Back. Food. Lessons.

Back from NYC. A great four days with my delightful son; otherwise, kind of a mixed bag. A whole lot of chaotic weirdness on the professional front, not good news for my student program although how it all works out remains to be seen. Long story.

But we had a lot of fun and ate some really good food and saw some plays and went to museums and got to spend some real time together in a way that we haven't been able to in a long time. He's such a great kid, so fun to be with, and we just get along really well, always have. It's so special to me... especially since I didn't have anything like this kind of relationship with either of my parents.

Anyway, on the food front, a couple of thoughts.

One thing is that it's surprisingly easy to eat reasonably low carb as long as you (1) skip the fast food, (2) skip the bread basket, and (3) skip the desserts. I kind of forget this because we really don't eat out much.

The second thing is that I've still got a long way to go along the cognitive behavioral road. I know, it's a few days on vacation (sort of), and no one is expecting perfection, and those of you who remind me that I'm too hard on myself will say that again. But the fact of the matter is that when I don't eat properly-- that is, when I don't eat the foods that my body is used to eat and skip the foods I don't generally eat-- I feel very bad. Physically. And bread and dessert is not worth nausea and bloating. Ex post, anyway. Ex ante often seems like a different story. Someday I will get this into my thick skull. The problem is that I do know this, but at some point I just kind of wear down, and once that happens, all the "what the hell" parts of my brain take over.

(Interesting side note: NYC now requires that chain restaurants put calories on the menu. We went to the Hard Rock Café for lunch one day, and in general, I don't pay that much attention to calories, but I have to say that having these numbers on the menu is a huge deterrent to eating. Anything, really. I recognize that it's difficult for all restaurants to do this, plus it's not that exact, but there's a lot to be said for it.)

Also, I totally racked up my hip walking a lot and going up and down a lot of stairs in the subway. So incredibly painful. I had to cancel classes yesterday because I basically didn't think I could walk across campus and stand up for an hour. No idea what this is or why it kicks off, although it really is walking and stairs that makes this worse. So maybe bursitis; regardless, it's unbearably painful plus makes it hard to sleep at night.

Now I need to get back to my routine.

And by the way... I sort of mean to write up some NYC review notes, just for the fun of it, but I wanted to put in a plug for the most fun museum thing that we did... the Frick Collection. I've been to all the big museums a million times, but I've never been there before... it is the most enchanting place, the mansion of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, which houses the most staggering collection of (mostly) European paintings, some of which are so famous that you can't believe that you're actually standing in front of them. The Vermeers are stunning (look at the one on their home page right now, if you click the link). It's small, it's beautiful, and there aren't a ton of people there. An absolute gem.