I'm on the South Beach Diet. I know, I know. Stop laughing at me. We've already established that I'm anti-trend, but if you actually read the article I directed you to, you'll recall that South Beach has been out too long to be trendy anymore. So I'm okay. I'm in the post-trend-phase of its lifespan, and only just read it while in South Carolina visiting my uncle. The cover had a little star-shaped notation, "Lose Belly Fat First!" and I thought, "I've got to read this thing!" Having weighed myself on my uncle's scales (we don't own any), I was appalled. Aghast. "Lose Belly Fat First!" sounded like just the ticket, especially since I'd gorged myself on shrimp the night before while devouring my cousins "Frogmore Stew."

Sidebar: Frogmore Stew is known to non-locals as "Low Country Boil." There are many ways to prepare it, but the main ingredients are shrimp, smoked sausage and corn on the cob. It's not really a stew. I ate a shameful quantity of shrimp.

So, South Beach Diet. Today is the start of Week 2 of Phase 1.

I miss bread.

I miss oatmeal.

I miss sweet snacks and corn and a little sugar in my tea.

It's not that I miss white bread. I'd given that up years ago. I miss really thick, grainy, homemade bread with a light bit of butter on it. Maybe a bit of jam. Oh, man, I've got to stop writing about it.

I miss oatmeal in the morning, or cereal. And I'm not talking about Fruit Loops or Lucky Charms. Those aren't my thing. I like healthy cereals and I miss eating them.

And I miss Trader Joe's chocolate covered raspberry sticks. Oh dear, those are trouble. I can't even have those in the house.

Fortunately, in a week I can have oatmeal and healthy cereal again. I can have fruit again, though I haven't missed that as much as I thought I would. I can have my wholesome homemade bread again, too, just not half a loaf.

In the meantime, I'm eating protein and vegetables, mostly. And that crazy little ricotta cheese dessert they invented, supposedly to satisfy one's sweet tooth. But let me tell you, it looks pretty gross and doesn't compare with the desserts I prefer. Nice try. And Jell-O? I like it, but it isn't dessert.

So I suffer a little, in hopes of losing some belly fat. Frankly, I don't see a marked difference yet, this first week. We'll see what happens in another week's time.

I have to watch the kids wolf down homemade macaroni and cheese while I nibble on a salad tonight.

What a happy birthday boy we have!

We took him shopping at Target yesterday. At the end of an aisle was a wall of Matchbox vehicles. He started shouting and pointing, "That one! That one! No, no, not that one. THAT one!" So we began to pull them off per his precise instructions and hand them to him. He would gaze at each one through the plastic cover, enthralled. This was at least a ten-to-fifteen-minute process, picking and choosing, evaluating, putting some back and getting others, then convincing him to let us place them in the back of the cart and that maybe he'd get them as surprises at his party. He picked out some helicopters, too, and some military vehicles. It was quite a masculine outing. I'd never spent that much time in those aisles ever before.

One of his sisters wrapped each one of the cars, so he'd have a lot of presents to unwrap at the party. Believe it or not, he didn't rip into them. Instead, he carefully unwrapped each one, grinning as the paper started to reveal the packaging. Then he'd exclaim, "Wow! I LOVE it!" delighting and "wow-ing" over it, elated. He'd unwrap another, as if he didn't know what it would be, then: "OH! Oh! I LIKE this one!!" It was getting ridiculously Pollyannalike, but so charming.

His thrill over every dinky gift prompted my sister-in-law to lean over during the hubbub and suggest, "Okay, tell the truth. These are the first presents you've ever bought him, aren't they!" What kid could sustain ongoing astonishment over ten individually wrapped 94-cent cars? One who truly only wanted a few 94-cent cars, I guess.

Oh, that we were all so easily satisfied, let alone ecstatic!