Breaking cleanly from the starting gate

Everyone who is anyone knows that I’ve been reading books about horse racing lately; therefore, I feel it is worth a blog post to advertise the fact that I’m stopping. I know that it’s shocking and that I’ve devoted miles and miles of cyberspace to praising horse books, but I think I finally managed to OD on horse-related non-fiction. At least, that’s what I was thinking when I woke up repeatedly last night from horse-related nightmares.

Now, to be fair not all of my nightmares last night were about horse racing. Some of them were about work and some of them were about some asshole stealing both of the bumpers off of my car. Most of them, however, were about horse racing. I’m not even exactly sure how they were about horse racing; I only know that I kept waking up in a panic, concerned over paddock boots and “break clean” from the starter gate. To make matters worse I was in that hazy intermediate state of coherence and kept having to reassure my soggy mind that there was no part of my life that resembled a horse race.

The terrible thing is that I was on such a g.d. roll with reading horse books. In the last two weeks I’d swept through three, one on Secretariat, one on Seabiscuit, and another on Ruffian. I started a book on Man o’ War last night and I fell asleep reading it. In hindsight I think it was the book on Ruffian that really did me in though…There was a lot about riding towards the light with shattered ankle bones toward the end.

Anyway, this has developed into a very belated and boring post so I’ll stop while I’m still ahead (or at least not that far behind). I’m going to retire with some very tame literature this evening – I’m thinking something about the prairie at about the 5th grade reading level. Any book that mentions the use of sunbonnets to preserve a racially-charged paleness of the skin is like a sedative to me.

3/18/2010? Whatever.

Because I am melodramatic and because I am, essentially, a glorified chatterbox I tend to enjoy finding my life and burdens very trying. There are other times, however, when I find my life hilarious. This (now, here, precisely) is one of those ignoble hilarious times.

I am sitting at home this evening (home after an afternoon working and a morning of mild Bud-Light-regret) and talking about buying a house. If you are waiting for the hilarious part, please pause further – buying a house is not a hilarious thing, it is a freakishly complicated intimidating thing, worsened by questions of river rock and character.

The hilarious thing is that I am discussing this while dining on a dinner of expired pesto (3/18/2010? Whatever.), peach pie and cookies-and-cream ice cream. The whole thing = deliciously immature.

Just when I think that I am getting the hang of being adult-like, I indulge myself in a little dessert-for-dinner action. Sure, I’m reading a novel that interchanges boring Victorian diary entries with saucy passages on an extramarital affair, but I don’t understand that serving a peach pie with anything other than plain vanilla ice cream is a crime. (What am I trying to prove with my preindustrial novel, you ask? It is only of note because I am reading a book that epitomizes the overlap of boring sentimentalism and pornographic imagery that characterizes the chick-lit market. No teen wizards here, brother.)

Oh, life.

Cleaning the fridge of your subconscious

To continue in my vein of discussing boring things, I would like to take this moment to leap up on my soap box and proclaim that I cleaned out my fridge. It wasn’t a real “cleaning” I suppose. It was more of a search for the thing that smelled foul and was ruining my (halfhearted) appreciation of the sunny day. If you were wondering, indeed, if you are the sort of person who likes to hear disgusting things and stares into the sink as you wash your hands to observe the discolored water running off them, then I’ll indulge your curiosity. There were several rotting items in the fridge to which the smell might be attributed, but far and away the most pungent was a Tupperware of black beans.

So I cleaned out the fridge. I like to chuck out the moldy stuff whenever I go grocery shopping, because it freaks me out to think of the old lettuce rubbing elbows with the new, but that is a pretty wasteful practice. Now if you have wandered into this virtual-saloon before you know that I am no eco-soldier, I’m just a person campaigning against a bunch of people that suck atrociously. Often, but certainly not exclusively, people who are very wasteful suck. This isn’t a connection to be made between their empathy for good old mother earth and their fellow man; it’s more a signal of the fact that a person who is wasteful probably A) doesn’t recognize the value of things, B) possesses a great personal ease that grates on the nerves of less fortunate hermit-types, and C) drives a shiny sand-colored SUV. All three of these things are suggestive of jackassery without taking into account any detriment to the environment.

