Premeals and a Food Baby 3-25-11

I ate two dinners last night. I was with my wife’s family celebrating her cousin’s birthday. She has a great extended family. They are warm, stick together like family should and they like to celebrate at restaurants. 

My gripe is that unless we are at a buffet, (and we do find ourselves at buffets often) it takes an hour for her family to decide what to eat.  It shouldn’t be that complicated; I often wake up having dreamt of what I’m going to eat.  Top that off with their predelection for restaurants that have the slowest order time to table delivery ratio, and it can take two hours to get a piece of food into my craw.

Being fat in general, uncomfortable with being fat at a cramped table, and having limited social skills; sitting at a table without food for a long time doesn’t work for me.  So, I went outside and made some business calls (I should have ordered take out delivery sent to this slow serve restaurant). On my way out, I spoke to the waitress and pre-ordered my meal. I told her to bring my meal at the same time as the other meals.  By the way, I had sworn an oath to eat in moderation just that morning.   

I returned to the table after 20 minutes outside and my dinner was sitting at the table. The problem was that no one else had their meal, they had just finished ordering.   Imagine how rude I must have looked to everyone. I step outside for 20 minutes and my dinner is already there. 

Feeling like her family was looking at me like an anti-social idiot, I immediately told my wife that I would not touch my dinner and was waiting for the others to be served. My commitment to decency lasted no more than a minute. My wife told me it was OK to eat. I started with the broccoli, telling myself “I will only eat the broccoli, but not the other items.”  Then, the ahi tuna steak and mashed potatoes called my name.  Within minutes my plate was cleaned. Feeling shame doesn’t dampen my appetite. I thought it would, but it doesn’t.

Somehow, everyone else’s food was delivered shortly after that.  The site of new food set my appitite blazing again, so I started eyeballing my wife’s dinner.  She ate a few bites and didn’t like it.  She saw me stalking her food and offered it to me.  Great, I’ll eat that.  I called the waitress over and had her spend no less than five minutes frosting my pasta with grated parmesan cheese.  I cleaned my wife’s plate just like I did mine before. 

As we were leaving the party, my wife’s attractive young 30 something cousin leaned into me, looked at my gut, and said that she was planning to throw a shower for my food baby.  Which she said, based on my figure, would arrive any day.