Starting off with a humble apology...

I sneered at you for years. Useless slop, tasteless, formless, the consistancy of vomit, I said. A food only crazed dieters would eat. I used your name as an obscenity, a snide description of diets I hated and my mother's failed weight-loss attempts when I was a child. You represented everything I hated about those diets, represented a desperate class of women choking down food they hated, ill-informed, uneducated about their own bodies and about nutrition, manipulated, half-starved.

I was so wrong. You are so much more.

Oh cottage cheese, can you ever forgive me?

...Which is to say, Day 2 of the great cottage cheese experiment has gone much, much better than Day 1. Yesterday I got out the first cottage cheese I'd purchased in my adult life, the first I planned to willingly consume in twenty years. I poured in a packet of Splenda and chopped strawberries, and... bleah. Better than I remembered, and I sensed that I could potentially learn to like it, but overall I was unimpressed.

Today, I brought along half a cup of mandarin oranges, which I'd planned to mix in. I opened up my single-serving cup of cottage cheese, and in the process (the top really didn't peel off well) got cottage cheese on my fingers. Out of blind habit, I licked it off.

Hey, hold on, that wasn't bad.

I got out my spoon and took a bite of the stuff plain, just as a test.

Not bad at all. Hey! Son of a bitch! This stuff is cheese!

Yes, I know, it's part of the name and everything, but every single helpful hint I'd read on "how to learn to like cottage cheese!" told me to add sweeteners, fruit, all that jazz. Briefly brainwashed, I'd completely forgotten that unless it’s a good sharp cheddar on apple pie, or some smoked gouda with luciously ripe pears, I don't mix cheese with sweet things. I'm not the biggest cheesecake fan (don't get me wrong, though, if it's topped with stuff, or has cookies or chocolate or whatnot mixed in, I'll cheerfully brave it), I don't care for cream cheese icing on cakes, and I've never gone for the Philly with fruit swirled in.

Now that I have this thing fixed in my head as a cheese, rather than a clumpy yogurt or sour cream, all sorts of possibilities open up. The hell with sweet. I'm gonna go savory. I'm fine with it plain, but cottage cheese strikes me as a second cousin to fresh mozzarella and I am inclined to treat it as such. I’m itching to see what would happen with some garlic, fresh tomatoes, and fresh basil.

I'm quite the domestic goddess this morning. I made myself an EggBeaters omlette (green onions and spinach and Laughing Cow light cheese inside, salsa on the top, yum), toast (of the low-cal/low-carb variety), and poured a cup of Soy Slender Cappucino flavored soy milk. The Soy Slender was a gamble-- I usually buy their chocolate or vanilla, but the cappucino was a new addition to our local grocery store, I hadn't seen it before, and I'd been intrigued. Result: YUM.

Actually, now that I think about it, I know why I liked it so much. I used to claim that coffee was an ingredient, not a drink, because I'd put so damn much other stuff in my coffee. When weaning myself off this style of coffee proved difficult, I just started drinking it black, instead. if I couldn't have the real thing, I'd rather not have it at all. Soy Slender Cappucino Flavor fills that coffee-flavored-candy-drink place in my heart. Oh, so happy.

The "domestic goddess" part really comes up when I finished yoga (ow, leg still hurts) and woke up my Hub. He'd been up late the night before, because he is a dope, and so I'd taken pity and let him sleep until seven. When I finally managed to shake him awake, it was more like ten after. Somewhere in the next half-hour of frantic preparations for work, I packed our lunches and made him a breakfast (which, I will add, I never ever do. I'm not sure what came over me) of re-heated pork-chop-and-potatoes hash and a scrambled egg & cheese sandwich. I was still showered, dressed and ready to go by quarter 'til eight. Rock on.

The candy calendar continues to work out well. It helps that I have it stocked with such ridiculously luscious, dark chocolate. Something surprising has developed on this front; out of nowhere, I'm learning to savor the chocolate. I was shaving it off bit by bit with my teeth, letting it melt on my tongue, mushing it around my mouth, taking my time. I wasn't even making myself do it, I was doing it because I wanted to do it. This is unprecidented. The first few days of the calendar I would be done eating my two little chocolates in no time flat. Last night it took me better than five minutes. That little glow you see around my head would be the stirrings of new hope: this might be possible, I might get my arms around this thing.

The one problem: my Hub has to watch me eat chocolate every night, with none for him. He claims to be fine with this, and yet it's clearly frustrating him. Next time through, I'm double-stocking the damn thing so I'll have some to give him every night, just so he won't be so grumpy.

In other news, while the library claimed to have two copies of Body For Life on their shelves, neither could be found. Bother. However, it's payday. An online check of the Borders down the street told me that not only do they have a copy in stock, but I could have them hold it for pick-up if I fill out this handy online form. I filled out the form, sent it in, and got a confirmation e-mail: they're holding it for me. Eeee.

I have to admit, the idea of trying a new program scares me. I'm comfortable with what I've already been doing-- too comfortable. I really need to shake things up and get my brain and my body up and aware again. Still, I'm leery of things that I don't already know. I hate being the new kid, I hate not already knowing everything. I know I'll get over this and get used to it, but mostly I’m mourning the fact that my nifty little freeware WeightWatchers-style Points counter program for my PDA won't be applicable anymore; I'll have to check the Palm site to see if there's anything out there I can use for BFL.

I know, I'm being silly, worrying about all this stuff before I've even read the book. Mostly it's my old fear of being "wrong"-- I hate finding out that I’ve been operating in ignorance. I always feel like I should have known, somehow, magically. I shouldn't let this freeze me up, but all too often it's more comfortable to live in the assumption you're right rather than risk finding out you're wrong and have to work to correct it. Sigh. I just hate being the newbie, and I'm gonna have to be, and it irritates me in advance. Boy, am I a dope.