so viel Arme!

Those who have the privilege to know me well know that I do not deal well with being hungry. Call me high maintenance or borderline hypoglycemic, but I get a little ornery. Today, during my break at the Writing Center, I decided to head to the Student Center to procure some lunch. For some dimwitted reason, they closed the Subway, ruling out one of my choices. You see, I'm still dieting - or eating healthy, rather. So, I got in line for the delicious sandwich man, but I was about the eighth person in line, and the sandwich man has a tendency to take his time, to put it lightly. (And anyways, I'm sure the delicious sandwiches are loaded in calories and fat as well, as he spreads about a pound of butter on each). I then left said long line to go to McDonald's and order a Southwest Salad (only about 300 calories, and delicious), but they're out of them. The rest of their salads and dressings are loaded in calories and fat, and not nearly as tasty. The soup du jour at the Student Center looked unpromising, and everything else was rather unhealthy (Chinese food, the rest of the McDonald's menu, etc.)... so now I'm hungry. Mike won't deliver me food. Perhaps I should give him a break, as he works an average of 13 hours a day, but how many times did I serve as his personal delivery girl, bringing him all sorts of delicious lunches from Arby's and Subway? I rest my case.

(Although I swore I would mainly stick to discussing books on this here blog, I have obviously strayed a bit. I do not intend to swing back to the prescribed topic, but instead, continue the discussion of food.)

It's been difficult to diet, but I have lost a little weight, and would like to keep up my good habits. I really haven't been eating out that much, whereas before I was nearly dependent upon take-out. But one area I still need to work on is my cooking. I am a good cook when I have a recipe to follow and I buy my ingredients ahead of time with a careful plan. However, it is really difficult for me to look at a pantry full of food and throw something edible together. So, I end up spending way too much money on food to make trips to the store for random ingredients, and I end up with a pantry full of food with (seemingly) no foreseeable options. I guess I thought that this skills were somewhat inherent - like a lot of skills I thought would come with 'adulthood.' As if someone would come along and hand me my Adult Hat, and I would magically have the abilities to cook, balance a checkbook (still haven't mastered that - more on that in a bit), and make life decisions. But 23 years have passed and that Adult Hat has yet to make its way into my hands. And I still haven't gotten any goddamn lunch yet, either. But I have successfully manoeuvered my bills in order to coincide with my way, WAY late paycheck this summer. So I'm getting there. And I didn't even cry!

Back to the balancing of the checkbook. I was making a simple calculation in my head this morning, and I realized how ass-backwards wrong I was. I got an email from Heartland Blood Center, an organization that collects blood donations/hounds people like me with type O negative blood, offering a gift certificate for $11 to Oberweis Dairy for donating blood over the Fourth of July weekend. For those of you not from the western Chicago suburbs, Oberweis produces milk, ice cream, and other delicious (yet expensive) dairy products; they also run a chain of ice cream shops with treats costing more than minimum wage a pop. In any case, I was delighted to see the opportunity to get a gift certificate to the glorious ice cream shop, so I tried to calculate the days between my last blood donation and the upcoming weekend. It is recommended that a span of 56 days elapses before the next donation occurs, and I don't even know WHY I possibly thought it would be 56 days or more, as I last gave blood during a break at the Writing Center. Keep in mind, the Writing Center opened June 9th, which could be the earliest possible date for my last donation. As it is not even July 9th, there is no way that 30 days could have even passed, let alone 56. And I don't really know why I delineated this whole 'thinking' process... it just boggles my mind how ridiculous I can be. I never said logic and/or mathematics were my strong suits.

To round out the fat girl blog, I look forward to visiting home this weekend not only to see my family and friends, but to experience Chicago food once again - specifically, Portillo's. And for those of you who are not familiar with Portillo's, you are truly deprived. Yum.