What a cheesy life!

It is about time I came out of the closet.  And openly admitted to who I really am.

So, here it is.

Out and aloud and proudly in the open.

I am becoming a health nut. A health foodie.

There, I said it!

Even normally, when home, I try to start the day with at least a little bit of protein.  On the road, and when I have to sit in a room and listen to presentations, I knew I had to have more than mere carbs and fat.  Which meant that I needed eggs to start a working day.

But then I am picky about how to eat eggs.  There is no way that I can force myself to eat those scrambled eggs at buffet that they leave sitting there for hours.  Well, unless I have no choice whatsoever.  And this time I had a choice--I just had to locate it!

I did find a place, eventually. I decided to go for an omelette.  

"What do you want in the omelette?" asked the fair-skinned waitress who seemed at least five, if not ten, years older than me.

"Vegetables and cheese.  What options am I looking at?"

"Spinach, tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, peppers."

"Everything except mushrooms" I told her.  Perhaps it is all in my imagination, but sometimes those mushrooms seem to trigger strange dreams.

"How about the cheese?"

"What do you have?"

"Cheddar or Swiss?"

I could not decide.  I am so much used to feta and gruyère in my egg preparations at home that all of a sudden I was stumped that the options were so pedestrian.  Maybe I chose the wrong place to have breakfast after all; what kind of a place has only cheddar and Swiss as options!

But, apparently she interpreted my hesitation differently. Very, very differently.  

"The yellow cheese or the white cheese?" she asked me in a much slower delivery.  

Could it be that a dark-skinned Indian guy came across as one who did not know the difference between cheddar and Swiss?  Could it be that the fair-skinned waitress assumed that people like me are ignorant about cheese?  Should I be snarky and tell her something like, "I hoped you would have feta?"

"Swiss please.  And not a lot--I don't want it all gooey and cheesy."  Yep, that is all I said.  There are very few moments in life when a retort is ever worth the time.  This one was not one of those moments.  

As I kept sipping the dark elixir of life, a kitchen-staff brought out the omelette.  The yellow omelette was colorful, with the spinach green, the tomato red, the onion purple, the peppers green and red and greenish-yellow.  I took a small piece.  It tasted great, exactly like what I was looking for.

I was set for the day. A long day of work and fun lay ahead for this health-nut.

Fame is a Fickle Food

By Emily Dickinson

Fame is a fickle food 

Upon a shifting plate 

Whose table once a 

Guest but not 

The second time is set.

Whose crumbs the crows inspect 

And with ironic caw 

Flap past it to the Farmer's Corn – 

Men eat of it and die.