Emily Post's Worst Nightmare

My new transcriptionist t-shirt no longer smells of tortilla.  I took it out of the dryer and it just smelled like...well...like a t-shirt.

Now it smells like banana.

We have some bananas getting ripe, so I made a desserty thing which included mashed banana rolled into a flour tortilla (because I love four tortillas).  When I got to the couch to go to sleep, still wearing the t-shirt (because I sleep in t-shirt and shorts), my hand brushed up against the shirt, and encountered something gooey.  Banana.  I spilled banana down the front of me and didn't even notice.

When I got up to change my shirt I noticed I had also spilled something on my shorts while cooking dinner, so I had to change them too.

For the moment, my clothes are clean.  But it is only a few hours until breakfast.

I cannot believe how sloppy I am with food.  None of those shaky old people at Atria can hold a candle to me when it comes to spillage.   If I'm not spilling things down my front, I'm knocking things over (as I did my mother's water glass today)

The dogs love me as much as dogs do whenever there is a toddler in the house who eats from a high chair.  Sheila and Lizzie stand next to me, with that pathetic "please share your food with me" look in their eyes, but Polly is the smart one.  She sits under the table, by my knees, certain that sooner or later something is going to drop off my fork onto my shirt, and roll its way down to the floor.

It's why I have dogs.  To keep the floor clean of all the stuff I spill on it.

Whenever we go somewhere that serves food on real plates and puts your silverware on cloth napkins, I really try to keep my napkin in my lap to catch the food I will inevitably drop, but my lap is so small, with that big protuberance of a belly resting on it, that 9 times out of 10 by the time I actually have dropped food onto my lap, my napkin is already on the floor, having lost the battle for possession of what lap there is to the belly.

Lunches at Atria almost aways include soup (because their soups are so good) and I almost always wear samples of the soup home with me.  I sometimes crumble crackers into the soup and bits escape, bouncing off the gable to leave samples dotting the black sweat pants I usually wear.

Meals like the Gilbert dinner we had the other night are wonderful because we were at a crab place and so they make a big display of giving you those godawful bibs to wear...but everyone is wearing them, so there is nothing to be embarrassed about and I generally come away from a dinner like that pretty much unscathed...unless, of course, I have made the mistake of having a dessert.  Creme brulee is my favorite dessert because it is pretty much solid with little to fall off onto my chest or into my lap.  Or both.

I don't know how long I've been such a disgraceful eater, but I do remember when I was in Australila, in 2003, Peggy telling me she could teach me not to spill food so much.  Her idea was that I sit closer to the table, with my mouth closer to the bowl or plate.  That would have worked well, but with my luck I'd end up dunking my chin into my meal and have to worry about food spillage on my face instead of my clothes.

I always wanted to envision myself as a sort of elegant lady who could eat at any table and be gracious and ... tidy.  But really, it's best to just send me out into the barn and slop me like the pigs because we'll probaby all look the same when the meal is finished.

---

I went to Atria for lunch today...a fairly solid meal with nothing much to spill, so I didn't embarrass myself ... and during the course of the meal I was telling my mother about finally learning how to shuck corn cleanly off the cob (a technique she had not heard of either).  She kind of moaned and said she hadn't had corn on the cob in forever.  So she's going to come to dinner tomorrow night and we'll have corn on the cob and lamb chops, which she also loves and which she doesn't get at Atria.

I thought about watching a movie too, but I don't want to push it.  I think a meal will be all that she can handle, but I'm thrilled that she wants to actually leave the building and come here for dinner.  This is the lady who was known to have eaten 8 cobs of corn at one sitting when she was a teenager.  That was when she acquired her nickname of "Chubby," which has followed her her entire life.

Day 26:  Happiness is my weekly lunch with my mother