It Seems I Don’t Get ‘Hangry’ – But I Probably Should

Dearest Rachel –

The English language is a peculiar one, isn’t it? As I understand it, it’s the only one for which a thesaurus exists, but given that is does, it proves extremely necessary. We can use all manner of words to describe virtually every situation – although this appears to result in us Anglophones being distressed to find some concept that we don’t have a word for. As a result, in that burst of annoyance at being bested, we tend to assault the language from which the word and concept originate, and promptly steal them both for ourselves. Consider ‘schadenfreude,’ for example; but hey, it’s cool – the Germans deserved that.

This overabundant vocabulary allowed us, as parents, to obscure various topics in front of Daniel by cloaking them in sesquipedalian terminology, as opposed to the more common practice of S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G certain W-O-R-D-S out. Of course, Daniel being as curious about what his parents were saying as any little kid would be, by the time he was in school, we were being complimented by his teachers for his own preternaturally comprehensive vocabulary. On the other hand, he was just barely able to keep up when it came to orthography, so… roses and thorns, I suppose.

As a result of this, our language has a plethora of words with similar endings, allowing a near-infinite capacity for rhyme. English may not be nearly as mellifluous as the Romance languages such as French and Italian, but its variety of terms for basic concepts make it ideally suited for the poetic arts in its own way.

But not every combination of phonemes has the same multitude of choices when it comes to finding a rhyming match. Colors like ‘orange’ and ‘purple’ are virtually impossible to pair at the end of a couplet without resorting to Seussian neologisms. And despite the common usage of words like angry and hungry, you’d be surprisingly hard-pressed to find another word to go along with either of them, if you were attempting to compose a poem incorporating them. The best you could do are a handful of portmanteaus, most of which simply piggyback on the word ‘hungry,’ and describe certain aspects and focuses of one’s appetite (while looking the proposition up, I was struck by the word ‘horngry,’ for instance, which you can probably divine both its meaning and why it resonated with me on sight), which feels like rhyming a word with itself, and therefore rather like cheating. Well, it’s not as if English is limitless in scope.

Anyway, the best-known of these portmanteaus is the one that literally combines these two otherwise impossible-to-rhyme terms into a single, recognizable concept: hangry. It’s a weird-sounding word, while at the same time being instantly relatable. Given that it’s Halloween today, it seems appropriate to point out that a candy company did an entire ad campaign about this fact:

However, with that being said, it would seem that this isn’t something that happens to me, personally – but for my own sake, maybe it probably should. It would appear that there’s only so far I can go with regards to my fasting routine these days – or maybe it’s my exercise routine? In any event, I probably should explain what happened yesterday.

But in order to do that, I need to go back a little further, to Saturday morning. Normally, when I’m working the booth on Saturday, I grab a slightly late lunch for myself on the way to church. This is the last meal that I have until breakfast on Monday morning. However, with the Family Fest going on, I was to report for set up by 9:30. So in this case, my last meal got moved back to breakfast (and it wasn’t a particularly large one – just a couple of breakfast burritos). And while theoretically, there was plenty to eat at the Fest – hot coffee and cider, donuts, hot dogs, nachos, and of course, an absurd amount of candy of one sort or another – you can just tell from that list that none of it would have been particularly good for me, or my attempts to watch my weight. So, I decided to test my willpower by eschewing everything that was on offer; and the fact that I’d just had that breakfast helped out toward that end. So it didn’t bother me that I skipped out on it; I wasn’t even hungry enough to grab something between going home to change out of my costume and return for my shift in the booth.

Sunday morning was a bit more challenging. Not only had it already been nearly twenty-four hours already by the time I was there and at my station, but the one gentleman who often brings casseroles and other food for the green room was part of the praise team this weekend, and he did not disappoint, in terms of supplying the team. I hate to be the one to refuse – and I feel like the vegan in the room when I explain myself, as I don’t shut up about what I’m trying to do (which is exactly what I probably ought to do, but at the same time, I also feel like it’s uncivil of me to refuse to even try what he’s brought without an explanation) – and it all does smell awfully good, but I knew that by this same time the next day, it would all be worth it.

Since Sunday afternoon is a fight against eating while bored (and I’ve yet to see a word that combines those concepts into a single word; ‘boregry’ doesn’t roll off the tongue very well, nor does it feel like it conveys either part of the concept particularly well) – all the more so since the boys were off to an evening showing of the FNAF movie (yes, they’ve made a movie out of that indie horror video game franchise; amazing, no?) – I usually retire fairly early in the evening. After all, if you’re asleep, you aren’t dwelling on the fact that you’re bored (and hungry). The only thing is, it shouldn’t come as any great surprise that this means that I’m up at a rather unearthly hour of the morning.

Which is still fine, as this means I can finish off my period of fasting with a workout at the gym, and really combine the two parts of my regimen geared toward losing weight. Besides, since I was now on this app that supposedly allowed me to track my own exercise (and have those following me hold me accountable), I figured I would try it out, and see how well it, ah, worked out for me – you’ll pardon the pun, it wasn’t intentional until I was halfway into typing it out. I’ve more to say on it, but I think I’ll set it aside for another day.

The stairclimbing was uneventful, as was the rowing, although the latter took more than the six-and-a-half minutes that has been something of a benchmark for the last couple of months. I’ve gone a little more gingerly on it, as I have started to blister at the base of several fingers if I pull too hard and too fast. In any event, I thought little of it. Likewise, with my bicycle ride; I decided to limit myself to a little more than seven miles and a climb of just over five hundred feet. Everything went rather normally, if a little slow in terms of burning calories compared to other workouts.

But when I got off the bike and pulled up my phone to record the results, I found myself unable to do so for a moment. There was salt in my eyes from my drying sweat, and while I could see the phone in my hands, I couldn’t make out the words it was displaying at first. Moreover, I was suddenly dizzy, and found the need to sit down to collect myself before I could continue and complete this entry for the day’s activity. Once I finally managed, and got to my feet, the dizziness persisted for a moment, if not as acutely as before. I decided I wouldn’t go through with my usual final exercise, a twenty-minute walk up a fifteen-degree incline. Not only did I have to get Logan to work (or rather, to the auto shop where he’d left his car over the weekend for routine maintenance, so that he could proceed on to work), but I still hadn’t reattained my equilibrium.

Clearly, I’d gone too long without eating and put myself through too strenuous a workout immediately thereafter – more likely the former, as I’d done the latter (and then some) on previous Mondays earlier this month. But I hadn’t been aware of my limits until I’d pushed on them like this. Had I gotten truly hangry, say, on Sunday, to the point where I might have needed to be admonished for my behavior and recommended to indulge in some of Roy’s cooking, I might have spared myself this episode. But I didn’t – and now I know how far I can push myself, and, more to the point, when to stop pushing myself.

For what it’s worth, I did reach a new low of 222.0 pounds – although I did restore five of those back to my frame by nightfall (and promptly shed two of those through this morning’s ablutions) – so it wasn’t all bad. Just another learning experience along the way, I suppose.

But, to keep me from learning the hard way too much more often, keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.