My meeting was running ten minutes late and I could hear my stomach growling under my shirt. Feed me, it rumbled. Feed me now. It was 11:10am and I was beginning to think I was actually starving the baby. To be clear, I had already eaten a) breakfast, b) a donut, and c) a bowl of fruit. All before my 10:00am meeting, where I assumed a piece of mango flavored gum would hold me over for sixty minutes.
Apparently I was wrong. By the third time my stomach growled I did that awkward thing where I stood up halfway out of my chair and said “Are we done here?”
I’m sure everyone else assumed I had to pee, which was also true, but little did they know I was about to inhale an entire chicken caesar salad in three bites, leaving a small trail of parmesan cheese on my keyboard to prove it. Ahhhh, satisfaction. Finally. I also polished off a dinner roll and two chocolate chip cookies before heading out to run a couple errands. After a quick carwash and trip to Goodwill to drop off some old clothes, I hopped in the car to drive back to work.
….and that’s when I saw it.
Glowing, in the distance, like a sign from Heaven.
TACO BELL. (where they have tacos!!!!)
And this is where you should picture a scene in a movie, where the crazy pregnant chick crosses three lanes of traffic, tires screeching, as she bounces up on the curb into the Taco Bell drive-through. It was there that I quickly realized this was no ordinary Taco Bell. This was a Taco Bell/Pizza Hut combination (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).
Self control, Ashlee. Self. Control.
I’m pretty sure I was drooling out the window as I read over the menu. Tacos. Burritos. Pizza. Salad (yuck). I’m going to be honest….for a split second, I actually considered getting a taco AND a piece of pizza. After really, really thinking about that, I decided I would be wise to just stick with a good ole fashioned taco supreme, and a pink lemonade for good measure.
“That will be $2.39 ma’am.”
$2.39?! So cheap! So good! Why don’t I come to Taco Bell more often? (Sidenote: it’s probably worth mentioning now that I don’t even eat beef, let alone Taco Bell.) The cash had barely left my hands when I grabbed the bag from the window like a greedy child. It smelled SO GOOD. I pulled ahead far enough to allow the car behind me to reach the window, and quickly unwrapped the taco to take my first bite. Confession: my eyes might have been closed, and there might have been inappropriate noises. It was simultaneously perfect and pathetic.
Honk!
The car behind me was trying to escape the drive-through, but clearly wasn’t aware of the fact that my taco supreme and I were having a moment. How rude. I exited the drive-through slowly, carefully holding my taco in tact. I finished every last bite on my way back to work, and may or may not have licked my fingers after doing so.
It was that day that I realized: what the baby wants, the baby gets. And on that day my friends, the baby wanted taco bell. Who am I to deprive my firstborn?
