Brian and I have a lot of differences, but fortunately we have similar feelings about food—particularly when it comes to buying it.
We both looooove grocery shopping. Wandering through the aisles together trying to remember if we already have that kind of mustard or not; campaigning for and against certain salad dressings, and debating whether we can really continue eating chicken twice a week, or whether I might go crazy if I have to eat another chicken taco. We’ve grown respectful of each other’s strange food proclivities. I look the other way when he grabs a box of soluble protein powder; he shrugs when I add a box of SpongeBob and Friends macaroni and cheese to the cart. But it’s shaped like SpongeBob! And his friends!
If there’s something we eat regularly, we tend to stock up on it. I think we like knowing that if there is a hurricane, we will have the ability to reinforce the windows with bacon. We like knowing that behind that jar of pasta sauce in the pantry is an army of other jars of pasta sauce. There is something comforting about a well-stocked kitchen.
Indeed, Brian’s Costco membership has brought new meaning to the phrase ‘stock up’. Costco does not kid around when it comes to economy sized offerings. It’s a little intimidating, even now. I ventured into my first Costco a couple of years ago when we started dating, and it was a disorienting experience. It was like that Super Mario 3 World where everything is giant. At every turn there were cracker boxes that shared my sweater size. Huge bags of almonds stared me down; I picked up a bottle of juice and realized, too late, that I should have lifted with my knees. I felt like a hungry garden gnome. I know that buying in bulk is more cost effective and saves on packaging, but it’s also not for the faint of heart or the uncommitted. “I like pickles,” I found myself saying, “but do I like ten pounds of pickles?” Fortunately, Brian eats in bulk. The idea of buying block of cheese that I could hide behind became less frightening once I discovered that it was usually gone in a week or two.
I particularly like to stock up on random foods. I tend to see meal preparation as food roulette, and the more filled your pantry is with strange odds and ends, the higher the chances are that you can piece together a meal without having to send out for grocery reinforcements. The last time I went shopping, I picked up a bag of dried split peas, so that one day when I am struck with the urge to make split-pea soup, I will recall with a thrill that I already have the main ingredient. I know that’s probably not normal.
When I was growing up, Mom would make huge shopping trips once a month or so, and have the groceries delivered to our apartment. We walked to the grocery stores in our NYC neighborhood, so what you couldn’t carry home yourself had to be delivered. To this day, grocery shopping with a car that you can put all of your groceries in instead of carrying them home fills me with delight. Anyway, as a kid, when those dozen or so shopping bags arrived, it always felt like Food Christmas. My younger sister and I would prance around digging through the shopping bags, ostensibly to help put things away, but really, we were looking for Keebler Elf cookies.
My problem right now is that I need to cut back on those two-faced little ‘one-stop’ trips to the supermarket by myself. You may know the ones I’m talking about. Where you think, ‘Oh, I need milk, and eggs. I’ll just run in.’ and you come out twenty minutes later with milk, and chocolate chips, and a giant bottle of wine, and a breath-freshening bone for the dog. You just spent twenty dollars more than you had planned, and you forgot eggs.
Those are the trips I need to avoid, and yet, they are often the most fun trips. It feels like I’m just dropping by the supermarket to check in; just seeing what’s new and kicky in the world of food I like to eat. What could be the harm in that? In this economy, with my state of employment (or lack thereof), they’re probably not the best trips to make.
I am working on making a list before I go shopping, and just sticking to that list once I’m in the store. Ideally I will be too embarrassed (or will forget) to add things like, ‘day-old bakery donuts’ and ‘scrubbing-bubbles-shaped nightlight’ (what? It made me happy) to the list, and then I’ll be tricked out of picking those items up along the way. I’ll let you know how this goes. In the meantime, I need to go pick up some day-old bakery donuts.
Man, I love coming home to a glass of wine at the end of a long day. Who’s with me? What’s your favorite way to unwind?
Our apartment complex is very fancy pants, but unfortunately it doesn’t recycle. I kind of figured that out on the day we moved in, when the residential director told us everything we needed to know about everything…except what to do with bottles and cans.
Still, hoping against hope, I visited him in his office a few days after we moved in to ask about recycling. He’s a nice guy, but his response was basically a verbal shrug. He suggested that I could bring recyclables to the local high school. I found this concept frightening. How do you approach a local high school in a town you’ve just moved to, when you hated high school and you’re scared of new people and situations? Do you call the principal? Do you just show up with a case of empty beer bottles? I dithered about this situation for a few days (ok, weeks), unsure what to do.
