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For the second day straight I woke up with a hangover. A junk food hangover. I’ve been eating crap for the last three days.

The crap-fest began on Wednesday when I was stupid and didn’t schedule my day at all. I hadn’t eaten anything all morning because of back-to-back work calls, so when I met my BBF for a 3 pm movie at The Arclight Theater in Hollywood, I was starving. I did remember to grab the bag of Tootsie Rolls, that Todd had given me, as a movie snack on the way out the door, so I ate those during the movie.

Wednesday morning, my friend Julien had extended a last minute invitation to the premiere of THE INFIDEL, but wanted me to drive. That’s a fine trade: carpooling in return for a movie and snacks. I called Julien as I was leaving The Arclight, because I realized only then that I had forgotten to get the time and location of the premiere from him earlier. Naturally, the premiere screening was happening at the Los Angeles Film Academy, which is located conveniently across the street from The Arclight. Had I been more organized, I would have invited Julien along for the 3 pm movie and then hung out with him in Hollywood until the premiere. Instead, I drove all the way home, changed into party clothes, picked up Julien, and drove back for the premiere, which gave me exactly no time to eat.

Luckily Tribeca Films knows how to order hors d’oeuvres, because the snacks at the premiere party were delicious. Of course when we arrived at the party at 10 pm I was super hungry because Tootsie Rolls are, surprisingly, not a filling lunch. I proceeded to eat my way through a platter of shrimp skewers, lamb kebabs, and chicken wings.

Thursday morning I woke up with a stomach ache from the late night eating and probably the Tootsie Rolls.

To make myself feel better I ate the remaining Tootsie Rolls and the last three palmier petite cookies, with coffee for breakfast. For lunch I ate about half the jar of pickled carrots I’d made with leftover pickle brine, and a half cup of wasabi coated dried peas that I found stashed in the back of the pantry. For dinner I made two servings of spaghetti with sauce made from the last of the sun dried tomato tapenade and a dash of milk.

Today I finished my carb rampaged. I ate the leftover spaghetti with tomato sauce for breakfast this morning. Lunch was spent at the ice skating rink with my Goddaughter, at her “Princess Safari Dinosaur Luau”-themed ice skating birthday party. (Her parents had cobbled together all the party supplies from freecycle–good job, guys). The birthday dinner, consisted of pizza and copious amounts of lemonade flavored sugary water. Homemade birthday cupcakes were the dessert. I ate two.

What is Mr. Foxypants eating these days? Really delicious Indian Food and five different varieties of beef jerky.

With the exception of this week’s two parties, this month has become an extraordinarily busy work month for both me and my boyfriend. It’s crunch time at work for my boyfriend, so his boss is catering lunch and dinner to reward the employees who are all working 12 to 14 hour days. Also, Mr. Foxypants’s weekend DJ job is supplying him with two meals a week. This is really skewing the results of the June Food Stamp Challenge because he’s been eating about 80% of his meals at work, on the company dime. While this allows us to stick to a budget at home, our food situation is now beyond the reality of most people, never mind most people on food stamps. How many people work at a company that recruits employees by advertising about its fully stocked kitchen?

But back to my crap food situation. I’m eating more meat, due to the massive ham inventory, than I would normally eat. This I can blame on my boyfriend. What I can’t finger him for is all the junk food I’m consuming. I’m eating a lot more sugary stuff than I typically would consider prudent, because the birthday cupcakes and the Tootsie Rolls are free and convenient at a time when I have no time or money to spend on food. But my newly awful eating habits are issues that food stampers must contend with every day. For example, since I work for myself and have no children, I suppose I can call every day my own, even if I am scheduled to the hilt. I don’t have to figure out how to work part-time during school hours so I don’t have to pay for daycare, or figure out how to get to the cheaper grocery store across town on the bus because I’m on disability and can’t drive. Even with the relative luxury of my life, the fact that I haven’t had time to do my usual foraging for free food, or bake bread from scratch, because I am working an extra job, has not only negatively impacted our household food budget, but has negatively impacted my diet.

If I were to do this experiment again, I would buy all my food in advance and spend the first weekend cooking a month’s worth of food. When I was just out of college and making no money, my food budget was $80 a month, so I did once a month cooking as a means of survival. If I really menu plan carefully, I can cook all of my groceries, without waste or leftovers, into thirty days of food. In addition to saving money, this also saves a lot of time. I only have to cook for two days out of the month, so on the days where I’m too tired to cook dinner or run out of time, all I have to do is zap a couple dishes in the microwave and make a salad and I’ve got a complete meal in seven minutes. Unfortunately, I didn’t plan for this month, at all, and this lack of preparation is now showing up in my current poor food choices.