One Week 'Til Surgery-Crying in Public

August 7, 2013

Today is exactly one week until my surgery date! I would love to say that I'm jumping up and down with joy and chugging down smoothies with glee.
I'm not.
Today, instead of starting my liquid diet like I was supposed to (shhhh...) my husband took me out for one last meal.  Chinese Food!
Chinese food has always been a great weakness of mine. When we get take out, it gets crazy. An order of won-tons please, oh and maybe some bbq pork. Well, of course we can't only have appetizers, how about some chicken and broccoli (you know, cause it's healthy) and well,  we need variety, so sure why not some sesame chicken as well.

Extra Sweet and Sour Sauce please.

Thank you.

This used to be our pattern and occurred pretty much every week.

We haven't had Chinese food since we moved (3 months ago) so we figured it would be nice to have one last hurrah before my stomach was smaller than a fortune cookie.

Well we drove down the road, embarrassingly excited about going out to eat, and parked in front of a somewhat questionable looking "restaurant". It was a poorly pieced together mobile home with wood siding. This would normally be enough to deter us, but we had read such great reviews online we just knew it would be one of those great mom and pop places that knock your socks off with their culinary knowledge.

It wasn't.

When we walked in, there was no one there. A little old woman came from the back and took us to a table and brought us some water.

We tasted the water and quickly realized why she was drinking from a water bottle.

We both ordered the lunch special that came with an egg roll, rice, soup and an entree. $6.85. Not too shabby!

When the soup arrived it was slimy and smelled like weirdly roasted nuts/eggs past their prime.

Mr. H ate both cups of soup, he hates to be wasteful. I mostly hate getting food poisoning, so I passed.

By this point I knew that this lunch was not going to be my dream last meal but kept my hopes high, because the loudly frying wok was creating some amazing smells.

In front of us was placed grey chicken, soggy (and yet somehow undercooked) broccoli, an eggroll that had been beer battered and fried, and mushy brown rice with chunks of egg on top.

The broccoli looked cheesy and swam in a light white sauce rather than the dark brown sauce I'm used to.

The moment I looked at it, I started to cry. Not big sobs or anything but more like quiet mourning.

I felt like such an idiot.

Why was I crying over limp broccoli and slimy rice?

Mr. H looked at me and apologized about 15 times (even though we both knew none of it was his fault)  and said he would drive me the 45 minutes to the next town over for Chinese, but we both knew that there wouldn't be enough time to get back home before he had to work night shift.

We politely asked for a box (because I'm ridiculously nice, mostly to my detriment) and headed to the grocery store where I had to buy sugar free jello, sugar free pudding, ice, protein powder, chicken broth, and tiny bowls.

My life of indulgence had officially ended.

So maybe I wasn't crying just about the grossest food in the world, maybe I was crying at the thought that this was the last food I would ever be able to mindlessly eat, that on the 15th everything I put into my mouth will have to be accounted for.

I just wanted one more great lunch that I could eat with abandon. No counting how many times I've chewed it, no cutting it to a bite 1/5 the size of a pinky nail.

So tonight I drink my smoothie, and convince myself that it's more delicious than any Chinese food I've ever eaten.

And if I compare it to today's, it's not that hard to believe.