Eat Less, Travel More

I’m traveling this week.  I’m on a business trip.  This is my first business trip in about six years.  I love an occasional business trip.  It gets me out of the office.  I get to see exotic places.  I’ve been to Israel, India, England, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, and now Boise!  After waiting six years for business travel, my first trip is to Boise!  Boise...  In November...

One of the joys of business travel is the expense account.  I can spend quite a bit on food.  I always eat more and better than I do at home.  I don’t mean healthy better, I mean expensive better.  I have a liberal per-day amount for food.  I usually eat light during the day so I have a lot to spend on dinner.  Years ago on a trip to Boston, I had lobster for lunch and dinner.  Not the same lobster.  I had two completely separate lobsters.  I haven’t eaten a whole lobster since.  The reason I haven’t eaten a whole lobster since? Eye stalks.  Lobster tail is good.  No eye stalks on a lobster tail, unless it’s a Chernobyl lobster.  But they’re rare and expensive.

The eating extravaganza used to start at the airport and end at the airport on the return flight.  After a full day of eating, I’d usually finish it off with two quarts of Ben and Jerry’s.  I’m sure there was a daily slice or two of cheesecake in there as well.

Now things have changed.  Just a little.  When I arrived at the airport, it was time to eat.  I drank a Starbucks herbal tea instead.  When I arrived in Boise, instead of going out for dinner at a nice place, I went to a grocery store and bought some seafood salad, Greek yogurt, and sugar free Vitamin Water.  I had to purchase a plastic silverware assortment for $1.25.  I should have eaten with my hands and wiped them on the sheets. Maybe next trip.

I went to Goodwood with a co-worker last night (for the company, not the food). I ordered a high-protein meal.  Everything they serve is high protein.  When my food arrived, my old travel brain said, “humph… not very much food.”   I was able to gorge myself and eat about one-tenth of the meal.  The only time I’d leave a restaurant with a to-go box was when I was taking a third piece of cheesecake for later.  I took most of my meal back to the hotel last night.

I’m learning that the main reason I loved to travel was for the food.  Eating three meals a day at a restaurant was a thrill for me.  A big thrill.  I loved seeing the sights at some amazing places, but in the back of my mind I was always more excited about where I was going eat my next meal.  If someone said, “We can either see the Eiffel Tower or eat at this French restaurant.”  Of course I’m going to eat at the French restaurant.  I can see pictures of the Eiffel Tower on the internet.  But, if someone said, “We can either see the Eiffel Tower or eat at this Burger King.”  I’d still choose the Burger King.  I’m not stupid.  The best solution would be a compromise, “We can eat, and then get something to go, and then eat again while we’re seeing the Eiffel Tower.”  There’s always a solution.

A trip to Boise a year ago would have been thrilling.  Short flight.  Familiar area.  Recognizable food.   Now it’s all business.   I had Greek yogurt at 6 AM.  It’s afternoon now, and I’m not ready for lunch.  I’ll probably eat the rest of my seafood salad in the hotel room tonight.  I’m allotted $300 for food on this four-day trip.  I’ll end up spending less than $50.

I’m happy about this, right?  I’m happy that I’m losing weight and eating less and feeling better.  Right?  RIGHT???  I wrote about the emotional separation from food a while ago.  I thought I was over it a few days after the surgery.  I guess I’m not.

The business trip thrill is gone.  Eating is eating.  About as thrilling as sleeping, using the restroom, or watching “The View.”  But, I did fit in the airplane seat really well.

Hairy Plodder

I used to have hair.  I used to have hair growing where I wanted it.  Now it only seems to grow on my ears and in my nose.  I’d rather not talk about the huge hairy caterpillars that are my eyebrows.  I used to check the mirror to see if my hair looked good.  Now check the mirror to see if any nose hairs are hanging out.

When my Dr said one of the side effects of surgery is hair loss, I thought, “What hair?”  Does it really matter to me if I have even less hair?

I had good hair.  I thought it was good hair.  In seventh grade I quit going to barber Paul and went to an actual hair stylist.  A woman hair stylist.  I had to make an appointment and everything.  She parted my hair in the middle and feathered it back on both sides.  It was winter and I was wearing a knit cap.  When the stylist was done, I put the cap on so carefully so I wouldn’t mess up my “feathered style.”  I ran to the mirror when I got home.  I carefully removed the cap.  I was so disappointed.  My feathers were flat.

