Last night my world came crashing down around me. The catalyst was a simple spinach salad. I s’pose that needs a little clarification seeing as it likely makes no sense whatsoever.

I’m what you could call a habitual eater. I pretty much eat the same crap every day, possibly not rotating “menus” for months on end. I was born this way and have come to accept it. If anything, it makes grocery shopping REALLY FRICKIN’ EASY. I made one list back in 1998 and don’t have to even look at it by now. I can do a weeks worth of grocery shopping blindfolded and bound in under 7 minutes. No, I’m kidding. Sometimes I forget whether it’s the Mesquite turkey or the Oven Roasted. The deli aisle makes me woozy.

Most people get bored by eating the same thing two days in a row, let alone the same six meals for months or years on end. And the worst part is that I love food, of all types, and love cooking even more. So it makes little sense that I should sentence myself to a life of boring, mechanical munching.

I won’t lie though, as someone who does try to eat healthily, making sure that I get a good balance of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, having one defined menu is convenient. Assuming I don’t deviate, I know exactly what my intake levels are. Perhaps it’s a control issue? But that wouldn’t explain why growing up, I still asked for the same food, passing through such phases as: The Cinnamon Toast (Not Crunch) & Milk Breakfast Dynasty (1984-1987), The Bologna & Cheese Lunch Combo Regime (1985-1990) and the Pasta-Roni™ & Diet Coke Empire (1994-1998).

For the past unknown number of months, my menu has been standard fare, including eggs, fish, soy milk, chicken, turkey, black beans, salads, etc. Heck, most of these foods, I’ve been eating every day for the last five years (or more) without getting sick of them. I like these foods. There have been times when I’ve even been rather excited to get to eat those eggs, those eggs that were no different from the eggs the day before, but yet today seem particularly delicious. That is until this week.

It started Monday, when the smell of that tuna fish almost made me vomit on the counter as I prepared my meals for the following work day. It was so unexpected, I thought it was a fluke side effect from just finishing a particularly hard work out. Yet when I went to eat said tuna fish yesterday at work, I pulled the classic five year old maneuver of shoveling it into my face and swallowing with a throat full of water so as not to taste The Nastiness. I just couldn’t do it anymore. And my dinner last night, a spinach salad and a chicken breast, was a repeat performance. For the first time in forever, I had to ditch the last few bites of my salad because it would have taken Jesus reappearing on Earth with some really, really great croûtons to get me to finish that shit. At least I assume if Jesus came back, he’d be packin’ some killer croûtons.

So here I am, suddenly and inexplicably lost. The staple foods that I’ve depended upon for over half a decade to nourish me now make me feel like I’ve just attempted to chug a quart of Valvoline. No warning, no reason for it. Unless of course I’m pregnant. Which, while it WOULD explain the sudden shift of palette, would leave certain other questions unanswered…