It’s finally happening. I’ve got irrefutable proof that I’m getting old and boring.

Yesterday I was reaching for the Red Delicious I’d brought to work and spied a tasty Braeburn in the fridge fruit drawer. Three things went through my head in rapid succession:

1. I wish I had that Braeburn instead of my mealy Red Delicious.

2. Wait a minute–that’s my Braeburn! I brought it in last week!

3. Oh. Wow. A Braeburn!

It’s the last part that really scared me. I was really excited.

Not so many years ago, I couldn’t imagine spending 50 cents at the fruit cart when you could get a jelly donut drenched in powdered sugar for the same price. I’ve come a long way. Now I find myself practically hyperventilating in a public space because I have a little bit of tartness in my fiber. Even sadder? That Braeburn was just as delicious as I’d hoped it would be.

Somewhere along the line, I’ve managed to exchange forbidden fruit for the forgotten kind. Sigh. I’m old. And boring. But if I keep eating this well, I’m going to live a very long, boring time.

I think I may have to go to Tea-hab. My effort to eliminate coffee was a smashing success, but now I’m hooked on tea. Not even caffeinated tea. Licorice, of all things, is my new herb of choice. In the general scheme of addictions, it’s a “good” one. But it still has its drawbacks.

According to the manufacturer of my favorite brand, Yogi Tea, licorice root consumed in high quantities raises blood pressure. How much is too much? More than 2 cups a day, supposedly. Now, that should be plenty. But I’m not someone who functions well with restrictions. Knowing I can only drink 2 cups makes me long for 3, 4. More.

Is nothing sacred? When herbal tea becomes the gateway drug, one of two elements are at work: (1) Murphy’s Law (2) Moderation insisting on itself.

I’ll do my best to moderate, oh licorice root. I’ll spread the love around and dabble in  Mayan cocoa spice again. If it doesn’t work, I’ll call Blue Cross Blue Shield and see if they can get me into a 28-Day program for herbal tea addicts.

BCBS, however, is no fan of of preventative healthcare. I’d probably have to have an “episode” before they paid for my treatment. I suppose shooting up the organic market would qualify. But purchasing a handgun, not to mention the bullets, would waste vital financial resources I could otherwise spend on Yogi Tea.

I suppose I’ll just have to live with yet another restriction. And have to admit that The Libertarian diet just doesn’t work for me. I’m not sure, yet, what does work, but I’ll contemplate it over a nice, steaming cup of….

This winter I adhered to a strictly vegan diet. It lasted six months. And then I got tired. Bone tired. Weary. I thought it must be my diet . My solution: eat more meat and dairy.

Over the next two months, I had a couple buffalo burgers. I ate a chicken dish. A few cans of tuna, two tilapia filets. And, the day after my wedding, a slab of sausage at brunch.

Plus–ahem–several servings of cheese.

And in those six weeks, I grew out of my vegan-sized clothing.

It was a weird weight gain: settling in odd places on my body. I looked thicker. My muscles felt chunky. I felt like a linebacker (which, at exactly 60 inches, isn’t such an endearing image.) So I stopped eating meat and dairy again. Two weeks later, everything fits. Which is particularly odd, since now I’m snacking my face off while I’m writing!

Now, I’m still not going to rule out hormone-free meat forever. To get those Omega-3’s, I may very well decide to indulge once or twice a month. But my recent experience has pushed me solidly into the casein-free camp.

I can’t believe what a difference a couple dairy-free weeks made!

From here on, I’m going to have to be extra careful to eat enough protein at every meal. That doesn’t mean veggie burgers, it means tempeh. Raw tofu. Beans. For iron, it means spinach instead of mixed greens. I’m lucky that I like soy products. Lucky, too, that I am in tune with my body enough to know when it’s reacting badly to certain foods. For whatever reason: allergy or otherwise, dairy just doesn’t work for me.

Now if only I could get the fatty cheesy yummy signals to shut off in my brain….

Yesterday started off with a fast. There was a medical reason for it: another test. A gastric emptying study.

I was paying for the pleasure of eating some unknown breakfast-type food laced with some unknown radioactive-type substance (barium?) and then lying down inside a scary-looking machine which recorded how quickly/slowly/if ever I digested it.

Of course, I brought my own breakfast.

