A man, a plan, a canal: a Tumblr.

It is probably the new diet I am on, but I have been extraordinarily grumpy lately. Yes, I am on a diet, and this time I actually plan to stick to it. Generally speaking, this isn’t a diet of “don’ts” (and by “don’t” I mean a contraction of “do” and “not” and not a weird but awesome syncope of “donut” which is what I really wish it were). Instead, this is a diet where I am counting the calories I take in, and holding myself accountable if I treat my body like garbage. And I’m trying to limit the amount of sugar I take in for a couple of weeks. Goodbye Ben & Jerry. Goodbye, candy bars from the vending machine.  Goodbye, ordering a pizza and eating the whole thing so I don’t have to “deal with” leftovers.  It’s been real.

It’s understandable why this lack of sugar and reduced caloric intake would make me a little cranky. I am the kind of person who can eat a pound of jelly beans in twenty minutes, who can put down an entire pie singlehandedly, and whose penchant for pastry is unrivaled. And when I say “I am the kind of person who can eat a pound of jelly beans in twenty minutes,” I mean, “Last week I ate a pound of jelly beans in twenty minutes. Twice.” I have gone through phases where I eat nothing but cake for every meal, for weeks at a time. It’s a marvel I don’t have diabetes, actually. 

But (and I’ve done this before, so I know) giving up sugar is only really hard for the first few days. After that, it’s no big deal. Right now, though, I am walking past chocolate at Key Foods and telling it, out loud, to shut the hell up and get out of my face. As a general rule, if you asked me how I was feeling in the past couple of days, I probably said “FUCK EVERYTHING, FUCK ALL OF THE THINGS!”  And if I told you that, what I meant was, “I’m pretty good, considering.”

It has been three days. And it’s not going to get better for at least three more still.

Today at work, I was scanning two hundred pages of an invoice I put together, and the copier jammed on the last page. Because having a job where I put two hundred page invoices together is not already insult enough, the copier HAS to jam.  Right as it started beeping at me, this guy, who I did not recognize as working for my firm, walked into the copy room and stood a few feet from me, looking at me. Why are you looking at me, I thought. Who the fuck do you think you are, standing there, looking at me, while I am clearly trying to repair a jammed copy machine, you son of a bitch.

“Hi,” I said, tersely. I wanted my tone of voice to convey all of the emotions I was feeling: embarrassment for having jammed a copy machine; anger because I had been working on this invoice for weeks and this was the last step; annoyance for having someone I do not know stare at me while this happens; and gothefuckawayIhateyou because I wanted him to go away because I hated him.

“Hi,” he said. He sounded friendly. Who goes and stands in someone else’s field of vision and stares at them and doesn’t say anything to them while they are fixing a jammed copier, and then sounds friendly and says “Hi?” After a few more minutes, I decided he must have been the copy repair technician.

I didn’t say anything else. I wanted him to go away. After about fifteen seconds of following the unclear instructions the copy machine was giving me, trying to figure out which door needed to be opened and shut so the copier would start working again, I was about to turn on him and say, “CAN I FUCKING HELP YOU,” because he did not move and he wasn’t saying anything or indicating why he was standing so close to me. Before I could do this, however, he started condescendingly telling me how to fix the copier.  Note: I used to repair copiers regularly as part of my job, so I know what I am doing when it comes to paper jams.

“You need to open that thing up,” he said. I did it, but only because that is what the copier told me to do three seconds before, and because I knew that is what I needed to do. “Okay, now you need to open that other thing up,” he said. Not only was this an unsolicited and wholly unclear direction, but it was also exactly what the copier had told me to do next, and which I had already started to do by the time he vocalized. Why was he telling me to do the exact thing the instructions were telling me to do? Did he think I was illiterate?  Even if he did, there are diagrams, so did he think I was blind? It couldn’t have been that, because this was not a braille copier/scanner/fax combo machine.  Why was he talking to me like I am his grandmother and he’s teaching me how to change the password on my hacked Hotmail account?

Normally I have an endless amount of tolerance when it comes to dealing with strangers. That is how I get along in New York: I am friendly to people even when they are complete assholes to me. However, it has been three entire days since I have had any refined sugar. I have had a dream where all I do is walk around eating spumoni cake; I have had another, separate dream, on another night, where all I did was make s’mores and eat Toblerones. My hugely pathetic unconscious dream life was showing up my actual real waking life. My signature patience had worn through.

“Okay,” he continued, “Now once that is open, you just—”

“YES, THANK YOU, I CAN READ THE INSTRUCTIONS ON THE COPIER, THANK YOU.”

“—signal is clear so you can… just… close… um.”

And then I closed the copy machine loudly, finished the scan job, and decided to get the hell out of there before I lost it again. “She’s all yours,” I said by way of goodbye, with a tone of reconciliation that flummoxed even me. I didn’t go back in there until after lunch.  Too many feelings.

Other examples of my mood issues include: when I read an article I didn’t like online today, I looked down to find my fingernails had dug visible, possibly permanent marks into the arms of my office chair; when I almost strangled a baby on the subway for looking at me too much; and when I yelled at that chocolate in the grocery store, which I wish I were making up for comedic effect but am being 100% truthful about.

So yeah, it’s been a rough couple of days. I’m coming to understand that there is a reason that the jolliest person ever, Santa Claus, is also morbidly obese: Papa Christmas needs his sugar, or he will fucking slit your throat. I bet if he were on this diet, if he felt like I do now, but adjusted for body weight, he would fucking shank Rudolph for a Pixie Stick. All I have to say is, I’m glad I am not trying to quit meth—I would be SUPER violent if I were trying to quit meth and sugar at the same time.

Note: I am not on meth, and that was a joke. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go calculate how many calories I burned by typing this. [Author’s note: 29 calories. And 10 more for editing.]