I have lost a lot of weight

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

21. Interesting.

I did not do anything specific to kill my appetite. It just went away. Weird, I know. I spent most of my life with a famously large appetite. As a child, a skinny thing, I was known for being able to eat second and third and even fourth helpings at meals.

Growing up, I didn't always have enough food. Went hungry fairly often. When I was in 10th grade, I had a Saturday babysitting job I'd gotten through my high school. I watched two little girls, age 7 and 9 or thereabouts. The parents, who were public school teachers, had themselves a Saturday job at a local plant nursery. I was paid the approximate equivalent of $25.00, a decent pay at the time. Most days, when the mom of the family was driving me home, I'd ask her to stop at a local grocery store so I could buy food for my family. We were really poor. Mom was an RN, and back then (the early 1960s) RNs were not paid very well. She'd left our abusive, alcoholic father and moved us to another part of the country to start a new life. As a nurse, she knew she could get work anywhere, even if it didn't offer a lot of economic stability. So spending my babysitting money on groceries made sense. I couldn't begin to imagine spending it simply on myself.

I learned to cook early on. I was the third of six children, and especially once Mom was working full time, I needed to be able to fix meals for us. No one would ever take me for a gourmet cook. But I do like my own cooking. Especially in the pandemic, I've gotten good at fixing something, especially various soups, and then freezing individual portions for later use. Right now I have about three weeks worth of meals in my freezer. The best part is that my food costs have dropped exponentially, especially compared to pre-Covid when I ate out a lot, and didn't always make things to freeze for later.

Oh, and I can't imagine forgetting to eat.