Tired and Hungry

I'm tired of planning, shopping, cooking, serving, and cleaning up for meals. But I'm hungry. And when I just grab something to eat, I end up not feeling so great.

It's too hard [whine detector lights up] to cook and eat and live. I mean and have a life beyond meals. Mealing it up. Especially the more educated I get about food and life. Really, ya know, we oughta eat vegges and fruits at each and every meal. And protein, all the time. Potato chips aren't gonna do it. Toast, even whole grain, is really not enough. Even with a big cuppa strong, creamy coffee. Popcorn isn't gonna do it.

Maybe it would be good if life were just about food. Only food. Only meal after meal after meal of fresh fruit, crisp veggies, savory meats, cozy carbohydrates. Every meal like that. There'd be no break between ending one (washing and putting away the dishes) and beginning the next (washing and chopping the food). Well, the break would be planning the grocery list and shopping. There'd be a lot of shopping.

But I think this notion has merit. Look at all the chefs in the world. Most of them are quite healthy. They never stop coming up with another thing to put in front of you. They must eat more than 3 meals a day. Of course, they get paid to do it.

Coming up with meals is my job, but I have a buncha others too. And they are distracting from the meal focus. Like the children. They like to be paid attention to, or at least supervised. The law requires it. And everyone is always wearing clothes that always have to be gotten into and out of the washer and then into and (here's the tricky part) out of the dryer and back onto the shelves or into the drawers or (all too often) directly onto the body.

Looking after the kids and the house isn't that hard. It can be done. It could be done, if someone less distractable was in charge. But I get hungry! Hungry and not hungry. The most unproductive kind of hungry. The open the fridge and stare and walk away empty-handed over and over kinda hungry. Some people get that kind of hungry when they have recently eaten, and they want something, but they can't say exactly what it is. To those people I say, have a big glass of water. It's a known fact (I love that expression so madly) that no one drinks enough water.

Back to me. I know I'm hungry because I haven't eaten anything for hours or even all day long, and I'm not hungry because nothing sounds good. When I'm really hungry, like I feel completely depleted because I haven't eaten for 8 hours and the last thing I ate was a chocolate oldfashioned donut and coffee, I don't want junk. I need nutrients. I want soup, or a salad, or steak, or sushi....And I have a relentless aversion to cooking for myself. This is when I turn to popcorn. Chopstick popcorn!