stomachy problems

It suddenly occurs to me that I have been eating nothing but crap for the past week. I think my problem lies mainly in the aforementioned grocery-shopping agony. When I was going to school, I could go on a weekday morning, in the afternoon, whenever I needed to. And I had piles of time to cook. Now I HAVE to go on the weekends, or after work, when everyone else on God's green creation is there (with their children!) and they are all in my way. It is so stressful. So I have come up with a neat solution, namely, to eat takeaway all the time. Takeaway, for my American friends, is not McDonalds or Subway, those oh-so-healthy staples of a Point load-in, but local shops that involve soggy food and low hygeine standards. So I had a brat on Saturday, an English breakfast and pizza on Sunday, then today I had a chicken sandwich and a shish kebab from a Turkish place across from the Arcola. I'm not going back there though--the shish kebab was very good, but the man behind the counter skewered lamb meat onto kebabs, wrapped up someone's sandwich, and made change ALL WITHOUT WASHING HIS HANDS. The guy who served me at least had clean hands, but I only managed to eat about half my shish, which was approximately the size of a baseball bat. (Note to British friends: a baseball bat is like a cricket bat, only longer and rounder, which is the way God intended them to be.) Where was I? Oh, right, handing in my vegetarian card in shame. I don't know what happened--I think because I didn't eat for three days last week my mind is saying "whee! Make up for lost calories!" while my digestive system is saying "You're going to pay for that." What I want, basically, is for this bloody country to invent some decent salad dressing that doesn't taste like runny cardboard so I can make a SALAD and take it to work--we have three half used up bottles of dressing in the fridge, all of which taste so terrible that none of us have the stamina to finish them off. I like cooking, and I don't know how I went from someone who could start off with a handful of vegetables and end up with dinner to someone who can barely drag herself out of the kebab shop. I begin to see why Britain's government is so worried about the declining health of it's nation. A pile of salad on a kebab does not a healthy meal make. I'm going to brave the store again tomorrow, but please, please, please, someone put a bottle of Kraft ranch dressing in the mail for me, I will love you forever.

I'm also very excited because tomorrow is Election Day. Yay! I'm going to sit up after the show and watch returns with a bowl of popcorn. Low-fat, of course.

"Dogfight" be at the Arcola from now until Saturday. It starts at 8:15--it's pay what you can tomorrow, then £12/£8, but if you want to get a deal, then tell the box office staff "Bite me!" for £6. Please come if you can, it's a really great show. It's only about an hour long, so there's plenty of time to go out afterward.