It was a good night to go to my backup plan: leftovers. So far, since I started the diet a month and a half ago, I’ve cooked every night except when I was (a) sick or (2) not home. The leftovers haven’t gone to waste, but they’ve made for some awfully heavy duty lunches the next day.

Now the leftovers are going to be dinner two or three (or four) times a week, and my lunches are going to be simple salads or sandwiches. That’s how I’m going to make the diet work for me, now that it’s not a “diet” diet, but an eating plan. (I should be able to come up with a better term, I know, but “diet” has a connotation I do not wish to imply.)

(Although I have lost a few pounds, if it comes to that.)

Anyway, I was in no mood to cook tonight, no matter what. I’ve had two extra-stressful work days in a row, and I was out of the house for a couple of hours to watch Aiden play baseball. The members of the opposing team tonight were all about twice the size of the kids on Aiden’s team, but that didn’t keep anyone from having fun.

David pitches to his own team, and at one point when Aiden was at bat, he announced that he was going to hit his dad in his broken ankle. He missed the ankle but ripped the ball right at David’s neck. I was coaching first base, and he bounced down the line toward me with a big grin on his face. “I hit my dad in the throat!” he told me, as if that were the actual object of the game. I told he did what he was supposed to do, hitting the ball hard. It’s the pitcher’s job to get out of the way.

It was such a relief not to have to stand in the kitchen chopping vegetables tonight. My back was already wrecked from doing payroll, paying bills and trudging back and forth all day between the computer, the desk and the filing cabinet. There wasn’t much sitting involved, and it felt as if it would never end. I’ll get back on the program tomorrow night, but it’ll be my program and nobody else’s this time.