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The Meals of Just-ish: A Sick Joke

Garth Brown |

If you are new to the blog, this post explains what's going on.

You may have noticed that, while I have largely followed the edicts set forth in Judge Hodgman’s ruling, I have not strictly adhered to the quantities. I drank less than half the allotted Fresca; I ate 4 ½ pounds of scrapple. I haven’t felt bad about this. For one thing, eating 4 ½ pounds of scrapple is much more entertaining for everyone involved than eating half of a single pack. For another, Judge Hodgman took about thirty seconds to come up with the list of items, so playing fast and loose with the quantities has not felt like a violation of some grand, intricate design.

So far this hadn’t caused any problems. There are some things like coffee and wine (to say nothing of gin) that, as much as I enjoy them, become rapidly less pleasurable after a certain point. But I anticipated gorging on chocolate from morning until night. Though I’d ignored it in the past, Judge Hodgman’s ruling was quite particular about the amount of chocolate, so I at least went through the motions, by which I mean that I easily located some high quality, 85% bars that weighed north of a pound online. While I didn’t order one - the shipping would have been as much as the chocolate - their mere existence felt like adequate reason to eat as much chocolate as my body would withstand.

As it turned out, this wasn’t much, at least by my standards. It was a somewhat hectic day. My mom and sister had been visiting, so they were leaving, and Ed and I had to load a few pigs, on top of the usual chores. But by just after lunch I had still managed to eat about four ounces. It tasted delicious, and I even felt a ghost of the euphoria I had experienced when I had coffee a couple weeks back.

Then it all went to hell.

Things started going a bit off around noon, and by three I felt nauseous. My stomach roiled and I barely managed to take a shower and lie down. Yet I knew I wasn’t sick, at least not with anything infectious. I can’t put my finger on the exact difference, and even if I could I doubt it would be suitable content for a family friendly blog, but there was something about the quality of the experience that made me certain it was something I’d eaten. In other words, it was the chocolate.

Four ounces of chocolate is more than a standard bar’s worth, so it’s not negligible, but it also would not have given my stomach any problems five months ago. I had anticipated eating at least twice what I did. Is this permanent? Did my abstemious diet allow my body to alert me to a hitherto unrecognized sensitivity? How can I live in a world in which I can’t eat a quarter pound of chocolate without adverse consequences? Only time will tell.

-Garth

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