Meanwhile, we washed and saved our bottles, cans and plastic containers until we had enough to fill a small closet. In fact, a big bag of them was in the front closet. More were in the spare bedroom, and the biggest pile was in the corner in the kitchen. It was starting to make us look less like the fairly neat, sane housekeepers that we are.
When my roommate and I lived together in Hawai’i, we faced a similar problem. Our apartment complex didn’t recycle. Not many places on the island of Oahu appeared to recycle. It seems kind of strange for an island to not bother doing what it could to reduce trash, when there were clearly limited places for it to put its waste. I mean, I suppose there was plenty of room in the delicate ocean ecosystem surrounding the island. I guess I should have thought of that. Anyway, she and I would save empty bottles and cans, stacking them precariously on top of the refrigerator, and when the piles got too high, we would resignedly throw them away with the rest of the trash. It was not a great system, but then again, we were short on apartment space, and we didn’t have a car to drive our empties anywhere if we’d known where to take them, so there was little else we could do with our bottles except collect them pointlessly, out of habit, and eventually sigh and throw them out.
In any event, I had to do some internet sleuthing and call the local town hall, but eventually I found a recycling center nearby. The woman I spoke to advised me that the high school no longer accepted recycling materials. She also said that a number of people from my apartment complex had called her asking for this information, which was encouraging. She suggested that I go back to the residential director and request that they implement a recycling program for residents. Brian did just that (thanks Brian!).
Yesterday, I piled all of the recyclables into the back of my car and drove fifteen minutes away to the center. It was abuzz with activity (and yellowjackets). Cars similarly brimming with bottles and cans were lining up in rows, and the crash and tinkle of comingling materials was deafening.
It was a heartening sight on a Saturday morning. Bottles in North Carolina are not eligible for deposit, and gas prices are at an all time high, but still people were saving up their empties, storing them, and driving them to the recycling center instead of throwing them away, which doubtless would have been much easier. It was a nerdy weekend pick me up.
I got my North Carolina Driver’s License today!!!
I am SO relieved. I had been dreading getting my license changed over since the day I moved here. I realize this shouldn’t be as big a deal as it is, but given my history with the DMV, it is an enormous milestone.
For normal people, a trip to the DMV is nothing more than an inconvenience—it takes a while, there’s lots of bureaucracy, and there are other things you’d rather be doing. But ever since I first got my learner’s permit, trips to the DMV have inevitably been fraught with misery and peril.
I had to attempt the road test four times before I got my first license.
That’s right, laugh it up. Just know that I’m still crying on the inside.
I took Road Test #1 in New York City. I ran a stop sign almost immediately. The instructor was disgusted. “Do you realize you just broke the law??” he thundered. “Turn around right now and take me back before you get us killed.” That was the end of that.
Road Test #2, the next summer, I decided to take in Cape Cod, where I was living with my grandmother. I sat for hours listening to the DMV’s hold music waiting to schedule the appointment. I was all set for this one. My local friends had assured me that the road test there was a cinch. You didn’t even have to parallel park! Just do a K-turn. I did K-turns in the driveway in Grandma’s Camry until the tires went bald. I memorized road signs until my eyes bled. The day of the test, I was told that because my parents hadn’t signed my application to take the road test, I couldn’t take it. I’d had naively had Grandma sign it.
“But my parents are in New York,” I said. “I’m staying with Grandma.” Another brilliant move.
“Is she your legal guardian?” The officer asked. “If you’d forged your parent’s signatures on the document and told me they’d signed it, you could take the test. But now that I know they’re not here and can’t sign, no deal.” So, if I’d been dishonest, I would have gotten what I wanted. Thanks, DMV.
“But she’s my Mom’s Mom!” I argued. “That should make her even more qualified than my parents!” Arguing was futile.
So, no road test. And I’d been so close, I could almost taste the licensey goodness! Scream! But the third time’s the charm, right?
Road Test #3 came the following fall. My father and I had scheduled it to take place in upstate New York, so that I wouldn’t have to drive in the city. We drove up to Utica the evening before the test and spent the night.
The instructor the next morning was gruff, and I was nervous. But I was on a roll. I aced the K-turn and parallel-parked like a dream. Success! All my preparation had paid off! As we returned to the testing site and I put the car in park, the instructor turned to me.
