Bomb Shelter Potatoes

Earlier this evening, something cracked. I’ve been feeling low for a while, but I’ve been putting on my brave face and trying not to let life suck ass through a straw quite so much. After all, life could be chewing my ass, and that would definitely be worse than a little sucking. Still, like I said, after work I broke, and I curled up in the middle of my bed and cried in a chest-heaving, nose-running way that I haven’t cried for a long time.

After I stopped, I lay there sighing and stroking the silver fur of my good and patient kitty, who was waiting for her canned food. I got up and walked to the kitchen with her wrapped around my left ankle. I spooned some gloopy, and evidently delicious, chicken-and-tuna stuff into her bowl and washed my face. I wasn’t sure if I was hungry myself or slightly sick to my stomach.

Comfort food is what I needed - something warm and filling and non-diet. Someone told me that when it comes to stressed-out eating, women tend to go more for fatty and sweet (chocolate, cheesecake) and men more for fatty and salty (French fries, pizza). Here once again, despite my obvious female features and mouth-foaming heterosexuality, I sift out on the same side as the boys. Fried chicken. Mozzarella cheese sticks. Macaroni and cheese.

Mac and cheese sounded particularly good. I opened the cupboard, replaced the blue plastic margarita glass that toppled out, and pushed aside the tea and sugar to see if I had any mac and cheese in stock. I didn’t. But I did find, scrunched way in the back, a package of instant mashed potatoes.

In the absence of macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, complete with a dammed-up lake of butter, started to sound pretty good. But were they okay? The potatoes came from my grandmother, who sends me home with bags and coolers full of food every time I visit. The last time I visited was Christmas, so the potatoes were at least eight months old - maybe older. She might have given them to me at Thanksgiving, or even Easter. It’s a bit mysterious why she gave them to me at all, since I have never prepared instant mashed potatoes for myself and have never (knowingly) eaten them at her house either.

I smoothed the rumpled bag, looking for an expiry date. There wasn’t one. I suppose they don’t expire. I suppose that’s why you can store them in your emergency kit, right next to the duct tape and plastic wrap. “With sour cream, chives, and imitation bacon,” the package read. Yummy. I boiled the water and dumped ‘em in.

While the potatoes rehydrated themselves, I sliced a cucumber from the garden and rinsed the last of the arugula that I bought at the farmer’s market on Saturday. On one side of the plate I had fresh, tasty, organic produce; on the other side, highly processed Frankenfood that openly admitted the artificiality of its bacon bits. I laid a knife between them so the potatoes wouldn’t eat the arugula before I did.

I created a satisfactory pool of butter and sampled my first forkful. They weren’t too bad, though they certainly were not my grandmother’s homemade mashed potatoes. They were rather bland and sticky, and the bacon bits didn’t do much for me. Nevertheless, I ate half the pot, pretending all the while I was savoring the finest macaroni and cheese, properly baked with bread crumbs on top.

As I sit here simultaneously working and writing this, the potatoes are resting in a cold lump in my tummy. Perhaps the bomb shelter potatoes will put me out of my misery. Perhaps I will explode like a sea gull full of Alka-Seltzer. Or perhaps it’s nothing a little vodka and tonic wouldn’t fix.