It began as a dark and stormy night (I’ve always wanted to write those words) when I decided to go the healthy route on my diet. I had about 300 calories left at the end of my day of eating very healthy. What I wanted was cinnamon toast with milk (which was 270 calories total); however I talked myself out of that option.

I am a bread lover. When I was a little girl, I positioned myself in front of the bread basket every single time my family went out the dinner. Bread has always been my “go-to” comfort food. In other words, eating products made with yeast are things that make me happy. While this particular night was not a stressful one, it was one in which I wanted the cinnamon toast with milk. But, no, I had made a promise to myself to eat healthy.

Instead of the toast, I decided to have an orange – one of those adorable little oranges that my three-year old granddaughter loves because she can peel it herself. Well, they were so tiny; I opted to have another one and the banana that was sitting on the counter. While putting the orange bag back into the refrigerator, I noticed the bag of grapes and decided they were healthy things, as well. Being the good dieter that I was, I decided to eat some of them also. I got the measuring cup out, rinsed off the grapes, and ate them (almost without tasting them).

Once again, on the way to replacing the grape bag into the refrigerator I had to move the container that had fresh pineapple. Well, pineapple is certainly a healthy item so I pulled it off the shelf. I helped myself to four slices of wonderful, sweet pineapple. Oh, how I love fresh pineapple!

The cinnamon bread was still untouched but I still felt “hungry”. Continuing with my healthy regimen, I decided that at 10:30 at night the thing I needed was a salad. I actually found myself cutting up lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, carrots, avocado and adding just a tablespoon of Russian dressing. Just for fun, I threw in a handful of baby shrimp. Healthy was my mantra for the evening as I sat down and ate my salad without any enthusiasm at all.

I found myself seeing the cinnamon bread out of the corner of my eye as I opened and closed every cupboard door in my kitchen. Still in the “I’m so healthy mode”, I grabbed the last Fiber One brownie out of the box, justifying my selection because of the five grams of fiber it provided me.

At 12:01 AM and after consuming exactly 817 “healthy calories” I finally fixed the doggone cinnamon toast and poured my glass of milk.

My total caloric count was 1087 eaten between the hours of 9:30 PM and 12:01AM. As I said, it was a dark and stormy night --a very dark and very stormy night.

Note to self: Next time throw the cinnamon bread away or, better yet, just eat the damned thing.