As it turned out I did not go along on today's trip to the food bank, because something I ate yesterday -- very probably the plain PB&J sandwich that food bank offered us, and which, yes, I ate, despite not having eaten highly processed bread or peanut butter or even goddamn jam for about a year now, because I was hungry and had had a bowl of oatmeal about two hours before and was looking at a forty-five-minute-long walk back. Shortly after I got home I had some black tea (no Silk or creamer) and was rewarded with some nasty stomach cramps, severe nausea, and other stuff you don't want to hear about. Goddamn chronic pancreatitis.
-- Also: If you are ever in a position to donate to a food bank and want to know what people truly need, I will tell you right here and now: NOT BEANS. (Especially not dried beans, that shit takes fucking forever to soak.) NOT BREAD. NOT PASTA. NOT BOXES OF MAC AND CHEESE. Food banks have that shit coming out of their ears. Not potatoes either. Produce! Something green and not-too-perishable, like zucchinis or cucumbers or maybe radishes or turnips, but hell, even canned fruit or giant bags of frozen JGG crap, if the food bank takes frozen stuff. Pears! Apples! Dried cranberries! Fucking Sun-Maid raisins! But for the love of saints and little fishes, LAY OFF THE POTATOES. (We have like three big bags of them now in the cupboard, I'm not even kidding. And T's not supposed to eat a lot of carbs....) There is also the Unmade Holiday Pie syndrome, where people buy a bunch of canned cherries and canned pumpkin and horrible fake cranberry stuff, and never make the pies and the cans sit there until they get taken to the food bank. Take it from me: you help noone when you donate three cans of horrible fake cranberry goo. No one.
(Canned pumpkin actually does work for us, even tho I HATE pumpkin, because we mix it in with our cats' food to keep them regular. But somehow "here, we want to make sure your cat can poop!" doesn't seem to be the rationale behind people donating pumpkin, I would guess. Altho a dear friend of mine suggested a Keep The Cats Regular food drive would be popular....)
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