Off the Map

It's been almost a week now and this is a follow up to the "Aftermath" post about food, cooking and me. With concentrated effort, I have successfully, purchased pre-made meals, saved money and lost a pound or two.

The first leg of this "plan" involved purchasing two Pasadena salads from Trader Joe's plus two small bottles of chocolate milk, a pound (.50 k) of strawberries and a bag of Pretzel Thins. This was supplemented by a Subway sandwich sliced into 3 sections. I also hard-boiled half a dozen eggs. I wound up eating "little" meals throughout the day such as a hard-boiled egg, or half a glass of chocolate milk or a few strawberries. If I was a little hungrier, I might eat one of the Subway sections or half of a salad.

This seemed to work well for 3 days so I repeated it with the TJ's salads, but instead of a Subway sandwich, I visited the deli at Albertson's and bought half a pound each of potato salad, Neptune salad, coleslaw and sliced Genoa salami. While there, I picked up a dozen little dinner rolls. I made a few small sandwiches from the rolls, salami and turkey (that I had at home) and continued with the same little meals for 3 more days.

Bottom line is that I feel better, didn't waste money or food, and wasn't starving at 9 p.m.! The surprising thing is that it actually cost less money than I normally spend and took very little effort once I had a "plan". I know this probably sounds utterly lame to you. Maybe I can best describe it by saying that sometimes you find yourself in an unknown land, and finally realize that you really need a map to figure out where you're going because the routes you knew and have taken in the past aren't available to you any more.

That's sort of what's happening in my life. My world after divorce is totally different. Nothing is the same. I'm essentially starting over from the beginning...again, and I think I finally stopped fighting it, or at least it seems that way at the moment. It's not what I want or wanted, it just is what it is.

Anyhow, so far, the kitchen experiment/solution seems to be working. Now I have to think of a path for cleaning up the house and getting rid of stuff. But I can't go there today, because just thinking of it really makes me feel like crawling back to bed and I wanted to enjoy this last week's success and build on it. So I'll save the house and my clutter for another day while I revel in the delight of getting a handle on eating and "cooking".