It feels like all my habits are different now. Some of this is deliberate. I stopped drinking Diet Coke last month. I expected this to be drastic, like getting my forehead tattooed, and somehow it is not. I did it for lots of reasons, though I think one of the most significant ones is that, well, Diet Coke is heavy. I’m tired of carrying those twelve-packs and cases, which, with those little cardboard handles, feels an awful lot like tying a set of encyclopedias to your fingers and letting them dangle.

And I was sick of the cans, especially all the empty ones in my car. When I drove on bumpy roads my car would sound like a junkie pushing his shopping cart. And just after I started cutting down on Diet Coke I found these videos, which helped my resolve considerably. If Diet Coke does that to Mentos, I wondered, what is it doing to my minty fresh soul?

And then when I stopped drinking so much Diet Coke. I started drinking black coffee. I mean I just stopped putting sweetener in the one cup I have at work in the morning. I haven’t felt this adult since the moment I realized I really actually sort of enjoy hearing Nina Totenberg read aloud Supreme Court transcripts on NPR. (No shit, I like it better than the recorded courtroom audio they’ve had recently. That Nina, she does Scalia’s quotes so snippily!) Anyway, it’s nice to know I can fully function on only a few dozen milligrams of caffeine and that my heart is no longer being pickled in aspartame.

I’m cooking more. I spend at least three or four hours on the weekend in a chopping/peeling/blender-ing trance. I finally understand why great big heavy knives are so great, though I might throw one at you if you call me a “foodie” because, dear God, that word makes me angry.

And I haven’t been to Target since early November. I wouldn’t call it a boycott, exactly, but I just decided I’d try to see how long I could avoid going there. I don’t imagine this would make any difference with them (and Illinois law overrrules their policies anyway), but I just began to resent how essential that big damn red store had become to my life, and somehow it felt better to just cut it out. I don’t mind if anyone else shops there. I just don’t feel like going there these days, and wandering around trying to find where the hell I left my cart, because I always fucking did that.

Does all this sound like I am living in a cabin in the woods? I hope that’s not the impression I’m giving here. My life isn’t suddenly more meaningful than usual. Though did I mention I’m doing yoga? I’ll tell you more about the yoga sometime. When I do more of it, that is.