Primal With A Side Of FABULOUS page 111

[Gay Panda]

Gay Panda wishes that it were possible to resort to coconut, but Gay Panda HATES coconut. UGH.

The expired chocolate sauce will meet its doom today. This is harder than it should be for me. One of my grandmothers grew up in the Depression, and generations later, Gay Panda still has trouble throwing away food. But if I'm not going to eat it, and I can't donate half a bottle of expired chocolate sauce to anyone, then the solutions are either to toss it or else continue to let it sit in its own ooze.

Even as I type this, the Fairy of Debauchery is encouraging me to squirt it just once into my mouth before chucking it. But expired chocolate sauce is not primal (thank you, Fairy of Resolve) and it will make me sicker (thank you, Fairy of Remorse).

::: shakes fist at Fairy of Debauchery :::
::: shakes fist at Fairy of Resolve :::
::: shakes fist at Fairy of Remorse :::

[bigchick]

love the fairy idea @0)

[robotunicr0n]

I'm sorry to hear that, robotunicr0n. What's going on?

Just not being very true to Primal over the last couple of months. I'm jumping back on now, though NOT as a new years resolution. I despise those things.

[Gay Panda]

PART ONE: Gay Panda has a rigid personality.

If Lady Friend is reading this, she just burst into howls of laughter. If you were to envision our brains as mazes, you would notice stark differences. In hers, there are no dead ends and infinite routes to take from entrance to exit. Some take longer than others, but it’s easy to detour onto a better route. Her brain never breaks down with a structure such as this; there is a steady fluid flow of thoughts through mental pipes and they weather all stress analysis tests.

And then there is the maze of my brain, which has exactly one route from entrance to exit and the dead ends seem to proliferate right in front of your pencil. Although there are six routes I could drive to reach my house in the magical bamboo forest, I only ever drive one. That is the way home. The others seem suspicious, full of foreign stimuli, and I prefer the familiar. There is the corner where I almost drove over Captain Suicide. There is the yard where I saw Poo Hurler calling out endearments and chucking bread slices over the fence at bewildered deer. There is my mailbox at the end of my road. There is home. Sometimes Lady Friend will take an alternate route just to drive me nuts.

GAY PANDA: You’re going the wrong way!
LADY FRIEND: I am not. I’m going a different way.
GAY PANDA: A different way is the wrong way! Go back!

When a first cousin was diagnosed with autism, Gay Panda was not surprised. I worked with autistic children for years and saw my own behavior in concentrated form. One boy had a meltdown during a fire drill, because after SNACK was RECESS, not LINING UP AT THE DOOR AND GOING TO THE ATHLETIC FIELD TO STAND IN STRIPES OF PEOPLE. His brain didn’t know what to do with the change; his thoughts could not flow into an alternate route. Snack is followed by recess or the carpet is ripped out from under his feet, and that is why I ended up tucking a slugging and scratching five-year-old into my armpit and hauling him to the field as he wailed, “NO, TEACHER! RECESS! RECESS! GO TO RECESS!”

He never had any idea the amount of sympathy Teacher was feeling. I hear you, kid. Snack. Recess.

It is why I have resisted eBook publishing for years now, because there is ONE way to do things and that is write a book, write a query, mail to a publishing house, hope for an acceptance, eventually get an acceptance, and have a book published. But it is very, very hard to get published and getting harder all the time, and Gay Panda has the misfortune of having a last name that is not Kardashian. That last name sneezes diamonds and farts hundred-dollar bills. Perhaps it is time for a name change.

[Gay Panda]

PART TWO: But it reminds me too much of the evil alien race of Cardassians that tortured Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and so instead I am trying to refit the piping in my brain to include a route to eBook. Today I selected four artists to do the cover since Gay Panda tapped out at stick people, and tomorrow I will narrow it down to one. My brain is on meltdown over deviating from the one acceptable route, and it is also resisting getting rid of that damn expired bottle of chocolate sauce.

I have been avoiding this chore all day. In the specific maze in my brain related to nutrition, the acquisition of food leads only to the consumption of food, unless it is covered in mold or the kitty sneezed on it, in which case tossing it is acceptable. But the kitty has not sneezed on it, nor is it covered in mold, and it is not that expired. Maybe if I just had a spoonful a day, I could get through it without causing cravings.

FAIRY OF DEBAUCHERY: THAT’S A GREAT IDEA!!!

But it’s not. Of course, the longer I leave it there, the more expired it will become, and the more my guilt will be alleviated. Then again, I’m having cravings, and it is far easier to deal with them if I don’t have temptation around. So we have the following solutions:

A: Just leave it there and hope the cravings do not get the better of me.
B: Continue waiting for Lady Friend to respond to my text asking her to throw away the chocolate sauce on the bottom shelf of the door in the fridge. (She is undoubtedly reading that as she walks into her Pilates class this evening and thinking WTF?!)
C: Hold it under the kitty’s nose until she sneezes on it.
D: Refit my brain with more shiny new piping, empty the bottle into the sink, and toss.
E: EMPTY THE BOTTLE INTO YOUR MOUTH AND TOSS!!!

Thank you, Debauchery. You’ve made this trip through Carb Flu Country such a delight all week long. Select: D. Wish me luck, ducklings, the Fairy of Debauchery is twirling her lasso as I post.

[MikkiB]

STEP AWAY FROM THE CHOCOLATE SAUCE!!!

Thaaaat's right ... slowly... hands up...

IS THAT CHOCOLATE ON YOUR LIP????

[Gay Panda]

UPDATE:

The Good News: While taking the expired bottle of chocolate sauce out of the fridge, Gay Panda noticed that a hair had become lodged around the cap. Utterly grossed out, Gay Panda threw the bottle away at once.

The Bad News: While closing the fridge door, Gay Panda noticed a second bottle of chocolate sauce on the bottom shelf.

[bloodorchid]

gay panda, there is mold and fungus all in that bottle

[Gay Panda]

Oh Valhalla, I hope so, bloodorchid. And swine flu.

[Sigi]

Gay Pandashian, I offer to come visit you to say a brief hello (air kisses only), stride into your kitchen, sneeze into your second bottle of chocolate sauce (or forcibly confiscate it from your panda paws - your choice), and then depart in a whirlwind of Primal gung-ho-ness, leaving behind just a faint cloud of resolve. Won't stay long; I'm not terribly sociable, and prefer to be a super-low-maintenance visitor.

Any volunteers to pay for my plane fare? I've never been to America!