Winona Dimeo-Ediger

Stage one: annoyance. Stage five: obsession!

1. Only eat salad and grilled chicken. Salad and grilled chicken, as a general rule, don’t ruin lives. Salad and grilled chicken are great... sometimes. Unless you’re going to amazing restaurants all the time and ordering nothing but salad and grilled chicken — then salad is definitely ruining your life.

The hardest thing about transitioning to an in-office job after working from home for a long time? Not being able to tell your boss, “I’m gonna take a quick shower to clear my head” after a stressful team meeting.

"These days, I don’t shop at the mall very often, but every once in a while when I find myself at a mall — any — I’m overcome by a wave of nostalgia for my salad days (although perhaps “Sbarro calzone days” would be a more fitting expression here). In many ways, I grew up in these chain stores and pretzel kiosks. And sometimes I feel compelled to write melodramatic poetry about it."

Winona,

I grew up way out in the country, and lying in bed at night I used to gaze out my window and think, “Maybe someday I’ll live in a cool apartment in the city where I can walk to stuff.” That was literally my big dream of far-off adulthood.

Dear Winona,

Toss back half a bottle of merlot while watching “Daredevil.” Pause it for a pee break. Glance in bathroom mirror, notice bangs are getting slightly unruly.

This woman has serious swagger. It’s a slightly more subtle swagger than, say, Snoop Lion, but it’s there: in the nonchalant flick of her wrist while tossing garlic cloves into a food processor; in her decision to throw a spontaneous formal garden party just because she made a frittata, and in her firm pronouncements to use only “good” ingredients — without ever defining what that means.

There’s that moment when you’re waiting in line for a buffet when you get a whiff of something funky, and one of your friends is like, “Is that vomit?” and another one is like, “Is it coming from that plant?” and you all shudder, plug your noses, and forget about it 20 minutes later because dude, all you can eat crab!