jen larsen dot net » eating and boozing

excuses

jen larsen — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:00:26 +0000

We talk a lot about how much we hate our stove. “I hate this stove,” I say. “This stove is awful,” E says. This stove is a relic, this stove is a piece of crap, this stove is one thousand years old and why, god, why have you cursed us with a stove that makes us drop to our knees, every single day, and weep olive oil tears while we beat at our chicken breasts and wail at the uncaring heavens?

It came with the house, I feel like I should tell you. And the first time I saw it, I thought it was adorable, I should confess. It is so old timey! Look at the adorable uh, knobs! And things! Isn’t it cute the way it uses electricity? Maybe it made me feel like I was back in my childhood, where every single thing in the house was electric, including our baseboard heaters and our boogie woogie woogie.

It may be a beautiful old piece of history (ha ha ha ha ha!) but it is also the worst kitchen stove in the world. Ever. In the history of the stoves and kitchens. The burners are all crooked and heat unevenly, and the oven hasn’t decided yet what temperature 350 degrees is, and it’s small and stupid and we hates it, we do.

We have a home warranty, and we managed to successfully obtain a new dishwasher to replace our antique dishwasher inside of which was an actual, ineffective little dinosaur with a little scrub brush. We thought, let’s get a new stove! A man who was one thousand and four years old came out and looked at it while I hovered over him, desperately trying to convince him that it was broken forever and ever. “It doesn’t heat up! It heats up too much! Sometimes, um, it catches on fire! But sometimes it won’t even start! WE HEARD VOICES COME FROM DEEP WITHIN AND THEN IT FOUNTAINED BLOOD!”

He said, “mm hmm,” and charged us thirty dollars and went away, and we still have the same stove that we have always had, which we are pretty convinced is going to be buried with us and probably also get the best epitaph, too.

This is sad because we want to cook. We want to cook every! We want to cook all. Because—well, have you ever met someone who has eaten fast food for every single meal for weeks on end? Yes, that’s us. Yes, we’ve seen Super-Size Me. Yes, we’re ashamed and our hearts are as fatty and enlarged as our butts.

But the thing is that we cook for a week and then we can’t stand the crooked burners and the weird uneven heat and the teeny little stove and the dark little kitchen and suddenly we’re on the road again, arguing over whether it has been long enough since we’ve eaten Taco Bell that our intestinal microbes have forgiven and forgotten.

We need a stove. I used to think that if I got a windfall of money first I’d pay to have my name lasered into the moon, and then I’d pay off my credit card debt and student loan, and then I’d get a full-body tuck, where all the parts of me that stick out are tucked in. But now I’m thinking a windfall of money is first, going straight up my nose and secondly, going right into a fancy nuclear-powered stove and thirdly, I am getting my name laser-carved into the moon.

the whole weight loss surgery–type journey

jen larsen — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:26:34 +0000

It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten weight loss surgery—five years, I want to say. Maybe six? Maybe less than that. Maybe somewhere in between that. I could get up and find the stack of paper I have, a whole folder’s worth,about as thick as ream of printer paper, of documentation and medical records and instructions and manuals and permission slips and checklists and diagrams and insurance bills and medical bills and leaflets and pamphlets. Weight loss surgery involves a lot of paperwork, and I’ve saved all of it like I’m afraid there’s going to be an open-book test and I’m going to really regret spending an hour shredding everything.

If there were any kind of test about weight loss surgery, though, I’d fail it. I could never really, and I still can’t, describe exactly what they were going to do up inside me, what with the intestines and the re-routing and the cutting out. I know you’re supposed to eat primarily protein, but I don’t remember amounts and grams, and the final word on fat, I don’t think I ever really waited around to hear it. I also still have no idea how to pronounce duodenal. Doo-odd-en-all? Duo-dennal? Something like that. I had it switched. Whatever the fuck that means.

What it boils down to: an uncertain number of years ago an unclear procedure was performed on unconfirmed areas of my digestive system, and subsequently, though I was unsure about and unprepared for what I was supposed to eat and when and where and how and to what extent, I lost a lot of weight. I lost all of the weight. I lost so much weight that people were starting to say Jen, where did your weight go? Do you need us to help you find it? Here is a sandwich. He is very helpful at looking.

Weight loss surgery was a fucking miracle. I lost a lot of weight, no matter what I did. I was free! I was clear! The world was a beautiful place because I was cured! I had no tits, but I was cured!

I wasn’t cured. That’s the secret surprise ending. I still have this candy issue. And I don’t like to exercise. And I’ve gained weight back. Not to the point where I’m fat-by-society’s-bullshit-standards, I think—but the bullshit part is that I feel fat. I am the size I dreamed about being my entire life—this is one hundred percent a true fact. I used to daydream about being a size 12. I thought 12 was such a good number. I have my boobs back; my butt’s always been there. I have curves, I can shop off the rack in most straight-size stores and can still go thrift store shopping and you can’t see my ribs and that’s a good thing.

