“Hi. My appointment’s running late. I’ll be back as soon as possible. Thank you. Yeah…I’m sorry…O.K.… Thanks.” As I hung up the phone, I knew I had crossed a line. I had just lied to my boss. I didn’t have a doctor’s appointment. I was at my apartment drying arugula in a salad spinner. The marinara sauce was simmering on the stove, the penne was just about al dente, and the shiraz was breathing on the table. All I had to do was finish making the salad and I was good to go. It was 2 o’clock in the afternoon and I was starting the third hour of my lunch break.
I’m subletting a studio in the Flatiron District from a friend who decided to move in with her boyfriend in Chelsea. I moved here a few months ago from the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. The rent is a bit more than I can afford but the location is ideal. It’s just five minutes from Union Square, where I work. Within two weeks of moving in it hit me: I now live close enough to come home for lunch. Hell, I can come home to go to the bathroom.
The first time I went home for lunch, I picked up a falafel sandwich from a shop on the street and ate it in front of the television. I caught a rerun of the Conan O’Brien show and a little bit of Kids in the Hall on Comedy Central before I had to hurry back to work. As I settled back into my cubicle, I told myself I would definitely do that more often. By the end of the week, I was going home every afternoon.
At first it was just sandwiches, salads, or slices of pizza, but one afternoon I remembered some leftovers from a dinner I made for a friend the night before—stuffed peppers and a Greek salad—so I ate that instead. It was a revelation—no, an epiphany: If I was going to eat lunch at home every day, why should I limit myself to the same food I might eat back at my cubicle? After all, I had a fully functioning kitchen with a stove, a refrigerator, and a spice rack at my disposal. I could make pretty much anything I wanted. And that’s exactly what I did.
I had gotten in the habit of taking lunch at noon, so I would be home in time to prepare my meal and catch Kids in the Hall and Conan. But to insure that I didn’t miss anything, I began leaving work at 11:45 a.m. and returning at 1:15 p.m. Luckily, my job requires very little supervision, so no one seemed to have noticed the additional half-hour extension to my lunch hour. Sometimes, I’d pick up some fresh vegetables at the farmer’s market (eventually, it was a bottle of wine) on my way home. I’d reach my apartment just before noon, and would hurriedly put my lunch together and sit down in front of the television. How civilized! A glass of wine, a nice meal, and television at lunch among my own things.
But sometimes the meal would be so satisfying that it was hard to get motivated enough to go back to work, and I’d need a nap; just something along the lines of a twenty-minute snooze to relax a bit and let the meal settle before getting back to the numbers crunching. Now I was extending my lunch break to an hour and fifty minutes. But since no one seemed to notice and I was still getting my work done, I didn’t have a problem with what I was doing. So after a month, I was daily enjoying a leisurely lunch, two glasses of wine, and a nap in the middle of the afternoon, and returning to work refreshed and ready to take on the rest of the workday…all three hours of it.
Perhaps it was too much of a good thing. Somewhere along the line, all the mid-afternoon pastas, salad nicoises, stir fries, ploughman lunches, and casseroles really started to add up and I began putting on weight. I needed some exercise. But I was already taking nearly two hours a day for lunch, how could I fit in another half-hour of running and still more time to shower and change? I wasn’t about to give up my leisurely meals and disco naps. As it was, I was now going into work early and leaving later to make up for the time I was missing indulging myself all afternoon. But what could I do? My hands were tied. I started exercising during my lunch break. All told—the hour to eat lunch, the half hour to get to and from work and shopping for ingredients, the twenty minute naps, the half hour of jogging and the fifteen minutes to shower and get dressed—I was up to 2 hours and 35 minutes. Wait, add to that ten minutes to walk to my favorite café to pick up iced coffees for myself and E—, the only other person at work aware of my daily siestas.
One day, as I was easing into my seat at my workstation, my boss popped by with an armload of folders. “Here you are! Where the hell have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you. I need you take care of these yesterday. Hey, weren’t you wearing a blue shirt this morning?”
“No. Why do you ask?” I countered, thankful that we were leaving behind the subject of my whereabouts.
“Wait a minute…Yes. Yes you were. At the budget meeting, you were wearing a blue shirt and black pants. And now you’re wearing jeans and a red shirt…and why is your hair wet?”
[Note to self: Figure in an additional five minutes to blow dry hair.]
