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Monday, February 7, 2011

The tax man's taken all my dough

This Monday is escaping with its life, I see. For a day that began with a feeling of smug satisfaction as I ran intervals on the elliptical, I've done a 180. I'll probably lick the plate after this piece of chocolate chess pie is gone. True there hasn't been much consumed between this morning's non-fat Greek yogurt and the pie, but let's hope this pastry eating at 10:15 p.m. isn't a harbinger of midnight banana splits to come.

No, of course not. I like it when my pants are falling off me even when I'm sober.

The pie is Sophie's fault. It was not a planned pie. After my threats involving holding the door open so the cats could escape, she stopped texting me about her stabby sore throat and toughed it out at school. She came home, swallowed the Advil I handed her when she walked in the door, thanked me, flopped on the sofa and announced that she had a craving for pie dough.

She looked so pitiful, what was I supposed to do?

There's a pie dough law that says if you marry flour, Crisco, salt and water, you are obligated to take the pastry cutter to it and finish by rolling it out.  Sophie got the trimmings to satisfy her craving, the rest of us got a pie that should have a blue ribbon hanging off it.

As I was tossing the dough with the fork, I thought about a piece of writing I'm working on and it occurred to me that the pie could make a great metaphor for that, as well. Not that I'm going to use it, but let's just say that MathMan did the taxes this weekend and figured out how much our income had dropped from 2009.

Our financial pie shrunk from a nine incher to the size of one of those frou frou tarts with the kiwi. I'm sorry, but kiwi? On a little pie? Please just hand me one of those lemon tarts, please. All the glaze in the world isn't going to hide the fact that that is a kiwi hiding under that bulbous strawberry. I'll leave that for someone who can truly appreciate it. I prefer my kiwis in the raw.

A quick look at my old patterns would suggest that the late night pie is stress eating. Perhaps, but I'm not going to stress about it now. I'm not going to follow the old patterns either. Instead, I'm  going to pop in my teeth bleaching tray that looks like a mouth protector and put a dead stop to any more snacking. And if I'm doing that anyway, maybe I'll see if MathMan wants to play the Wrestling Game. I think our tights are clean......

Pie?

22 comments:

  1. Accidental pies are SO annoying, don't you think? My share of the pie has been reduced to a tiny tart as well...but for some reason my jean size has gone in the opposite direction! I think I'd prefer poor and thin! Congratulations on the weight loss though...I'm digging out my bleach trays now!

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  2. This all won't work, Lisa, you haven't thought it through ...

    If you go on losing weight before playing the Wrestling Game to background music by the Kinks, the line in the chorus

    "I gotta big fat mama trying to break me ..."

    won't fit any more!

    [Ouch, ouch, Ow! ... sorreeee ... ]

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  3. Yay - Europe weighing early! (no pun, no pun!)

    Delana - I hear you. It couldn't be all the fabulous French food? I have to introduce you to Bobbi at Finding Me in France. She's an expat from Newfoundland who is now living in Semur. I think the two of you would have some things in common or at least to commiserate about!

    Francis - Good catch on the title. I promise I won't get stick thin. I may not be the big fat mama, but my DNA rejects the idea of Twiggy.

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  4. I've actually forsaken the teeth bleaching tray for the mouth guard. You'd be surprised at how much anxiety is eliminated once you halt the grinding of teeth.

    And, yes, I do resemble Tina Fey in that opening scene of Date Night.

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  5. Eat the pie! Eat it all! Or maybe don't listen to me --- I can be a bad influence when it comes to stress eating. I always wonder at people who say, "I'm so stressed I can't eat."

    What?!?! I can always eat. Always. I'll take a bag of Lays potato chips (the whole bag, thanks) and a yellow cake with milk chocolate icing with my stress.

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  6. Thanks for the reminder. We have blueberries in the freezer that must become a pie before we move.

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  7. Ugh. I ate a huge bagel and a half with cream cheese today. I need to diet. But, I don't want to - its so hard.

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  8. You're a much better mom than me. My kids generally just hear what I can't do for them and when they whine, I give them why.

    And I'm not a tiny tart... in fact probably I'm a full-on pie, but lemon is good.

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  9. mmmmmm.....pie!

    *said in my very best homer simpson voice*

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  10. What, no pie with cloves and Tom Collins mix?

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  11. Chocolate Chess Pie AND wrestling??? That should make you forget about the money stuff... for a little while.

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  12. Pie.

    See, that's all I got out of this post. Word word word PIE word word.

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  13. Have not done the taxes yet, the FAFSA was scary enough. The early year income is giving us a tax bill the late year income can't pay!

    I know from stress eating so I don't keep crisco in the house! I should try the teeth whitening trick...

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  14. I owe money this year, so for th efirst time ever I am going to file at the last minute. Otherwise the gubmint might use that money to send Mubarak more tear gas canisters.
    Hope you enjoyed the pie. It looked good.

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  15. Well, you do have 2 little tax exemptions living w you, so hooray for that!

    So now the little tax deductions, I mean children are even more cherished & one that even makes a mean pie!!!

    May you find many write offs, loopholes, and breaks.

    Still for the amount they let you write off for raising/housing a child... you gotta be kidding!
    My full grown teen son could blaze through that amount of food in just 1 month!

    In our case, the state tax man taketh what the federal tax man giveth.

    Maybe we can get that cuppa coffee we've always wanted??

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  16. Ok, I am not going to crack a pie joke. I'm not. I'm NOT! I'm going to be mature, at least for the next 5 minutes.

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  17. Taxes in 2 countries on retirement income plus gst, hst, and vat may yet do the job on us that 4000 miles of hard road didn't.

    Here's another good one for your listening pleasure:

    If you drive a car,
    I'll tax the street.
    If you drive to city,
    I'll tax your seat.
    If you get too cold,
    I'll tax the heat.
    If you take a walk,
    I'll tax your feet.

    Taxman!

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  18. It really does look like a beautiful pie.

    As for Susan't comment:
    My husband is looking for a job outside of the UK at the moment.
    He did a "pie chart" of our spending and discovered that by far the biggest piece is TAX.
    20% VAT on everything and the taxes on petrol are so huge that it now costs 80 pounds (130 dollars?) to fill up my car. ARGH.

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  19. Eat the pie, woman! I just did. Ah, nothing wrong with a little sweetness at the end of the day.

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  20. I always thought frou frou was spelled froo froo. Now, I'll have to consult the urban dictionary.

    I like that S uses words like stabby to describe her sore throat. I think that's evidence of the presence of the writer gene. I'm pretty sure pie crust is what's recommended in herbal texts for sore throats, btw.

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