?

Eggplant, mushrooms.

Anything else.

There. That's your recipe for the day.

What do you find wears out your self-control? Keeping your weight under control while surrounded by the worst food environment in human history? Having a schedule so packed that you run out of steam long before you have the chance to do anything truly restorative? Keeping focused and doing good work on a job where you're cursed with the workload of several people? Going to Bed Bath and Beyond to run a simple errand with the full knowledge that your partner will be very, very upset if you come home with more place mats, no matter how beautiful or seasonally appropriate?

Finely chop enough eggplant to stuff the number of large white mushrooms (which you have already liberated of their stems and reserved same for another dish) you plan to stuff. Marinate in lime juice, lite soy sauce, ginger (fresh or powdered), garlic (fresh or powdered) and a dash of Worschtershire (somebody rescue my spelling... I can't drag myself to the kitchen to look it up on the bottle.)

Pre-cook the eggplant mixture for four to five minutes in the microwave, covered in a glass dish in the marinade.

Pre-cook the mushrooms for about a minute or a minute and a half in the microwave.

Spoon the eggplant mixture into the hollowed out mushrooms.

You could at this point top them with cheese, or not. I didn't.

Sprinkle ginger powder and fresh black pepper on top.

Microwave for a minute to two.

Serve piping hot.

Very cute little stuffed mushroom bites.

Have you ever bought a bag of small carrots, the kind that are just the size that may be conveniently dipped in hummus, my awesome spinach and artichoke dip, or other convenient toppings? I'll admit it: I've done it many a time. "Baby carrots," they're usually called. You bring them to the party or potluck, you feel good because you're providing an alternative to crackers and chips, and everyone is happy. Yeah, they're a little expensive but they're just so convenient, and if you can ignore that weird uneasy feeling that comes with serving "baby" anything (I still can't buy baby arugula... what about the arugula's mother???) you get a ready to eat healthy bite sized appetizer dipping stick.

You do know, though, don't you you, that they're not really baby carrots? They're "baby-cut carrots."

Now that I know that they were a clever farmer's way to using imperfect carrots, I am much more hesitant to call the whole thing a scam (note that I just edited the title of this post.) After all, I am all for using every bit of the vegetable. Making money off of selling cutely cut carrots, cashing in on the cache of babiness without actually using the extreme methods to babify them, makes a lot of sense. And just like those packs of pre-cut vegetables that I make fun of in the grocery store because among the things I will never pay for is having someone else chop my zucchini, I actually think it's perfectly fine to cash in on other people's desire to save time. So hats off to you, Mike Yurosek, and may you rest in peace. You saved many an "imperfect" (who are we to call God's vegetables perfect or imperfect, but for the sake of simplicity) carrot from the industrial sized garbage compactor and many a party tray from a lack of carrots because the host or hostess didn't feel like chopping up adult carrots into bite sized dipping sticks. My Downstate baseball cap is tipped to you.

I, however, am on a money-saving kick, for reasons that I pray will soon become apparent (no we are not getting married or having a baby -- get your mind out of the gutter!) so I am in no mood to spend money to have someone else use an industrial carrot chopper on imperfect to human eyes though perfect in the sight of God carrots to justify charging me more for a healthy party snack. And, I have a convenient bag of adult carrots at my house. So when I volunteered to bring appetizers for the going away party for Danny California that we're having this evening, I broke into my big bag of generic adult carrots and chopped them the way you would fire wood. Not that I have any real idea how one would slice fire wood, not being the kind of person who would be allowed by her partner or anyone who loves her or values his or her limbs to handle an axe. But you get the picture: cheap carrots, chopped, placed in bag, ready to absorb hummus at this afternoon's fiesta.

Hey, I promised you silly, healthy and passionate. If you want depressing go back and read the New Yorker article again!

Full text, no special access codes needed! It's your lucky day!

Go read something serious... I have to work. More silly musings, healthy recipes, and passionate rants as soon as possible!

Silly, healthy, passionate... hmmmm. The empress of our local yoga scene, Dhyana, has coined the slogan "Happy, healthy, helpful." Silly healthy passionate R Us? On a good day...

Thank you Diana! I think this article is really good. Something we should all think about.

Live like we're dying!!!

Not to be confused with living like we're already dead, which a lot of people do for way too long.

All well and good, except that I got stuck on hold for quite awhile waiting for the receptionist to schedule our appointments. (We go at the same time so we can minimize carbon footprint through car usage. We go for bloodtests at the same time so that MR can pick me up after I faint without making an extra trip. I don't faint at the sight of blood, I just faint when people stick large needles into me. Or I cry. I often cry, but only after the fourth or fifth try, and then not so much because it hurts but because I feel like I am being a bad patient and ruining the nurse's day. This is what happens when you organize nurses for fourteen freakin years. You try it, and then stand on your head for five minutes. See???)

There was country music on the hold music. Not pop rock country-inspired music like Taylor Swift or Shania (both of whom I love. Favorite Taylor line: "First date, man I didn't kiss him and I should have!") but real, real country.

