The spirit is willing; but the stomach is weak.

A bowl of Fruity Pebbles and Frosted Toasters, mixed in roughly equal portions, with 2% milk. Incongruously, I also ate two leftover pork ribs before leaving the house. I suppose I didn't want to seem like a pigbelly at the picnic later that afternoon. Or, on some thrifty impulse, I wanted to eat them before they went bad. Bizarre.

Camilo drove over to pick us up, so J. and he and I stopped at Dunkin Donuts for coffee. I had half of a vanilla kreme [sic] doughnut, and a sip of her iced latte.

At the picnic, I kicked things off with a plate of pasta salad, turkey kielbasa, our potato salad, and a cracker with goat cheese. A bit later, I snatched up a chicken patty from the grill, and made a sandwich of it on a generic white bun with a smear of boursin cheese spread. After the desserts were brought out, I had two chocolate chip cookies and a half-cup of rainbow sherbet. I drank three cans of Fresca during the afternoon. Let's not forget the half of a black-and-white cookie which J. bequeathed me in a show of appreciably unconventional baked good largesse. Also a plastic cup's worth of white wine mixed with apple cider.

Unexpectedly, we felt peckish before meeting Julie at the movies that night. I ate perhaps three generic wheat Ritz-type crackers on the way to the train. And before we stepped into the cinema, the three of us stopped at McDonald's. I had a Southern-style chicken sandwich and a small diet cola. This sandwich is as close to pure candy as I can think of in non-confectionary form. To be more accurate, I really had five-eights of the sandwich; the girls each had a bite or two. And murmurs of gladness were heard.

During the movie, I finished not more than half of a large bag of popcorn, and a bucket of Coke Zero. It could have been a gallon. Certainly it felt that way. "Eat, Pray, Love, Pee."

It doesn't stop there. In high spirits we stumbled over to Peach Tree on Tyler Street in Chinatown. From all we ordered, I ate perhaps half again as much as I should, maybe more -- chicken and corn soup; a really fine sweet-and-sour chicken; shrimp with cashew nut; pork fried rice (I had none of this); and scallion pancake. This, with hot tea and diet cola.

I want to bed contrite, overfed, and a bit despairing. It is normal to eat more than one's appetite demands at social occasions, sure; but I really have to learn to push back against this tendency, when I have a day like today stacked with such events.