Food, the Fat Girl, and a reverie about a Turkey

You know that I'm all about breakfast, lunch, dinner, elevenses, supper, and midnight snacks, right? Like, to the point where today I didn't actually rise to my hangover until gone noon, and that reduces my time to eat today by approximately five hours so I'm pretty much going to be chain-eating right up until I go back to bed so I can catch up with myself. I'm totally taking one for the team. If by the team we mean MY THIGHS THAT CHAFE WHEN I JOG.



But at least I'm jogging.



I actually have palpable, tangible, FITS of excitement complete with singing out-loud and skipping and kissing-strangers-on-the-mouth-but-without-tongues-because-that's-just-weird when I get to go to the supermarket. You want to spend Saturday afternoon on Via Del Corso window-shopping in Zara? I want to stand in the aisles of M.A. Supermercarti comparing pasta sauce.



I came to the (alleged) cultural capital of the world to stand beneath tube lighting in my free time.



The supermarket is an experience I have come to embrace with increased intensity over the past months because I'm broke. It's pretty safe to say the pot of money I had when I arrived three months ago now only serves as somewhere to piss. I'd like it to be payday now please.



I knew things were starting to get really tight about mid-October and so my weekly food budget has been whittled down to twenty Euro this past few weeks. For seven days. 21 meals. TWENTY EURO. I'm no Einstein but surely that's less than a euro a meal. OHMYGODIJUSTDIDTHEMATHANDWTF.



It is just like Challenge Anneka except that I'm not Anneka and nobody else cares about my challenge. The challenge that sees me go a half mile further up the road than I have to because the supermarket furthest away is cheaper than the one by my house. And telling you that almost makes it seem like I don't have anything better to do than spend my time reducing expenditure by 20 cents a meal. Hahaha! Well... urm... YEAH.



Imagine, then, when I accidentally overspent to the point where I have four Euro in my purse until payday. FOUR EURO. When the cashier told me the total I was all BUT I DON'T KNOW HOW TO TELL YOU IN ITALIAN THAT I HAVE TO GO PUT SOME STUFF BACK and she was all I'M SORRY, WHY ARE YOU STARING AT ME LIKE YOU MIGHT LICK MY CHEEK and I was all, SHIT WHAT SHALL I DO and she was like HOLD ON WAIT- I FORGOT TO CHARGE YOU FOR THE BAGS.



Three Euro and eighty cents left.



I have never left a supermarket so disheartened and raped of joy. It reminded me of stories Mama tells about when my dad and she had just gotten married and they Lived off of twenty quid a week, Laura. I'll tell you this: if I spent a pound over one week you better believe I'd be a pound under the next.



Only, one Christmas she ordered a turkey from the butcher and got all the weights and conversions and measurements wrong and so when she went to collect it the butcher was all Eighty pounds please and she was all But I don't need a turkey that big and anyway I don't have eighty pounds and he was like Well this is what you ordered so you have to pay me and Mama was like I'm so gonna cry when I walk up the big hill home with this overpriced turkey priced at four weeks of my budget slung over my shoulder and pockets empty of anything but hate for the bird and the butcher was all Uh-huh. Merry Christmas!



So basically what I'm telling you is that this bag of potato chips I'm eating as I write about the turkey Mama bought at Christmas one time like three hundred and six years ago before I was even born?



They'd better last me a really long fucking time.