Lunch.
There are days when I am so busy that lunch is not on my mind throughout the morning. "Oh, it is 1:00 p.m. and time for lunch." "Oh, it is noon, I have to order something for lunch."

But then, there are days like today, a little slow in library land, when lunch becomes LUNCH, and I cannot wait to run downstairs and devour what I have waiting for me in the Staff Room fridge.

Of course, today is a bit different, for I am starting my 549th diet program. It's called the Zone Diet, and it will be delivered to my door each morning with three meals and two snacks. I am very excited by this diet because the food is supposed to be gourmet and it will be as close to my dream of having a personal chef a la Oprah as I am ever going to get.

It's funny how relative things are. If I weighed now what I weighed when I started my first diet, I would be thrilled. But no, I was not as skinny as those Seventeen Magazine models I looked at all the time, so I started the Dr. Stillman diet. This required the usual eight glasses of water and was mostly protein, so my meals consisted of meat. Lots of meat. I reached my goal weight while Larry was in Europe, and it lasted for a few years, through our engagement and until we got married and I started making Mrs. Shurman's chicken for dinner three times a week. (cream of mushroom soup, sherry and sour cream). So, I joined Weight Watchers, the first of a number of times in my life. And I did quite well... until my sons were born.

Then it was the Bloomingdale's Eat Healthy Diet, a series of five workshops with a manual. This worked quite well, but, in reality, the real cause of my weight loss might have been the fact that I took this workshop with my friend, Jane, and I laughed off the weight. I still use the gaszpacho recipe from that diet, and I still have the workbook. For anyone who knows me well, they know that the main attraction of this diet was the fact that it had Bloomingdale's as part of its name, and the workshops were actually held in the store at Riverside Square.

When I turned 50, it was back to Weight Watchers, but now it was the points system. I was so psyched and the points system really worked well for me at the time, so that into my 50th year, I had actually lost 50 pounds and was so happy that I nearly went backrupt spending money on new clothes.

And then the weight crept up again. That's the hard part, the maintenance, and it's even harder when you really love to eat, and I really love to eat.

The latest was a short stint with the low carb diet and a short stint with Jenny Craig. And so now I begin the Zone diet. Wish me luck, because I just had lunch and it was delicious, but now I keep thinking about dinner!

There is so much guilt involved with having a disabled mother. No matter how much you do, you never think it is enough. No matter how many times I heard how wonderful I was to her, I knew in my heart that I could have done more. I know that I should have visited more, but I just couldn't get myself to go much more than once a week. In the beginning, I went to see her every day, but as the years of her illness dragged on, I went less and less, until even once a week seemed like an impossible chore. I had failed to make her well and I couldn't face it and couldn't face her.

Poor woman. She knew how hard it was for me and she did everything that she could to make it easier. She never complained when I did not visit enough. She covered up her pain and sadness when I was around, and tried to be cheerful during nightly calls. When we were on vacation, she never let us know if she was having a bad day. She knew that she was a burden and she tried to intrude in our lives as little as possible. She put on a front for me, and because she did, she gave me a life. Truly, she was as selfless a woman as I have ever known.

And, truly, she was the most courageous woman I have ever known. In the early years of her illness, when she went from cane to wheelchair, she learned to drive with hand controls. She arranged for her building superintendent to help her into her car in the morning, drove to work where the maintenance man met her and helped her out of the car, and did everything in reverse at the end of the day.

In later years, it was Sally, her incredible caretaker, who gave her the strengh to face each day, and Sally in whom she confided her despair and to whom she clung for comfort. More on Sally at another time. For now, I will just say that she became a member of our family, and we will never forget what she did for our mother and grandmother, and for us.

My mother, Inge Carol Goodkind, born in Hanover, Germany, daughter of Lotte and Hans Samuel, wife of Ted, mother of Joany, mother-in-law of Larry, grandmother of Jordan and Jamie, aunt, cousin, friend.

Steve Spielberg has not contacted me yet, so I will write a little more. Now I am thinking that it may be Steve Sondheim who contacts me and wants to do a musical about a 57 year old blogster looking for her niche. That might even be better than the other Steve. I'm thinking Bernadette Peters in the lead. (Does the reader perceive a little bit of Walter Mitty syndrome here? I have had that for a while and I just let it play out until I forget about it. My nieces and sister-in-law might remember a trip to Grandpa George's funeral and trying to get out of the area in a major snowstorm, and me picturing be interviewed by Katie Couric for the heroic way I helped us all to survive without much food or water. (In reality, because of my brother-in-law's expert driving, we got to the airport in Atlantic City just fine and ate at the airport before the plane took off.)