“You failed before we even pulled out of the parking lot,” he said, “and let me tell you why.”
We had begun the test in an empty parking lot. Before pulling out, I had checked both my mirrors, but I had failed to turn and look over my shoulder, to make sure no cars had materialized behind me in the empty parking lot.
Why he couldn’t have just told me this right after it happened, I don’t know. The thought that he let me take the entire road test when he knew from the very beginning that he was going to fail me, is troubling. Such is the way of the DMV, though. Mine is not to question why.
Road test #4 came a few months after that. Hope springs eternal. I was driving a Thunderbird I wasn’t accustomed to, weaving in and out of traffic snarls beneath an elevated expressway in the Bronx. At the end of the test the instructor turned to me. I was prepared for anything.
“Well, you’re borderline,” he said. “You just barely squeaked by. I probably shouldn’t give you a pass, but I will. Just don’t get into any accidents.”
Hallelujah! I became licensed! The skies opened! The roads opened! I could drive in a car by myself! The fourth time was the charm!
Knock on wood, in the nearly ten years since I passed that final road test, I have never been in even a minor fender bender. I’d like to think it’s because I’m an excellent driver, but deep down in my heart, I think it’s mostly because I’m afraid of the DMV. I don’t want to lose my license and have to take another damn road test.
You can now read one of my satire pieces here:
Also I recommend checking out the website because it is deee-licious.
Excited by the prospect of going out to dinner, I decided on a whim to do my hair last night. Twenty frustrating minutes later, I realized that I had no idea what I was doing. I apparently have a huge gap of experience in the field of hair do-ing. True, I can’t remember the last time I made my hair do anything except be in a ponytail or a bun. But just because I don’t usually do my hair, does that mean that now, at the age of twenty-seven, I can’t do it, even if I want to?
Clearly, it does.
I now regret all of the opportunities I missed out on to learn and practice this useful skill. Countless sleepovers during which I dreamily allowed friends to curl my hair and straighten it and make it do things, all while I was busy watching Teen Wolf and picking at my cuticles, and not paying the least bit of attention to style or technique.
The bizarre hairdo I ended up with that evening looked like something my four year old niece would have come up with if she’d been playing with my hair while sitting on the couch behind me watching Hannah Montana. Eventually I gave up and went back to the bun.
There are two kinds of women in the world, I realized. Those who have acquired experience in the ways of hair and are fairly competent stylists, and those like me, who are constantly asking the first kind to do their hair for them.
I realize that some skills are innate—while others must be learned and practiced. However, I am now more aware than ever that I am bad at distinguishing between the two.
Take jumping, for example. A few years ago spent a weekend in a cabin in Vermont with a bunch of people I barely knew. I was one of the youngest people there, which made me feel super cool, and perhaps a bit overeager. At one point, the guys in the cabin began competing with each other to touch the floor of the cabin’s loft bedroom, getting a running start and leaping one at a time; and mostly missing. Guys who were just barely taller than me were almost making it, but I was the only girl there who seemed to want to try it myself.
“Hold on. I don’t find jump much. Do I actually know what I am doing?” I never asked myself that crucial question; I just assumed I had the skills necessary to compete. I took a running start, jumped with all my might and made it about two inches off the ground. A dozen guys I was vaguely trying to impress roared with laughter. I now know that I have absolutely no vertical jump whatsoever—although I had clearly assumed that I did. Now everyone else knew too. This is what we call natural selection at work.
“Aye, I can spin ye a fair yarn about a time when me management skills were tested on the job. Arrrr!”
Even though today is National Talk Like a Pirate Day, you might not want to bust that out at a job interview. Sure, it breaks the ice– but only if by ‘ice’ you mean ‘chance at getting a second interview’.
To post in its entirety on my blog a debate I got involved in over Facebook regarding a woman’s right to choose?
Maybe! But here it is. Comments are certainly welcome. I think this is an interesting issue and I got a lot out of engaging in this debate.
Pro-Choice Argument:
I’d like to address the abortion issue.
I find the idea that a woman’s right to choose is a ‘silly euphemism’, very disturbing. No human right should ever be taken so lightly.
I personally don’t know if I could ever have an abortion, because I realize that it must be extremely psychologically painful and upsetting, and it is not a choice I would like to have to live with for the rest of my life. BUT I would like it to be a choice that is there for me to make. I would like to be trusted as an individual to make that kind of choice for myself.