That being said, I like to throw things away. I find any kind of purging of possessions very cathartic, probably because I have mad hoarding tendencies. I hold onto shirts that don’t fit and have holes under the arms until throwing them away becomes a real production. I do this about twice a year with flannel pants. [Really, how can I have so many pairs? Between the free t-shirts (kept for sentimental value) and the pants, the drawer won’t close.] Some people get their jollies skydiving; I get mine from throwing away flannel pants that say “Sleepy head!” all over them.

(Speaking of flannel pants with things on them, I would like to pose a question. Why are people into the Tasmanian Devil character from Looney Tunes? He seems a frequent figure on flannel pants, the cheap kind that have a drawstring that will fuse into a solid-mass in the dryer and leave your pants knotted, forever, at an uncomfortable size. I’m not trying to showcase my provincial horizons, but my observations seem to suggest that the T.D. and that grumpy Martian are preferred by even the most hoodlum-y young adults. Is there some kind of inherent street-cred in Looney Tunes that I don’t know about?)

I’ve been thinking about cathartic things (like throwing pants away, if you lost my train of thought) a rather lot lately. 2010 has thus far been a somewhat gnarly year (with a few shining html-exceptions) for practically everyone that I know and we’ve been sharing notes on how to best cope. I do this – my rambling discussion with no hope of eventual gain – but not everyone has such a marvelously free and soothing hobby. And a person with no release can go a little crazy.

In short: We all have issues, but we don’t all have the extra flannel pants. This is potentially a problem.

The kind of face that I've got

My face is the kind of face that makes uncomfortable exchanges occur. It is the face of a sucker, the face of a bottom-layer pyramid schemer, the face of someone who is a little afraid of the homeless and so will give them money. In short, it’s a damn inconvenient sort of face to have if you ever plan on leaving your house.

I’m used to these sorts of interactions and generally I wouldn’t think twice about the thing that happened to me in a coffee shop this afternoon. But last night I was reading a short story that put an interesting idea into my head.

The story was a very modern thing that mentioned chat rooms and Sanrio. I can go both ways on pop-culture savvy short stories. On one hand I like to feel included in the narrative, like the author had me (or rather my demographic and our collective implied demographic intelligence) in mind when he/she penned the story and now we are sharing a great literary joke as was intended. On the other hand, the mention of specific websites in novels make me feel a bit snobbish and pukey, to say nothing of my noted and dramatic reactions to starlet name-dropping in literature. However, as usual, this is all beside the point.

The protagonist of this story, through various S/M exploits with a fellow called Satan, reveals that she is dissatisfied with men because she has the sort of face that make them want to worship her. She meets these men and wants nothing more than to have brutal sexual encounters involving duct tape and flogging, but they all too soon start professing love for her and she believes that it is because of the nature of her face.

So today, when the following occurred to me in my local coffee shop I thought to myself: “Well this is the sort of face that I’ve got.”

After a mildly uncomfortable job interview I headed down to a coffee shop to try to get some writing done. I was determined to earn my weekend or I promised myself punishment in the form of typing. Plus I hadn’t been out much this week and I was feeling a little detached from the world.

So I got a coffee bev, seated myself near an outlet and was soon puttered away. Before long, a middle aged woman (bright shirt, black pants, bangles, too much hair with too much blond in it) chose the seat nearest mine and asked to use my outlet. As someone who is always far too uncomfortable to ask this question but always needs an outlet, I readily complied (though I shifted my computer a little so that she couldn’t see my Seabiscuit desktop photo). At this point I consider us comrades in computer use, but certainly not chatty.

A few more minutes passed and the woman asked me if I would “be a sister” and watch her computer while she used the bathroom. Always the enabler, I agreed, though my radar for religious nuts was tripped with the word sister. Anxious to avoid questions of conversion (and on closer examination seeing a saint’s medallion around her neck) I didn’t make eye contact when she returned and promptly got on the phone. Between the phone chatter of my new friend and the loud world music in the ship I decided to call it a day.

I noticed my friend eying me as I packed up my gear and so in an effort to be friendly I announced that the outlet was in her possession now. I got a “Bless you” and a mumbled TGIF-style sentiment for my troubles. I exited the building feeling jaunty.

