The comfort of food

Where to begin.  This weekend was interesting.  Saturday was good.  We got to take some friends to our favorite burger joint and then a vegan bakery.  Nice combo eh?  That's what high cal days are all about.  After they left and we were kind of hanging out with no real plan the Mr mentioned it wasn't a big thing but did I notice the bathroom faucets were leaking.  I said yes, agreed we needed to get on that but it wasn't huge so we'd put it off for a few weeks.

Sunday we slept in, a rare luxury these days.  I rolled into the bathroom and when I went to wash my hands, I noticed the water was coming out a little quicker than I remembered from the faucet.  "La la la.  I don't see you.  I have no plans today and you certainly aren't part of my day of nothing.  I plan to eat a fiberlicious breakfast, workout early so we can have the entire day to ourselves so pffft"  (Yes, I talk to faucets)  Then the Mr rolls into the bathroom and when he comes out he asks if I notice the water is worse.  *Plugs my ears*  LA LA LA.
A few trips to the Home Depot later and a local hardware store all tell us that the man that will be our savior is apparently closed Sundays but hele on over Monday and if he doesn't have it, no one does.  So this is how my bathroom has looked for the past 2 days:

I get to wash my hands and brush my teeth in the bathtub.  Jealous?

We decided if the Mr was going to go to the faucet man on his lunch hour that we'd better do a drive by.  It would require driving past my old high school.  I like to drive by on occasion to reminisce so I was curious to see if the rumors for the plans for it had come to fruition yet.

As we got closer, I lost my breath and burst into tears.  

It was gone.  My entire high school career was now a pile of rubble guarded by a bulldozer and fenced off from the rest of the world.  Memories flooded back to me...spotting my friends waiting outside for me as I walked up or waiting outside of the door of the art room gossiping about snobs that walked by with their noses in the air or screaming the name of a cute guy that just passed by only so we could see his face one more time before he disappeared in the sea of people.  Or trading Poison or Guns and Roses posters from the latest edition of BOP or Metal Edge in study hall, getting kicked out of study hall for being too disruptive or giggling over how outdated "Our Bodies, Our Selves" was.  Gone were the stairs in the Math/Science section where Glenda fell and "broke her butt" my sophomore year.  Gone was the locker of Mike B. where I got busted by him for slipping a note in there from my friend and as he smirked I said "it's NOT from me!"  Gone was the 2nd floor stairs where I would pass notes with my best friend between classes and give one last shout goodbye as I got to the top when she got to the bottom.  Gone was the cafeteria where we watched MTV and ate horrible cafeteria food but found that half hour break from academia to reconnect and talk about what was going on in our day.  Gone were the hallways that we used to follow teachers aids we had crushes on and pretend we were doing something else when they caught us.  Gone were the home ec and print shop classrooms where I spent time with my favorite teachers that encouraged me to be my best self and that I did have talent as long as I continued to hone it.  These things will always live on in my memories and the school notes I keep in a shoebox when I'm in the mood to revisit how dirty and crazy we were in those days.  But there is something different about not having that physical building there any more.  It's like you could pass by it and feel that familiarity and there was comfort in the feeling it would always be there.  But it won't.  Nothing is sacred any more.

I needed to be surrounded with familiarity from my high school days and that meant a trip to the pizza place that was basically a food group for me back then.  Back in the day I could've gotten a medium and ate 3/4 of it or all of it depending on how fast I ate it.  But Sunday, we split a medium (which a nutritionist told us was absolutely acceptable) and given I'd already planned dinner, I knew how many calories I had to work with and it was well within the limits.  As the Mr put the pizza in the car, the smell of that pepperoni pizza enveloped me and it smelled like high school.  I remembered slumber parties with my best friends and eating a pizza in my room or going to another friends house and eating it there.  Or stopping by after school for a pop on the way home on rare occasion.  I remembered having a small crush on the namesake grandson on the football team for which the pizza place was named.  I remembered giggling over many a pizza from that place on the phone with friends.  Some would say since this wasn't a high cal day that I failed.  I didn't.  Was I using food for the wrong reasons?  Yes.  But ask me if I care?  I knew damn well what I was doing and it didn't blow my day by any stretch.  As a matter of fact, I did a little extra cardio just to make sure.  At that time, it wasn't a matter of if I wanted that pizza.  I needed that pizza.  I needed to be surrounded by that taste and smell which are now the only tangible piece of my high school years other than yearbooks full of people I rarely associated with.  I needed comfort and I wasn't going to feel guilty about indulging in that comfort because I knew it was for one meal.  I know that pizza could never bring back what I lost yesterday but for 20 minutes, it felt like old times and I needed that more than I needed to project the image of a healthy blogger saint.  

To you old high school, I'm thankful I took pictures on your steps last Fall and pics with my friend when she was in town one last time.  Thanks for the memories and I'll always remember you the way you were when I went there, not how much you changed in the years since.

Do you use food to bring you back to a happier time in your life?  If you do are you able to do it in moderation or can that trigger a binge for you?

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