Bottoming out.

Have you ever experienced a clash of two worlds? You know, when the work you meets the school you, or the family you, meets the recreation you, etc. Well this recently occured and I thought I should share it with you all.

At work there is a group of us who regularly order out. We consider ourselves the "Hells Angels" of lunch clubs; we will eat whatever we want, whenever we want, and the rest of the hospital can go to hell if they have a problem with it. Cheese fries, ok. Six meat pizza with no cheese and no vegetables of any kind, ok. Two hotdogs, two bags of chips, a bacon cheese burger, and a soda, ok. We like our food, and we like our lunch break, and we will have them both! Give us lunch or give us death! I am even considering getting a tatoo on my stomach that states "yeah, I ate one of these too" over the image of a two pound gravy laden pork calzone. This would be the "work me".

Back at the ranch Amber and I have been eyeing our finances with the realization that remodeling a house has a big impact on your bottom line, and our bottom line couldn't go much lower to begin with. So we decided it would be prudent to begin packing a lunch. The "home me" was on board immediately. What a wonderful opportunity to save money and make my wife happy all at the same time! And so a couple of months ago I became a brown bagger. Ok, let me clarify that, Amber has been packing a lunch every shift she works, and I have been doing likewise just often enough that I can claim a "brown bag" title, but not miss out on the regular Rubio's/Cafe Rio/Hires/Crown Burger runs at work with the lunch gang.

Well all that changed last week when I finally put my foot down and became a purist.

No Seriously. So seriously in fact that I even went as far as to stop carrying money with me so as to not slip. I am committed.

I am happy to say that I have been doing quite well these last few days. However, what is it they say about temptation? That it is proportional to your level of determination. How true it is.

Yesterday morning I arrived to work with the realization that I had forgot to pack a lunch. Not to worry, I told myself, I can tough out one day with no lunch, right? To be sure I scrounged up a hefty breakfast and I went on my way.

All was well until 1000 hit and the lunch bunch started batting around the "Where are we eating today" question. Since I am usually the instigator of such discussions, and since I hadn't bothered to inform the lunch crew of my recent conversion to the religion of "what you got" cuisine, it wasn't long until I had several hungry eyes looking to me to make the final decision. I sat for a moment looking at my culinary compadres until I noticed one shady looking fellow hanging around the background and I recognized him as "work me". So that is what I look like I thought, kinda wild looking. I sighed, the time had come. I had to come clean.

I think they took the news quite well, I only had two pens thrown at me, one of which came from "work me", who muttered something that sounded like "uppity jerk" before he skulked off to go find a vegetarian to harass.

All the talk of food ended up being too much in the end, I had to eat something. So when lunch time came there I sat amoung my friends who pounded down P.F. Changs with obvious glee. Among the boxes of crispy honey chicken, beef with broccoli, and lettuce wedges sat my reserve package of ramen noodles and two ham sandwiches that I found in the back of the fridge from wednesday of last week. The bread was wet with condensation and the mayo was only clear around the edges, but the it tasted just fine to me. I had done it.