There are enough unwanted children in this world– is a woman who would have aborted her baby if given the chance going to morph into a good parent because she is forced to keep it? Enough wanted children are abused and neglected as it is.
I strongly believe that abortion should be an option– but that does not make me ‘pro-abortion’. It makes me pro-choice. I don’t like abortion– I like options. And I disagree with the idea that if abortion is illegal, woman will just work harder not to get pregnant. Trust me, we work DAMN hard at it. If abortions are made illegal, desperate pregnant women– whose unwanted pregnancies trap them in abusive marriages, or keep them in poverty– will be forced to resort to more dangerous alternatives.
Why should you, as a male, have full jurisdiction over your own body under any circumstances, but if I become pregnant (by accident, or rape) my body becomes a gestation chamber– and my own life, as an adult, must suddenly capitulate and be ruled by some fertilized cells that have existed for a matter of weeks? How can you rank those cells above me, and what I want? They are in MY body, and being nourished by my body. This is not your decision to make.
I think that I should have the right to judge what is best for me under any circumstances.
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Anti-Choice Response:
This is a certainly a difficult topic, but a couple quick, hopefully non-vitriolic points:
1) “Why should you, as a male, have full jurisdiction over your own body under any circumstances, but if I become pregnant (by accident, or rape) my body becomes a gestation chamber– and my own life, as an adult, must suddenly capitulate and be ruled by some fertilized cells that have existed for a matter of weeks.”
It may sound crass to you, but the life of human beings are characterized by physical necessity. A man no less than a woman must endure the hardships of having a body and all that entails. That women have the particular potency of childbirth is both a blessing and a hardship. That’s the way it is. Nothing we do can change that, and I think it is dangerous, metaphysically speaking, to think of this as injustice.
For you are yourself, “cells.” But you are of course, much more than that, and that is the whole point. You ask how these subordinate cells could be “ranked” above your own. But the whole argument hinges on whether we are willing to “rank” human life itself. And I say emphatically that I am not.
2) As far as choice, it is a choice. It is a choice between something natural and beautiful (that, yes, due to human proclivities can become horrible and miserable, as your examples of desperate women elucidate) and something heinous that should be unacceptable to a civilized society that respects human rights. Never is the latter more desirable than the former.
For me, the very categories of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” are detestable. For us to congratulate Sarah Palin, for example, for her “choice” to have her child, is unfortunate. For that means that we (“pro-lifers”) have adopted the language of choice that presumes that either option is equally good and valid. And that is, quite simply, a euphamization of reality.
Pro-Choice Response:
I agree with you that the terms “pro-life” and “pro-choice” are reductionist misnomers. However, in my view, this is because people who cast themselves as my opponants because they are “pro-life” implies that I am not in favor of life, and that I am in fact “pro-death”—which is not true. I consider myself to be pro-life as well, except the life in question that I want to protect is the life that must consider whether or not to bring another life into the world—that is, the life of the woman.
It’s true that I am also cells. You may be outraged at the idea of ranking human life—and I understand this. But when it comes to the rights of a woman versus the rights of one of her fertilized eggs, as someone who recognizes the consequences of giving birth to an unwanted child, I will sooner uphold the rights of the woman.
I agree with you that having a child is ‘natural and beautiful’—but that ‘due to human proclivities it can become horrible’. Ideally, every child that is conceived is going to be wanted and cared for by those who have conceived it. However, you and I both know that we do not live in an ideal world. Further, I don’t believe that by deciding our laws based on those elevated standards, we will make people live up to them. If that is your view I understand that it is well-intentioned, even though I think it is unrealistic.
I also feel that there are too many children in the world who have been born into households of violence and misery—and that it is THEY who will benefit most from the passionate defense and aid of dedicated people like us. Working with children whose mothers fled to escape domestic violence, which I have done for years, is to me a better way to protect and promote the sanctity of life. These children did not choose to grow up in dangerous and scary environments, but they did, and they will benefit FAR more from my protection and care than an early, unwanted pregnancy will.
Anti-Choice Response:
All very fair.
I do find the notion of “life” in this context strange. When pressed, the early feminists (the biggest proponents of abortion) put up the life of a fetus–theoretical– up against the “life” of the woman. They basically suggest that when a woman has a child, she “dies”; she “loses her life” and now must care for another, constantly encumbered.
I find this telling. Rather than see the raising of children as fulfilling, these women saw it as a biological tyranny.
