Gioconda's Diet

Gioconda has been threatening since December that once the babies were born she would be going on a diet.

Today that threat was realized when the Fed Ex guy delivered a package labeled perishable.

Inside the box, packed in ice were 15 little meals in plastic boxes, two smashed bran muffins, a corn tortilla, one square of dark chocolate and a slice of cheese.

This is her meals for the next week.  I find this whole thing very upsetting. 

When I was a kid airlines always provided meals on flights more than 2 hours.  Granted the food was typically pretty terrible ( grill marks on the chicken- ok - how does that happen on a plane?), yet recently when I took a trip and I was so hungry I thought about eating my own head,  I considered those little meals with fondness.

Clearly, the airline food industry has made a segway into the diet food market.  Gioconda's little meals look and smell exactly like that airplane food I ingested in the late 70's early 80's.  I don't know if it tastes the same, as I didn't want to take a bite, which would amount to 1/3 of her meal.

What is amazing to me is her tolerance level for discomfort.

If I had to go through what she went through with fertility treatments I would be institutionalized.  Last week I had a tag on my shirt stabbing me, and I had to take an Advil.

She has had five c-sections- FIVE.  After merely being in the room with her when she had it I would never- and I mean NEVER go through it again - and by going through it I mean I would never even be in the same ROOM as a person having a c-section.  

So, the airplane "diet"  food is completely acceptable to her.

Sometimes she will see an apartment above a business- and I mean, this might be a dingy little hobble, above a smoke shop- or Chinese fast food restaurant - and she'll say-

" I wouldn't mind living there."

It makes me completely insane.  

We ate lunch together today.  She had mixed vegetables, (one mini carrot, a stalk of broccoli, a scintilla of red pepper) and a piece of chicken the size Camille's palm.  I had a chicken burrito, fries and a coke- not a diet coke- a regular coke.

But just watching her eat this food fills me with so many horrible emotions I could barely enjoy my high caloric meal.

I imagine her eating this food in her one room apartment above a nail salon, and she is still happy...