You’ll notice this is mostly an EMPTY peanut butter jar… from Victoria Marinelli @ Vortex(t) 17 Feb 2007 5:35 am
[Note: The following post was written under the duress of both a migraine and pain related to a hematoma in my abdominal wall following my surgery last month. And also, asthma, which might not seem significant here until one factors in the effect that asthmatic coughing can have on two such sources of pain. Which is to say (duh) that it’s all rather amplified for me right now.]
There is something about the physical plane that seems like such an affront to me lately (indeed: it’s been an affront to my whole family).
Five weeks and one day ago, I was in the ER with an ovarian cyst, said to be in the process of rupturing. I was led to believe, at that time, that it might resolve on its own. But then, days later, I learned I’d have to have surgery, though it wouldn’t happen for several more days. (Which gave me lots more time within which to worry, also - bonus! - without ever being wholly out of pain.)
There was one little event that happened between the date I found out I’d have to have surgery, and the date I finally did, which I never wrote about (much less, told my doctor). That is to say, I spent a great portion of one of the nights between the diagnosis and the surgery throwing up. (Which, in itself, is never a pleasant feeling, but with the Abdominal Demon in residence, it was that much more fucked up for me at the time.)
I didn’t tell the doctor because I was afraid he’d postpone the surgery, and I was in so much pain that I was desperate to get it all over with. I figured it was just some passing bug (which, in fact, it may have been; also, my eldest daughter had similar symptoms around the same time). But now, of course, I can’t help but laugh over recent news of a salmonella contamination of peanut butter products affecting people in our state (among others).
Though I didn’t think much of the story when it first aired, I finally got up the energy earlier this evening to go to our shelves and make sure our (mostly empty) jar did not have the dreaded “2111″ at the beginning of its lot number.
Um. Oh well:
So while I have no idea whether the respective barf-fests endured by my two children and me, at various points over the last several weeks, have anything to do with this peanut butter fiasco, it is beginning to seem a certifiable truth that, lately, the physical universe is out to get me.
Perhaps, indeed, I am being punished for a lifetime of gross overindulgence in peanut butter. (I am, in fact, responsible for most of our current peanut butter supply’s disappearance.)
If so, then perhaps the (ewwww, yuck, icky icky ewwww) hair in my pizza tonight* was also a sign from the Great Beyond; God is angry with me for eating more cheap, crappy, fatty foods (which I don’t even particularly like) than, say, blanched organic vegetables (which I would love).
To which I say, Okay, fine, God - but who’s going to finance all these nice healthy groceries?
*At a cheap pizza joint that shall remain unnamed, and which I did not complain about at the time, as 1) I was too grossed out to speak and 2) I was pretty sure the only result of such action would be that some minimum wage worker would lose his or her job, or at least get yelled at. I must say, however, that it deeply disturbed me to have Lou Dobbs issuing anti-immigrant invective from the television set there, all the while young Hispanic women and men worked at furious speeds to bus the tables. The clientele was comprised of mostly working class black, white, and Hispanic families, and it seemed to me that (on the macro- level, at least) our accumulations of buffet plates were, on some collective level, compensatory indulgences, responses to learned deprivation. (I, for one, never qualified for the medical moniker of “obese,” until I’d been through involuntary periods of severe hunger, at various points in the late 80s and early 90s, following which my metabolism was screwed and I was far more prone to binge eating.) How many of us in that room had, or will eventually develop diabetes, I wonder?
Oh, and if you think it’s funny that I can take a post about peanut butter and turn it into some self-conscious political screed, see this post by Morgaine at The Goddess (a blog of which, I might specify, I am a fan). She actually manages to work in a tangent about Anthrax!
Tags: classism, immigration, Overtly Political, Parenting, The Body, womens healthclassism, immigration, Overtly Political, Parenting, The Body, womens health