I’m experiencing the January blahs…sitting in my apartment amidst the Mallamar wrappers and discarded boxes.  Perhaps you can relate.  It’s Thursday at around 8:00PM.  I’m lonely.   I should be out having drinks. But here I am watching Grey’s Anatomy and eating Twizzlers with my bear Solace.  There’s something wrong with this picture.  I call my best friend Rita, who lives in my apartment building.

“Rita, we’re fat,”  I cry sinking into my bed.

“You just discovered that?”  she laughs.  I hear her toy poodle Gucci barking in the background.  ”  That mutt is the only one of us in this family who doesn’t have a weight problem!”  I hear a sucking noise.  “Oh, excuse me.  I didn’t mean to interupt your menage a trois.”

“You’ve got it!”  I’m indisposed.  With Ben and Jerry!”

“I’ve dated them.    Expecially Chubby Hubby.”  I turn on the remote to watch American Idol.”

“Yeah, it’s smooth, but reliable.”  Rita is a pretty blonde who looks like a plus-sized Chistina Applegate.  A clinical psycholgist, she’s highly analytical and is prone to long explanations of things.  Resigned to single life at 43, she adopted the toy poodle we dubbed Gucci after our favorite bags.

“Diet” I declare.  That’s we have to do.  Including the poodle.

“Listen PinkSlip.  Diet is a four letter work. Nite!”

I think of the Gone With The Wind.”  Scarlett O Hara was determined to succeed despite overwhelming obstables.  What did she say?  “I’ll never go hungry again!”

Well, that’s not going in the right direction, but she did eat turnips for a while and looked mighty trim when she visited Rhett Butler in that green curtain.