My Bologna Has a First Name

There are good things about singledom. Number one, you live in a place called singledom. You are the boss. You are the master of your domain...rrrrrr. (For the uninitiated, in Tiz-speak that’s Cat Woman purr.) You get up when you want; you go to sleep when you want. You wear what you want. You have the haircut that you want. (I’ve had some controlling boyfriends, I think.) You can take up the whole bed. You can bathe in the middle of the night. YOU CAN PICK YOUR NOSE... c’mon, everybody does it, right? Right? No?

Oh, dear.

You can eat what you want, when you want. This is key for me. I’m a grazer. I don’t really like to sit down and have a meal. Not very “mindful” of me, I know, but I like to make a big meal, leave it on the kitchen counter and just stop by and visit it every once and a while throughout the day. Say hello, play with it, sniff it, lick it...maybe even eat it. Works out well for me...I’m pretty lanky. Dick might even have called me physically fit and toned if he hadn’t closed match.

And then there’s bologna. I don’t know why, but it re-entered my life. Maybe it has something to do with Pop’s passing and my need to revert to childhood. As a kid, every morning for breakfast I would have two slices of bologna, rolled up, and two slices of Wonder Bread, rolled up. The Wonder Bread Roll-Up was, in fact, a bit of a production. I pulled the “bones” off each slice first and sucked them up like spaghetti. I then rolled each remaining mushy mass of amazing chemicals into a little ball, manhandling it until all the oxygen left its being. I would pop the first one back, barely chewing it, but the next I would savor, nibbling away like a retarded chipmunk.

Nana was the dietary expert of Madison at the time.

I don’t know if the bologna fetish I now have has anything to do with Pop, but I’m eating it...a lot. And now they have this wonderful 98% Fat Free Bologna MADE WITH TURKEY. According to the package it’s been “America’s Favorite For Over 120 Years.” Do you know why? ‘Cause it’s freaking amazing, that’s why. Only 25 calories per one ounce slice. I can slam down 12 slices (the entire package) in 15 minutes, which I did just yesterday and then I looked at the back of the package. DO YOU KNOW WHAT’S IN THIS?

· Mechanically Separated Turkey (Wha?)
· Water (I can handle that...I don’t really get enough.)
· Turkey Broth (I can handle that, too.)
· Modified Food Starch (There’s a little note below that reads “Exceeds Amount Permitted in Regular Bologna.”)
· Dextrose
· Contains less than 2% of:
o Potassium Lactate (I didn’t know potassium COULD lactate.)
o Corn Syrup (Don’t they say that causes obesity?)
o Salt
o Hydrolyzed Beef Stock (Hydrolyzed means broken down to an amino acid, so I’m counting this as one for my team.)
o Carraganeen (It’s extracted from red sea weed... another one for Team Tizzy.)
o Hydrolyzed Gelatin for flavor (I’m loving my amino acids.)
o Autolyzed Yeast (That means dead yeast—me no likey.)
o Flavor (Flavor? Flavor?)
o Sodium Phosphates (Didn’t we have sodium before?)
o Sodium Diacetate (See above question.)
o Sodium Erythorbate (Ummmmmm...)
o Sodium Nitrite (OH, DEAR GOD!)

I look closer and it says that each slice has 240 mg of sodium, which is 10% of the daily value for a person who consumes 2000 calories a day. My daily calorie consumption is about 1500 (I tried to do 2000 and my measurements were 40, 30, 44—I was a BIG GIRL).

I think it’s time for some math.

1500 is 75% of 2000, so...let’s increase 10% by 25% to get 12.5%. (Although this is correct, my Economist Ex would find this math a little backasswards). Each slice of Oscar Mayer 98% Fat Free Bologna Made with Turkey is 12.5% of my sodium intake for the day. But I just ate 12 SLICES. A little more math...12.5% times 12 is...wait...I’m doing the math on my iPhone. (I have one because I’m a very important person.) And it’s 150%. I had 50% too much sodium for today...in a 15 minute time span. No wonder my delicate digits look like a serving of undercooked Jimmy Dean’s sausages.

Maybe singledom isn’t so swell. It’s swollen.

Isn’t it nice how I tied that in?

Excerpted from my Tiny Tome