Food!

Because my sister told me yesterday that my blog was depressing (and I immediately disagreed and scrolled down the page pointing out the Happy Board entry, and the dentist entry, and the roommates entry, and insisting that I always try to end even my more contemplative posts on a positive note), I have made a special effort to think of good things to write about today.

Interestingly, everything I thought of had to do with food. I guess this might be worrisome if all the food was, say, chocolate, because that might imply that I am having a very bad week. Not that I don't like chocolate (I had a very enjoyable conversation with Ambrosia a little while back about our mutual sugar addictions), but it's interesting to think that the type of food that gives me the most pleasure at a given time may be a reflection of my overall emotional well-being. I actually don't think this is entirely true because I can be in the best of moods and still find great joy in a cookie dough Blizzard from Dairy Queen. But I would venture to say that when I am in the worst of moods I don't tend to find happiness in a salad. Therefore, because I have three nice Healthy Food Moments to talk about, I must be doing okay :).

On Tuesday I had my last of four dentist appointments in a period of three weeks. I have to admit that by Tuesday I was not as enamored with the the whole idea of dentists as I was the first time. The actual process of getting a cavity filled is relatively painless, but the aftermath is not particularly fun. About noon I was sitting rather glumly in my office trying to think of what in the world I might want to eat for lunch given that half of my mouth could neither feel nor taste any food that I might put inside it. Peanut butter sandwiches (my lunch of choice) are no fun at all post-novocaine, as I'd discovered the previous week. I then had the brilliant idea of buying myself a Jamba Juice. I don't eat those very often, but they're relatively healthy and filling (if expensive), and very conveniently sucked through a straw that can be placed in such away that the juice completely bypasses any of the numbness.

That's not the happy food moment, though. The happy food moment is that as I wandered over to the Wilkinson Center I just happened to run into my little sister and her roommate eating their own lunches on the grass, and when I mentioned that I was on my way to buy a Jamba Juice because it was the only thing I could eat at the moment, my sister almost immediately offered to buy it for me. Oh, I will miss my sister when I move to Michigan. And not just for her Dining Plus.

The second happy food moment was yesterday. This has kind of been a bad lunch week, I guess, because all the way home I racked my mind to think of anything in my cupboard that sounded even remotely appealing. I was out of bread, sick of leftovers, and unenthusiastic about any of the food I know I should be using up before I leave at the end of the month. But when I walked in the door, I found a large pot of lentil soup cooling on the stove and a note from my roommate on the whiteboard telling me to help myself. I don't know if she realizes how happy that made me feel.

And the third happy food moment was when Petra cornered me at the Board party last night and informed me that someone had just unloaded a large quantity of oatmeal on her, that she didn't like oatmeal, that she remembered me writing a Board answer recently about how much I love oatmeal, and that she had brought it all in a plastic grocery bag to give to me. Hooray! Free oatmeal! And someone was thinking of me, and that makes me happy.