Yes, I called the hospital in advance to ask what they were serving. When I heard “a packet of Quaker oatmeal and toast,” I cringed in horror. The sugar! The wheat! Then when I arrived, the tech changed course and asked me if I’m allergic to eggs. Well, no…not technically. Mixed into brownies, eggs can be delicious food glue. Left to their own gloopy devices, though, I would certainly wind up puking up a barium eggy substance all over the million dollar machine.

So I brought plain oats. And rice toast. And ate them both, coated in radioactivity. While I chewed (or merely swallowed, in the oatmeal’s case) I noticed that the hospital employee list was posted neatly at eye level. CONFIDENTIAL was typed on the top left, right above the doctor’s home addresses and phone numbers. Classy.

By now, I had no confidence in the nuclear med department whatsoever.

After eating, I was told to lie down in the machine. Reading was impossible, as the machine came up to my chin. But I did have a remote control. As well as a pillow and a blankie. My first question was: “Can I sleep?” This was answered in the affirmative. In reality, though, it was impractical. At least with Tech Big Foot. She stomped around, slammed doors, spoke on the phone in loud tones and otherwise disturbed my much-needed beauty rest. So I did what any other pop-culture obsessed woman with radioactive oatmeal in her gut would: I watched Desperate Housewives.

The test results were normal. Apparently, I digest my food properly. That may be the only thing I do “correctly” with regards to food.

I wonder how they would deal with Sheridan Memorial on Wisteria Lane….

She’s a modern heroine, of the kind Truman Capote couldn’t even have imagined. Holly, the aesthete who must forsake her breakfast at Tiffany’s for a clear liquid diet–followed by an entire gallon of GoLYTELY bowel prep for a chaser.

For those out of the colonoscopy loop, GoLYTELY is a nausea-inducing, salty, slightly lemony beverage. The nurses instruct you to drink the entire gallon prior to the procedure. The procedure itself–sticking a tube with a camera up your tuckus–sounds nasty enough. Rest assured, the prep is worse.

I’ve never consumed more than a gallon of anything except homemade Hefeweisen. In a German beer garden. Let me tell you, bowel prep doesn’t exactly get me clanking beer steins and singing along with my expatriate cronies. For one thing, the prep is saltier than the Dead Sea. For another, it’s supposed to clean out your colon. Almost immediately. It didn’t work that way on me.

It took me a full four hours before I started to reap the benefits of GoLYTELY. Four hours, with a gallon of electrolytes lodged in my gut. Even the generally-enthralling presence of cable TV in my hotel room (I have no TV at home) didn’t make up for the fact that I could barely bend my knees, lest they accidentally knock into my tight-as-a-drum tum-tum.

But why, you ask–why would HollyGoLYTELY submit to a colonoscopy in her late thirties? It’s not a routine procedure until 50! You see, Holly has to atone for her twenty-something lifestyle. In the end, life isn’t all fun and boys and skinny jeans (That’s something Miss Audrey Hepburn discovered, too.) Sometimes it takes a decade or more to evince, but ultimately the laws of physics apply. What goes up must come down. At least in regards to food and the female digestive tract.

Today, Holly GoLYTELY has a clean bill of colon health. Her esophogus wasn’t so lucky. Ulcerated to the point of Swiss cheese–she may want to ask Edith Head to take out the waist on her famous black dress just one more inch. Or else she’d better reserve a bed at the local hospital for a scope every once in awhile. To check on that esophagus before the cells mutate on our poor, skinny heroine. Cancer, see, would seriously put a kibosh on Holly’s socialite lifestyle.

My quest for health and wellness grows more tiresome, day by day. The nutritional information I have access to–plentiful and sometimes reputable–promotes detoxes of every major organ, whole body cleanses, and diets specifically designed to starve parasites. I can’t help but remember how badly I wanted a tapeworm in college–that way I could eat and drink for two.

I wouldn’t mind eating only what I’m “supposed” to, but I just can’t figure out what the hell that means. Advice is conflicting. I eat sugar-free, gluten-free and (mostly) vegan. I work out 2 hours every day. Is that not good enough? Not according to too many sources.

Yes, we are a country of fat-asses. Yes, too, women’s sizing is deflated from what it was a decade ago. But is there a middle line between McDonald’s and anorexia? Less and less, it seems. Food is the new economics. We’re getting rid of the middle classes.

The “have’s” side of the thin wars is actually the “have less.” (Except for cup sizes. It took me 45 minutes to realize why the XS bikini bottoms were sold out at Victoria’s Secret, but the XS tops were all still there. Surgery. That’s why they sell them separately.) There’s a direct link between the ability to choose good food and income.

