Tag: Oreo cookie

Curses Foiled Again

My body and I have always had a love/hate relationship. Especially when it comes to food and exercise. In other words, any attempt on my part to “do” healthy was met with contempt and aggression. And a lot of swearing, mostly by my body.

I know most people are thinking, I know she’s nuts, but to separate herself from her body, do you think she’s completely lost it?

Probably. And if you look at the world around us now, I believe it’s justified. But as usual I digress so back to gressing.

It seems that in all the years we’ve been together my body and I have never been able to have a Zen moment. To find a common ground for understanding, love and peace. Lord, I sound like the old hippy in me has returned.

It’s just so unfortunate that two entities living in such close proximity never got along.

No matter what the discussion an argument ensued.

Me: That Oreo cookie looks so good, but oh well. I can’t eat it I’m on a diet.

My Body: Like I care? Shove it in your mouth right now sister and add six more to the mix.

Me: No way I haven’t broken my diet and I won’t.

My Body: I will hurt you and I will hurt you bad if there is not an Oreo in my mouth in two seconds.

Me: Do not threaten I’m the boss here.

OUCH! A sudden sharp pain in my head.

Me: Stop it!

Another pain.

My Body: Want more? Cause I can keep going like this all day until I get that cookie.

Six Oreos later I heard the laugh inside my head of a demented clown.

Don’t even start me on the battles I fought and pain I felt when I even tried to exercise. I heard more obscenity than when I try to zip my skinny jeans.

So how is it so easy for your body to win and how is it so much easier now that I’m older?

Isn’t my body aging along with me? Or is it still young and feisty from winning all the time?

Perhaps it has a desire for world domination. Maybe my body is power hungry? Well, we definitely know it is always hungry.

So in an effort to keep the peace, I’ve decided to just give in. Yep, if my body wants to run the world, go for it.

If my body wants Oreos or a cheeseburger, I say hip hip hurray! No arguments, no fighting, just fill my mouth with all the yummy food I have felt guilty about eating and fought to resist. Fill my hand with something grand!

But then suddenly something strange happened. When I stopped resisting, my body became more cooperative. We were getting along much better. No pains, no threats, no swearing. It was as if the Dali Lama took over my circulatory system.

Never one to accept success gracefully, I began to wonder what was going on? I was worried that my body was too broken down to fight. Or perhaps it was up to no good. A ploy to lure me into a state of confusion? Either way I had to find out.

All the peace and quiet was making me antsy. I tried to be antagonistic. I threw away a whole bag of Oreos and still nothing. No response, no demands. It was as if my body had lost its voice. It certainly was fueled by enough chocolate and carbs so what could be happening?

Oh it was up to something, but what?

Like all great debaters every conversation is an opportunity to disagree. So as soon as I gave in, my body opted out.

What no fight left in ya, huh? Scared of me I teased? I finally wore you down. Yet, like everyone who has done perpetual battle, the victory is short lived. No more mountains to climb, no more battles to fight, no more fun licking the middle out of an Oreo?

I felt a certain sadness at the diminished spunkiness of my former nemesis. Like seeing your old car die before your eyes. All the years it drove you where you needed to go and now suddenly kaput. Sad really.

I tried to perk it up a bit.

Oh boy, oh boy that Black Forest Cake looks yummy, but I shouldn’t have any.

Hmmm, silence.

Wow! A whole new bag of M&Ms and only me to munch on them. But I do have to get into that new blouse so none for me.

Crickets.

I smell pizza so I have to leave the room.

Death.

Now I’m really concerned. I’m carbo loading like a prize fighter and not even gaining any weight.

This is quite disconcerting. I’m used to walking by a bakery, smelling the bread and gaining two pounds.

Wake up I can’t stand anymore, I plead. I’ll eat everything you want, just fight with me. I implore you. I can’t enjoy anything unless you battle me over every morsel.

I was becoming depressed so I did what I always do when the corners of my mouth curve downward. I ate. And I continued eating until I gained five pounds.
I jumped off the scale in a state of gloom, ran for the kitchen and baked brownies. When I burned my tongue eating a forkful right out of the oven, I heard a strange noise.

A smug laugh emanating from somewhere inside me. I dropped the fork and realized I’d been played.

Curses, foiled again.

I hung my head and threw in the dish towel. I knew I’d lost the war.

We Got This. Or Do We?

Has anyone has ever noticed a person’s face eating an ice cream cone? Pure bliss and happiness with each lick. Ice cream makes everyone happy, but there is something different about ice cream in a cone.

Whether or not one realizes it, eating an ice cream cone is a study in contradiction. Despite the enormous pleasure a good ice cream cone can bring, and I’ve yet to meet a bad one, it comes with certain challenges.

The greatest of these is to ensure the ice cream doesn’t fall out of the cone. It’s a balancing act of sorts but the prize is well worth the effort.

