On the weeks I don’t know what to write my column about, I tend to look back on what I’ve written at the same time in previous years, hoping those past stories will prompt an idea for the present. It’s both a painful and pleasurable thing to do, resulting in me smiling at the memories and wincing at how many ways the writing could have been improved.

This morning, at a loss for a topic, I looked back on last November, and found a column I’d written about our decision to pursue in vitro fertilization, the final step in our efforts to have a baby. At the time — and for the year before it — I was struggling with intense anger concerning our failure to conceive. Part of it was the hormones I was taking, part of it was the extreme desperation I felt: time was getting away and I was getting older by the minute.

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Yesterday afternoon, I had a sick little girl on my hands. I had picked her up at the usual time from school and she sunk into the car, putting her head back on the headrest.

“I feel terrible,” she announced weakly.

I looked over and saw that her eyes were watery and her voice sounded like she was talking around a ping-pong ball. She blinked wearily and I realized, with a mild feeling of dread, it was time for the Pauline Lord sickness special.

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A few Thursdays ago, I showed up at my friend Dianna Milam’s house with a basket full of eggs, whipping cream, sausage and bread. Dianna opened the door with a pure, unrestrained smile on her face, and I basked in seeing the radiance. Because after the hardest year of her life, Dianna Milam had made it. Life was ahead of her in all its wonderful, complicated glory and she was ready to dive in, ready to feel normal, ready to celebrate, and, thanks be to God, ready to eat.

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Last week, I jauntily wrote about the success I was having with my diet, an effort that involves losing 10 pesky pounds that crept on over the summer. In a tone that might easily have been mistaken for boastful, I talked about how I was in Week Three of my weight-loss project and how I had started to feel wholly in control of my appetite. I could walk past the fridge without feeling weakened by it, could run on the treadmill and not feel like dying. I had lost 5 pounds and could see the light at the end of tunnel, a light that showed that I was slim, marvelous, a little smarter, funnier even, perhaps suddenly ambidextrous.

Oh, the trickster that is Week Three. Here I was, so confident, so sure that this three-week-old approach to food was my new permanent approach and that I could face any threat to my resolve. But then Labor Day weekend struck and everything went to pot.

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It’s Week Three of my Back to School diet and I just finished a bowl of shredded wheat for breakfast. How hungry am I right now? Pretty damn hungry. But I can look into my empty bowl and see that victory is coming.

This effort to lose weight is to get rid of 10 solid pounds that crept on me over the summer. Even though I’d been telling myself I was mostly eating vegetables, it turns out they were accompanied by a lot of meat and cheese and bread. For a while, I rode with it, enjoying myself so much. I ordered dessert at restaurants. I baked zucchini bread and spread the still-warm slices with butter. I ate pasta with fresh tomatoes and Parmesan. I made ribs and slathered them in sauce.

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A few weeks ago, I found myself moving a super-industrial drier to gain access to the spice drawer. The drier was one of many that were in place throughout the kitchen and basement after a pipe burst in our upstairs bathroom and water poured down through the ceilings. In fact, so stuffed was the kitchen with drying equipment that it was essentially unusable, so unusable the insurance company was actually paying for us to go out to restaurants to eat.

After three days of doing that, though, I was ready for home-cooked food. Luckily, my mother-in-law stepped in and brought over a pan of her lasagna. Which brings me to the spice drawer, wherein live the hot pepper flakes.

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