It's pizza night!

And it manages to last longer.

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When it gets sloggy enough in any long February and every long winter, it is natural to look for omens. The everyday stuff is usually fading pretty badly at this point, or at least dramatically eroded by all the black ice and early sunsets that have washed over it in the preceding weeks. It’s natural to search for something outside of or above all that rigidity that might tighten this mess up. Which leaves me with the dorkiest shit that could still qualify as somehow socially acceptable—inspired by the One Bite Pizza Reviews, I have maintained a power ranking system of pizza spots in Toronto with their numeric scores in my Notes app. I’m either losing my mind or have managed to go full Rain Man on my favorite food.

That all probably looks roughly the way it’s going to look, but also there is still the sense that If Only something happens then other things might follow. This is not the same thing as actually understanding what’s going to happen, and is in fact maybe the opposite of that, but I’ve been having some fierce pizza cravings made in brazen defiance of some recently undermined health-related New Year’s resolutions. Paradoxically or not, I’ve been getting a particular pizza craving that arrives in the form of me rationalizing how much I deserve a treat for eating healthy for most of the week and then breaking down and ordering an XL pepperoni pie. But I can’t eat the whole thing in one setting, so I only devour half of it.

When I wake up the next morning, there are still the omens and signs and whims of some hazy and checked-out interventionist god. I peel my face off a pile of pillows feeling horrible, absolutely awful, with a salty mouth, burped-up stomach acid in the back of my throat, and a protruding bloated belly that is actively repulsive at an initial downward glance. I really do want to be a better version of myself, but I’m not very patient, or very astute, or very eager to commit to the detailed work of building a resilient and effective routine that might get me toward self-improvement. I’ve been gleefully brash in this dereliction and I know I can’t do this anymore. It’s a thin hope, but I will tell myself, Moving forward, I will be healthy!!

And for all that abstraction, it is not nothing. Hour by hour, I seem to be doing more or less fine—as capable as I have ever been of a morning smoothie and getting in a multi-hour skate at an outdoor hockey rink. I am determined to take the little victories wherever I can, but then I realize there are another four slices sitting in the fridge because I ordered an XL pepperoni pie. Naturally, I ate them all in one sitting.

My girlfriend has been on the west coast doing her Ph.D. for the past several months, so I’ve been living alone. Now, many of you reading this may argue that, given the circumstances, I should’ve ordered a small or even medium pizza instead of an XL, and then I wouldn’t have a full day’s worth of leftovers. This is simply not an option. I could’ve streamlined the process by slamming a few beers and punishing the whole pizza at once, condensing my degeneracy into one dismal moment. Or, I could microdose this immense shame by spreading it throughout a few days like a soft butter. But that’s in the game of life itself. It’s the absurdity of our foibles and destructive choices that’s latent in these moments of insignificance, the silly and unreasoning and essential element that makes otherwise normal people into thwarted versions of their lofty ambitions. It’s the realest and most entertaining aspect of living, and it’s something that can only be improved with another XL pepperoni pizza.

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