Lately, I have taken to pretending to be on the food network when I am in the kitchen. This is especially prevalent after watching an episode of Ina Garten or Rachel Ray. I have become particularly adept at describing how I slice a tomato or smash the garlic with the flat side of a chef's knife to easily remove the skin. I learned this method from Rachel, by the way, after years of buying every garlic-skin-removing gadget on the market. Now that I have learned this easy method, I threw away the last clumsy gadget I had purchased for this purpose, but it popped out of the garbage and back into my anything drawer. This garbage phenomenon happens a lot at our house, but I will leave that for another blog entry. Hint: It has something to with Larry.

My food episodes are legendary to my immediate family and a small group of good friends. I have been told that I make good, tasty meals, but in reality, I am not a particularly good cook, and the reason has to do with handling things when they go wrong. To illustrate what happens when things get off track, one would have to look no farther than stuffed cabbage that never got made because the knife blade broke off and got stuck in the cabbage head while I was trying to get the cabbage core out, or the hand mixers blades getting stuck in the batter and causing a distinct burning smell when I was trying to make cookies. I keep trying because I want my sons to have good food memories from their childhood, but I have a feeling that instead, they will remember the chinese food, pizza and other take-out. They have certainly eaten many many good meals at restaurants through the years and we never required that they order off the children's menu...probably a throw back to my own spoiled upbringing when I was allowed to order shrimp cocktail, filet mignon and lobster. That's what happens when you are an only child and grand-daughter.

Alas, it is my friend Gwen's food that my son Jordan will remember, and both of my sons will remember the bountiful meals at their Aunt Aggie's table. And, of course, they will have many memories of their dad's delicious concoctions served at 10:00 p.m. I, too, have a few signature dishes, (including my roasted brussels sprouts that I learned about from Ina Garten), but I have a feeling that it is all the laughter about what did not turn out well, for which I will be remembered, and you know what? That's fine with me.

This is nuts. Who would want to read the baby boomer rantings of a 57 year old female who is still looking for her niche in life? Who would care? But, you know what? I am doing this for me and not for the reader, and if the reader gets something from my postings along the way, that's an extra.
One thing I have noticed is, that if I am feeling a certain way, you can bet that there are plenty of people out there who are feeling the same. I really do believe that I am pretty normal. A little silly sometimes, a little naive many times, but pretty normal.
So, I'll start off by writing about my attempts to find my niche, and I will define 'niche' as that sense of excitement and involvement that makes the rest of the world fade away. (Actually, I feel that way when I am eating chocolate, but that doesn't really count). It's how I feel when I am singing; it's how I feel when I have just written a perfect paragraph. The problem is, that I am not talented enough or assertive enough to be a broadway star (which is what I am convinced I was in another life, because I yearn for it so much) and I am not talented or assertive enough to actually write a novel or be a journalist, or even do the research to get a magazine article published.
But, lest you think that I waste my days pursuing an impossible niche, let me assure you that I have a full-time job and am quite successful at it. And, I like it, too...it's just not my niche.
I have come close to my niche a couple of times that I can think of. The first time was when my wonderful grandmother used to bring me this incredibly delicious salami from New York. It came wrapped in a white waxed paper, which I soon found that I loved to unwrap and re-wrap. For a long time I tried to convince my husband that we should purchase a delicatessan and I would be the one to wrap the meats and cheeses. He didn't even flinch, because by then we had been married for a number of years, and he expected these statements.
Another niche possibility presented itself when I was asked to work the food booth at my sons' Hebrew School Purim Carnival. The menu was very limited, so there was no anxiety involved, and, unlike my one week stint working as a waitress, I found that I was really good at getting people their food quickly, and I loved the fact that, before I realized it, three hours had flown by. (I like it when I feel so involved with an activity that time goes quickly). The problem with this niche was that Purim is only once a year, and a niche has to take up more of the calendar than just that one time span. Get a hotdog cart, I can hear the reader say. Well, that's the thing I would have to decide....would I want this as my niche for 8 hours a day, six days a week? Something tells me no.
So, here's the thing....I have a feeling that I will never really find my niche and I will just have to deal with that reality and enjoy the little fulfillments that come my way every once in a while. But then, you never know, writing this blog could be my niche. And maybe Stephen Spielberg will come across this blog by accident and decide to do a movie about a 57 year old baby boomer blogster and her search for her niche. Or not.