Lori Duff Writes

morguefile.com

It’s been a while since I wrote about how much I like food, but I hope that does not make you think for a second that I have quit eating for the sheer pleasure of it.

I’m having a bad day.  I mean, not in the way that people in Prisoner of War camps have bad days, or schizophrenic homeless people in cold weather have bad days, but I’m having a bad day in my upper middle class way.  It isn’t only the person who is suffering the most in this world who is entitled to wallow in the black swirl of a pity party from time to time.  The fact that your problem is worse than mine doesn’t make mine any less painful.

After a lunch consisting of questionably old beef stew (still tasty – is there anything wrong with preferring my own cooking to just about anyone else’s?) I was still feeling dissatisfied.  Disobedient children, clients who don’t pay my bills or appreciate my services, Pacific northwest persistent rain in what is supposed to be the sunny south, sick loved ones, and a general feeling of exhaustion all conspired to make me feel, in a word, blah.

It’s hard to be funny when you feel blah.  I pride myself on being funny.  I need to make blah go away.

So I got in my car and drove across the street to McDonald’s and got me some apple pies.  I distributed them, Santa like, to the people in my office from their paper sack, spreading fried-apple flavored sunshine in my wake.

I get it.  Going for a brisk walk is probably healthier than eating fast food pie, and has longer lasting effects in beating off depression and anxiety.  But what if one of the reasons why I am anxious is because I have 4935 unread emails in my Inbox?  I can whittle that number down while eating pie.  I can’t do anything during a brisk walk but briskly walk.  I can bury my nose in a cup of French roast coffee while reading case law, I can eat a gorgeous pile of Pasta Primavera while talking to my husband about his day, and I can eat a dish of ice cream while trying to figure out how to simplify radicals to help my 8^th grader do his math homework.

Of course, food is better when you don’t multi-task it.  I would just as soon not even see or hear anything when I put a piece of something wonderful and complex in my mouth.  Sometimes I’ll even close my eyes.  The salt on the side of my tongue, the sweet in the back, the savory dead center…it’s like listening to perfect harmony in music.

Pie never disappoints.  People are inherently unreliable, even the ones you love, and even when they don’t mean to be.  There is no one on this Earth who lives or should live solely for the purpose of attending to my every desire at the moment that I desire it.  People have their own needs, their own agendas, and look out for their own number ones.  But not pie.  Pie just sits there.  Nobody needs pie.  Pie isn’t a food group recognized by any credible dietary agency, though maybe it should be.  Pie is a luxury.  Pie is a sign that you have enough, and want just a little more.  Pie waits to be eaten.  It wants to be eaten.  Its sole purpose, its raison d’etre, is to give pleasure to whomever decides to eat it whenever they decide to eat it.  There’s no such thing as punishment pie.  Pie is a reward.  And the fact that I got through today without committing any felonies or screeching like a crazy person at everyone and everything that irritated me means I deserve a reward.

Yup, that was me.  I ate some pie.  And I’m not ashamed.

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Lori Duff

Lori B. Duff is an award-winning author who practices law on the side.  Her latest book, “If You Did What I Asked in the First Place” was awarded the Gold Medal for humor in the Foreword INDIES awards in 2019. You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook. For more blogs written by Lori, click here. For more information about Lori in general, click here. If you want Lori to do your writing for you, click here. If you want Lori to help you market your book, click here.