A Loud, Sad Trombone

When I decided to quit smoking, I had numerous false starts.  I eventually did give up the habit, though, and in time, my hair smelled great, as a rule.

I say that in a sad attempt to make myself smell great now, because... man, I'm stinking at this.

DAYS 2 AND THREE, in which our heroine treats food like heroin.

It all started with a messy-haired squeak and a mad-dash hunt for my car keys on Thursday morning. Because I was so charmingly late to get out the door for work, I left my prepped food in the refrigerator and realized it about ten minutes into my commute.  Womp-Womp.

So I'm starving and working and trying to debate whether it's worse to starve or just go ahead and eat something cheap and forgive myself for one day, when I decide that some sugar and caffeine will help clear my head.  Swipe that card for a coke can, yeah!  Hello, Darkness, my old friend...

Coke is my coffee.

I don't drink coffee for one very simple reason.  I don't drink coffee because I don't like to pay people to punch me in the stomach, put a lit match to my chest, and then chase me to the toilet.   I have kinks, but that's not one of them.

So Coke is a delicious, caramel-citrus caffeine delivery system, and I hate that it's so full of sugar, but most of the diet sodas are bullshit.  Tea works, and I keep saying I will switch over, but tea doesn't drop from a machine at the perfect temperature and get all seductively prickly on my tongue.  (oh. huh. there's that kink, maybe.)

Work was slow, with few customers coming in, and I realized I had a weird mid-shift eoffice so I needed to take lunch early.  (You don't work at my job, so just understand that this was less than ideal and meant that I had to be logged into phones at a normal lunch hour.)  I felt stressed and disappointed and "fuggit," so I drove two blocks down the road to Sonic.

I don't. even. like. Sonic.

I hilariously decided that ordering off the kids menu would be less gluttonous, so I asked for a junior DOUBLE cheeseburger.   Let that sink in.

no, I don't know why I have strange alien imprints on my legs. maybe I'm being brainwashed, and none of this is my fault. 

I feel like this is what a six year old eats when it's Dad's weekend. When we tell him in a brat voice that Mommy said we are supposed to eat vegetables, he says we can tell her we did because ketchup and pickle.  Then we go to WalMart and pick out packs of Pokemon cards as a reward for not telling Mommy about his new friend, Mistie.   Then at night on a sour-laundry scented pillow, it kind of tastes like vomit in the back of our throats, because Daddy doesn't remember to make us "brusht yer teeth" and even though we were glad about it at first, now we feel guilty and weird and wish we were home where our cat Kool-Aid sleeps in the bed with us.

This got depressing.

That burger.  Was depressing. 

I ate it with large tater tots and a large... guess what... Coke.

And the thing is, I didn't think any of that was a problem until I was done eating.  This is the psychology of a part-time stupid person.  I am rational most of the time, but something else takes over when I'm hungry. 

At home, for dinner, I did eat my previously prepped veggie/chicken dish, and I drank a Propel zero.  I still think we can clearly call this day an embarrassment.  Fortunately, "tomorrow (was) another day."

... Except it really wasn't.

I woke up to find a text pop up on my teen son's phone that meant he was going to be in deep trouble.

My son is a good kid, and one who very, very seldom commits even the most normal age-appropriate transgressions.  That said, when he screws up, he does it right.  I read the text where it appeared on the bathroom counter, sighed deeply, picked up the phone to read what extent of crap I was paying for him to carry out behind my back, saw enough, and then continued to get ready for work.   Once finished, I stepped into his room, flipped the light on, and said in a calm but deadly voice he rarely hears, "Get up.  Put your shoes on.  You're coming with me."

I didn't really have to say much.  He looked at me with shock and confusion, and I just gave him a look to convey that I wasn't kidding.  "We need to go now.  Take the dog out and hurry."

He complied, and when we got in the car, he saw his phone in my hand.  He sat up a little straighter.

We began to talk.

It was a talk.

Very heavy on the after-school special tone.  He sighed a lot and cried some, in embarrassment and guilt and frustration.  I might have done the same.   I threatened to get him one of those toddler type phones that only call 911 and your mommy.  I told him he was going to be bored all day, because I couldn't leave him alone without a phone or some way to be reached in an emergency, but I also saw that he couldn't be trusted with the phone I pay for to be used in such situations.

Pretty good/awful, right?  I'm wingin' this parenting thing, just like everyone else.  Fortunately, my son and I are very close, and I know what type of consequence tends to work with him.

We continued to talk, and nobody yelled.  He raised his voice once, and I said, "I understand you have feelings, and I don't mind if you're mad.  At yourself, at the situation, maybe even me.  You get to feel how you feel.  But don't you disrespect me right now by yelling at me."   He apologized.  He asked if he could sit in the car and think, while I went into work.  I said yes.  I bought him a soda from the machine, so what the hell, I bought myself one too.

What a weird day!

At lunch, I took him to a Chinese place for more discussion.  I let him pick up the tab.  We ate some absolutely VILE Kung Pao chicken and decent wonton soup.  It was an unintentional addition to my kid's punishment. He said he could barely choke any of it down, he was so upset, and it was so nasty.  I felt similarly.

i realize you're more interested in what he had done than in some ugly lunch choice, but you could probably guess close enough. he's fifteen. he has a "girlfriend."

Later in the day, our moving truck finally came.  We've been here for weeks and weeks, basically camping in our new apartment, and the moving thing was a disaster.  Long story short, the company defrauded us and robbed us for thousands.  If you look them up online, you either see 5 star reviews (which are clearly fake, if you do deeper digging) or brutal 1 star reviews lamenting the same problems we had.  I don't want to talk about that right now, but we have been advised to sue.  That's how bad.

So when I got home from work, my roommate/bff  (who has asked to be referred to as Shasta D. Zasta like his drag name) and I were working on frowning at boxes.  I was stressed out to the gills from the issue with my son and the issue with the moving truck, so I set about eating in the kitchen.  

What.  It was dinner time.

I ate some tuna salad and gluten-free crackers (why? I ate gluten all through the day), I ate a Lean Cuisine gluten free chicken and rice meal (hahaha), I ate a king size pack of Reeses peanut butter cups, and I washed it down with ginger ale.  When the doofus squad packing men left our apartment, we rolled up our sleeves and started unpacking shattered glasses.  My favorite Bambi mug, which has survived no fewer than nine moves, was in a million tiny pieces. There were some tears.

I keep reminding myself that I did eventually quit smoking.

Several false starts.  But eventually I did give it up.  I did what I set out to do.

I am going to share this blog now with those of you who (are masochists) very kindly volunteered to encourage me or mock me or look to me for encouragement.  I will do better.  I sure do hope so.