Day 6: More Excuses
Perhaps instead of reporting on my month of attempting to not eat out, I can instead spend a month reporting my justifications for all the time I ate out while trying not to.
Yesterday was an eat-out-all-day kind of day, although not entirely intentionally. For lunch my team at work took our boss on a private food tour of our local public market. It wasn’t cheap but it was our special gift to him since he’s leaving in about three weeks. So that’s okay (although what’s less okay is my scheming to go back now that I’ve been introduced to so very many yummy eateries at this market).
Dinner was a big fiasco. Last night there was a meeting at my son’s school that I learned, late in the day, started at 6pm. I knew that if I rushed to pick up my boys, we could get to the school exactly in time for the meeting, but that left no time to go home and get dinner. Although we live somewhat close to the school, between home and it are freeway on- and off-ramps, a big mall, and a big transit center, making the road to get from one to the other somewhat hellish during evening rush hour. So it was either go home or go to the school, but it couldn’t be both.
When we got to the school at 6pm on the dot, I was surprised to find it completely dark with an empty parking lot. I quickly checked my smartphone to see if the meeting time had changed (which, since I don’t have a smartphone, means that I sent a text message to a friend who does have one and asked her to check my email) and confirmed that, oh wait, the meeting is actually at 6:30.
So I had a half hour to kill, three hungry bellies, and no way to get home and back in a half hour. The local food options included a burrito place (my boys might eat beans and rice), a sub shop (my boys might eat a veggie-free, meat-or-cheese-only sandwich if they can get past the fact that the bread doesn’t look like sandwich bread) or a teriyaki place. As my boys love gyoza and rice with teriyaki sauce, the choice was easy, so once again, we ate out.
I had high hopes for today, though, what with the last of this weekend’s mulligatawny waiting patiently in my fridge, but although I took it out of the fridge and set it next to my bag and salivated a little at the thought of eating it for lunch, I walked right out the door without it. So once again, I have to buy lunch. But all is not entirely lost because I figure that this and the fact that my birthday is Sunday are both good excuses to warrant a trip back to yesterday’s public market in order to treat myself to a few goodies. It’s always okay if it’s for your birthday.