Purge and Binge (But Not Like That)

Yesterday was uncomfortable. As per usual, I ignored the hunger pangs and starvation shakes in favor of allowing the onset of oh-my-god-feed-me-now-I-am-dying delerium to signal that it was time to get some lunch. I am so smart. S-M-R-T.

I got my usual burrito, but instead of eating half like I usually do, I ate five-sixths of it--and fast--and then spent the rest of the day and night in agony because the burrito, it was larger than my stomach, and if I'd opened my mouth and allowed you a gander down my esophagus, you'd have seen the tail end of a flour tortilla waving about like a flag of surrender from a ship in distress. A ship? Make that a barge. And I was the whale that swallowed that barge.

When I got home from work, I couldn't wait to change into something elastic-waisted or, better yet, tent-like. Unfortunately, having shed my pants and belt, I realized it wasn't the tightness of my clothes that was painful but the tightness of my skin. For the rest of the evening I avoided sharp objects and open flame lest I inadvertently pop myself and go spitting across the room with an audible ppphhhhhtttttbbbbb.

Although I skipped dinner that night, I must confess that in a bout of what could only be called insanity or, hey, maybe just hormones?, I did an awful lot of snacking. The heel of a sourdough baguette. An extra-large cup of hot chocolate. A (small) pile of roasted asparagus. A head-sized bowl of popcorn. I wanted a hard-boiled egg and some cereal too, but I balked when Simon threatened a straightjacket and Hannibal muzzle.

Let's just say I'm beyond ready for my period to start.

And speaking of waiting for things and how much I hate it, can we talk about the scheduling difficulties I've been having? In short, the world is not spinning at my preferred rate of rotation and I would like that situation remedied posthaste. Although I'm most often offended by the passage of time when it involves rush jobs and looming deadlines--things that need to be done now now now because someone else said so--lately I'm more at odds with all the waiting I'm forced to do. The agonizing, interminable, nothing-I-can-do-about-it waiting. Waiting that is only exacerbated by all of those rush jobs and deadlines, of course.

My relationship to time right now reminds me of the two years I worked at Barnes and Noble, when I always knew where the big hand and the little hand were because the dreaded factory-style punch clock in the break room was my dark lord and master. I had exactly thirty minutes for lunch, exactly fifteen for break, and I knew exactly what time I had to leave my house so that I showed up for my shift not a minute too soon or too late. Man, that sucked.

These days my overall schedule is a little more relaxed. Okay, so relaxed it's practically flat-lined. I don't have to be anywhere at any specific time (I seriously can't think of one example), but that still doesn't mean I'm free of the crunch. There are manuscripts to be edited, gardens to be watered and weeded, laundry to be folded, dinners to be made, and yet I find myself spending several hours each day waaaaaaaaiting. Waiting for the elevator, waiting for the BART train, even waiting to use the goddamn bathroom, of all things.

(Re: the elevator. My office building has been under renovation for eleventy billion years. This means the construction guys are constantly hauling concrete and tile and garbage bags full of asbestos up and down in the single elevator. Say I'm on Floor 8. If I want to go to the lobby (to get lunch so I don't expire prematurely?) I have to wait. The elevator will go from Floor 2 to Floor 7 and then down to the basement and then back to Floor 2 and then maybe also Floor Four, just for good measure, before coming all the way back up to Floor 8, to take me to Floor 1. Each of these stops involves several full minutes of dead time while the workers lollygag in the midst of loading or unloading the elevator. The stairs, you say? ARE UNDER CONSTRUCTION. And the whole building smells like beer, although that's beside the point.)

(Re: the BART train. Trains run to and from my destinations every fifteen minutes. I have about a thirty-minute commute. Because of the time spent waiting for my train, however, my thirty-minute commute typically takes an hour with all the waaaaaaaiting. HATE. (See how it rhymes with "wait"? Not an accident.)

(Re: the bathroom. We have two toilet stalls in our women's bathroom at work. On one of them is a sign that reads "Please use other stall until this one is fixed." I ripped off the corner of the sign, sent the sample to a lab for carbon-dating, and learned that it has been there for eleventy billion years. Today I had to wait for two other people to do their business before I could, which, considering that I hold it until I'm near to bursting anyway, was not the most pleasant fifteen minutes of my day. Add to this that after years of not liking asparagus, Simon tried a few stalks from our garden last month and has ever since been buying it in great bundles from the store. Asparagus pee + one toilet (well, one that doesn't harness lightning) = scheduling bathroom usage at home = not cool.)

Perhaps all this waiting means I need to slow down and take a breather. Perhaps it means the world is unjust and I should file a complaint. Perhaps I need to take a nice long nap until spring arrives. And perhaps that explains the pre-hibernation binge and the extra layer of fat filling out my middle.

wrote Leah at 6:38 AM | Comments (11)