Offline, Salt and my Madeleines

I've been offline for the past two weeks.  The kids had mid-winter break, and then week after was crazy.  During the break, the Boy's Lego Club made it to the First Lego League State Championship in Ellensburg, WA. We also skied for a few days.  All good, but we have been eating out.  A lot.  As a result, I've eaten so much salt in the past two weeks the Atlantic Ocean is jealous.

Speaking of salt... Last night my daughter was skiing and John was working, so the Boy and I ordered pizza for dinner.  We usually get Delfino's, which is a Chicago style place that serves a deep dish spinach.  This is only place west of the Kennedy Expressway that serves deep dish like this.  Anyhow, at the Boy's request, we did not order from Delfino's. We ordered from the national chain that serves this garlic dipping sauce on the side of their pizzas.  Ingredients: soybean oil, water, salt, and then a bunch of chemicals.  I was at the AWP Conference yesterday when a woman read a poem about desire and lack of control written by a prison inmate.  The way this guy feels about cocaine, I feel about this garlic sauce.  This morning, I went to the refrigerator in the basement and ate a piece of cheese bread covered in the sauce for breakfast.  I didn't use a plate.  I just ate it over the box.  Maybe this sauce won't ruin my life and cause me to lose my family or end up in prison, but it could clog my arteries and cause some serious hypertension.  I know this sacue is bad for me, but I could not resist.  I was a victim to its powers.  

And then there was Potbelly for lunch.  Potbelly used to be a one shop operation on Lincoln Ave in Lincoln Park in Chicago, very close to where I lived in my twenties.  The story goes that Potbelly started as a antique shop in the 1970s that started making lunch for its customers.  Soon, the sandwich business took over the antique sales.  Anyhow, John and I used to go to Potbelly on a regular basis for lunch.  On a beautiful summer afternoon, the line would sometimes snake around the place and out the door.  I would get a ham and swiss baked on a hogie roll with mayo, lettuce, tomato, onion, oil and Italian seasonings.  John and I would usually split a bag of chips and a milkshake.  Sometimes we'd just go for a milkshake.  

Now Potbelly is a chain, and there is one on Pike and 4th in downtown Seattle.  This ham sandwich is my madeleine, sending me back through a vortex of time to my twenties, living a yuppie's life in Chicago.  When I had time to wait a half an hour for a sandwich and not worry if one of my children would meltdown from lack of food.  When I could slam a milkshake and not feel like I had to compensate by detoxing on only lettuce, rice and tea for the next two days.  While I love this place, yesterday I left feeling like I was pregnant with a ham sandwich and oatmeal chocolate chip cookie.  Those days of freedom weekends and high metabolism are gone.  

That didn't stop me from returning today.  I wonder how many times Marcel Proust returned to his madeleines.  Did they always bring him back to his childhood, or at some point, did he just remember the last time he had the cookie?  Did he ever decide a cookie was just a cookie and leave it at that?