The Best News Ever
I read the best news ever the other day. It is not often that I read the news and see anything even vaguely great, but this was outstanding. There are two news sites that I frequent, and I check them a few times a day. One site contains actual news meaning it is informative, and miserable. Fortunately it is written in such a dry objective way it is impossible to get depressed about it. The other site I read is news by definition - information about recent events or real happenings – but only if you consider Miley Cyrus’ tongue an event, and the kidnapping of babies by Extra Terrestrials a real happening. It is not the sort of news my parents have flapping on their broadsheet while they drink their morning tea and argue over bias in journalism.
Every day on this ‘news’ site I usually skim over The 6 Foods That Personal Trainers Avoid, and The 80:10:10 Girl Responds to Haters to get to the real news about celebrity pedophiles. But I have recently gained a little weight. It really is just a little and I am not yet in an I-am-never-eating-again panic, but the scales are groaning more than usual and I have noticed.
I was quick to blame the gain on all sorts of things. I blamed Halloween because I was forced to eat the kids’ Halloween buckets empty of chocolate to save their beautiful unfilled baby teeth from all that sugar. I blamed my husband because he has been bike riding a lot and losing heaps of weight, which clearly has to go somewhere. I blamed this blog for insisting I sat for long periods when I would usually be doing star jumps for hours at a time. I blamed my hand for scooping peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon and shoveling it into my mouth while I was busy doing other things with my eyes and my brain.
I started reading the weight and health related items on my faux-news website and realised I could also blame the egg I ate in 1992 and the hot water with apple cider vinegar that I did not drink at 5am.
But in the end I hung my head and said with forlorn resignation ‘it is the wine. It is THE WINE GODDAMNYOU!!!! I have been drinking too much wine and it has found its way to my saddlebags (but not my boobs or bum who could really use it). Damn saddlebags Damn lovely wine.’
From then on the glass of wine I poured at 6.59pm to celebrate the end of another great day of parenting, was tainted. Instead of sipping and sighing and enjoying, I drank it solemnly and sadly. I stared at it and asked ‘do you really have fifty five billion calories?’ and ‘if I have you now and then do star jumps for two hours will I look like Madonna by tomorrow?’. Of course after the 3rd glass I just looked in the mirror and said ‘You don’t need to do shtar jummmpsh baby, you look frrkn trrrrrrific!’
Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi, oh are you water? You can leave. Hi.
It has all been more depressing than real news. I tried going a couple of nights without a little tipple but ended up just eating my own (growing) body weight in chocolate. Anyone could see that wasn’t going to work. So what would it take?! Apparently it couldn’t be wine or chocolate; it had to be both (as well as maybe cheese…and peanut butter).
So decisions were made. I was merely minutes away from pouring all booze and booze related products (bye-bye sweet hand sanitiser) down the drain as well as throwing all chocolaty bites of love into the greedy mouth of the bin, when I read it: The Best News Ever.
I was walking past my computer when it said ‘bling!’. An email perhaps, or a new follower? Neither apparently, just my computer saying hi and, I like to believe, ‘check the news.’ So I checked the news and it was filled with incurable diseases, and innocent people dying in horrific circumstances, and children getting hurt in the hands of despicable humans. ‘Bling bling’ said my computer which obviously meant ‘not that news dummy, the other one.’
And there it was: