Things went fine with my dad. No bogeymen jumped out at me, just my own shadow. He always makes me laugh on the phone, too, with his funny ways. He's starting to laugh at himself in his fifties.

Of course I'm having food issues. It's the story of my life. I don't like that I was weighed recently, because the number is out there now. 104. It's less than I thought, but it feels like I'm balancing on it with the possibility of falling far down. With that, I've got to be at least two pounds heavier today.

Compulsive overeating, like you see spread across our fat country, is what I've suffered with since I was a kid. Someone said my preschool self was fat. I look at pictures of my thick toddler middle and think fat. I thought about fat when other kids were being kids. I think about fat at 104.

A bad day--a mean day--is a day I have no self control. I'm not talking Big Macs. All it takes is finishing the kids' cereal or obsessing over the food I ate, didn't eat, want to eat, and will eat. Everything comes through the food filter those days, and I end up acting like a "dry drunk."

I have referred to myself as a dry drunk because I'd much prefer to eat my carbs than drink them. Women say they know what I go through, that it's the same for them. It is hardly the same, I say to myself. I obsess and I know it. I have to make a conscious decision each day to be selective in the kitchen, to slow down, and remember how easy it is to cross that line. I am not like everyone else. Eating pizza, McDonald's, cookies, cake, even too much healthy food turns me into a zombie to be feared.

Eating when not hungry wins me: being mean to kids, self-loathing, not in the mood for sex, depressed, with pain in the gut, no ability or desire to exercise, anger, sadness, more eating, obsessing, anxiety, and more!

Lloyd's birthday was Tuesday. I ate about four bites of the kids' McDonald's for lunch, which sent me straight to the bathroom; I also ate cake and real ice cream. By night I was hating myself and justifying eating just a little of this or that.

Yesterday I continued the zombie act. I didn't overeat but I thought about food all day and lugged all the symptoms around with me. I woke up today making a commitment to myself to have a "good" day. There was a part of me having trouble agreeing to this. It said I would fail. I asked myself a couple more times to do right--eat nice to myself, I say--today.

I am fine. Things are slowed down. I'm not angry at myself or kids. I'm happy. Nothing gets me down like the food idol can. When I am making mountains out of things, it's usually not the thing, but a bad food day, to blame.

Its simplicity does not make it go away. It is something I will live with my entire life, like an alcoholic will never stop being an alcoholic, drinking or not. I have the choice to live life either closed in the pseudo-safe food room or open, out of the room where the elements can touch me and even hurt me sometimes.

It has a lot more to do with than the number 104. My sister lives with this, fat. I live with it small. Why we have this, I don't care. My mom telling my sister and me that my niece looks like she's getting chubby I told her was not okay. I don't let my kids make habits with foods or show them love with it. Most importantly, I am small and manage this to be a better mother to them; although I do have bad days, which my daughter checks me on by asking me why I'm so mad.

With my husband a recovering drug addict and me a recovering food addict my kids need extra love to combat thinking they need to fill space with a thing. Lloyd is somewhat hyper and I've considered putting him on something. Ritalin use is correlated with less occurrence of drug use as an adult, which sounds good to me. I'll at least wait to see how he is in school.