(Day 208 / -109 lbs.) Like a Snail on a Razor's Edge

Very Sharp -- A Snail's Life - video powered by Metacafe

My wife is chaperoning my daughter's school field trip today. While we were at the gym she mentioned that they both needed a sack lunch and would have to leave for school earlier than normal. Now understand that I am an incredibly anal-retentive and scheduled person. While I'm able to cope with whatever little emergency and plan changing event that comes along with calm, cool outward grace and aplomb, on the inside I'm a whirling quagmire of anxiety and contingency-calculating psychosis. By the time we had made it back from the gym I had gone through dozens of permutations and contingencies associated with preparing two nutritious and desirable sack lunches for two very finicky individuals within an abbreviated period of time with next to nothing in the house from which to create them.

When I set my mind to it I can make a mountain out of even the smallest mole hill but with equal applications of determination and massive action I was able to make some sandwiches from a loaf of frozen 12-grain I chiseled out of the freezer and a few leftovers while baking some protein cookies from some fairly atypical ingredients- sheerly on the fly. No recipes, no traditional (or obvious) ingredients and all within less than 45 minutes. A little fruit and they were on their way.

I'm sure none of this impresses anyone except me and only does so because a) I'm easily impressed and b) I'm prone to anxiety in the presence of chaos within my own personal microcosm of existence. Outside, I can cope with Armageddon but inside my world, each thing remains in its' place and the trains run on time. A morning a food-focused chaos is a recipe for distracted consumption of unnecessary calories. This is a leap of causality to be sure but hey, that's the fact, Jack.

Why the additional consumption? It's the way I cook. I drive by ear and I cook by taste-- it's a sensory thing. No recipes. Nada. It's chemistry you can eat- and have to taste to get it right. So there I am making cookies, getting the chemistry down so that the thermodynamic reactions will take place in a reliable fashion while tailoring the organics so that the final product is pleasing to the palate- and I've got 45 multitasked minutes to make it all happen. Some of it is going to end up in my mouth.

I'll bore you no further except to say that it all came together with minimal consumption and only moderate anxiety. Now the train is back on the tracks; next stop, my happy place (aka: where Order intersects Productivity).