Just One of Those Days

You know the days I’m talking about. You fell asleep under a pile of clean laundry you didn’t have time to fold. With makeup on, no less. So you wake up looking like the before shot of a Proactiv commercial.

Maybe you’re like me and ate a lifetime supply of peanut butter M&M’s before calling it a night. So you are hardly cartwheeling out of bed like your nimble, former-life self.

Your baby is teething. Again.

It’s humid and rainy out. Awesome.

On one of those days..,

If you were to meet the you that wrote What’s the Happiest Blood Type? B positive! you would, at the very least, karate chop her in the throat. Just a really light, swift one that she might not even feel. And probably when she’s looking away, so you can act like it was an accident. A weird reflex or something. But then, since it’s one of those days, you probably wouldn’t even feel better for your stealthful act of gingerly-delivered vengeance. You’d feel guilty and ashamed for even thinking about hurting that type A, really attractive, pain-in-the-ass go-getter.

You’re an asshole. Everyone’s an asshole. On one of those days.

Anyway…

After I fed the little lord his breakfast this morning, I finally succumbed to the sight of food caked into the creases of his high chair. Until now I’d been trying to keep it my peripheral vision only (if you don’t look directly at it, it’s not really there). But effin’ yuck, b’y.

So obviously the only answer is to lug the whole thing into the shower and let it blast some hot water on that shit, am I right? Seemed to be working like a charm.

Now the chair is back in the kitchen slow-leaking a greenish-brown ooze from each leg. Which is awesome.

Anyway…

So I waited too long to eat breakfast. Powerful leaders who waited too long to eat breakfast have directly or indirectly caused some of history’s greatest tragedies. I made that up but I bet it’s true.

By the time you feed/clean/entertain the baby, you’ve passed that window of opportunity to turn “one of those days” into “a nice little Tuesday, actually”. Your blood sugar has officially dropped below the critical 4mmol/L which makes you, medically speaking, an asshole.

The quickest thing to grab happened to be one of my sister’s “healthy cookies” from the freezer. Now let me clarify something: they are effing delicious. Big seedy pucks of nutritious, good stuff. Every kind of seed known to man interspersed with the nectar of rare Polynesian health flowers and held together with berries that make you look ten years younger and seven pounds thinner within minutes of eating them. I’m not sure of the specifics but suffice to say they are uber healthy.

But have you ever eaten something uber healthy when your stomach is aching with hunger; just raw and throbbing with its own emptiness? That’s right, it feels like eating a pack of staples.

[Side note: Growing up I always got quite stomach sick if I ate an apple when I was hungry. One time I was skiing with friends. I was maybe twelve or thirteen. The boy I was in love with was sitting with us in the lodge during lunch. He was eating an apple. I’m not sure if he asked me if I wanted a bite, or if I was just staring at him so intently I convinced myself he wanted to discuss apples. Also, I talk when I’m nervous. Ad nauseum.

I may have wanted to say “apples make me wanna puke”. Or maybe “apples make me sick”. But instead, I looked (too deeply) into his beautiful eyes and said, “apples make me wanna pisssssss”. Just like that, lingering on the ‘s’ by my own horror. Apples make me wanna pisssssss.]

Anyway, healthy food? Good. But on an empty stomach? Baaaad. I lost track of how many Tums I consumed.

In an act of self-redemption for letting my morning go sour, I invested myself in making a healthy supper for the fam. I even called mom to ask for her recipe for “quinoa pizza crust” (you just throw in an egg and some cheese but still…I made a phone call!).

I figured I’d feed the baby something way less delicious like pureed kale and salmon with infant cereal (which goes in exactly as it comes out, in texture and in aroma) and save the big she-bang for the “grown-ups”.

By the time I got the wee one to bed and started making the quinoa, my stomach was eating itself.

[Have I mentioned that I’m always hungry?]

I finished it, added the goddamned egg and cheese, mixed it the fuck together (sorry for the string of obscenities; this is just how I was narrating it in my head as I fought the urge to collapse on the kitchen floor), pressed it into a glass baking dish and baked it for twenty, God-forsaken minutes.

Then, I grated the cheese and chopped vegetables with the speed and pizazz of a narcoleptic, newborn sloth. In the process I ate too many olives which added to my hunger pangs the sensation of paint-thinner creeping up (and dissolving) my esophagus.

To make the slow process less painful, I mixed in a (pint) glass of red wine. Which, clearly, is great for both an empty stomach and acid reflux. Also, I’m fairly certain I’m hammered.

I finally decorated the be-otch, set the timer for another twenty minutes and sat down with another glass of wine. Because, ya know…

It was a painful twenty. I’ve resolved to avoid Facebook after 7pm and I find something really sad about channel surfing. So I just sat on the couch. In silence. With my thoughts and my hunger. Mostly my thoughts about my hunger. Trying not to count the minutes but counting them anyway…

Ding! The sweetest sound.

I may have had the oven mitts already on as I bolted (adrenaline surged) to the kitchen.

To see my dinner. Still cold. Still sitting atop the stove. The hot oven empty.

The next twenty minutes of food actually cooking were like a scene from Castaway. I’ve never seen the movie but I’m pretty sure the stress and hunger and desperation would have made me befriend a volleyball. If I had a volleyball.

[i don’t even have a volleyball?! Waaaaaah! It’s one of those days.]

I may have openly wept, but just briefly. A single wail. Like an infant unsure of what he’s upset about.

Ding! Finally. Here she is.

As I gazed upon the gluten-free miracle, it occurred to me: it’s only 7:30. J has basketball tonight. Until 9. And I (clearly delusionally) promised I’d wait for him to eat. It’s kind of (yet another) new year’s resolution.

So here I sit (8:24pm) with another glass of wine (how did that get there?) blindly eating chocolate chip cookies that came with a tea set dad gave me for Christmas. If my list of (lenient and open to interpretation) new year’s resolutions could speak, she’d sound like Tiny Fey and say, “Fuck yeah, ya are!”.

Content. Finally.

Normoglycemia is sexy. And tomorrow’s another day. God willing.