Finally. It's lunchtime. My stomach had spent the entire morning splashing around in lukewarm coffee, preparing for this moment: when I would open the refrigerator and extract something delicious to fill its growling hollow.
This has been our habit since as far back as I remember … so far back, perhaps, that the phrase intermittent fasting might have been known as the less celebratory phenomena of binge eating.
No matter. Time and repetition have convinced my body to feel ravenously hungry at noons and threes.
Alas! My stomach turns as I fling the door wide and stare blankly into the harsh light of the Frigidaire. The leftovers have been leftover too long.
I open containers one by one and dump their contents into the trash. There is formality if not ceremony to this weekly ritual.
"Goodbye Thursday of last week. Pasta usually gets better with age, but not spaghetti so old its angel hair grows coarse and green.
So-long, Friday. Fish that smells like it's gone long past the time to cut bait.
Farewell, plastic-wrapped thing that I don't have the gumption to unravel. It may still be good, but the chance that it's gross has better odds. I won't take that wager.
The dog looks at me with Puss in Boots' eyes: big and round and saucer-y ... ready to spill liquid emotion all over the floor.
How could I, in good conscience, feed all this slightly furry food to the bin when she's right there … salivating to recycle our food waste?
I do not waiver. In as much as I won't bet the farm on how far my iron stomach has oxidized, I would likely win the gamble were I to give in, the subsequent liquid spilling forth on the carpet wouldn't be emotive as much as an emetic.
I slip her a biscuit or five. Atoning for the lack of equality we humans have with our resident canines. How patently unfair it must be to watch your hoooomans casually stuff their faces at will. Even the felines have figured out how to thwart the hinged lids on the food bins and gorge on the kibble inside. They are not afraid to tip the thing over and eat to their heart's content. Dogo cares what I think of her. If the cats have any cares about feelings, they are looking inward.
My stomach still mewls.
There must be something I can eat: a slice of bread toasted and slathered in butter; a bowl of doughnut-shaped oats swimming in milk; a banana, still firm and unspotted.
Why does the food not make itself?
Maybe I'll just have some crackers and cheese ... that is if the little mice children haven't already eaten through them. I'll know by the empty saltines sleeve hanging from the weightless package in the cupboard, and the tell-tale discoloration on the block of cheddar left in the drawer, unwrapped.
We do not live by crumbs alone.
No. On days like these, we live on ice cream.
Gummy-edge, freezer-burned vanilla … and a tiny ribbon of chocolate lining the seam of the carton where it had once known the touch of strawberry.
I hope there's still antibacterial cream left for when I require unguents for the knuckle graze I get from planning (unwisely) to lift a full box.
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