My daily posts got interrupted for a couple days by a trip back to the Midwest. I’m from a tiny small town in the corn belt of Illinois, and my mom just had some pretty heavy duty surgery, so I traveled by plane, train, and automobile (OK, no train, but whatever) back to my little town so that I can nag mom into doing her rehabilitation exercises. Between the traveling and hospital stuff, this is the first chance I’ve had to write.
Of course, since my bikes are back in California, there’s no way I’m getting out for a ride this weekend either… so why not just go completely overboard, yes?
This morning, while the surgery was happening, I went out to breakfast with my brother and my aunt. As for where we ate, I’m not mentioning the name of the place, but it’s a chain restaurant that they have in most of the decent sized towns and almost everything they serve is bad for you. It’s the kind of place with country folk art on the walls and extra wide chairs to accommodate their clientele. It’s the kind of place where you can get pancakes at four in the afternoon or pie first thing in the morning.
It’s been a long while since I’ve had biscuits and gravy, and the Midwest does biscuits and gravy really well, so that’s what I looked for on the menu. What I found was well beyond what I’d could have imagined; two sausage biscuit sandwiches covered in sausage gravy with eggs, bacon, and hash browns. To drink? Coffee and orange juice. All this carbohydrate-and-fat-laden goodness set me back approximately ten bucks, so you know it had to be good, right?
Before I ate it, I sent a picture message to my wife so she could cringe at the idea of my eating almost a day’s worth of calories in one sitting. Today, the diet was on break.
It actually tasted pretty good. Well, to be fair, it’s really hard to screw up bacon, eggs, and hash browns, but the gravy was quite tasty, the sausage was just greasy enough but not too greasy, and the biscuits, while not perfectly fluffy and flaky, were better than most. I finished the whole meal… cleaned my plate like a good boy.
That meal happened at about 10:30am. As for the rest of the day, I skipped lunch, had no snacks, and ate a normal sized portion of spaghetti for dinner at about 6:00pm, more out of wanting the taste of the spaghetti than actual hunger. It’s 10:01pm right now and I feel like my stomach is going to burst. It’s as if my lower digestive system has gone on strike and the mashed up starches have started an Occupy movement in my bowels.
No. Really. I’m not exaggerating. I’m imagining that this is what pregnancy must feel like. My belly feels more like an obligation than anatomy. Like I’ve committed myself to carrying a sack of wet flour around inside my gut. Bleh.
If it weren’t 38F degrees outside I might be tempted to go for a run. Unfortunately, like a dimwit, the exercise clothes I brought consist of a pair of shorts and a Dri-Fit tee shirt. Doh! Oh well. Lesson learned… until my next trip back here, that is.