Anyway, I was the seventh of nine children, and it would certainly be accurate to describe the life I was born into as one of “violence and misery.” But I am certainly better for it. (First, for existing in the first place; and second, for learning early about life’s difficulties.)
Pro-Choice Response:
I think that the early feminists had a point, considering the times they lived in. Before the beginning of the feminist movement, women were not expected to make anything of themselves, besides mothers. Once they had children, their chances of doing anything else with their lives, except parenting, were probably small. And even today, I agree with the spirit of their argument — it’s not that your life ends, if you have a child. But your life as you have always lived it changes irrevocably. Men still have the option (although it is deplorable) of disappearing and shirking fatherhood. It is not as easy for a woman to abandon her baby (although statistically, it is certainly not unheard of). Really, though, every person has the right to their view of abortion. Each individual’s circumstances and perspectives are different.
I would be curious to know whether your parents, having had nine children, were also against abortion? My parents were always pro-choice. It is interesting to see how whether a person tends to hold the same opinions on these kinds of topics as their parents do. They don’t always, of course. But I think it is a factor.
Certainly, having been born, you are the better for it! I don’t think there’s a person on the planet that truly believes it would have been better if they’d been aborted. But frankly, there’s no way to know, either way. That is the problem with an irreversible decision— there is never absolute confirmation that you made the right choice. There’s no “It’s a Wonderful Life” montage to show you both scenarios. This reality, and the ‘what-ifs’ it conjures, could haunt you forever.
Thus, the choice to abort must be an extremely difficult one, and any woman considering it likely asks herself a number of agonizing questions. (If she doesn’t, what kind of parent does she promise to be?) What if I am aborting the next Mozart? She might worry. What if the fertilized egg I’m harboring could become a scientist who cures cancer? Worst, what if my parents had decided to abort ME? This last is a question that I think is particularly troubling to those who are strongly opposed to abortion. The idea that you could have been aborted is a terrifying one for anyone. It can scare you to the core. If abortion is illegal, then you don’t have to bother hypothesizing about it anymore. It is an easy way to stamp out a frightening concept.
When I was around 25, I found myself in a stable, loving relationship with a boy I trusted. I had an apartment and a job that paid the bills. It slowly dawned on me that were I to become pregnant, I could conceivably (ha ha) have the baby and—just barely—afford to raise it. After all, other women my age were having families. My boyfriend would have to drop out of school, and I would probably have a very hard time focusing on the writing career I wanted, but it would be doable. I could no longer justify the idea of abortion as an option for myself by for reasons like, “I’m too young, I am broke, I don’t want to be tied to the guy”. Granted, I still thought those things to a certain extent, but they were less convincing arguments to me at that point. It was almost enough to make me stop having sex, because although I still didn’t want the responsibility of a child, I knew I could probably handle it. Would that mean that, given an unexpected pregnancy, I HAD to?
Ultimately I realized that whatever happened to me, it would be my responsibility to rely on my own judgment, weigh my options and circumstances, and make an informed decision—just like I did in every other area of my life. The idea that my government would not trust me with this decision-making ability, in this crucial area, is absolutely terrifying. Having a baby is an enormously important, personal, and life-changing event. No sort of prohibitive legislation, no matter how comprehensive, could ever do justice to the complexities of the issue. Banning the option of abortion implies that women are unable to govern their own bodies and lives in one of the most important ways they have. If we aren’t granted that right, then it reduces the other rights we have to meaningless euphemisms.
A group of drunk girls were laughing and shrieking in the courtyard below our bedroom window. My alarm was set for 5am, which is when I needed to get up to drive Brian to the airport. When the girls started playing “Red Rover” is when I decided enough was enough.
“Girls,” I shouted down from between the blinds. “Can you please keep it down?” My voice sounded shockingly loud and petulant in the darkness. It also showcased that, although I am on the 3rd floor, my proximity to them was very close.
“Are you going to tell our mom?” one of them sassed. And the others chorused, “Okayyy.”
“Thank you,” I shouted back.
And with that, complete silence. As I drifted back to sleep, I decided that either they were scaling my apartment building with knives in their teeth and I wouldn’t wake to see morning, or they were fairly polite drunk girls who didn’t really want to disturb anyone.
I awoke safe and sound. Thank you, polite drunk girls! This place is almost starting to feel like home, except for the fact that you listened when I asked you to be quiet.
I Heard Tell 