Last night, twelve days into the Thirty Day Sugar-Free dare, the temptation was too much for me. I crumbled for a blackberry cobbler.

In my defense, it was our Fifteenth Wedding Anniversary. A gal should be able to savor something sweet on that occasion. But my competitive side didn’t want to break the streak.

“Why didn’t we make an exception?” I lamented, like we did for our niece’s upcoming Bat Mitzvah, which falls within our thirty days, and which will feature a chocolate fountain and a candy bar, to name a few of the temptations we won’t have to miss thanks to our planning in advance. Ever the lawyer, I felt that an explicit exception would have blessed this breach.

Proving himself (as he often does) to occupy the pinnacle of the Best Husbands On Earth list, Christopher said, “Of course there’s an Anniversary Exception. It’s implicit!”

I wasn’t convinced. It’s only thirty days, after all, and we are nearly halfway there. Resisting ice cream, chocolate, cookies and cake hasn’t been as hard as I had thought it would be. Each day that passes, I have I craved the big-time sweets less.

(I can resist this, but I’d eat a graham cracker in a heartbeat. Go figure.) The dessert menu at Joe’s Restaurant, where we had enjoyed our anniversary dinner, didn’t even tempt us. White chocolate? Coconut? Yuck.

The day before, my grandmother had looked at my like I was the master of the obvious when I told her about our dare. “Sugar?! It’s poison!” she shouted in the dining room at the “old folks home” (her phrase, I remind you, not mine). “Every night I see these people eat ice cream, and pour SUGAR into their tea. And it says right there on the package, in black letters: SUGAR!” (I did not say, as you are probably thinking as well, that if I make it to the old folks home, I’m damn well eating anything I please.)

Back to last night’s battle between my craving and my promise. After rejecting Joe’s Restaurant’s desserts, we walked down Abbott Kinney. I knew what was waiting for me: Gjelina To Go, source of my most recent pie-fantasy. After one or two passes by its window, where the menu boasted blackberry cobbler, I made a decision: I would regret not having that cobbler more than I would regret having it.  And even though it turned out to be a tart plum biscuit instead, it was worth it.

At least it was fruit.

Christopher is the only one of us with a clean record on this dare. Which is fair, since it was his bright idea.

But all of us have benefited. I’ve had one dessert in twelve days. Even our kids, who celebrated our anniversary with their own desserts at dinner with Grandma Fran, brought half home in a to-go box. That unprecedented experience (not finishing dessert??) — and the fact that neither Christopher nor I finished their treats while they were sleeping — shows that our twelve-days of less sugar has had a positive impact on all of us already.

I’m joining him back on the wagon today for the rest of the ride…at least that’s my explicit plan.