Fat Sunday, Lard-y Monday, Obese Tuesday

The bathroom scale has been pushed all the way back out of sight.  There’s just no sense in abusing my self-esteem right now; it’ll get its comeuppance soon enough over the Lenten season.

Confession: I have eaten not one, not two, but FIVE paczki in the last four days.

Criminally.Insane.Gluttony.

That NutriGrain cereal bar ad on television, the one that insinuates “you are what you eat”?  I’m the rotund sugar-glazed jelly-doughnut-like thing that can’t squeeze into a car or through a doorway.

Worse, I’ve eaten not a single plain paczek, but three raspberry-filled and two chocolate custard-filled paczki.  At 400 to 500 calories a pop, their dough is laced with extra egg yolks making them extra rich and dense. 

It’s a ritual in this neck of the woods; we have a large number of Polish-heritage folks who are either preparing or scarfing these fluffy filling-laden deep-fried fat boluses before the Lenten season begins.  There will be lines this morning and tomorrow morning in front of the favorite local bakeries that specialize in pacski. 

One office in which I worked for a handful of years had a weirdly disproportionate number of Catholics on staff.  It was a reinsurance/insurance business, of all things; more than 80% of the staff were Catholic.  (Most of them had worked in the same office long enough that they never questioned the business’s weighting towards Catholicism, let alone the number of Irish- and Polish-heritage on staff!)  A number of us would bring in dozens (yes, plural) of paczki to the office; the entire office would fall on them like wolves on Fat Monday and Fatter Tuesday.  On Wednesday, we’d attend Ash Wednesday services in groups, wearing our ashes around the office the rest of the afternoon.  We were rather glum on that day, although I couldn’t say whether from the solemnity of the service or from the post-paczki bottoming out of our blood sugar levels.

It’s one of the few things I miss about that office: the special communion we shared on Fat Tuesdays, chattering and laughing over paczki.

Lord, have mercy on me and my big, fat, paczek-like rear end.  May the rest of the paczki in my house evaporate before Ash Wednesday arrives, without crossing my lips.  Or at least may we have a communion-like experience sharing these golden greasy-sweet orbs before then. 

And may my sweat pants fit on Wednesday before I head to the gym in contrition.

9:51:26 AM    comment []