Holy cow, it's over

I feel utterly drained and terribly triumphant.

Yesterday, I ate a tortilla with some rather questionable "chicken fajita" filling (it appeared that the chicken and peppers had been boiled-- BOILED!-- and the interior of the chicken was still dry as all get-out) for the Free Lunch On The Company Nickle (#1). Ate as slow as humanly possible, drank a great deal of water, enthusiastically flagged down the coffee guy. No questions asked from anyone.

I did not partake of the mints on the tables. I checked out the snack tables at 3 PM to-- as Naomi puts it (and which I love)-- "visit the food", but did not partake of those, either; I grabbed some more coffee and blithely ate a chocolate MyoPlex Lite meal-replacement bar whilst my colleagues were eating dessert items. No comments from the peanut gallery on that one, thank God.

I had brought my dinner and left it at work, so after we hiked back to the office for the reception, I swiftly heated up my lasagna, chatting all the while with a few co-workers about the need for "real food" for the evening, since otherwise all I'd be eating would be appetizer-style tidbits and swilling alcohol. Co-workers thought this was brilliant and wished they'd thought of it. I then grabbed my heated lasagna and hid in my office to eat it along with the carrots & celery I'd packed as a veggie side dish. Emerged in time for the reception, grabbed a Diet Coke (the first of, oh, six-- it's a miracle I didn't get insomnia), and followed my Hub around while he tried everything at the six different catering stations-- six different mixed drinks, six different types of food.

I didn't touch a thing. I considered it, but I know how I work: when there is grazing to be had, I want to sample everything, and I don't like being unfair, so trying the shrimp would've meant trying the crab cakes would've meant trying the gorgeous pile of different cheeses and crackers and the cheesecake bites and the chocolate fondue... so I figured better to draw a line in the sand. My Hub reported on how everything was (fairly mundane, except for one drink that he liked a lot), and kept offering me tastes of things until I told him gently to cut it out because he was unnecessarily draining my willpower. My poor sweetie was stricken with guilt over that; he gets drunk and wants to share everything with me and forgets that I told him not to. Aww.

Went home. Had my 9 PM fudgesicle. Went to bed. Rock on.

Got up this morning, did my upper body workout, ate oatmeal with chocolate protein powder in it (which, incidentally, I'm becoming quite fond of). Packed up some 4-Apple Tuna Salad, a mini-pita full of sloppy joe mix, and a container of carrots & celery.

Went to the continental breakfast and had coffee, whilst my Hub grazed amidst the pastries. (He also had yogurt with granola on top, exclaiming "I'm full of health! Hooray!" I can't help it, he's just such an adorable dork.) I was kind of wondering how I was going to get in my morning midmeal, since we didn't have a break scheduled, but since we ended up being in the middle of a lecture at that point and everyone else was still occasionally drifting to the back of the room to pick up more coffee and pastries, I figured "hey, what the hell" and ate my sloppy pita. No commentary on that one, either. (Ha!)

Lunch: chicken breast, all right, but it was covered in GOO. And dry. I find that most sauces are added to chicken try to make up for the terrible sins committed upon it in the cooking process. I picked up salad with mandarin orange segments and a side of baby carrots and asparagus (tough, but not bad), and had a decent enough meal. Did not eat the pie. Went back to the meeting room and hung around noshing on my carrots & celery until things started up again-- another gal who started WeightWatchers right around the same time I did, and is also still maintaining a good-sized drop, saw this and told me, "God, I wish I'd thought of that." Indeed.

There were cookies and cupcakes in back for the snack at 3 PM, but since we didn't get a break, per se, I ended up once again eating at one of the meeting tables while everyone else had giant chocolate things. And boom, a comment cropped up-- "Bring your own snack? What's it, pasta salad?" I didn't want to explain the tuna part, so I shrugged it off as "everything chop-uppable in my fridge". "God," the woman barked, "that's so HEALTHY. No chocolate for you, eh?"

I waved this off. "At an all-day meeting? Hell no, I get all jittery if I have too much sugar, especially on top of all the coffee. This works better, keeps me awake."

She left me alone after that. Victory!

I managed to avoid snagging a cookie on the way out, although I was still tempted... and then we were out the door, three days of non-stop temptation over with. Hot damn!

The best part wasn't even about food-- I just felt so much more adult and at-home then I did a few years back at a similar all-staff meeting. I've got some plans in place to start carving out a niche of my own in my department, build up some clout and importance and all that. I might become ambitious, by God. I've decided that I like this company, I like working for my boss, and I'm going to make it my goal this year to eliminate (or deeply reduce) the things about my job that annoy me. I can get behind that kind of goal, hell yes.

So it's been a good couple of days. I started to get anxious and defensively angry this morning when they distributed the materials for the day, my Hub called me on it, so I took a little walk, got a little privacy, stretched, shook it out, reminded myself that the only thing that was going to make this day horrible would be my own overreaction so cut it the hell out, and I was okay after that. Much, much better than the last time we did this kind of meeting.

TRIUMPH!

Now, to go catch up on everyone else's blogs. Whee!