Tonight was one of all-out unabashed rationalization.

Lauren came home from work feeling an inexplicable need to eat a lot of food, preferably edibles neither she nor I were in any way involved in preparing. Note to any restaurant: The surest way of securing our business is to check our refrigerator and pantry, and design your nightly menu based solely on what we don't have here. We could have in the apartment three cheesecakes, limitless peanut-butter sandwiches, and a fat piece of steak, and we'd be repelled. In fact, that's the surest way to get us to eat vegetables, too -- stock our house with every junk food known to man. If we've got it, and worse, if we are expected to in some way work with it beyond putting it in the microwave and letting science be our chef, then we absolutely don't want it.

So, staring down the barrel of yet another predictable night of standing in front of the fridge and moaning softly, followed by ten minutes of counting the Campbell's cans in the pantry and declaring war on soup, Lauren opted for going out to dinner.

"I went running today. So I earned this," I thought, ignoring the fact that I used the exact same rationale on Sunday night when ordering Indian food.

Lauren said, "I liked the way my pants looked today. So naturally, I want to pig out."

And so we went. Of course. As if you doubted we would.

Specifically, we went to The Cheesecake Factory, because we wanted large slabs of rich dessert. We felt guilty about this for one fleeing second, positioned as we were with our noses pressed to the bakery display case, our breath fogging the thick plastic as other patrons waiting for tables stared and pointed at this pathetic display of sugar addiction.

"Well... this IS kind of a big night," Lauren said.

"That's true," I mused. "It's... The Night Before."

"The Night Before The War Begins," she said.

"The Night Before The War And Loads of Potential Acts of Terrorism," I added.

"So, we should probably have cheesecake," she decided. "We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to America."

"It's true. We are free, and what better way to rejoice in our personal liberties than to eat a large block of cheese and sugar?" I asked.

And so we ate. Of course. As if you doubted we would.

We toasted with martinis, we filled up on dinner, and we split a slice of carrot cake cheesecake that was, exactly as it sounds, half carrot cake and half cheesecake. It's as if a child grabbed handfuls of each confection and sloppily married them on a plate, the way competing colors of Play-Doh inevitably get wadded together after a week of use, yet never become each other -- there's globs of yellow stuck onto blue, but they never really make green. But it was tasty. "It's carrot cake, so that's my vegetable for the day," I announced. "I feel rather healthy all of a sudden." "I am proud of us," Lauren said. "We have done well." Now we're sitting around at home watching pathetic people who are not nearly as attractive, smart, or generally appealing as they think they are, while they live in a Las Vegas casino and cease being nice in favor of being real. It doesn't get much more exciting than this.

But at least we're predictable. When we can sense a crisis, we fatten up. I like to think it's our little contribution to the war effort.

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