Radial Tire or Gummy Bear?

Diet solution circa 1903

Lately, I've been trying to eat less. Some people call this dieting. I call this missing dessert and being pissed off about it.

When a person wants to do a better job controlling what they eat, diet advice often points to knowing what the triggers are that lead to bad eating. What makes a person eat so mindlessly that they could stuff a radial tire in their left cheek and blissfully gnaw on it as if it were a giant gummy bear? I wondered this about myself.

A big trigger for me is writer's block (which is sometimes all day long) and another big one for me are my two sons (a trigger that is mercifully confined to firing only in the late afternoon, thanks to compulsory education). But writer stress is a cake walk compared to kid stress. I actually do pretty well all day until they show up. But once they do, hide the tires.

Before this so-called spate of dieting started, I used to put my kids to bed and then stumble into the kitchen, blind with rage over the endless bedtime stall tactics like me having to sing them yet another lullaby (sheesh!), or read yet another story (are they kidding?). I would stand with both hands on the counter, like a wild animal about to rip the head off of a helpless prairie creature. I would pace. My husband would know well enough to stay in the living room in the shelter of ESPN. I would whip open the freezer and eyeball the contents of it like Jack Nicholson coming home in The Shining. What was I going to eat? What was going to calm me down? It was going to be something good, dammit. I deserved it. Because by God, I let them live another day!

Well. Now I am a different mother. I still have triggers, of course, because the boys have lived on day after day as I mentioned. But when a trigger strikes, I don't eat ice cream or pretzels or fruit bars or chocolate chips that are being saved for some day in the distant future when I'll bake cookies and eat half the dough anyway. No. My trigger solution has become carrots. Those little baby ones that you pay extra for in the grocery store because they are peeled and cut small and "ready to eat right out of the bag." I give up. I'll pay it. Because no way am I going to stand over the trash can and peel a whole bag of carrots. I can't tell you how many bags of carrots have gone to rot waiting to be peeled. I can hold out for months; the carrots always lose that stand-off.

Now when a trigger hits, I grab my ready-to-eat-right-out-of-the-bag baby carrots and throw them in my mouth like they are Quaaludes. I'll be honest, the crunching helps. Ice cream doesn't crunch. Crunching feels good when your child has told you that you are the meanest mother who has ever lived because you won't allow the child to play sumo wrestler by stuffing couch cushions down his pants and doing a Superfly Snuka off the coffee table. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

At this point, I've had so many carrots it's likely that I am on the verge of even being able to see through lead (thank you, Wiki: Powers and Abilities of Superman). But who cares. It's better than having to 'reduce my flesh' with obesity soap. Still, I might send off for that book of testimonials. Just in case. Because in all likelihood, I will let my children live another day.

Little Consignment Shop of Horrors

I used to frequently visit a consignment shop near my apartment in Hoboken. For me, consignment shops are the equivalent of a good writing prompt: a creative breakthrough, an unexpected direction, possibly sexy, likely to hide my flaws if I choose well.

Before long, however, my hunt for a creative breakthrough was flagging because this is what I started to notice: racks and racks of Size XXS, Extra Petite and my all time favorite, Size 0.

Size 0? Is this even a size?

And isn't the point of "Petite" is that it is smaller than small? The smallest you can get? Like "Petitest." So is there really a reason to tack the word "Extra" onto the front of it? Isn't that just smearing the rest of our noses in it? Do I need to ask another question about this for you Fashion People to see the error of your ways here?

So I guess I have to spill it: I'm a Size 10. Sometimes a 12. During bad spells, I might even be a 14. After my first son was born, I did catch myself buying a Size 16 in the "Woman" section of Macy's. Speaking of which, here's another thing for you Fashion People: couldn't we agree it's sort of offensive to label as "Woman" all clothing that is cut to fit a larger body? As if, were I not in the category of wearing a larger size, I would be something else. Like an egret.

Alas, I am always just looking for something that will fit on my body now, which according to most of the informed media (examples escape me), is the average size of the American woman.

One day recently in my consignment shop I found what looked like a fuchsia potato sack. Compared to everything else, it looked positively huge. Circus tent huge. While not especially attractive, it looked like it might at least fit me. I flipped the tag over: Size 6.

The salesgirl was lurking nearby. Then she asked me: "Do you know how our sales work?"

I wanted to ask: "Do you know anyone who has eaten a doughnut since 1982?"

I kept looking. Donna Karan, Size 2. Banana Republic, XS. Juicy Couture, Size 0. (HA!) Zara, with sizes listed for four countries that all say some variation of "Only For Bread Haters." Then there is Calvin Klein, who tends to favor the "One Size Fits All" size. What a cop-out that is. But Calvin's "All" mainly includes the emaciated models at his last show. It definitely does not include the group known as "Woman."

I started to wonder: where are all the Sizes 10 and up? I began weaving a theory together while I picked over the Ann Taylor Petites, just for the hell of it, musing about whether or not the fabric could be cut up to make throw pillows. The theory was this: is it possible that Sizes 10 and up are so down in the mouth about their bodies that they just don't care about clothes? Either the buying of them or the consigning of them? Have they forsaken any interest in fashion whatsoever? Do they hold on to their Target t-shirts until they are threadbare and then just toss them?

Once I was in the same shop with my mother and I tried on a lively patterned Tommy Hilfiger button down shirt. It was a shirt I actually liked. The colors were bold and the pattern, as I mentioned, was lively. My mom was in the next try-on stall. When she came out and saw me with the shirt on, I could see diplomacy wandering her face, directionless, a bit gun-shy, looking for her lips, so it could exit with something appropriate to say. "At least it fits," she offered.

