You are what you eat?

I hope this saying isn't true because I've gone through some strange eating habits in the past. And if you are what you eat, I'm disturbing and unnatural. I started thinking about my weird food eating the other day when I decided to top off my chocolate chip peanut butter cookie stack (and banana ice cream) with the trio of fries (sweet potato, parmesan, and some spicy one I can't remember the name of) at Tillman's. Because doesn't that just sound like it will all go so well together? For some reason I thought so. Looking back, eating that food in that order wasn't my best call. This was one of those decisions that tasted good at the time...and then my tummy regretted later.

That's usually how my food eating habits go. You see, I love food SO much  that I have problems with the whole "stop eating when you feel like you might explode" concept. I just had a huge dinner but there's free pizza available for the taking...yes please. I'm already stuffed but that dessert looks really yummy...I'll take two, thanks. Maybe I don't need lunch because I'm still full from the ten pancakes I had for breakfast...no way jose.

My proudest and most ridiculous/embarrassing food moments come from my childhood. To this day, my family STILL makes fun of me for how I used to eat two of my favorite fast food meals.

The Flattened Hamburgers at McDonald's

Picture this: An 8-year old girl walks up to the counter at McDonald's. Does she want a Happy Meal? Nope. Make that a double cheeseburger meal with a large order of fries and a Sprite, please. I'm not talking about a cheeseburger with two meat patties. I'm talking two separate burgers. Because clearly, one just wasn't enough to fill out my adolescent frame. But of course, I still wasn't convinced this was enough food.

Cue my stroke of genius. In my little brain, I decided  that if I would flatten the burgers it would increase the surface area. Obviously a larger surface area of burger means more bites for me and more food. I was such a bright child. So every time I went to McDonald's, I went through the process of ordering more food than I could carry and flattening my cheeseburgers. I then had to eat the burgers fast enough so they didn't have time to un-flatten. People judged (as they should have), my family laughed (it was much deserved), and I ate every last bite.

The Mayonnaise Overload

Before I start this story, I should first tell you that I am completely grossed out by mayonnaise now (most likely due to the amount of mayo I consumed as a child). Mayonnaise freaks me out. If it freaks you out, too, this childhood food habit might freak you out (it pains me just to recount). You've been warned.

So, around the same time that I was ordering my flattened hamburgers I was also ordering footlong turkey sub sandwiches from Subway. My ideal sandwich required just 3 ingredients: white bread, turkey, and LOTS of mayonnaise. My conversation with the Subway employee usually went something like this:

"Hi, I'll have a footlong turkey sandwich on white bread."
"Don't you want a kids meal?"  "Are you sure you can eat all that?"  "Did you say a footlong?"
"Yes, I want a footlong please."
"OK...what else do you want on your sandwich?"
"Just mayonnaise. LOTS of mayonnaise."
"Is that enough?"
"A little more please...little more...little more...that's good."

And because that wasn't bad enough, I would beg my mother to let me walk across the parking lot to Rex's Chicken so I could get a side order of mashed potatoes with extra gravy as my side dish. Who needs chips? Clearly having my potatoes in mashed form went so much better with my sandwich than potatoes in chip form (how dull!). I remember one sandwich/mashed potatoes meal in particular. The gracious Subway employee who was making my sandwich offered to WRITE MY NAME IN MAYONNAISE on my sandwich. Yes, this actually happened. She even wrote in cursive. That mental image you've got in your head? The one with the word "Becky" written ornately across pieces of turkey sitting on a stale loaf of white bread? Top it all off with some mashed potatoes and you've got it exactly.

So in retrospect, I guess I have made some sort of progress in my eating habits. I'm still not normal, but at least I'm not as bizarre as my 8-year old self. (Good thing my cottage cheese phase didn't last long either...that one was rough.) You can still judge me, but don't judge the flattened hamburger technique until you've tried it.

Cat-astrophe

Remember the children's book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day? Poor Alexander wakes up one morning with gum in his hair. And so begins the awfulness. No window seat on the bus, reduced to Paul's "3rd best friend", a cavity at the dentist, lima beans for dinner, soap in the eyes at bathtime, least favorite train pajamas...it is certainly a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Alexander decides he wants to move to Australia and escape bad days forever (I can totally relate to that one!) but his mom explains that bad days happen to everyone, even people in Australia. (Though from personal experience I'd like to point out that bad days seem to happen less frequently in Australia.)

Here's a little nugget of information for you: Wikipedia told me that in the Australian and New Zealand versions of the book Alexander wants to move to Timbuktu instead. Just in case you were wondering.

