Makes Me Sick.

Have you ever been eating a bowl of grapes while simultaneously reading, The Bloggess, Jenny Lawson's hilarious memoir 'Let's Pretend This Never Happened' and suddenly realize you just ate something that tasted like a mixture of fresh cut grass and goat cheese?..

Me either. Except for that one time.
More specifically, this morning.

Have you ever convinced yourself that you had instantly contracted food poisoning while vowing to never eat another grape again?..

Okay. Maybe that's just me as well.

The point is, it was nasty and I almost died.
Hopefully, I'm not alone in this, but whenever I eat something that is either semi-questionable in regards to freshness beforehand or obviously rotten after the fact, I somehow feel instantly ill.

I'll spend five minutes debating whether or not that chicken pasta is really growing spores or not, after all it's only been four days.. then realize I'm being ridiculous and throw the dang tupperware in the microwave, because pioneers didn't have refrigeration and they survived, right? Well, for the most part.

But once I pull it out and bring the first fork-full towards my mouth, I start to second-guess myself. "Did I leave it out too long before boxing it up last week? The microwave probably killed anything that might have been growing.. probably. I nuked that bad boy for like five minutes, just in case. Oh, for the love of pete, just eat it!!"

And somehow, what was supposed to be a pleasant experience eating tasty leftovers turns into a worry fest over whether I'm going to regret this later.

I usually do.
Not because I actually get sick, but because I convince myself that it's probably coming. If you know me, I consider throwing up one of the worst feelings in the world. Right up there with heat stroke and gunshot wounds.

Not that I've ever been shot, but I can imagine.
And it's that same imagination that always gets me in trouble. I avoid being wasteful and ultimately spend a day trying to diffuse an argument with my brain over whether I'm actually feeling sick or not.

I blame this on my mother. I always do, she claims.
Growing up, if leftovers sat in the fridge for, at most, five days, they were thrown out promptly.

Not only did I see this as extremely negligent but extremely ironic, seeing as she was notorious for forgetting to clean out the vegetable drawer or random container, resulting in frequent discoveries of mold covered mystery foods and the sad remnants of what used to be asparagus in a former life.

So I, adamant on saving money and being resourceful, insist on finishing off whatever needs to be eaten, regardless of the consequences.

To be fair, I have gotten sick yet. But today might be the exception.
Because I've already convinced myself that one rotten grape might be the death of me. And ingesting that was a very unhappy accident.

The moral of the story is, food lasts longer than most people think.
Oh, and it's probably a good idea to look at what you're eating before you shove it in your mouth.