We went to dinner together. I’d been good all day and wasn’t going to ruin it on a restaurant dinner. I’d not eaten anything remotely carbohydrate looking so far, and the food that did make it to my mouth was appropriately healthy. I wasn’t going to ruin my gastronomically successful day with one meal, even if it was on a date.
My Captain had not eaten anything but peanut m & ms all day. Seriously. When I asked him if he had eaten anything today, he said, “Yes. M&M’s.” As if that answer was at all normal or socially accepted.
Have I mentioned he can wear the same jeans he wore in high school?
She came to take our orders. My Captain ordered a cream and butter laden pasta dish, and I an Asian Salad…replete with cabbage and carrots and other crunchy, yet in all otherways unsatisfying, vegetables.
Oh, and grilled chicken. Not breaded. Not fried. Plain. Old. Grilled.
It was very sad.
But I did it! I had committed my order to her and felt superior to my fatter self of yesterday.
We waited. I drank as much iced tea as I could to pre-load my belly. And then it came.
This mountain. MOUNTAIN. of Cabbage. Napa Cabbage is what they called it. That family sized serving bowl had to be carrying at least one entire head of cabbage.
I poured out the meager little plastic cup of salad dressing…the kind that has that horrendous “Oh, I’m sweet like sugar except that I have this nasty aftertaste” dressing. I stirred it violently, attempting to get SOME of that dressing on every piece of tasteless crunch I could.
And then, I dug in.
I won’t lie to you. It took me a while. There was a lot of chewing, by necessity. There was no physical way to wolf this salad down. There was no way to get the suffering over quickly. I had to endure every last bland, unsatisfying bit of it.
It was hell. HELL, I tell you!
I couldn’t take it another moment! So, after we paid the check and got up, I demanded to be taken to the bakery nearby for a chocolate eclair.
What? I’m only human.
That eclair was The Bomb.
Mama Boe 