Because of that point—one point!—my doctor banished me to the Mulletville diabetes center last week for a consultation. I entered the center in the foulest mood possible. I may have been dubbed a gestational diabetic, but I wasn’t going to go quietly.
First I saw a chipper, lumpy nurse who called me “honey,” “hun” and “sugar.” She smiled past my snarky looks. She was impervious to my Death Stares.
Like gasoline on a fire, baby.
She gave me a 50-page health questionnaire to fill out. She checked my thyroid. She waxed my legs. By that point I’d been at the center for an hour. I started to get even pissier—sighing heavily and looking at my watch. Scratching the walls. Urinating in the corner. You know the drill. Nurse Lump-a-Lot finally noticed.
“I don’t belong here,” I moaned. “One point…”
“It’s probably genetics. Just one of those things.” She handed me this:
The OneTouch UltraMini. It may sound like a vibrator and look like a crack pipe, but it’s not nearly as exciting.
She told me I have to check my blood sugar levels four times a day and record them in my own special blood sugar diary.
(Sorry, Heidi Klum, this will have to replace your special notebook for now.)
We test drove the UltraMini. I passed. Hoohah! I waited for her to tell me I could skip the whole gestational diabetes thing but no, it was time to see the dietician.
Fuckity fuck no.
The dietician was even cheerier than Nurse Lump-a-Lot. Worse, she was skinny. I’ve been around long enough to know that skinny people who think a lot about food are never happy people. They use food scales and talk about bulgar wheat.
They are the Anti-Christ.
Before I’d even sat down, the dietician busted out her rubber fruits and vegetables and started playing kitchen.
“Two servings of broccoli equal one serving of potatoes. Now, what happens when we add a piece of toast?”
She drew smiley faces on my food chart. She referred to her camaraderie of dieticians as “we,” as in “we strongly encourage you to try Quinoa.”
I wanted to tell her where she could put her Quinoa, but she wouldn’t shut it. I kept trying to tell her that I knew enough about nutrition—one point!—to fast forward through the elementary-school schpeel, but she was going to cover it.
I even busted out the big guns—I told her how I was one of the first reporters to cover trans fats, a nasty bi-product of the hydrogenation process, for a gourmet food magazine back in 1997, so I knew about bad fats—but she wouldn’t put down her damn rubber vegetables.
She pummeled me with fake food. I was beaten.
So here I am, just me and my UltraMini. And a whole buttload of Halloween candy. Thoughts of Thanksgiving pies. Of fat, gooey chocolate Santa Clauses with jolly bellies full of marshmallow. Brownies dripping in caramel. Puff pastries. Cheesecakes paired with red wine.
Nothing I can touch.
I need a vice, people, and I need it now. What’s left to do that’s naughty?
(Don’t say sex. Please. We all know that sex when you’re eight months pregnant is about as appealing as moose going at it on the National Geographic channel.)
