The party's over …

Time to put my singed credit card back in my wallet, throw away the tattered shopping lists, point my car toward the east and drive for about seven hours. Give or take.

Actually I never found time to go to a craft store – Michael's would be my preference – so I'm going to see if there's one with easy access to the highway on my way home and make that my lunchtime.

My daughter and I built an Ikea bed yesterday. It's quite sturdy and, of course, since it's Ikea it's also nicely designed. Very few actual "instructions" in the manual, the Swedes are more visual, I guess. There were swear words – and much sweating – however, and it's pretty amazing how sore my back and shoulders are this morning.

Really, assembling furniture should count as both cardio and strength training.

In addition to heading home, it's time for me to reset my food button. It's much too easy to eat pretzels – a snack I don't keep on hand – when they're right there in the pantry. She keeps them for her children, since she's low-carbing. And skinny.

And every time I'm around her for any length of time I think, 'Should I try that? Could I even do it? What about fruit? WHAT ABOUT ORANGE MARMALADE?!?'

Clearly orange marmalade isn't a dieter's best friend, but I can find room for a tablespoon of it (49 calories) as part of my breakfast yogurt-preserve-granola breakfast. My daughter, however, absolutely would not eat it, not even a smidgen, because it would set off those blasted sugar cravings again.

Tempting is what it is. Not orange marmalade, but getting skinny. There's more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak, and I've tried them all. I just wonder, sometimes, and pretty frequently this weekend, what would happen if I shocked my metabolism by withdrawing sugar/flour/crackers/CARBS.

So who among you is low-carbing? And how's that workin' for you? And if you've formerly tried controlling your weight by counting calories, what happened when you made the switch to counting carbs? Details, people, I want details!

Also, Descendants was a little heavy. You've been forewarned. But there were enough twists and light moments to make it work, and I really, really cared about the characters. It's just an interesting story, well-written, well-acted, beautifully filmed.