The next morning before school, I figured out how to feather my hair on my own. This was a huge accomplishment for me. I went to school nervous and excited.  I must have checked myself in the mirror a hundred times that day.  I was looking good.  Really good.

I feathered my hair for about four years, and then my favorite rock star of the time parted his hair on the side and grew it really long on top and in back.  So I did too.  Then my rock star started to bleach his hair in front.  So I did too.  I started with ‘Sun-In.’  I wasn’t getting much sun, so I tried peroxide and a blow dryer.  Within a few days, my hair had turned a beautiful golden blonde.  I’m just kidding.  My hair had turned an ugly orange/rust.  It’s the color that says, “I’m too cheap to have this done professionally, so I poured some chemicals on my hair and crossed my fingers.”

I thought I was cool.  I looked kind of like my rock star.  Kind of.  This was the mid-eighties, and the new-wave look was in style.  It was in style in ‘Somewhereville’ where rock stars pose for photographs.  In my small hometown, I fit in like a baby kangaroo in a den of Dingos.

Finally, I’d had enough. I wanted my own style.  Plus, I thought, “I’m going to do some serious damage if I keep putting chemicals on my hair.”  I’d be much better off if I let a cosmetology student do it.  The result was much better.

Toward the end of my senior year, I still had cool hair and it was falling out.  It wasn’t falling out a little bit.  It was coming out in wads. I’d run my fingers through my hair, and it was like I was petting a shedding dog.  I was thinking, “Chemical abuse has killed my hair.”  From now on, no more bleaching.  The only chemicals I’ll use are hair dyes (jet black, black with purple hues, pink, red, pink with red stripes, red with pink stripes, etc).

I returned home from an LDS mission three years after high school.  It’d been at least two years since I’d used chemicals.  I still had some hair on top, but you could see through it.  I was near comb-over land, but not quite there.  One day, my ever helpful mother pulled me aside, and after seeing that we were alone, she said in a nervous but serious tone, “Brad, I need to talk to you about something.”  I was alarmed!  Agggghhhh.  She should have had this talk with me about ten years ago.  Fortunately she didn't give me an anatomy lesson.  But, using the same serious tone, she told me that she was concerned about my hair loss.  She told me that she’d made an appointment with our family Dr to get a prescription for Rogaine.  She handed me some Rogaine coupons. I was wishing she would've given me the “other” talk.

I didn’t go to the Dr.  I didn’t use Rogaine.  I’m a disappointment to my mother.  Actually I bought a toupee.  Actually, I’m kidding.

I've kept my hair stubble-short for several years now.  I’m old and lazy and having really short hair is a convenience. Plus, I was really starting to do the comb-over.  I swear I wasn’t doing it intentionally, but I’d go to a stylist, and they’d cut it to “minimize my bald spot.”  I’d look face-on in the mirror and I’d think, “Yeah!  I’m looking great. I’m not losing that much hair.”  Then I’d see a photo of the top of my head – I belong to the head-down-photo cult – and I’d cringe.  The bald spot wasn’t minimized.  It was huge!  Worse, there were four or five wispy hairs stretched across the vast open area. So, I started buzzing my head. 

Sometimes the stubble will grow out a bit between haircuts.  I can usually get about six-weeks growth before I start to look funny… well… funnier.  Shortly after surgery I got a fresh haircut.  Afterwards, one thing led to another (I was lazy) and I let it grow longer than normal.  This is usually fine other than it takes a minute to get the comb-over just right.  But, this time my hair was thinning.  The Dr was right.  But, weirdly enough, it was only thinning in certain spots on my head.  I’d try to get a spot to perk up and it was too thin.  Another spot was normal.  Another spot seemed coarse. One spot it was sticking straight out.  I looked like I’d spent two-weeks in Chernobyl (a great place, I gave it a glowing review).  I’d wear hats.  It is hard to look dignified in a suit and a trucker hat, but I think I pulled it off.

Gratefully a neighbor sacrificed her evening at home to give me a haircut. 

The Dr said the stress on the body after surgery can cause hair loss or thinning.  I really don’t mind.  I found the toupee on a shelf in the garage.