Even eating an Oreo cookie presents scrutiny. Should you eat both sides at once, break it open and lick the middle or eat both sides separately trying to balance the amount of filling on each half? Yes, I know everything I seem to relate to starts with food.

So how do we make certain our precious scoop or scoops are protected from landing on the curb? Or eat an Oreo?

Okay, here’s the real point I’m making…in every moment of pleasure there is risk. Most of the time we just “got this,” without focusing too much. Choices must be made to ensure the best reward.

Yet why is it that the risks these days seem out of balance with the rewards? Something is off kilter and we are walking sideways.

Even something as simple as licking an ice cream cone must be done with care to ensure against loss. While we’re enjoying our treat, we don’t realize we’re being challenged unless we look down and ice cream is covering our shoe. Yet now we are suddenly aware we are teetering with cones or cookies.

Are we really aware of this delicate balance as we live our lives each day? Often dwelling too long in the mundane tasks that fill up our moments and became a part of who and what we are.

The things we’ve come to depend on for consistency, but truly mean very little to our well-being.

Reading the morning paper, sorting through laundry, making a grocery list no one sticks to anyway or playing Wordle. These aren’t earth shattering events in our day, but they give us a sense of continuity and a certain harmony.

We aren’t aware how much we need these habits until we find our world disrupted. Perhaps this is where the true challenge for human beings takes on a life of its own.

Despite our feelings of security, we are not. Yet this is something we all have learned to tune out, to ignore and lock away. We must or our entire day would be spent in fear and anxiety.

We need to feel whole and in control. The fact that one little shift in gravity would mean the entire world being destroyed doesn’t enter our mind. We won’t allow that to happen because we have set up a perimeter and bad thoughts aren’t allowed inside. The crime tape border of our well-being.

We are so certain the earth will continue on an even keel the fact it could spin out of control is irrelevant because “we got this.”

Yet suddenly we humans are facing a new challenge. One that is not so easy to ignore and is making us a bit antsy. We are a bit off kilter these days and searching for our sense of equilibrium.

Oh we fight that feeling every day and tell ourselves, I’ve got this, but inside we’re feeling off somehow.

Where our usual grasp on life was steady and in double digits it seems to be slipping and something is there deep in the pit of our stomach where foreboding lives.

So how do we handle the fact our steps seem wobbly and not feeling as safe or sure on our feet?

How do we convince ourselves it will all turn out fine, so we can go back to reading our paper and sorting laundry as though it mattered?

We humans don’t do well when faced with danger or life is lopsided. We’re not hyenas galloping through the Serengeti Plains in Africa, unaware we are about to become a dinner entrée for some lion. We’re a higher life form, we have a brain, well most of us anyway. Despite having the brains, sadly we don’t always choose to use them.

It is precisely when intelligence and logic is lacking and absent from our lives that we feel the most off balance. Suddenly nothing makes sense any longer and a weird feeling in our gut registers, “Danger Will Robinson.” So if Robbie the Robot is warning us, what do we do?

Despite all of our best coping mechanisms a strange sensation remains and it’s left to us to discern the solution. We know something is off, we just feel it.

After all this mumbo jumbo have I brought you here to offer no help? No, but I can’t be totally certain it will work.

For perhaps the first time in our lives our fight or flight mechanism is triggered all the time.

Flight is no solution for there is nowhere to run.

Now fight is the only way to get our balance back.

Let’s face it; we’re extremely bothered by the state of our nation and our world. Although we are only one person, in this we share a single goal. To restore order to our lives. To face what is confronting us every day and restore calm and harmony. We know life isn’t right, or the way it should be and we feel it continually.

We need to open ourselves to the reality of our situation and understand what is to be done.

As any psychiatrist will tell you, the first step toward healing is admitting there is a problem.

Facing that fact will help us get our power back.

It will force us to look for answers, seek out others who feel as we do, take the risks we must to restore our equilibrium.

Abraham Lincoln famously said, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

We are not fooled by those who would disrupt and corrupt our world. We see them, we know them. How we stop them is the real question. We are only one person against a hostile world. How do we walk straight again? Sure, this time it’s trickier, but in the end it’s imperative that we got this. And we will!

Perhaps while you’re pondering the answer a double scoop ice cream cone might help you think.

Is this the Rabbit Hole or CNN

Is this the Rabbit Hole or CNN?

“I am Not Crazy; My Reality is Just Different From Yours…” Alice in Wonderland 

To say the world is getting curiouser and curiouser is an understatement of gargantuan proportions.

As a child I was obsessed with certain stories. Oh sure the usuals come to mind, Cinderella, (yep, I bought into that absurdity too) Snow White, Treasure Island, etc. etc. However, none seemed to monopolize my attention like two favorites, The Wizard of Oz and especially Alice in Wonderland.

I dreamed of entering the Emerald City and watching the horses of a different color parade by and skipping through a field of poppies with the magnificent Emerald City in the distance, but there was always something about Alice. 

