The hot potato for lunch came with turkey chili and a half slice of cheese. It wasn’t all that bad, though it’s worth noting that Tuesday’s lunch was also a potato and turkey. And Tuesday there were raw peppers and tomatoes on the side; Wednesday had cooked peppers and tomatoes in the chili. I know I’m not supposed to think about this as much as I am right now.

Dinner: TURKEY tetrazzini and sweet POTATO.

Okay, this is starting to freak me out.

Dinner last night, courtesy of Ms. Seattle: A sort of minimalist lasagna where the filling was rolled up in two big noodles. They were sort of like spring rolls made with pasta. Also, brussels sprouts, for no good reason. And a canned pear half that Seattle suggested I heat up but I did not.

Breakfast this morning: Half a bagel, though I’ll grant that it’s the nicer top half. Everyone on Seattle Sutton follows a very specific menu schedule and while eating my breakfast I couldn’t shake the spooky feeling that some stranger within about a five mile-radius was like eating the other half of my bagel at practically the same time. There was pineapple cream cheese, too, and fruit juice in a squat little plastic cup like a lab sample.

Lunch: Has yet to be eaten. Today it will be a hot potato, which feels like progress of some kind.

I’ve been debating whether or not I should tell you people that I’m trying Seattle Sutton’s Half-Assed Eating Kind Of Thing this week. As a once (arguably) and (maybe) future and currently (ha) very occasionally weight-loss journaller person I feel that buying into a prefab-meal program is a slightly dubious undertaking, because I can’t shake this idea that I’m supposed to lovingly prepare my own bitsy meals, and take charge of my life, and become wiser in ways of skinny food by being intimately involved with the whole process.

(You people all know who Seattle Sutton is, right? Because I don’t want to link to her. Then again, if you don’t know who Seattle Sutton is, you might think, just from a name like “Seattle Sutton,” that she’s a porn star. However, she is not.)

But I’m trying to finish up the last gasps of work on the book, and I’d rather not 1.) fall back into the kind of feral eating habits that I developed while writing the first draft this summer or 2.) cook. And I don’t know about you, but sometimes I think fondly about airline food and wish that I could have it at home.

I picked up the stuff last night. It helps to start with very low expectations. They did not decline with last night’s Chicken Alfredo dinner, although Seattle neglected to tell me that those little plastic sauce cups do not microwave well at all.

This morning at breakfast Seattle let me have a muffin that was pretty okay. She tried to make me eat a very hard nectarine, too, but I refused. I got a riper one at the farmer’s market and ate it at work, so there.

Lunch was strange: “Chilled potato, turkey fillet, and fresh veggies.” It consists mostly of a cooked potato that you’re supposed to eat cold, with dip. And then the “turkey fillet” is a round, dense puck of reconstituted turkey. I believe there is a certain genius to this meal, because there really is no fucking way to delude yourself that your lunch is anything but a cold potato and a turkey cookie. And once you come to accept that, you’re pretty much ready for anything.

Is it wrong to admit that I sort of wish I’d been outside yesterday when this happened? I might have been close enough to see it from my office. What did I tell you about the geese around here?

If you didn’t get a chance to stalk me last night at the Hideout, this weekend I plan on hitting the Renegade Craft Fair in Wicker Park. I went last year with Michael and bought a handmade checkbook cover with a retro fabric pattern that is not only unspeakably cute but oddly inspirational as well, because if rosy-cheeked children and duckies and kittens can fare so well in outer space, then surely I ought to be able to endure writing checks for painfully stupid things like parking tickets.

I feel a little goofy for wanting to take a moment here to be all “Go, DIY Movement!” and shake yarn pompoms around over this fair (as well as the upcoming DIY Trunk Show in November), but seriously–if you’re not at least a little blown away by how many women (and, yeah–guys, too) are making and selling stuff and helping to support great independent magazines with their ads and creating art all at the same time then, then maybe you need to be gently knocked upside the head with a handmade purse. Because really, there’s other things you can do with your time and energy besides knock yourself out trying to do the damn Core Plan. Just think of all the shit we could get done.

(Edited to add a link to this article.)

Tomorrow night (September 15th) Ms. Claire Zulkey is hosting a night of funny stuff read aloud by some esteemed writerly and/or bloggery types at the Hideout. You should go. I will go. See you there. See me fat!

Oh, and you can now pre-order the book The M Word, which includes a piece I wrote, though I know deep down you’ll be buying it because staggeringly cool people like George Saunders and Dan Savage and Wendy Brenner are in it. And I’m okay with that.