My mouth stings.

Everyone has New Years resolutions. I recently scribbled down ten myself. At the top of the list, before I could even consider the rest of my resolutions, I wrote "cook more". Included in that resolution is eating more fresh food...as in stuff that will actually go bad over time if you don't eat it. I admit, putting a clock on the food that you eat is a scary, scary notion to me. We all remember Jerry Seinfeld's routine on expired milk and how it's the psychology of drinking milk on the day it expires that makes it intolerable, not the taste or the texture. Well. Listen. To. This.

The lovely Ma W bought me some groceries over Christmas. I estimate the date of purchase to have been roughly 11 days ago. One of the items I bought was a big bag of fresh oranges. This week I started getting nervous about them, but assured myself that if they were bad, they would look bad, perhaps like this. Alas, they looked perfectly ok. Today I took one to work, sliced it up, and it looked juicy and succulent as ever. I ate lunch at my desk, pouring over the latest headlines and catching up on emails, and I wanted to save the orange slices for the last part of my meal (in order to leave a tangy, citrusy taste in my mouth for what surely would be hours to come).

Once I finished my sandwich I delicately slid an orange slice into my mouth, and my mouth.......instantly.......burned!! So many thoughts shot through my head simultaneously. "There is something rotten in my mouth." "My mouth is on fire." "My mouth tastes like the smell of spoil." "There is evil in my mouth." "Get it out now." "Bad. Bad. BAD!" I spit out the thrice chewed orange remnants onto my plate, and realized that the back of my tongue was stinging, as if hot, liquid garbage had just been poured into my mouth.

After spitting multiple times, rubbing my tongue with a Kleenex, and chasing the spoiled orange with two white fudge oreos and 800 ml of water, I feel a little better. But I still have that dull, stinging sensation in the back of my tongue. Which I really do not appreciate. Thanks a lot, "New Years"!