And holy crap, I hate it. Holy crap, what is wrong with me? I have no idea! I still have no idea how this whole weight loss surgery thing works! I want to go back to the part where I was just happy to have lost all the weight and didn’t have to think about food or dieting or exercise ever again. I want to be peacefully stupid. I want to be happily ignorant. I want to be a size six again, and I want to punch myself in the face for saying that, and then keep punching myself in the face.

I did learn one thing, during this whole weight loss surgery-type journey I’ve been on: if you are not happy with your body and in your skin, it doesn’t matter what size you are and what other people think you look like. There is no objectivity when it comes to being comfortable with your body. There is only you and all your subjectivity and it doesn’t matter if someone tells you that you’re crazy and gorgeous—if you are unhappy with your weight or your size or your muscle tone, you need to do something about it. Diet, exercise, self-actualization and peaceful letting go—whatever works. It’s all good, if it’s healthy.

And yet I still want to punch myself in the face for being unhappy and ungrateful with the body I’ve got. I feel like I’ve been rescued from being 300 pounds—and I’m being churlish and ungracious about it.

I’ll do something about it. I’ll probably start walking the dogs, instead of just standing there and chucking the ball for them. I’ll probably try to eat just a little less of the candy that makes me sick (candy makes me sick? I say wonderingly, every single time I’m sick after eating candy). I’ll probably try to self-actualize. I’ll find a smarter way to spend the next five to six years. Maybe figure out how to pronounce duodenal.

obsession

jen larsen — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:04:53 +0000

For Valentine’s Day, which was very lovely and Valentiney, I made a small feast. I made steak with a rub and a nice salad and roasted garlic mashed potatoes. The steak was excellent, the salad was okay, and the garlic mashed potatoes were the stuff of creamery, buttery, garlicky perfection in a gigantic pot of potatoes and I wanted to put my face in them and fall asleep and maybe asphyxiate in potatoey, garlicky happiness. It’s a fitting end for me.

I started them first, because the garlic had to roast for awhile, and then peeling the potatoes took an age and a half and also a knuckle. I focused on my potatoes as they came together, almost like magic. Garlic-smelling magic. The boiling, the concentrated mashing, the adding the entire stick of butter and the cream, the careful seasoning, the whipping in the soft, roasted cloves, the careful adjustment of seasoning, the struggle with myself to not put my face in the pot–at every stage it came together so beautifully, I nearly cried.

And at every stage of the garlic mashed potato caper, I had to try them. At first just a nibble, but as they got more delicious and buttery, a spoon, another, a third. Spoons lining up next to the stove because tasting my garlic mashed potatoes was a very serious business I take very seriously. Especially when you are serious like me.

When they were finished and staying warm on the stove, as I started to put together the salad and cook up the steaks, I kept sneaking back to the pot of potatoes for another bite, and another, and another. I finished cooking, plated the food–a big slab of meat and two, a tong of salad and then another, a mound of potatoes, a spoonful for me, a mound of potatoes, a spoonful for me and then another spoonful.

I sat down across from E with our plates.

“You have something on your chin,” he said.

“I was saving that for later,” I said.

There was an entire pot of mashed potatoes for later, and I was so grateful. As I generously splotted the stuff on our plates, I kept a careful eye on the level of potato left behind, and was thankful to see that it was still pretty robust and magnificent. I had a whole plate of steak and salad and mashed potatoes waiting for me, but I was already planning how I would have potatoes with corn for breakfast, and potatoes for lunch and then potatoes tomorrow night. I was not enjoying my present potatoes, because I was already hoarding my future potatoes. “Hoarding My Future Potatoes” is also the name of my forthcoming personal investing memoir/how-to.

It’s also a little bit nuts–I mean, I know garlic mashed potatoes are delicious. They are proof that if God existed, he would love us. But the mashed potatoes had taken over my mind. Mashed potatoes, mashed potatoes, mashed potatoes. I could not finish my dinner (I barely started it) because I was so full of mashed potatoes. As we snuggled on the couch watching Mad Men, I was thinking about how I’d have mashed potatoes later when I got hungry. As we drifted off to sleep, when I woke up, as I moved through the day, in the back of my head was the countdown to mashed potatoes, and everything was an obstacle to them–no I can’t go fax something for you because that means I am no where near the mashed potatoes if I need them Yes of course, sweetheart, no problem.