On September 22, I lived through "Becky's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day"

I wake up late, as usual. This is a problem because I had plans to look presentable for Pi Phi composite pictures that afternoon. While I am rushing around trying to get ready, I decide to turn on some music. I don't notice Frankie, my roommate Lisa's cat, scurrying past me as I come back into my room. I approach my computer and notice the screen is blank. Strange since I was just on Facebook a few minutes before. I click the mouse. Nothing happens. Then, I notice where the problem is coming from.

MY COMPUTER IS RESTING IN A LAKE OF WATER. A LAKE!!! IT'S PRACTICALLY FLOATING!

My first thought is that the ceiling is leaking. I look up. No leak. Then my foot kicks something. It's the cup I had sitting on my desk while I was studying the night before. Last  time I saw this cup it was filled with water. It is now empty on the ground. Suddenly my brain starts to click and things fall into place...I left my door open for 2 minutes while I was in the bathroom...I passed Frankie coming out of my room...THE CAT! It's a CAT-astrophe of epic proportions!!!! Picture this: Frankie jumps on my desk and spills  the water directly on top of my computer, leaving everything except for my precious MacBook completely dry.  Just my luck.  Whereas Alexander woke up with gum in his hair, I woke up with a drowned computer.  My terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day has officially begun.

I frantically start screaming for Kendal, my other roommate, and burst into tears. Kendal finds me in a sobbing mess trying to use my duvet cover to soak up my dripping computer. Being the genius she is, Kendal grabs a box of rice from the kitchen and pours it all over every crevice of my computer. Soaking my friend's phone in rice worked once when I spilled a few drops of water on it so surely the same trick can save a computer right? ...right? We leave the rice covered computer in the sunlight for extra drying and cross our fingers. (Hint: it didn't work)

The rest of my day falls apart as follows:
--Lisa's car is parked behind mine and she carpooled to school with her only set of keys. I'm trapped!
--Kendal drives me to the Zoo. I'm late. She's late. And I'm definitely not photo-ready.
--I don't finish half of my to do list at work. The cashier at Hobby Lobby sends me hate vibes when I make her ring up $250 worth of fake grapes. She then gets in an argument with her boss in front of me over the Zoo's non-taxable customer card.
--I open a bag of M&M's at work to make myself feel better. Spill them all. Later that night, I tempt fate again and break into my secret stash of M&M's at home. Spill those too.
--I go to take my Pi Phi composite picture with frizzy hair, minimal make-up, and a sour attitude. I'm sure that picture is going to turn out fantastic.
--To try to salvage my day, I attempt to go to McKinley's for lunch. I've been thinking about eating a strawberry cupcake and chicken salad all day. McKinley's is closed.
--I go with two of my friends to Potbelly's instead and order an Oreo milkshake. While handing me my milkshake, the lady at the register lets one of the precious Oreo cookies slide off the top of the lid. I really wanted to eat that Oreo.
--My shoes give me blisters.
--I drop my phone at least four times on concrete over the course of the day.
--Thief! In my 2:00 class, I realize that I accidentally stole the keys to the Zoo's Honda Element. Since my car is still trapped at my house, I have no way of returning the stolen keys.
--I decide to try a new recipe of "salmon cakes" for dinner.  Disasterous. They fall apart and turn into a mess of crumbles on the frying pan.
--It hits me as I'm about to leave the house that I forgot to drop off something really important for the Zoo that needs to get printed for Zoo Ball. I scurry over to the printers and apologize profusely for delivering something at 5:30 p.m. that needs to be ready the following day. Oops.
--I go to my first career fair and have a freak out because I have no idea what I'm doing. To make matters even worse, I start sweating out my nervousness and produce two lovely armpit sweat stains on my brand new silk blouse. Bet that impressed the potential employers.
--I leave the career fair and it starts pouring rain. I pitifully run to my car (in heels and silk, mind you) and the rain immediately stops once I close my car door. I look up. There is a huge black cloud situated EXACTLY over my running path and nowhere else.
--It starts to rain again the second I open my car door and set foot on my driveway. Typical.
--Did I mention that my computer is completely ruined? R.I.P. Macbook

As you can see it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. But at the end of this day, all I could do was laugh. Surely I've used up enough bad luck to keep me in the clear from bad days for a while now, don't you think? Still haven't ruled out Alexander's idea of moving to Australia, though...

I wish each and every one of you many happy days free from water-logged computers, spilled M&M's, embarrassing armpit stains, and unintentional thievery.