In trying to sort of change my eating habits, I have decided to add more vegetables and squeeze in fruit when I can. About the only fruit I can eat anymore are apples and raisins. And I prefer my apples in “sauce” and my raisins covered with chocolate.

I know. Good eating habits, right?

I’ve been pretty good about having my breakfast of sauteed mushrooms, onions, and zucchini, but somehow it just wasn’t filling enough.

So, being the middle-aged woman that I am and harkening back to what my nana ate that kept her alive and active for so long, I went to the grocery store in search of bran.

I’d already done the prune thing, all those did was make me burp.

My nana always made bran muffins, and really good ones. Chock full of raisins and flavor.

I walked up and down the cereal aisle trying to find a box of good old-fashioned All Bran. If I remembered correctly, which I’m sure I wasn’t, the picture on the box made the bran look like some kind of thready nutty small animal excrement.

I saw Bran Flakes (with raisins) and Flax Flakes and all that roughage-in-a-box that people my age are supposed to start being mindful of.

After fighting really hard to not get a box of Sugar Pops, although they are now just called “Pops,” I had to finally settle on a box of All Bran “Bran Buds.”

Looked a bit like Grape Nuts.

I wonder if Euell Gibbons really ever ate a bowl of Grape Nuts. It takes a lot of flossing and brushing to work those suckers out from in between your teeth.

The claim on the box said it contains 51 percent of your daily fiber value.

Wow.

That’s some kind of major claim.

Says you only have to eat 1/3 of a cup with fat free milk to start getting your system back online.

Should take about 10 days to really get your body kick-started.

OK. I can do 10 days with these little gerbil pellets.

I didn’t have my reading glasses with me, so I reckoned I would have to wait til I got home to see the ingredients clearly.

I could see, though, that it wasn’t merely “just bran.” There were other ingredients in this cereal.

Nevertheless, I got home and had the required 1/3 cup of cereal, but I only drink full fat milk. Haven’t quite been able to lower the fat content on my milk yet, but I managed to use just a bit of milk to try to moisten up the cereal.

It was crunchy and slightly sweet, just the way cereal should be.

I had another bit of it for lunch the next day.

By that evening, I was tootin’ and sputterin’ like an old wind-up Ford.

The Kid even had to comment.

“Mom! What the heck? Did you eat a squirrel or something? Wow!”

“No, just something that looks like what the squirrel would leave behind.”

“Whatever it is, I don’t want any of it. Please.”

He doesn’t need bran of any sort.

He plows through salads and fruit like most people plow through a bag of chips, so I think he’ll be all right.

I figure since Hubs is off working, I can get my system back into shape without any complaints from him.

Even when the skunk came around and let loose on the back patio, I had a hard time determining if it was me or him making the hole bigger in the ozone.

And mind you, I am nowhere close to my 10th day yet. This is just the beginning.

Add to that the handful of raisins and nuts I have every day, too, and you can just imagine what a wonderful world it is to be in my house.

I would just eat Activia, but I refuse to do so because I hate the commercials so much.

I did comment to a friend of mine that I’m sure glad we don’t pass gas in color, or I’d have to change my name to Skittles.

I am the rainbow.

But trust me.

It’ll be about 10 days before I get to see what’s really in the pot at the end of it.