The willpower to starve yourself means that you have the luxury of being able to go for days on end without putting together a rational thought. Rob your body of calories and you’re also robbing your brain.

I know all this, and yet I still hold dear to the old adage “you can never be too rich or too skinny.” The question is how far am I willing to go for either? 

Cutting out fruit? That’s over the line.

The thought of someone taking away my dates and raisins and apples leaves me no reason to live–healthy, skinny or otherwise.

Since I live in a rural community where the highlight of the 4th of July is, honestly, watching my vet blow up explosives in his backyard, I did exactly what Hollywood hoped I would this weekend: dragged my man to the movies.

I guess the blowing-stuff-up bug hadn’t left me at the vet’s backyard, because I had a hankering to see Wanted.  I got just what I paid for, too: stuff blew up. There were car chases, dudes-in-peril, knife fights and, best of all, a cubicle take-down. But of all the millions of dollars spent to engrain these scenes in my brain, the image that won’t leave me is Angelina Jolie eating a hamburger.

Here’s the scene: James McAvoy is getting the crap kicked out of him. He’s bleeding heavily through the nose. There are knives. Angelina is in the background, smirking, ostensibly chewing. Damn it! I can’t pay attention to the blood gushing all over the place because I’m waiting to see Angelina swallow her food.

She never does.

Now, I know the movie is supposed to be a bit ridiculous. I mean, an underground network of assassins run windsprints atop a subway car. Clearly it’s a comic book world. I buy that. But in no way can I buy a 5′7″, 95 lb woman pretending to enjoy a gigantic slab of red meat on a bun.

I guess we all have our limits. Mine, I discovered, start–and end–with anorexic chicks. Blood, gore, assassination attempts are all no problem. But when a grown female with the BMI of an adolescent famine victim acts like she’s not starving herself, my hackles go up.

Eat the damn burger, Angelina. Kill the bad guys on screen, not yourself. 

According to local sources, the practice began long before Napoleon Dynamite made tater tots “cool.” (Or as cool as opening credits can make something.) Here’s the sitch: two Mexican eateries in town wrap tater tots inside their burritos. Along with the fake sour cream, no-avocado-in-sight guacamole, lard-y beans, and instant white rice. Tater tots. As in, fried logs of shredded potato. Can they even grow potatoes in Guadalajara?

Somehow I doubt Anthony Bourdain is on board with this. 

The first time I discovered the “magic ingredients” in my burrito, I was surrounded by about a dozen other women who’d gotten roped into judging a local beauty pageant by their mailman. Just like I had. This explains why I didn’t simply open my mouth and let the food fall back out onto my plate. (It doesn’t, however, explain why I agreed to judge a beauty pageant. Suffice it to say, for someone who relies on E-Bay as much as I do, the mailman can be a lifeline.)

At least I didn’t have to pay for the bizarre dining experience.  Our meals came out of the pageant winner’s scholarship fund.

Yesterday, I had very specific dinner cravings, like I usually do, so I called the man to see if he was on board with my pre-menstrual combination of fatty dairy products and farty proteins and about twenty-five different desserts. He told me, like he usually does, the equivalent of “whatever you want is fine by me, dear.” 

And then he told me he doesn’t have food cravings. Ever.

Huh??

I think the explanation I was given had something to do with Buddhism or advanced personality theory or the fact that he’s male but I can’t imagine a world in which the elimination of food cravings is even desirable. I mean, there are days at work where I’m torn between getting-a-running-start-and-leaping-out-my-second-story-window and consuming magenta toner in a water glass and the only thing that keeps me among the living is the handful of medjool dates I’ve hidden in my bottom desk drawer.

In July I come in for the free air conditioning, but that’s another story.

Seriously: I can’t imagine being craving-free. I’ve worked through the more destructive ones, but I’m not sure I would ever want to wake up without an inkling of exactly what I want for breakfast. Coconut pancake mornings are very different from steel-cut oatmeal days, which are, of course, widely disparate from “screw it I’m going straight for pizza.” It would take some serious time in the female equivalent of a Zen monastery to get that kind of food Buddhism to take hold.

Today has been very raisins-and-pecans thus far, heading into chicken enchiladas territory.

We atheists may not be the most serene folks on planet god-is-dead, but we sure know how to plan a menu.