The first song was a female singer waxing poetic on how she would no longer provide for her cheating boyfriend in any fashion unless he were to take her to the church and (I presume) marry her. Among the things she enumerated that she would not be doing until the blessed matrimony took place: making him barbecue chicken, having his babies.

Hmmmmm. I was just thinking about barbecue chicken, but MR only eats meat when out so it's not really on the table that I would or would not make him barbecue chicken, Carolina or otherwise. I am going to make some for myself, based on my mother's excellent Carolina bbq recipe, which is made of vinegar like good Eastern NC BBQ with no tomato sauce.

As to babies, we neither have nor want, as I have described at length. Clearly, this song does not really speak to me.

Second song comes on (I was on hold for a long time.) One of those really depressing songs about a guy who goes to a bar after his first real fight with his new wife and the bartender is a guy who is three years sober but was a drunk because his beautiful young wife died of cancer right after the birth of their second child, a son named Earl.

I am not making this up.

I don't listen to country music because I get really sad about songs like this. Poor guy... drinking milk in a bar... two small children at home... remembering the long slow first kiss on the second date with his wife... and then she died.

At this point I am literally tearing up.

Then I'm thinking about how my best friend's son nearly died of cancer many years ago, and thank heaven the receptionist comes on the line before I have a complete sob-fest.

Then I finish up making the appointments and go back to work and on my iPod comes up Toto's "I Won't Hold You Back," which always reminds me of my dead cat Philomena, may she rest in peace.

If only all humans could live in such good health as Philo did, and die with as little suffering and as much dignity, surrounded by those they love and eating Christmas turkey on their last morning on earth. I mean, if appropriate.

I'm no huge fan of aging, but at least when people or pets die at a ripe old age, you can feel like they got a decent shot at life. And I find I worry less about my friends who are chronologically older, on the simple logic that if they made it this long, they must be fairly good at looking both ways before crossing the street (this is especially true if you live in Brooklyn.)

I have cancer research in my head now for other reasons, and can't help but think that better can and will be done. Not that I can do anything about it: I'm just an organizer, and in the world of medical research I'm nothing more than a good proofreader and an excellent cheerleader. And a self-deprecating one at that.

I have to run off now to go back to my real job of caring for those who care for the sick... nurses to organize, contracts to fight for, a health care system destroying itself that can't be saved by anything but a full-scale attack on the causes of disease. Everything else is just a band-aid, and not even a cute Hello Kitty band-aid of the sort that no doubt is no longer considered appropriate once one hits "formerly" age.

If I sound wistful, I don't mean to. I'm not feeling particularly full of wist, whatever that is. I'm feeling unusually excited about the future. So much of what I've always dreamed of is so close to being mine that I can almost taste it. Or is that the string cheese? Either way, things are going well.

I'm ordering "Formerly Hot" and reflecting on a time when I definitely felt "formerly." That feeling went away when I reconnected with my dreams. It didn't fade away: it blew up like the Death Star in the first Star Wars movie.

"Nice shot kid, that was one in a million!"

Can you believe that Harrison Ford is 68? Soooooo not formerly!!!

Ouch, I so identify that I just want to run up to NYC and give her a big hug/take her out for a grown-up sized Ketel One and Diet Coke. Or seltzer with lime, as one may prefer.

Hang in there Steph... reasonable people can disagree, but nobody deserves the level of snarky personal attack that passes for okay on today's internet machine.

My usual post-yoga and now post Pilates class meal:

-- two Weight Watcher light string cheeses
-- 30 g almonds
-- 15 g pumpkin seeds

MR bags up a week's worth of nuts and seeds for me in cute little baggies cause he's wonderful that way. A few weeks ago I found these really cute Hello Kitty ziplock bags and being a huge fan of the Hello, of course I purchased them, along with some extras for my friend Harriet's five year old daughter.

These have made excellent conveyances for nutsnseeds. Until today, when while merging into traffic on the I-676 connector to I-76, my nut and seed bag broke! NO! That's a misplaced modifier! The nutnseed bag wasn't merging, my car, Wendy the Geo Prizm (named after the girl in "Born to Run") was merging! Hahaha!

Anyhow, at an awkward time, my nutsnseeds flew about the car.

I managed to collect most of them, once safely off the highway, but there may be a stray pumpkin seed here and there.

So if I pumpkin grows in the Prizm, it will be just in time for Halloween.

Speaking of, isn't it about time for me to put the Halloween decorations up?

* Do not try this at home unless you are an experienced yoga practitioner, in which case you've got better sense than to do an inversion after a big meal anyhow.

I didn't want to get charged for a banana as though I had bought it from the stack of rapidly over-ripening ones they had on the counter. I had brought my own that I had bought at the Wawa store that morning for way cheaper than $1/banana (more like 20 cents I think) and I was planning to enjoy it as a late afternoon snack with my iced coffee.

Is it just me, or is a sweet fruit with iced or hot coffee just the most wonderful late afternoon snack? It hits some sort of deep psychological button with me. Anyhow...

I brought my own banana. But I felt like an idiot announcing it. "I brought my own banana?" What kind of BYOB is this?

Is it just me, or are all women of my generation traumatized by the idea of announcing in an inappropriate context that we have somehow conveyed a piece of fruit?