She caught my attention most and when young I thought it was perhaps because of the Cheshire Cat, the epitome of coolness or the Mad Hatter always hurrying to get somewhere, but always late. We never did find out where he was going of course or why he couldn’t find a way to be on time.

Now that I’m older I realize the reason for my obsession with Alice…the psychic in me knew that someday I would live in her world. And now I do.

Or as Alice says, “When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one.”

So many credit Jules Verne or H.G. Wells for their amazing insights and of course they were amazing futurists, but Lewis Carroll never received such accolades.

Carroll not only satirized the absurdity of life, he actually predicted how incredibly far it would go in the future.

And as an American I can only say that the Cheshire Cat’s words hound me constantly…”We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad. You must be or you wouldn’t have come here.”

Talk about calling it like it is!

As I look around at the total absurdity of this country and what is allowed and condoned in the upside down reality our politicians have created, I wonder why it feels so much more Wonderlandesque here in the United States? 

After all isn’t Europe also mad as well? I won’t even go into the Middle East or China except to point out we have surpassed them by miles.

So why does it feel like I am living deep inside of that proverbial rabbit hole and can’t find a way out?

It seems every time I check in on the outside world I am tempted to quote an Alice character and there is one that always suits the moment. Like when Alice said to the mad hatter, I don’t think” and he interrupted her saying, “then you shouldn’t talk.” I wonder why this wisdom is so seldom acted upon today. And why politicians don’t adhere to this sage advice.

According to Alice, “it would be so nice if something made sense for a change.” No duh, I think that every minute lately. But I digress. I was asking why the insanity seems so much greater here in America.

I believe it’s simply because so much more was expected of us.

We always knew China was, well China and madness seemed to suit them. The Middle East has always been chaos personified, but the U.S. we were supposed to be the beacon. We were the guys in the white hats that rode in to save the town, and yes I know I use too many cowboy references but my late brother loved westerns so I must to keep his memory alive.

Now it seems that we have not only caught up with the insanity of the world, we have far surpassed it. I’m a believer in American Exceptionalism, but this is really going too far.

To be great at being crazy is nothing to hang your hat on. We led the world in innovation, invention and let’s not forget the development of the Oreo Cookie. Belgium may make the best chocolate, but America has a theme park with Hershey Kisses for lampposts.

Talk about something of which to be proud.

America fancied itself a place with no limitations, a place where imagination ruled and was supported and admired. Now newscasters publically malign women and spout their stupid and egregious opinions. 

Are we now supposed to support crazy because it’s mainstream? News people, remember the “I don’t think” quote before you speak, please. 

What turned us into Wonderland? 

It’s just too easy to understand the whole Queen of Hearts comparison with Congress, but is that even enough of an excuse for the unending madness of our you-should-excuse-the-expression leaders?

Is the planet now a gigantic rabbit hole we’ve all fallen through?

Did COVID actually create some sort of mass hypnotic state and we don’t even realize we’re in an upside-down world?

In this red, white and blue wonderland, children carry guns and use them, teenage mobs take over the streets attacking innocent passersby, criminals beat and kill victims and receive slaps on the wrist, our enemies run wild with no deterrents and on and on it goes as we fall further and further down the hole at a dizzying pace.

“For if one drinks much from a bottle marked poison, it’s almost certain to disagree with one sooner or later.” Wise words from Alice, yet no one seems to be listening.

I keep waiting for someone to echo the Queen of Hearts and yell “Someone’s head will role for this.” It’s as though Lewis Carroll were writing about today. And yes of course when you’re living in a world in any given time one wonders if it’s all madness. However in these days one need not wonder. It is all madness.

Or is it merely as the Cheshire Cat says, “ I am not crazy; my reality is just different from yours.” Or is it as he tells Alice, “If you don’t know where you are going any road can take you there.”

As I look around at the craziness I must wonder, what road are we truly taking and where is it taking us?

It truly amazes me that Lewis Carroll writing so many years ago has hit the nail on the head here when he writes about the current reality in which we all exist.

I think the only way to sum up my life is with a quote from the Cheshire Cat, “how queer everything is today! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning?”

For as the little furry guy also says, “Never let anyone drive you crazy; it is nearby anyway and the walk is good for you.”

Easy Peasey Seafood Pasta Slaw 

1 package Shredded cabbage (may use the pre-shredded packages in grocery store) 

2 cups Rotini pasta cooked  (colored or plain, but I use the colored)

2 cups cooked cut in half Shrimp

2 cups either real or fake crabmeat

Salt and pepper

Add all together and toss with mayo dressing

My mother-in-law’s Mayonnaise dressing

1 cup of mayo

2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 heaping tablespoon of sugar (artificial sweeteners may be used here instead, but will have to be sweetened to your particular tastes)

Mix together all and toss into slaw mixture. If you like it with more dressing just double the recipe. You may use any protein you have available.

Add soup or fruit or both and it’s a great meal.

If there are any questions about the recipe or cooking in general I can answer for you, please contact me at my blog at normazager.com. Happy Eating!