But to be fair to me, she was standing there wearing a bomber jacket made out of brown fur with a chain link zipper. And she looked positively giddy about it.

It turned out the jacket wasn't her size. Way too big, in fact. Maybe we are being protected from our lesser selves with this size pre-selection, I mused.

I did end up buying the Tommy Hilfiger shirt that day. I wore it three times, and then decided it made me look like a couch. A couch that even Extra Petite throw pillows couldn't help.

I Feel Bad That I Feel Bad About My Neck

Ms. Ephron

While The Orphan's Daughter is seeking its path to literary stardom (a path that is entirely out of my hands), I've started studying the great humorists. You know: Dave Barry, and, umm...

Well, I knew there had to be others, though I had a hard time thinking of them at first. So I Googled "great humorists" and, as usual, the first result was a link to a Wikipedia page.

Wikipedia's page was useless in my humble opinion. In their list of "notable humorists," they had Don Rickles but not Dave Barry. Any list of humorists that does not include Dave Barry doesn't deserve to make it to the top of that particular Google Search. Please: alert them in Mountain View.

The next link, Amazon, led me to a book called New Treasury of Great Humorists, of which Dave Barry was the author. Now we're talking. But this book had a review that said "it was put together with little care and titled with even less." Ouch. Remind me not to give that reviewer an Advanced Review Copy of my book of humor. She's not so funny.

But honestly, I have been reading Dave Barry since my teen years, so I thought I should branch out. Thus entered the following five humorists into my study repertoire: Tina Fey ('wordsmith goddess' wouldn't begin to cover where I place her in my writer firmament), Russell Brand (his accent - including on the page - is such that he could just say "pomegranate" over and over and I think I would crack up), David Sedaris (I, too, would like to make millions off of a book about a squirrel and a chipmunk), Nora Ephron (of turtleneck fame...), and fellow New Jerseyan, Stephen Colbert (you could say he's the #1 humorist at being the best at greatness).

I dug into Ephron's book, I Feel Bad About My Neck, first. She seemed like she would have to be the big sister of our latest crop of humorists: Tina's auntie, the woman who would have the chops to give Russell the spanking he has long deserved (and not the one he dreams about), Stephen's dinner guest, David's traveling companion. After all, she wrote one of the seminal films of my generation: When Harry Met Sally. A movie so quotable with humor, it makes Ferris Bueller's Day Off, or the more recent Hangover, drone like documentaries.

I was ready to be schooled. Chapter 1. Page 5. And I quote: "We all look good for our age. Except for our necks." I wonder? People tell me I look good for my age, which I don't mind telling you is forty. Except they don't say anything about my neck. I start strenuously mouthing vowels, stretching my chin forward. My cheeks are starting to hurt. I keep reading. Words like: "turkey gobbler," "wattle," "saggy," "flabby," "mottled" are in the next few lines. Now my mouth is voweling double time. I start mouthing the whole alphabet. Then Ephron writes: "According to my dermatologist, the neck starts to go around forty-three."

I don't get any further, not that day. I slam the book shut. I look into the mirror at my exhausted neck and face, after so much alphabet mouthing. Neck, I say, we only have three years left. Damn, her.

I eventually paged through the rest of the book and decided I am not Nora Ephron's target audience. I can't be. She writes whole chapters about the crap in her purse, dying her hair, her steadily failing vision. Then there's a short spit of a chapter called "Where I Live," in which she proceeds to peacock-feather through three pages about how she loves living in New York City ("I could never live anywhere else"), in an apartment with a doorman, in her Upper East Side neighborhood, with her Power Mac G4. Damn, her.

Her book is not funny. Her book is depressing and old-lady, despite what it says on the back that it has "laugh-out-loud moments that will appeal to readers of all ages." Ha! I can imagine the meeting in which the editorial board is concerned about how "old-lady" the book comes across so they throw that description onto the back cover to hedge their bets.

But then here's the sucky part. Her book is a #1 Bestseller. Nora Ephron can make millions writing about her dry cleaner in a depressing, old-lady book. The book will be called "wickedly witty" and everybody will buy it. Why her, dammit? The question reminded me of a scene from the film Tootsie in which an actor gives his agent hell for not getting him an audition on Broadway.

George (Sydney Pollack): Stuart Pressman wants a name, Michael.
Michael (Dustin Hoffman): Oh, I see, Terry Bishop is a name.
George: No no no, Michael Dorsey is a name; when you want to send a steak back, Michael Dorsey is a name.
Michael: (quietly fuming, turns to leave) Okay.
George: Terry Bishop is on a soap opera. Millions of people watch him every day. He's known.
Michael: And that qualifies him to ruin "Iceman Cometh"?
George: I'm not gonna have this conversation.

Nora Ephron is a name. That qualifies her to ruin the relationship that millions of women have with their necks. Including mine. Melissa Romo, on the other hand, could send a steak back.

What did the other four humorists teach me? Mainly, that humor is the most difficult writing there is because it is so easy to get wrong. Sydney Pollack, also the director of Tootsie, has said that while there are many ways to play a dramatic scene well, there is usually only one way to play a funny scene well. Bullseye, or nothing. If you don't hit the bullseye, the gears are showing and you're begging for laughs.

In my experience as a reader of it, I think humor is even harder than that. If the writer doesn't show all of themselves, 100% bare naked, the humor somehow doesn't transmit. I need to know Russell's inner feelings about his struggle with sex addiction, to see Tina's hideous 1980s poof bangs and shoulder pads. Humor is funny because humor is real. Humor is us.

And, as far as I know, I swear I am not making this up.