Pink Rugs and Pepsi Cans

I have this set of pink bathroom rugs. A few years ago a friend of mine kindly sent them to me when she changed the color scheme of her boudoir, and they were in beautiful condition. At the time, her sons were in college and high school, while my son was just about to break upon the world scene. Little did I know, these rugs had an uncanny propensity for disaster. Either that, or I just have the world's WORST rug karma, and I'm ruling that option out, merely because I cannot face a life of tomorrows in which I have bad rug karma.

You think I'm paranoid, naturally, but you haven't even heard about my daughter's paranormal connections to every Pepsi can I ever have, and--no doubt--ever will, open. Now, I'm not an addicted consumer of diet carbonated beverages; however, I am an obsessive compulsive scheduler, and I have a diet soda scheduled into every week day at 10:15. My daughter's sub-concious day planner correspondantly prompts her to find and dump that Pepsi by 10:45. I rarely get to finish my Pepsi. Whether it's full or empty, left on a table, in the trash, or on something's fifth shelf twice as high as she is tall; she will find it, and onto my carpet go the contents. Again, we're choosing to rule out bad rug karma here.

So, if not to discuss the absolute presence of bad rug karma within these four walls, where am I going with these discouraging anecdotes? Why, to the kitchen of course--the soul of the house. Just as every good sermon grabs the attention of the sinner and takes it's discourse straight to the heart--every good diet blog begs a bit of sympathy and then heads straight to the supplier of the stomach--that is to say, the kitchen.

Another topic we've covered in our Weight Watchers meetings is controling the kitchen environment. Anotherwards, don't keep stuff around that you can't say "no" to, or that is going to tempt you in a moment of weakness, because chances are, if the stuff isn't around, your head is going to win the argument with your stomach. You are going to make a good choice from the good foods you have in your wisely stocked kitchen. Your stock, of course, will not include the pink rugs and pepsi cans of your existence that might make it practically impossible for you to succeed. After all, you might walk to the kitchen for that tasty temptation at 10:00 at night, but you're sure not going to drive to the grocery store in your pajamas for it.

We all have that food or two--for me it's cheese puffs and ice cream--that if they are present in the house, we will eat them every day until they are no longer available. It may even be that most of the time, we are successful at portioning these foods reasonably, so that no major sin of the tracker takes place and the scale is not transgressed; however, usually, before it's all over, we're sitting there with a double (or triple, God forbid) serving of whatever it is, just because we have some flex points on our hands.

Now what is this accomplishing? Maybe for someone else, this situation would not be a problem, but for me, it's entirely defeating the point. Yes, I am trying to lose weight, but more than that, I am trying to overcome the mental and emotional failings that got me here in the first place. My mind says I can have that extra ice cream because I have 18 flex points left. But at 3 points a half cup serving, my mind also knows I could do six scoops of ice cream with that kind of a flex-point bank roll. Am I gonna do it? Chances are, no. Have I done it in the past ten years? Yep.

And that's just the mental. What about the emotional? I deserve that big bowl of ice cream right? I mean, after all, I've worked my tail off all week long. I take care of six kids under four! Who's gonna blame me for having a scoop of ice cream per kid? This line of reasoning could--and has--gone on ad infinitum. Before I know it, I'm eating leftover candy from Halloween all because . . .

I take care of six kids,
and kids make laundry,
and laundry takes half of my life,
and by the time I dig myself out
I'll be 100 and too geriatric to brush my teeth or shower,
but why does that matter because no one lets me take care of basic hygene as it is because they're too busy waiting for me to cook six meals a day,
and then there's dishes left over that breed like pheremonal rabbits
And on, and on, and on.

Yes, if there are cheese puffs or ice cream options in the house, I'm going to find a reason to eat them, and then I'm going to reason a reason to eat a little more. They are the pink rugs and Pepsi cans of my kitchen. If they are present, they draw me almost surely to failure. That failure is not necessarily cataclismic and entire, but it has the potential to start a chain reactions of smaller failures--the mental and emotional failures--that could threaten to undermine my attempt as a whole.

Case and point, last week, my son begged me to buy a Mega-container of cheese balls at Sam's Club. I usually do let him choose one snack, so I let him talk me into it. Guess who ate cheese balls three nights in a row? (In my defense, I did count out a serving even though my husband laughed at me!) Then, I had to buy ice cream for a Friday night get together I was hostessing. Three half gallons of ice cream sitting in my freezer is NOT a good thing. I did fine while the ice cream was still virgin, but after the plastic seals came off on Friday night, all bets were off. I ate a serving Friday, then two servings Saturday and Sunday. I have entirely sworn off ice cream and cheese balls this week!

Like the pink rugs, if I remove them from the big picture, bad things are going to stop happening. I can't get rid of them entirely as there would be a family revolt if they caught me pouring the cheese balls in the dumpster and letting the icecream melt down the drain, but I am removing them from my menu!

So, let's stop the bad karma in it's tracks, because the only thing worse than bad rug karma, is bad SCALE karma.