The Love Diet

I told my husband the other day that my stress level had gone down to about zero since I married him, which I thought was a big bonus. And then I thought to myself, and I actually told my husband, too, because I can tell him anything, that one of the big reasons my stress had decreased was because I had given up dieting once I met him. Because he loved me no matter what!

Since we met in January, we have enjoyed introducing each other to our favorite restaurants and feeding each other our favorite things and just being Foodies together indiscriminately. We ate Key Lime cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory, New Orleans Beignets (with three sauces!) at the Grand Lux, and sushi at every sushi place in town. We chowed down on Chinese food in Des Moines, Thai food in Houston, Italian food in Hot Springs, Indian food in Dallas, and barbecued beef in Texarkana. We had popcorn and Cokes at every movie, and sometimes even movie dogs with the works, too. We indulged in the ice cream of our choice with our home movies--Mango, Passion Fruit, Chocolate, and Dulce de Leche. And we didn't eat that ice cream out of a bowl, oh no, we ate it right out of the CARTON--our OWN carton.

I watched the pounds pack on almost like a scientist conducting an experiment, and I observed my condition in a bemused way, as if I were gaining weight purposefully for a big movie role like what's-her-name did for Bridget Jones (not that she ever actually got FAT) or Robert DeNiro for Raging Bull. I would pull on a pair of pants and laugh at how they no longer fit, ha ha ha, and throw them in the stack of Clothes That No Longer Fit, and grab something else from the other side of my closet, which is stocked fairly well with three different sizes of clothes, due to all of the afore-mentioned dieting. I would giggle when my husband played with my "love handles" and tell him there was more of me to love. I would consciously be aware of how most parts of my body felt like they were encased in a thick cake-layer frosting of lard. I laughed and felt loved.

And then I weighed myself. O. M. G. And, OK, this is the truth, I have never weighed this much before in my LIFE. Well, unless you count the time I had my third child. I did weigh this much after I had her. But I think pregnancy is a much better excuse than being in love. Although, I have to say that the being in love part prevents me from wanting to practically kill myself like I did back when I weighed this much about 19 years ago.

I did tell hubby that I'm going on a diet. He chuckled, amused at me. "That's OK," he said. "Go ahead and lose some weight. I can put it right back on you."

Ha! Let the dieting begin. Man, I feel stressed already.

Choosing a Temple

Trying to choose the temple to get married in went kind of like this:

Which temple do you want to go to?

The Houston temple, it's my temple (this is EASY, I'm thinking).

But you won't be living in Houston when we get married.

Oh, yeah.

Nobody in your family will be living in Houston. You will be living closer to Dallas at that time.

But Dallas is the ugliest LDS temple in Christendom! And nobody in YOUR family lives there.

But you and I will live near it.

Well, what if we had a destination wedding and flew to the temple nearest the most members of the family?

OK, how about Orlando? You have a sister and a daughter there.

But then we'd have to fly everybody else in, including ourselves, and we would HAVE to take everybody to Disneyworld, which we can't swing right now. What about Salt Lake, you'll have two kids there and I have one there.

But we'd still have to fly all the other kids there and YOU AND I would have to fly up.

What's close to Iowa, there's one daughter and her whole family there. Nauvoo? But then again we fly everybody else including US up there?

Dang (this is NOT as easy as I thought). So we just stick with the Dallas temple and fly everybody here?

Dallas it is.

Wait a minute. What about the Anchorage temple???