I am damn sick and tired of people commenting on my lunch.

I am not a lunchtime socializer; I enjoy having the time to myself and using it to read or write or work on this here page. I've been that way my whole working life.

Up here in Manoa, there aren't too many decent places to eat that won't bankrupt you if you go there on a regular basis. I would love to have a place to eat outside under one of the lovely trees up here, but there is a dearth of benches and picnic tables any place one might like to hang out. Hawaii at lunchtime is hot, regardless of season, so the lone picnic table behind the library in the blazing sun is pretty much out, besides the fact that there are usually some high school smokers hanging out there. The park is too far to walk at lunchtime. So, I end up eating at my desk most days.

Not only do I get hit with interruptions, but I also get the out-of-the-blue lunch socializer comments -- usually when I'm right at the good part of the book or at the critical part of the piece I'm writing. And then there are the comments about my lunch itself.

No, I am not the world's healthiest eater -- but I'm by far not the worst either. I do not eat Chips Ahoy and Diet Pepsi for breakfast every single day, followed by a Wendy's double cheeseburger and biggie fries for lunch, followed by nachos (hold the veggies) for dinner, as a former friend used to do. I used to go to McDonald's for lunch about once every other week, but haven't been there for several months now -- since I realized it really didn't taste all that good.

My breakfast is usually OJ and tea and some kind of grainy thing such as cereal or toast or a granola bar. Lunch tends to be my biggest meal, since Kevin & I usually don't eat dinner until later in the evening. If it's late enough, dinner is usually pretty light for me. So, 75% of the time I eat my biggest meal of the day in front of the people I work with, who apparently feel it necessary to scrutinize what I'm eating. And I don't feel that I should have to justify my food choices to my coworkers.

As I said, I'm not necessarily the world's healthiest eater, but I'm not the worst, either. Today, for example, I'm craving something salty and potato-y. I could have gone to McDonald's and done the whole meal thing, or even just the french fry thing, but I didn't really want that (and besides, it's way too humid today for any kind of hot food at all). Now I knew that I won't be satisfied until I have some salty potato-y thing, so I went to Safeway and got a bag of Red Bliss Terra Chips -- the absolute best potato chips in the world (red potatoes and olive oil and just a little salt) that also happen to have a bit less fat than regular chips.

Knowing that I'm going to eat potato chips, I toned the rest of my lunch down and opted to have just some carrot sticks and a banana to go with the chips. That is not a horrible, terrible lunch. Really. A dietician would tell me to not eat the chips at all, but let's face some reality here. I'm going to eat the chips -- not the whole bag in one sitting mind you, but a serving or two of chips. And I can have them with a roast beef sandwich with cheese or I can have them with my carrot sticks and banana. Yet, I get comments on the chips.

If it's not the chips, it's the cookie. Or the sandwich (usually just 1/8 lb of meat with a slice of cheese on whole-grain bread, or sometimes PBJ with natural peanut butter and all-fruit jam on the same whole-grain bread). Or the yogurt sans that icky fake sugar stuff. (I remain resolutely unconvinced that fake sugar is any better for you than real sugar.)

I just want to eat my lunch in peace.

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Everything is annoying me today.
- posted by Lori @ 4:37:00 PM | permanent link | |