Christmas elicits a variety of reactions. There are those seemingly born for Christmastime. There are those seemingly born to bitch about those first people. Some get depressed, others find their inner joy. Some take the break to enjoy a personal reboot of sorts. Others stress themselves out more than at other times of year. There’s no one reaction.
I eat carbs. Yes, of course, I decorate a tree, I get into gift getting, and I coax my animals with heavy foods into pictures in front of the tree. I watch Christmas movies. I do all that stuff. But what I do most – and what I look forward to most – is that Christmas is the carb-eating season.
So, two weeks ago, when I announced into the flat ‘it’s time to cheat!’ Burke did give me an arch-eyebrowed look (that might melt one’s kidney). I quickly explained that I meant cheat on our healthy diet. Nota bene: my explanation was not quick enough to get me out of the Dog House.
We do live a reasonably healthy lifestyle. Sure, a bowl of cereal is snuck throughout the week. Beer’s presence in my life is there more than it should be. And what would life be without cheese? But during the week we typically eat a vegetarian diet, very little bread, and lots of vegetables. On the weekends we eat meat (moderately) and carbohydrates. When I wake up on Saturday morning, it is indeed Sammich o’clock.
But in late December, the short days, the dark, the plummeting temperatures, and the festive foods converge to make Christmas a time that begs a human to eat his weight in bread and pasta. And Christmas needn’t have begged, but rather nudge me in the general direction of cheese. And so for two weeks I plan and begin ordering a cavalcade of treats and foods: pasta, cheese – so much cheese, loafs of bread, ground beef (as a palate cleanser), cookies, cookies, along with a thousand other bits to bring together a Christmas feast.
It is Christmas today. I am sitting, half slinking on the couch. I have eaten a day’s worth of carbs and then started today with a morning’s worth of carbs. My elastic waistband isn’t elastic enough. In fact, it’s giving a bad name to elastic everywhere. Heartburn is rising in my chest and throat. Nevertheless, I have taken four journeys to my kitchen 10 feet away. Each time I have come back with a plate of food that is making me more uncomfortable by the moment. But, you know, tis the season.
Have I learned my lesson?
Fat chance, he says, with hindsight pun intended.
I am glancing at the half-eaten (half-uneaten for you psychopathic optimists) baking dish of mac-and-cheese and I am moaning towards it and reaching my chubby fingered hand towards it. I figure if The Force is going to work one time in my life, this would be the time. It does not move. Thus, I will be forced to engage in another pilgrimage. And then another. And then probably another.
Ho Ho Ho
