Seven pounds.
I'm not talking about the movie with the ambiguous plot that stars my favorite alien-whupping actor ~ the same actor a recent Facebook quiz revealed I should marry.
No, I am referring to the seven pounds that magically showed up on my scale this morning. I mean, is it even possible?
I wondered, then quickly dismissed the thought, if Chris somehow jacked up the scale on purpose because he was bitter about the whole centipede incident a week ago.
Yet since there was no toddler hanging off of me and I was completely naked, I decided that this number must be true. Cringing, I thought of the past week ~ the dinners out, the glasses of boxed chardonnay and the piece de resistance: yesterday's all day love-fest I carried with Chinese food .
I love Chinese food. I could very well eat Chinese food, Mongolian beef specifically, every single day for the rest of my life. This love was an integral part of my 60 pound weight gain in this last pregnancy.
So it was no surprise that we found ourselves at a new Chinese food restaurant yesterday. The banner out front said it was the "grand opening," which I like because I feel that places try harder during "grand openings." I careened the car into the parking lot and announced this was where we were going to eat.
As I struggled to control myself to not jump over the counter and eat directly from the woks our food was cooking in, I attempted to make conversation with Chris. I was dying to show off some of my newly gained knowledge about China from the book I am currently reading by J. Maarten Troost called "Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation, or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid."
"Where do you think the people cooking the food are from," I ask him.
"They're Chinese, Mary," he said as he fed the baby a piece of fortune cookie and looked at me like I was the stupidest person in the world.
"They don't look Chinese," I insisted. He turned around and looked at them again. "Yes," he said. "They do."
I looked. I guess they did look Chinese. And, they were preparing Chinese food. A dead give away.
I tried something else.
"The travel book I'm reading about China is good. I'm at the part where he is in the city that makes Tsingtao beer," I said. "Do you know where that is?"
He named off a couple of cities, but none of them sounded familiar, except Beijing.
"No, no, those aren't right. I think it is a little south of Beijing," a statement which I pulled right out of my ass because my geographical knowledge of China is such that I am not even sure that I could point out more than two cities on a map. But he didn't know this, so I acted like I knew what I was talking about.
"Do you know," I asked, "that the Germans settled in the town for a while, and that is why they make beer?"
He genuinely looked as though he didn't know that, so I mentally patted myself on the back. That made up for the "where do you think the Chinese-looking people cooking Chinese food are from" question.
We worked on the mounds of food in front of us for a while, then when the baby began to cry we hurried out. The leftovers made it into the refrigerator where I continued eating them the rest of the day and into the night.
Remembering all of this, I went for a jog in a pissy mood.
I jogged over three miles, cursing myself and praying that I was sweating some of the water weight off that caused those abominable numbers to appear on my scale. I vowed to eat only fresh fruit and vegetables today to make up for the past two weeks. Then I remembered we have no fresh fruit or vegetables because it is grocery day and I am out of just about everything ~ one of the reasons we went out for Chinese food for lunch yesterday.
Tsingtao beer is made in Qingdao. I'll have to let Chris know that when we go back to that restaurant.... as soon as I take care of this seven pounds.
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