saint-louise's Diaryland Diary
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Once again with the food obsession, folks.
Every day for the past week, I have gone through a little ritual involving the bags of bagels that I regularly keep and restock in my drawer at work.
Every once in a while, I realize that I�m hungry and need a snack.
I remove the bag of bagels from the drawer and get up from my seat to go to the lunchroom to toast it. Then I think, �Oh, damn. I just remembered that the toaster here always burns my bagels, and is therefore in cahoots with The Devil and all else that stands for evil as defined by the Christian world, based on mostly European history, elderly white men, and the Good Book which has several versions that tend to contradict each other on many points, but ultimately agree on one thing and that is the total and complete naughtiness of Satan, in addition to him seeming to be an altogether unpleasant individual on a social level.�
Then I also recall that the �public butter� (besides the idea of �public butter� being close to emotionally scarring) is kept in the fridge - which makes sense, it being perishable, after all. But this makes it nearly solid with coldness, and difficult to spread on bakery items. I�ve snapped several flimsy disposable knives attempting this, resulting in plastic shrapnel being launched at high speeds across the lunchroom, delicious remnants of plastic in my bagel for me to bite into later, and complaints from my co-workers to HR that bagel-making seems to be causing an excess of injuries and disturbingly inventive profanity in the workplace.
Then I think, bitterly, �What the hell is so great about a toasted, buttery bagel anyway?� And I sit down and devour that puppy raw.
My ongoing relationship with my office-drawer bagels have had the unusual side effect of causing me to ogle the baked goods at coffee shops. I think, �I could use one of these bagels for breakfast, to go with my yuppie caffeinated beverage.�
To which I reply to myself, �You have a bag of bagels at work, remember? You don�t need one from here.�
And I then whine to myself, �But these are coffee shop bagels. They�re better somehow. I must believe in something, and this is it.�
Then I am forced to bitch-slap myself and flee before I�m tempted to fall headfirst into the bagel-elitism myth again.
A side-story in the Louise Bagel Saga: one time when I opened my drawer to retrieve the holy bag o� bagels, one of my co-workers happened to be wandering by. For some reason, he decided to come over and peer into the drawer. Curiosity got the best of him, I suppose. Because we all know that no matter what could be happening in the company � be it catastrophic crashes on the online system, cross-dressing running rampant in the Database Programming department, or rabid capuchin monkeys rappelling from the roof to crash through the windows and enslave all of Quality Assurance � the contents of my desk drawer are by far the most compelling things in existence.
I watched him as he looked down and saw the box of tampons I also keep in the drawer.
(And save your �Ewwww! You keep TAMPONS in with your snack foods?!� comments. Fie, judgmental people! It is a box of unused tampons, still in their wrappers. None of them have ever been near my vagina, okay? For the record, none of the bagels have been near my vagina either. Good moley, people�)
He paused, staring at the tampons, and a very unusual look came over his face, as though he didn�t quite know what he was looking at.
Ever helpful, I said, �They�re tampons. Want one?�
Surprise ending: He didn�t.
3:13 p.m. - 2002-06-07
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