The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ Can't Come Soon Enough

All you Christians out there please do not waste your time saying a prayer for my soul. I am Catholic and I am already piloting the fastest rocket ship to hell so that post title will only make my descent that much quicker. 

Why do I need Easter to come so soon? (The title was referring to Easter - in case you are not Christian or you just don't pay attention.) Because I can't lose any weight. I am no lard-ass and some would say I am actually rather trim, but I need to lose some weight because I am lazy and don't want to drag all this excess adipose tissue up and down hill and dale for miles and miles. The fact of the matter is, all holidays kill me. 

Thanksgiving was the biggest week of gluttony I have experienced. What makes it worse is, I don't even drink anymore. It's all food. (Who makes two turkeys!? Me.) A month later is Christmas. After that food debacle I was at my heaviest in a long time. I vowed to be better with my nutrition and that worked for awhile. I was bumping up (or "down" as the case may be) against 190 and feeling pretty good. Then Easter comes along. 

As you may or may not know, I am a terrible Catholic. Yes, my kids go to Catholic school. Yes, my father-in-law was in the Jesuit seminary for over ten years - then he left - then he met my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law has a masters in theology. Her parents - A's grandparents and my kids' great-grandparents - were off-the-boat Irish Catholics. F is named after an Irish saint. So I probably have a lot of people pulling for me. They will have to do a lot of negotiating to get me through those pearly gates.

As Catholics we do the whole Lent thing (I just included a Wiki link if you don't know what this all entails - it is very complicated James Bond-type stuff that even I don't fully understand as illustrated by my lackadaisical follow through) which basically includes giving up some "vice" and not eating meat on Fridays for 40 days before Easter. Well, this year I decided to give up Oreos and ice cream. Now, in the true spirit of the sacrifice Jesus made for my soul, I should have given up all sweets/desserts, but in the spirit of making my life easier and increasing my odds of success, I decided to be very specific. (As of today I have not had any Oreos - I will get to the ice cream later.)

What does any of this have to do with not losing weight? In order to satisfy my sweet tooth (teeth) I have substituted Oreos and ice cream with multiple bags of these:

And to a lesser extent - these:

And when I say multiple, I mean many multiple. I bet I have gone through eight bags of Mini Eggs and about three bags of jelly beans. To rationalize/justify/make myself feel better, I do chase the fist-fulls of Mini Eggs with giant glasses of milk. Inevitably, I still have milk left after I eat the chocolate so I have to get more chocolate to go with the milk and then that doesn't work out so I have to get more milk to chase the chocolate and on and on until a quarter of the bag of Mini Eggs is gone and half a gallon of milk. But hey, milk's healthy, right?

While I try not to break one arm patting myself on the back for resisting Oreos, I have to come clean about ice cream. I have been pretty good, but I have had a couple of slips that I need to rationalize/justify/make myself feel better about. My kids both requested ice cream cakes for their birthdays. Now, how can I not partake in my children's birthday celebrations - I am not some inhuman monster after all. Besides, it really is kind of a gray area. It is technically "cake" and I did not give up cake. Granted, it is made with ice cream, but, again cake is in the description so I will file it under "cake." (In the larger scheme of things, Jesus might just give me a pass on this one. He certainly has bigger fish of mine to fry.) My second "slip" is also negotiable. When in Florida I went to an ice cream shop with my mother-in-law and E. When I got there I remembered, "Hey, I gave up ice cream for Lent." Now, I just couldn't disappoint my darling daughter and Grandma was buying (free stuff trumps Lent in my book) so I was all set to dive right into some creamy goodness. Then I saw it - my way out. Actually, my mother-in-law pointed it out to me. The ice cream shop also served gelato - not technically ice cream - ask any Italian, they will concur. I'll get some of that then. I had a bit of a guilty conscience (yes, I feel guilt and yes, I have a conscience - really people) because I knew this was the knife's edge of legitimacy. Then I found the Windex for my clouded conscience - SORBETTO! Frozen fruit. "I will have a scoop of each of those please." 

I did do a little penance for my ice cream/gelato/sorbetto transgression. It kind of sucked. Whoa, not enough to not eat the whole thing, but not good enough to go back. 

And that whole "no meat on Friday" thing. Long story short, it didn't happen. More fuel for the rocket. 

To make matters worse - I have Easter dinner staring me in the face (figuratively, but soon literally.) Candied spiral-cut ham, cheesy potatoes, green beans and lamb cake. Not to mention the appetizers that will precede all that gluttony. And for whatever reason, I am just a boy who can't say "no." Luckily, when I was in the grocery store this morning I saw that half the packages of Mini Eggs were gone and I wouldn't imagine they will be restocking them this late - at least I hope not. And "No," I didn't buy another bag before they were gone, I still have two bags at home. A man has got to know his limits. Maybe one of these days I will know mine.