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FACEBOOK is like eating peanuts—can’t stop once you start. It destroys your sked for the rest of the day, by the time evening hits, you’ve accomplished nothing. It’s like staring at the trees, but with stress.

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Yes, FB can be stressful if it’s now your source of all information—Duterte and de Lima news, Tokhang, Brangelina, Trump, Syria, US cops gone berserk, US protests against cops going berserk, ad nauseam.

Better read a book then, instead of checking out FB. Thus, on Monday night, there I was, facing the small cabinet filled with books, trying to decipher what my minute brain wanted to read. There’s a need to distinguish the small from the big cabinet also filled with unread books.

I’ve stopped buying books, by the way. The recovering knee doesn’t allow long walks. I’d rather walk to a resto than walk to a bookstore. Priorities.

The moment you wake up, that’s what you face—priorities. The to-do list. Which is most important in that list. Then, you open FB, and the list is forgotten.

The small fridge in the room—to distinguish it from the big fridge downstairs—is a witness to the confusion. Its top is now loaded with peanuts, popcorn, pistachios, sambong tea, ampalaya tea, and a freshly blended protein shake. The wellness coach may agree all these are good food until he learns that the peanuts are coated with sea salt, sugar, cornstarch, gelatin, torula yeast, maltodextrin, and dried corn syrup. Torula who? Malto what? Well, celery is included as one of its spices, and dried onion and dried garlic are among the powdery thingy settling at the bottom of its gigantic plastic container.

As for the popcorn, the remaining four containers have these flavors: Country Cheddar, Mochachino, White Chocolate, and White Chocolate Parmesan. There used to be six in one package but Original Caramel and Creamy Parmesan didn’t stay long on the fridge’s top, consumed and downed with a bottle of Frappuccino on Sunday night while watching movies on Cinema One: “Just the Way You Are” and “You’re My Boss.”

Don’t ever watch “Just the Way You Are.” Starring Enrique Gil and Liza Soberano, it’s so corny, I began thinking, how apt for me to be eating popcorn while watching all that corny. And they lived happily ever after. Gawd. Tell that to Brangelina. No wonder JaDine has more fans.

“You’re My Boss” is funny with all its hugot lines, any sawi could relate. It has some parts that may remind you of de Lima and her supposedly active lovelife—the lady boss and her male underling—but you do need an active imagination to believe she and the guy could morph into Toni Gonzaga and Coco Martin.

Bad food and bad TV are a bad combination. Gluttony galore. Thus, it’s better to watch movies like “Storks” where all the babies are so cute with their goo goo eyes, even wolves can’t help but lick them. Yes, lick. Anyone with an active imagination must be thinking of de Lima and her alleged sex video scandal again.

The Frappuccino, by the way, says it’s made of “vanilla with other natural flavors”, has 200 calories per bottle, and kept me awake on Sunday night. There was a time when I drank several bottles of this, with cups of brewed coffee, in New York, and had anxiety attacks by midnight while inside a train crossing the East River from Manhattan to Brooklyn. The wise commuter doesn’t go out of any Brooklyn stop except the one she’s familiar with. So, there I was, stuck in the train, could hardly breathe, counting the number of stations—five more to go, four, three… That’s while trying to pretend to be a male New Yorker. A woman in an NY subway train at midnight is not a thug’s best friend.

NY in September must be bliss. Here in Pinas, the weather is cooler, too, thanks to the “ber” that reminds Pinoys the Christmas season has begun, the kind of weather where waking up in the morning only inspires more sleep. If only there’s no to-do list to, uh, do.

The best breakfast for a cool morning: hot choco, bacon, and rice soaked in sunny-side up eggs. Or, instead of bacon, you may have tocino, longganisa, hotdogs, corned beef, Spam, chorizo, sausages, ham… In other words, the best breakfast is never a protein shake. But that’s what I have daily now, and without a banana. But a friend brought bananas the other weekend and I kind of felt obligated to blend those with the shake.

Another friend has acquired the habit of having muesli with milk. I don’t know if it’s for her snacks or breakfast since her protein shake is for lunch.

To be advised that real food is OK as long as it’s in moderation is like being told to eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we eat, drink, and be merry again. The brain has this switch, focusing only on the “OK” and not the “moderation.”

You won’t have more protein shakes, though, since your hungry emotion will never go craving for that.

The emotional eater will always be on the worst side of bad habits, eating when he’s happy, sad, or celebratory. Any emotion triggers a corresponding response in the tummy, coating any real food with a yummy taste. Ampalaya could even taste good, if mixed with eggs and ground pork. The emotional eater doesn’t discriminate.

So, what book to read? Haruki Murakami’s “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” would be nice. I bought that on Dec. 5, 2014, more than a year before the knee injury. But it now reminds me of how the knee got injured last January. Well, I wasn’t running—I think it was circuit training—but I’m now allergic to any form of exercise.

How about Sara Nelson’s “So Many Books, So Little Time”? I can definitely relate with that. But I read it already, based on the pencil tick marks on its margins for the lines I like. Oh, here’s one: Robin Sloan’s “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.” Yeah, read a book that doesn’t remind you of anything but books.

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