The One About Oatmeal

Category: weekleez

The One About Oatmeal
September 25, 2001

kids. hi.  

for the past month or so i’ve been eating like a horse. what i mean is, oats.  

or what i really mean is, oatmeal. 
(jennifer, aren’t you excited?! last week i said the topic would be oatmeal, and it is!)  

yep, for the last five weeks i’ve eaten two bowls of oatmeal everyday.  it goes like this: i start out my day sleepwalking through showering, dressing and somehow making it downstairs without breaking my neck.  then i have a brimmin’ bowl of hot quaker oats.  then i go to work.
by lunch time i’ve managed to sleepwalk through the morning and somehow i wake up to another bowl of oatmeal.  but since i’m at work i don’t get to eat my hot quaker oats in a fine china bowl.  instead i get to scarf the warm goo out of a soggy paper bowl with a plastic spoon.  nummy.
then for dinner i have a delicious meal of ANYTHING BUT OATMEAL. usually.  if we are out of food (which is 90% of the time) then i have a nice bowl of hot quaker oats.  then the cycle repeats itself.  

the only bad part to all of this (aside from me not getting any protein) is that i hate oatmeal.
hate it.
unfortunately, my quest to find foods that do not hurt my sissy stomach has only turned up one perfect food. 
oatmeal. gag.  

but hey, i shouldn’t complain right? at least i can eat something.  and heck, put enough cinnamon sugar on it, and it tastes alright.  there’s something to be said about the texture though.  and that’s the part i hate the most.  it’s all warm and soft, like a loogie. only it’s got hard bits in it.  and i gag when i eat it.  so i have to make it extra soupy, just so’s i can keep it down.  it’s pathetic, i know. but it’s all i have. 
note to self: oatmeal and a trigger-happy gag reflex go together like Dr. Laura at a gay pride event.  

i only have one rule when i comes to oatmeal, two if you count that i can only eat it extra soupy.  my one rule is, i only get the kind with the pilgrim on it.  i like his wizened smile.  he has a certain confident air about him that exudes…confidence.  his smile says, “i’ve been making this stuff for over 100 years. yeah, i know what i’m doin’.” of course, he, being a religious man (quaker), would never brag out loud about his oat empire or that fact that quaker merged with pepsico to form the 5th largest food and beverage company in the world.  he’s just not that kind of guy. nay, he’s content to sit back and peddle his canisters of simple oats all the while sitting quietly on his pile of money.  yep, that ol’ quaker dude knows what he’s doing.  

meanwhile, i was thinking about oatmeal and wondering which of the four food groups it fell into and in all my genius i came up with the “oatmeal group”. and then i remembered that oatmeal is a grain and is probably in there with the cereal group. and then i remembered that they (they as in, them.) don’t use the four food groups anymore. instead they’ve moved on to some sort of devil chart called the “food guide pyramid”.  why is the word guide in the middle?   

ok, now i don’t want to sound alarmist here, but i think that the food guide pyramid is evil.  and if not evil, well, it’s stupid. first off, it’s in the shape of a pyramid, which of course screams,”NEW AGE!” but really, no one cares. ’cause if there’s one thing that no one has time to worry about it’s new agey nutritionists and their odd food charts.  

the thing that makes it so stupid is that it doesn’t tell you anything important.  it basically tells you to eat a variety of foods every day.  way to go einstein!  i think we can figure that out.  it’s not like we’re eating the same sludge day in and day out.  that would be like some pathetic boob just eating two or three bowls of oatmeal a day!  and NO ONE does that!   

but the part that kills me is the bread and cereal part of the spirit food guide pyramid.  it “suggests” (and by “suggests” i mean “hypnotizes”) that we eat 6 – 11 servings of bread/cereals a day.  and they don’t even tell you how much is in a serving.  so let’s see here.  6 – 11 servings a day.  and hey, i don’t want to just eat the minimum amount, i want to try harder than that! so let’s say i have to eat 8 servings. i dunno about you guys but i’m just not that hungry. 

morning: 1 bowl of oatmeal.
lunch: 1 bowl of oatmeal
dinner: hmmm. let’s say i have a “sensible” dinner including a bread roll and some rice, that kills two more “servings”. now i gotta find AT LEAST 4 more servings! i suppose that means i have to eat 4 slices of chocolate cake, seeing as how cake is a bread, right?  
sheesh!  that’salottafood!

and you know what? that “karmic food spirit guide pyramid scheme” is seeming less new agey and more “good bidness” for the grain venders. 
see where i’m going with this?  that separatist with the instant oatmeal is looking more and more like a freemason to me. and that confident smile has nothing to do with his superior, mad-oat making-skillz and everything to do with inventing a totally random food chart with huge kickbacks for the oat and grain industries.  wake up and smell the artificially flavored instant oatmeal people!  it smells really good!   

here’s something even more scary to think about: next week the weekly turns one (1) year old.  and laura “she’s a muggle you know” bentley has made us all something really special and cool.  and it will be on the webpage pro’ly next week.  seeing as how next week the weekly turns a year old and all.   

next week’s epitomb: jaimie sends out the one about the olympics and hopes nobody notices.
i would never do that!  

next week’s epitomb: jaimie makes fun of the morton salt girl and slogan.  

ok you guys, who would win in a fight between the bumbling salt girl and the god-fearin’ quaker?   

jaimie “when it rains, it pours.” pickle

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