I had not gotten 6 feet, however, before the Saint Lady was calling “Hey girly!” after me from the doorway. I turned around, embarrassed that I answered to ‘girly’ and thinking that I must have forgotten my keys or wallet somewhere. She wasn’t holding anything so I halted awkwardly in the entryway.

“You are so darn cute,” she announced and maintained eye contact in that weird Life-Coach-y way. I ran a mental scan. I was wearing the casual version of my professional interview ensemble (remember this outfit, oh loyal blog followers?) which involved black Dockers, Midwestern housewife hair, thick white socks that I hoped people couldn’t see when I sat down, and some no-nonsense footwear. I can only hope to aspire to cute on my best days and a sweaty post-interview me is not cute.

“Oh,” I said convincingly.

Saint Lady said that she’d like to ask me something, and I said “Oh” again. She asked if I was a student. I informed her, with a dollop of pride that surprised me, that I was a college graduate but recently unemployed. Her eyes lit up. She asked me if I would be interested in a business opportunity.

This time, all I could manage was an “Um” before she held her cell phone, which was spouting up a recording about digital technology and millions upon millions to be made, up to my personal ear.

I squirmed. I thought about how when I was in France the beggars always knew that I was American and would beg in English. I thought about how I was going to rush home and blog about this freaky experience. The recording told me that I could be making money every time someone turned on their television. I thought about how I gave two dollars to a very suspect charity in front of Trader Joes last week because I didn’t know how to say that I didn’t care about football. I thought about the sort of face that I had.

Eventually I said that I had to get going. She told me to go on her website and let Donald Trump convince me, reasserting that I was too cute to not be playing for “the big money.” I considered telling her that cuteness of the face is not the issue here, the issue is the gullible nature of the face and the gullible nature of the brain housed in it, but I didn’t want her to bless me again, so I just scuffled away.

Vic, of Vic's Market

I got out of work a couple of hours early today and so I am doing what any reasonable person would do. I am making brownies and thinking about food in a pensive way.

I know what this seems like, and it is true: I didn't eat lunch and I'm waiting for my co-habitator to return before I eat dinner. General hunger, however, is not the root on this pondering. Sadly, just as I often think about hairbrushes and linens, I have a tendency to over-think food, or more specifically, the food in the home and the implications of hospitality. (That last sentence could have been an essay title. Food in the Home and the Implications of Hospitality. I've still got it, alright.)

I suppose that my time would be better used explaining than tooting my own ex-literary horn. I'll explain, as best as I'm able, the origins of these excessive thoughts. You see, whenever I get the yen to eat some brownies (or other baked good of your choice), I have to actually make a trip to the store to get the supplies. Today's last minute trip to Vic's Market (11.00, Vic is such a scumbag) was for eggs and vegetable oil and, inevitably, brownie mix. And every time I have to make this fateful trip, I wonder to myself why I don't have these very mundane items at my house. Or better yet, why I can't prevail upon my miserly self to buy more than one brownie mix, or a slightly larger serving bottle of vegetable oil, to prevent this very trip in the future.

I guess I'm just not much of a preventative shopper. I make one weekly trip to Trader Joes (I hate people who plug TJ's almost as much as I hate how TJ's doesn't have any ketchup, so bear with me as I make a point) and gather the essential items for weekly eating: bread, lunch meat, strawberries, lettuce, cheese, pizza dough and sauce, milk and cleverly-named fibertastic cereal. I never venture into anything more adventurous.

All of this is very economic (again, Vic is a scumbag), but often leaves me with a sense of unease and no refried beans on the occasion of a spontaneous burrito. My unease derives from the fact that I was raised in a house where culinary hospitality was one the the cardinal virtues; the sort of place that never (ever) ran out of family-sized cans of refried beans. Thus my impulse a few months ago on the eve of a visit from my mom to buy two bottles of wine. Not just one to serve her with pretended aplomb but two, in case another wine drinking event ever occurred. (This is momentous, since we generally don't have an alchy around the house beyond a few stray Bud Lights in a box in the garage and a conspiciously aging and untouched bottle of whiskey in the freezer.) When I bought that extra bottle of wine, I felt prepared for any wine-related situation.

