Eating Brownies, Listening to Fogelberg

Most days it is my computer that beckons to me like an only friend. And then other days, like today, it is a pan of brownies. Make that two pans of brownies. Two pyrexes of my mother’s brownie recipe that I brought to a friend for Mother’s Day, but are now back in my house because she did not want her family to gorge themselves on the leftovers.
 

No, much better that my family/I gorge.
 

I’m wondering when this became acceptable to send back unused fattening desserts with the guests who brought them. My mother-in-law, sister-in-law and I perform this dance all the time, nearly coming to blows over who will be stuck with the excess birthday cake, cookies and whatever else we will be cursing the next morning.
 

“I don’t want them in my house,” one of us will yell at the other until the nearest male simply takes it out to the car while the women are still arguing. It’s always a gracious way to end any gathering.
 

Being a woman, I have spent considerable time pondering the direction of my life and wondering whether I’ll do it underweight or overweight.
 

I ate almost nothing for two days after the financially motivated dissolution with my former employer (just trying out different ways to say “laid off”) and thought this might be a bright spot to unemployment.
 

Then the trauma gave way to depression and somewhere on the way to resurgence, I found my appetite and then some. So now I’m wondering if Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers or someone might consider a deal like Hyundai’s, which allows you to return their car if you lose your job within the year.
 

Like maybe if you gain more than 10 pounds after you lose your job, they’ll come to your house and weight you in private.
 

You know, just some kind of gesture.
 

So desperate am I for inspiration that I recently stopped my spin class at the ‘Y’ in mid-spin to ask what song was playing on the instructor’s iPod. So for a few days, Dan Fogelberg’s 1975 hit “Part of the Plan,” was my new anthem.
 

I especially like the part in the chorus when he says, well sings, that I should “cry when you have to.”  I’m pretty sure he was talking about some ugly break-up with a girlfriend and not losing your job as a sportswriter, but that’s not really important right now.
 

What is important is that I’m eating brownies and watching the end of “Dancing with the Stars” and not at the Blackhawks’ game right now.