I should make a little sling for my container of mashed potatoes. A mashed potato hat. A potato IV. I should inject mashed potatoes subcutaneously. I should become a mashed potato when I grow up. I should consider that I have some kind of problem–a humorous mashed potato problem, which isn’t as hilarious when I consider all the food that has haunted me, made me tap my foot impatiently when I was delayed in getting back to it, made me sigh gratefully when I was reunited with it, made me worry about what would happen when it was gone.

You try being logical–you can make more, you can buy more, this is not the last food that will ever appear in front of you–your mashed potatoes, the box of cookies, the donuts that appear in the break room and they’re not even very good donuts. But that low-level anxiety remains, and you’re torn between the need to devour immediately and hoard forever and either way, you end up with a stomach ache. Or maybe that’s just me.

photo by ohskylab

on dieting

jen larsen — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 04:56:29 +0000

E is going on a diet. We keep trying to refer to it as “healthy living,” but really it’s a diet, because he thinks that he needs to lose weight. He went to the doctor, got a full physical work up, discussed his health and his options and his goals, and was prescribed the South Beach diet. We went through the cookbook, picked out some meals and went shopping, on Sunday, for many different kinds of meats and all the additional spices required, a whole sack of garlic and a whole bag of onions. We agreed that this whole healthy living thing is very expensive, when the cashier hit us in the face with the grand total.

This is a lifestyle change, and we have been cooking every night since, for a grand total of two nights. I am happy to not be eating fast food every night, even though fast food is fast, and easy, and doesn’t require me to run out of the room sobbing because the big pile of onions is trying to kill me. I am happy that he is trying to take care of his heart and live as long as possible, because I want to keep him for as long as possible. But he is grimly determined not just to improve his cholesterol and make healthy choices–he is on a diet. He is trying to lose weight, a lot of it. He thinks he needs to, and only weight loss will make him happy. I think he is perfect and gorgeous right now, and he does not agree.

Shouldn’t he agree with me? Isn’t my opinion important? Isn’t my opinion, in fact, the important opinion around which all other opinions wither away and die ashamed deaths because they are so much less important? He doesn’t believe me. Or rather, he believes that I believe that he is gorgeous and perfect; he believes that I believe that I love his body, that I find him completely sexy and want to jump him all the time. He believes that I believe he is hot and I like to touch him, but he thinks that probably I am mildly retarded, that I am totally blinded by love and excellent oral sex, that I am completely crazy, that it is adorable, the way I lie to myself.

He doesn’t want to diet. The idea of being on a food plan for the rest of his life, never eating what he wants to eat but what he’s supposed to eat makes him miserable. He is convinced that being on a diet means that he will never be happy, ever again. Then don’t diet, I tell him. You don’t need to diet, I say, continuing to beat my tiny little drum. I have to diet, he says. Well it won’t be miserable forever, right? Because you’ll get into an exercise habit, and then you’ll be able to indulge sometimes, and you don’t have to do it forever. And he says–yes. If I want to stay skinny, I will have to watch what I eat forever, and I hate the idea. I try to argue with him, I tell him to stop, that it isn’t so bad, to cheer up, jeez. And he says, “Honey, why did you get weight-loss surgery?”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you get weight-loss surgery so you wouldn’t have to diet ever again?”

“Well, I have to watch my diet.”

“But you don’t have to be on a diet.”

“But that’s not why I got weight-loss surgery.”

“But that’s one of the reasons. You know it was. You don’t have to diet ever again. I am not going to get weight-loss surgery, so I have to be on a diet. And it sucks.

I’m quiet for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “It does suck. It sucks a lot. You’re right.”

Because I do remember that. It is easy to forget that feeling that everything I put into my mouth was my enemy, that anything I ate could be the possible undoing of all my work to try and lose weight, that feeling of panic that a diet wouldn’t work but had to be strictly, maniacally adhered to or else, that it was an endless cycle of rotten choices, any of which might be my eventual undoing. It was no wonder that diets never worked for me, because I spent the entire time I was on a diet miserable, anxious that I was doing or about to do or had done something wrong and I didn’t even know it. It is one of the great freedoms of this surgery, one of the great beneifts, the happinesses that I couldn’t have predicted but which has changed my life–food doesn’t fill me with fear any more.

As with most of the great benefits, I wish it could have come without the surgery. I wish I could have made peace with my body, my eating habits, with food, all on my own without any outside intervention, but it wasn’t working that way and it might never have.

Maybe E will eventually figure it out, and it will become less dieting and more that healthy lifestyle we keep talking about. Maybe he will find happiness in his body and in food and eating and maybe he will believe that he is gorgeous and perfect and sexy and that I have not hit my head on something or am a compulsive liar. I wish it hard for him, with crossed fingers and a lot of hope, because he is not allowed to get weight-loss surgery.