Let us try to make this about good news. For starters, we have just pushed past February’s midpoint, which means two heartening things:
Crocuses and snowdrops, those earliest spring flowers, are poking their heads out of the ground, heralding the season ahead. And pitchers and catchers, those earliest spring throwers, are poking their heads out of dugouts in Florida and Arizona, also heralding the season ahead.
Saturday was the trigger. It had snowed Thursday morning, as you recall. On Saturday morning we pulled the cross-country skis out of the deepest recesses of the garage and brought the ski boots down from the darkest corners of the attic.
By the time we got to Stone Valley, alas, we were too late. The snow was melting away even as we gazed upon it. Warm and sunny as it was, we couldn’t feel too terrible about it, especially after the breakfast we’d eaten.
Eggs, toast and coffee might not sound like anything special to you, but we’d been on a month-long no-bread, no-coffee, no-alcohol, no-meat, no-dairy detox. In keeping with the tenor of the times, I thought of it as the drain-the-swamp diet. Sunday’s repast was the break-fast breakfast.
Devoted readers might recall that I tried to adhere to a similar regime last winter and was sabotaged by the untimely delivery of a packet of pastrami from a Philadelphia deli.
This year the fiercest temptation was in-house. My daughter, visiting for the holidays, had made a quart of hot fudge sauce. We might have eaten it all on the 12 days of Christmas had we stayed in town, but we knew we could only muster sufficient self-disgust to start the detox if we ate ourselves silly in a culinary capital first. So: New Year’s in New York. When we got home, the hot fudge was waiting for us, along with the remains of two half-gallons of ice cream.
Night after night, for one whole month, hot fudge sundaes sang their siren song. I ate unsweetened applesauce.
Morning after morning, coffee called. I drank hot water with lemon.
Lunch hour after lunch hour, sandwiches beckoned. I ate soup or salad.
Evening after evening, the martini glasses glinted merrily in the holiday lights. I drank cranberry juice and sparkling water.
All that deprivation, all those dark January days, all those sour Tweets spewing from @realDonaldTrump. Tough month, January.
But now it is the ides of February. Yesterday morning, just as I sat down to my Valentine’s Day breakfast (first bagel since, let’s see, Jan. 5, Brooklyn, not that I keep track of such things), I heard that the implosion of the Trump White House had begun. Imagine: At 24 days, Michael Flynn’s tenure as national security adviser was shorter than my detox diet. Who’s next?
Having survived without bread, coffee, alcohol, etc., I’m totally ready to go no-Conway, no-Pruitt, no-Perry, no-Puzder. Having done a detox, I say on to the de-DeVos. Having reduced my munchin’, I can do without Mnuchin. Having become less of a salter and sugarer, surely I can reduce my dependency on Spicer. Having endured a ban on pasta, it’s time I passed on Bannon.
Speaking of word play, did you hear that Penn State’s Dan Letwin was among the winners of the New York Times’ Donald Trump Poetry Contest? The contest was the brainchild of columnist Nicholas Kristof. He got about 2,000 entries and published his favorites last Thursday. Letwin, a historian, proudly told me “Ode to Alternative Facts” was his first published poem. Here is the last verse:
Just as loggers might swing an alternative ax
And fell a great tree with alternative whacks
When the truth won’t cooperate, try some new tacks
We live in an age of alternative facts!
Thus inspired, I offer a verse of my own:
When you live in an age of alternative facts
Your Breitbarts, your Foxes are alternative hacks,
Your emperor pays an alternative tax
And no, he’s not naked, they’re alternative slacks.
One final piece of heartening news, before I sign off. I have mentioned previously in this space an associate whom I have chosen not to name or shame, who blew me away by bestowing her vote on the blow-dried blond who resides in Trump Tower. I spoke to this person the other day and lo and behold, she seems to have had a change of heart. Specifically, she informed me that she can’t stand the sight of the guy she helped elect.
I suspect she’s not alone. I also suspect that a lot of Hillary haters on the left are now deeply sorry they sat this one out.
Ah, but there are no do-overs in this life.
And so, if you’ll excuse me. I will drown my lingering sorrows in several of the formerly forbidden food groups. Not to worry, though: They’re alternative snacks.
