Why I will l not watch the Hunger Games

Hunger is life changing. When you have felt true hunger in your life it never leaves you. It clings to you like a bad memory of food poisoning that repels you from the food culprit that led to your illness. However, in this case, the reverse happens: you are instead drawn to food because of your past experience with hunger.

Hunger haunts you even in those innocuous moments when you don’t have time to eat breakfast, and your mind starts to freak out on you simply because you are hungry. Your freak out is not due to low blood sugar. The feeling of hunger takes you back to that time when you and your two sisters had to share a small frozen pizza between the three of you, and there was nothing else to eat. Hunger takes you back to searching in vain for something to eat while your mother holed up in her room with the blinds drawn, the lights out, and the door closed. At 6 years old your resourcefulness could only take you so far.

But, in fact, you were resourceful. You learned that watermelon was served during the summer lunch program, but, your understanding was that you needed to be in summer school in order to get a free lunch. So, you showed up to school one day, and declared that you needed summer school. You were so persistent they didn’t know what to do with you so they let you read books all day and play with the felt board. You were fine with that arrangement.

Then there was the time you learned how to make deviled eggs on the television show 3-2-1 Contact. You were thrilled beyond belief because this was something you and your sister could make on the nights your mother holed up in her room, which was most nights.

Your reactions around food are not muted, nor are they discreet. God help the person that tries to start a conversation with you while you are holding your tuna melt that you just purchased. You have a short capacity for waiting to eat something once it’s in your hands ready for consumption. Your brain cannot fathom ignoring a hot tuna melt in your hand for a two minute conversation.

You do know that you are no longer in danger of going hungry, but your brain is mixed up on this issue. Part of your brain knows that you have a good job, and you can feed yourself now as an adult, but another part of your brain still lives in that scary place called hunger. So, why would you want to see a movie depicting this feeling … this horrifying feeling likely not intimately known by most movie goers of The Hunger Games?

For pizza’s sake

Hi guys,

It’s Letty here! Beatriz is letting me blog today on here. I am so happy to blog for you guys.

We went to my favorite store for pizza today. We tried going yesterday but they ran out of pizza slices. I was mad cause there was no pizza for me. I want to reserve pizza slices but Beatriz says we can’t reserve slices. That’s dumb that we can’t reserve slices.

But today there was pizza!

pizzaFor pizza’s sake! They only had two slices! But I still took them! They had red peppers and onions in them, and the crust was not too crunchy.

Then I had to have veggies. Blah!

kaleIt’s kale with squash and stuff. It was okay.

The table had nice flowers.

flowers coopI wanted to take the flowers home, but Beatriz said that they weren’t for taking. So I smelled them. But I guess I smelled them too long cause Beatriz said I needed to put them down. Oh well.

I had pizza and I got to look at flowers today. It was a good day.

Bye everybody!



The chase for mini beef wellingtons

Mini Beef Wellingtons

Mini Beef Wellingtons

I know from past experience if I’m going to a function with a cocktail hour with hors d’oeuvres prior to eating a meal I should be prepared, and by “prepared” I mean being sure I’ve eaten enough so that I’m not starving by the time I get to the function.

That plan did not come to fruition yesterday.

Despite my best efforts with planning my eating, things did not go as smoothly as I hoped, and I wound up showing up at an evening work event ravenously hungry. I walked in to find a beautiful set up on several tables with creamy, beautiful cheese fondue, teriyaki chicken, vegetable crudites, sliced cheese (which included smoked gouda in the roster!) with fancy crackers, intricately sliced and arranged fruit, and mini beef wellingtons. Of course, such an array includes plates the size of the palm of your hand. I don’t know if it’s DID integration or a PTSD response or both or something else, but Letty could hardly handle all of this.

Here’s the internal dialogue that ensued:

“We need FIVE plates for all the food! Why are the plates so tiny?! Can I have like 5 of the puffy things (the mini beef wellingtons)?”

“Letty, we cannot take five plates of food, nor can we take five beef wellingtons. Five will not fit on a plate, and it will not look polite. We can take two beef wellingtons, 2 crackers, 2 pieces of cheese, a cube of bread with fondue, and one small piece of teriyaki chicken, and even that is really pushing it, but we can pull it off.”

“But, I’m hungry!”

“Sweetie, I know you’re hungry, and I’m doing my best to fix that. You are not going to go hungry. I promise you will eat.”

“I don’t understand why we can’t eat like it’s dinner, and eat until I’m not hungry anymore.”

“Honey, we can’t do that because it’s not meant to be dinner. It’s just meant to be a snack before a lecture.”

“But it’s not just a snack for me, and they have all this food here that I can just eat for my dinner.”

“I know, sweetie, I know. We will eat afterwards, I promise. This is not meant to be dinner for people.”

“Then why do they have all this food?”

“Because it’s a snack before a lecture.”

“That’s a big snack.”

“It’s not meant to be big.”

“Then why do they put out a lot of food?”

“That’s just how these kinds of things are.”

“Why are not a lot of people eating?”

“Because it’s not the focus of why we’re here. People are here to talk to each other, and listen to the lecture.”

“That’s dumb. Forget the lecture. We should just eat cause we have a lot of good food.”

And so the lecture started, and I could feel Letty looking over at the food station during the lecture. She could hardly believe that people could remain quietly seated with such vast quantities of food in our presence. I thought I was going to lose my mind. Meanwhile, I needed to pay attention to the lecture, as it was work-related.

Blessedly, the lecture concluded, and Letty wanted me to head towards the food. But, I had to chit chat with various people enroute to the food because I needed to pretend that the food was not a concern. One of the lecturers then made a bee-line for the beef wellingtons. He walked over to them, picked one up, and popped it into his mouth. Letty just about did cartwheels when she saw that.

“Okay, Letty, we can have some more food. But we have to be relaxed about it.”

At that point, my boss came right up beside me, “Can you believe all this food? Well, we paid for it. I’m taking a few cookies for the road. Don’t feel you like you need to hold back.”

And that was all Letty needed to hear. I looked down to see four beef wellingtons on a napkin, with one in our mouth.

(Photo credit: kjd)