Whenever I get thinking about this sort of business I tend to recall this short story that I read a few years ago. A young couple is featured in this story and the wife is always purchasing fresh food and stockpiling/preserving it for the spontaneous guest or event. Over the course of the story the couple gets pregnant and the baby is still-born. Afterwards the wife never cooks anymore but they eat all of the stuff that she has stored up for a whole year until she leaves the husband. (Note: If this sounds like your short story, sorry about the smashing butcher job I did on the synopsis.)

I know that this story is probably about things that you can't prepare for (death) and can't preserve (certain ill-fate marriages) but I like to think about it when I think about food. What a nice and reassuring thing to be prepared at a moment's notice to turn out a bitchin' spread.

Longs probably isn't a place you think about a lot

Today I ate my first vegetarian burrito.

Actually I don't think that that is strictly accurate, since I used to only eat vegetarian burritos of the bean-and-cheese variety. But when I was about 18, after learning that chinese food is delicious despite the off-putting color of sweet and sour chicken, I decided to make more mature eating choices. To give you a general idea of my culinary sophistication, these mature eating choices included putting chicken in my burritos and putting fewer giant hamburgers into my mouth. What I am trying to say (so valiantly, I think you'll note) is that today I ordered a burrito that was specifically called a vegetarian burrito.

And this shouldn't be overly surprising, given that I am hardly carnivorous and live with someone who eats about 12 veggie burritos a week. Still I thought it was of note.

Also of note: today while eating our matching veggie burritos my boyfriend-person and I discussed nostalgia over businesses as ideas. He is nostalgic over banks and deposit slips. I'm sappy about department and drug stores (to say nothing of general stores, but that is another topic altogether).

I was thinking about drug stores today as I walked past one on my lunch break. I have been told repeatedly by people that I should buy my toiletries at Target (a mere stone's throw away from the Longs Drugs) but for some reason I keep going back to Longs. And it's not even really a big-box issue; Longs is hardly ma and pop status, and I've been known to buy my over-sized (I'll avoid say 'big' again) box of decaf tea at the dread Walmart. I just like the idea of Longs.

I'll offer two reasons for this particular nostalgia.

The first is that I used to live in a dormitory that was within walking distance to a Rite-Aid. Everyone I knew bought all of their needs (shampoo, razors and ect) and their un-needs (water guns, giant sodas) there. I recall feeling very accomplished in my senior year of college when I moved back into that same neighborhood and would ride my bike (oh beloved bike, side baskets and bell) down to the same Rite-Aid. I felt very mature and purposeful in returning there, because now I was a native with a bicycle bell, who knew the exact toiletry needs of a single person with a limited income.

The second reason for feeling affectionate towards drug stores is cold cream. I don't know what it is or when people use it, but I feel fondly towards it. And I bet people buy it exclusively at drug stores.

The only way to get MORE carpal tunnel is to learn to quilt

Today I did a particularly uncharacteristic thing (only more shocking since the principal feature of my character is to resent any sort of change). The offending action was a massage, an unlikely thing because it is a frivolous expense and because I am prude unrivaled by anyone outside of the Shaker/Quaker demographic.

I went and got this massage (and hear my defenses, oh judgmental internet) not for some pansy relaxation, but because my mad carpal tunnel has been flaring up violently. Just yesterday I had my hand turn into a claw of pain when I was adjusting the quilt on the couch, and since I must have the finger mobility to pretend that I am cleaning my house, I decided to pursue some help. Of course I didn’t go to see the doctor, because I’ve been a million times since my fingers started doing their impression of heart-attack symptoms only to leave with a set of wrist splints and a heart pat on the back.

So I went and got a massage and though I was quite earnestly freaked out, I managed to calm myself by focusing on the fact that the massage person looked like gym teacher (you know, sneakers, gently balding, polo shirt). I did my best to focus on this and the periodic wild monkey calls in the soothing jungle tunes that they pipe into the rooms.

I would consider today as the most unclothed that I’ve ever been in public (note: not real public, this wasn't one of those middle-of-mall shacks that sells cellphone skins on the side). Is this admirable? Or does it just make me feel worse about my voodoo backsliding?

No answers here. I will admit to be writing this mainly as a distraction. A certain human of my personal acquaintance is making his radio debut and listening to it is giving me a alarming surrogate stage fright.