Ch 5 Sunday I go to the Y and then to the grocery store, where I buy my own lunch, even though I am a guest in someone’s home, and get snacks to keep in the guest room

I go to the Y, take a step class and a weights class, and then find a People magazine to read while I pedal slowly on the exercise bike. Shockingly, this does not give a person a good aerobic workout, but that is not really my objective.

In case you are wondering, no, I do not usually exercise this much. This is Avoidance Exercise.

I finish about noon, then find a grocery store.

I’ve never had to be in charge of my own meals when I’ve been a guest in someone else’s house. How do you handle that? Do you let them see you eating food you brought? Would that be insulting to them? What is the proper etiquette when you are the guest in a home but are not being fed? Do you worry about the food-withholding host being offended? Or do you think, Yeah, they SHOULD see that I had to buy my own lunch even though I am a guest in their home.

I buy a turkey and cheese on wheat and a peach yogurt for lunch and eat in the car in the parking lot.

The sandwich is not very good. There’s a shock.

Neither is the yogurt.

Man, I hate having to eat bad food.

I also buy a big bag of almonds and a bag of dried apricots. I smuggle them into the guest room and leave them in my suitcase. Is that the right thing to do with snacks? To hide them?

Me and my eating disorder. What would you call it? “Not Lunch-Eating Hosts Hidden Eating Syndrome?” “Post-Gym Grocery Store Hidden Eating Caused by Poor Hosts?” Is this a common syndrome? Is there a DSM-IV code for it?

There is no fruit in the house. I could have bought fruit. But I don’t want to. I shouldn't have to.[1] Produce is horribly expensive where Sly and Doris live[2] and what is at the store isn’t even ripe, so I couldn’t eat it right away anyhow. Where would I leave it to ripen? If I bring it into the kitchen, they will see it and might eat it and how unfair would it be that I not only had to buy my own food while I was their (unwilling) guest but I now also had to buy theirs?

I am ticked off enough that I am buying my own darn lunch. They can’t feed me lunch? They can’t buy a few pears?

"What is wrong with them?" I whisper to Primo as I shove almonds into my mouth during a break from cleaning the garage. “Why don’t they eat lunch? Or at least have lunch food for us? Didn’t they ever take Host 101?”

"They're not hungry," he says.

“But I am!” I say. “I WAS HUNGRY! I HAD TO BUY A SANDWICH AT THE PUBLIX DELI AND IT WASN’T EVEN GOOD! I AM THE GUEST AND I EAT LUNCH!”

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[1] Entitled much? I know. I am a bitch.

[2] Why? Why should produce be expensive in Florida? I lived in Miami, which is a port, for two years, and could never figure that out.