Monbento Square #37 (Double Tier)

 

I'm really into tofu chick'n salad at the moment, so I made some more and tucked it into a sandwich with red onion, cucumbers, and spinach. Alongside that I had some Fritos, fruit snacks, and slices of pineapple.

This is authenticity now:

I'm excited for pineapple season, and I love what tofu can do. If I wasn't eating alone, though, I would probably have cut the pineapple up more. This was juicy and got all over my face for my solo car picnic. But that's also one of the good parts, really! It was just hard to appreciate on this day but I tried hard. The pineapple was a really, really good one. The sandwich was a perfect balance of flavors. But somehow, the most lunch could do for me on this day was to not make things worse.

Do you ever have one of those days when you just don't know why anyone is bothering? Like, why am I at work? Or even awake? The day I ate this was one of those days, when sadness and a sense of fatalism settles in with me and prods me all day. Lunch usually helps on such days; it did not on this one. I did find, however, that when I came home and did the dishes--even though I saw no point in doing the dishes--that something about that felt better. I washed the lunch box and the silicone cups, threw away the leftover pineapple skins, and felt satisfied with myself for trying to give myself a better tomorrow. And maybe the tomorrows aren't going to be better, but at least the dishes will be clean, you know?

I suspect this was a combination of Daylight Saving Time, a pending migraine, the state of my own little world, and the state of the world at large. I have my reasons for all my struggles. They don't arise out of nowhere. We all have our reasons! But one little chore in the face of existential dread always seems to do something for me, if I can manage to get through the chore. 

That part isn't always easy. I was trudging around the kitchen putting dishes away so I'd have room to drain the freshly washed ones, beating back the thoughts peppering me with why am I doing this and what even is the point and who actually cares if the forks are in the right place? Putting away dishes is the weirdest chore. I've hated it since childhood, when emptying the dishwasher was my responsibility, a seemingly endless parade of silverware. But I do so love when things are put away and clean. The results pay their own dividends.

And hey. Maybe, even when we can't have what we would like to have in our lives, we can have fresh pineapple in a clean kitchen, with a fork found where it was supposed to be.