Quiz

Various alarming physical responses to food (racing heart, shortness of breath, all kinds of other fun things) have led me to consider the possibility that I may have food allergies or sensitivities. And, since I have no job and nothing better to do than sit around thinking of ways that I could be healthier, it's probably time I actually implement some of them. It would be pretty pathetic if I came out of this forced hibernation even less healthy than I was before.

So I am going to start by cutting out the sugar. Or at least as much of it as I can find. I have yet to confront the unpleasant fact that this may well mean cutting out my beloved spritzy wines, especially because yesterday I went to Trader Joe's and found that they finally restocked the white Lambrusco that I adore and love and cannot stop drinking at just one glass even though I read somewhere that white Lambruscos, that any Lambruscos, are the mullet, the Monkees, the shag carpet of the wine world. I do not care.

Where was I? Yes, cutting out the sugar. So, let's say you decide to excise sugar from your diet. You are strong, you are committed, you are eager to take this one step closer to the solution to your myriad health problems. You also have a container of the delicious homemade mint oreo frozen custard from the custard lady down the street. You:

a) pitch the entire thing in the trash. Better not risk it.
b) leave it where it is. You can avoid eating it, but if you determine you can start eating sugar again it'll be nice to have around.
c) devour the entire thing in one sitting, because that way you can start fresh tomorrow with no temptations.

I probably do not need to clarify which one I picked. It made sense at the time. Then again, so, I am sure, did shag carpeting.

I have something you don't have!

I'm not having children. Not that there is (that I know of) any physical impediment to me reproducing. It's just that there are two very big character flaws that inevitably surface whenever I consider the idea.

First off, I'm a very self-involved person. From all I've heard about childrearing, it's a pretty big sacrifice. I'm fairly certain that looking after a child would get in the way of my drinking.

Second, I'm kind of a worrier. In the "I don't know how, but the world will end and it will be my fault" kind of way. I am convinced that the only way that I can keep my three cats alive is by constant monitoring of their every move. Most of my friends expect it by now, but I'm pretty sure it's tough to get used to coming over to my house and having to participate in a tail count every ten minutes. Though it might not seem too weird after they've navigated the moat-and-drawbridge setup I've created with an old screen door in my foyer to avoid any possibility of a four-footed escape. If I were to have a child, it would be wrapped in bubble wrap and not allowed to leave the house until it was twenty.

However, my sister very kindly has provided me the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of reproduction in the easiest possible way. My niece Olivia is quite possibly the most adorable human being to ever walk the earth. I am addicted to this child. I look at pictures of her over and over again in my free time. I check my brother-in-law's Facebook page religiously, hoping for an update. When I am fortunate enough to be in the same state as she, I spend every possible second with her in my arms. I am not very good at the social aspect of aunt-hood; I never ask the right questions on the phone or send gifts in time and I don't have a strong enough internet connection to run Skype or videochat. But get me in the same room as the kid and I'm all over it.

Except, and this is the best part, when she cries. Or screams. Or smells bad.* Those are the parts of motherhood at which I would be an epic failure, and those are exactly the parts that I don't have to deal with. That's why God made mothers. There is no better feeling in the world than holding that fat little infant in my lap, except for the feeling of relief when Diana comes over to rescue me from whatever mess I've made.

It took me a while, getting used to being around a person that doesn't talk. Or feed herself. Or use critical thinking skills and vigorously debate politics. But eventually I got there, and now that I have I'm really enjoying it. If I were employed and had a cash flow, I'd be headed down South right now to get my Olivia fix. When I spend enough time with her, every once in a while, I just start to think that maybe I might be able to do it myself.

When they invent children with an "off" button, that is. Or lower the legal drinking age to six months.



*Yes, I realize that it's tough to believe that I can't handle a dirty baby when I spent two years in an animal shelter and grew up in a horse barn. Animal stuff doesn't bother me. People stuff grosses me out. I've probed open wounds, sifted through vomit looking for foreign objects, cleaned out a horse's "sheath," but I would rather drink turpentine than change a baby's diaper.

After too many margaritas

Do you think the people who lived through The Great Depression knew they were living through The Great Depression? Or did they just think, man, things are pretty tight right now...

Do you think they knew they'd end up in history books?

What I'm wondering is if, given the current panicked state of the world economy today, we are going to end up in the history books. Are we living through the next big thing and we just don't know it? Are my great-great grandchildren (should they ever come to be, a possibility that decreases in likelihood with each year that I drink away) going to read about The Second Great Depression of 2008?

Because if so, I need to start wearing makeup when I leave the house. For posterity.

Yes, You Can be very very silly

I find this almost embarrassing.

In this article, some of my neighbors and fellow Virginians passionately decry the closures of the bridges from VA into DC. They allege residual Civil War hostilities, of all things, as if the closures are based on anything other than pure logic: once you cross that bridge you typically come to a dead stop on a good day. Add in a couple thousand extra people and a massive security force, and yeah, it makes a lot more sense to walk.

Yeah, I get the irony. Virginia voted blue for the first time in a, well, blue moon and now they can't come to the big party. And a little part of me can't help but wonder how, exactly, all of these millions of people that the event planners expect will actually get to the city-- when the sheer numbers of the projections are causing planners to close off all routes into the city. It's a little bizarre logic circle that I suspect may end up with Mr. Obama sharing his big day with only a few of his closest new neighbors.

Anyway, transportation issues are moot to me as I'll be watching the big event on TV from a comfortable chair with a bottle of (Trader Joe's) champagne. But, pride in my state is not moot and seriously, people, the Civil War? Let it go.

Public Service Announcement

Generally speaking, I consider 2008 to be crap. Any year that starts off with me getting mugged and goes downhill from there is not going to fare well in my own personal history books, and as I understand it, it sucked for everyone else too. But throughout the long and mean-spirited practical joke the universe played on the world and called 2008, there was one shining beacon, the bright spot that made life bearable: Trader Joe's wine shop.

Apparently I was the only person in the world who did not know about this, but I am making up for that now with visits so regular, they know me better than my neighbors (which, granted, isn't so hard as my neighbors are of the "friendly" variety and I am of the "close the curtains and hide when they ring the doorbell" variety).

I know there are a lot of people out there who treat wine like an adventure and a lifestyle. Evidently, there are "notes" and "layers" and other complicated things in wine. Apparently, there is some sort of art to matching food with wine. Allegedly, you should let some wines breathe and others age and others still need to be sipped out of very expensive glasses.

Here is how I choose a wine: Can I afford it? Can I drink it without my mouth involuntarily twisting inside out? If the answer to both is yes, we have a winner.

That's why I don't typically go into wine stores, order wines at restaurants, or talk to anyone about wine. I have what you might call plebeian tastes, and I am easily intimidated. Most sommeliers do not have a polite response when you ask for a glass of whatever is the most like Sprite. However, I have a fairly significant friendship with alcohol, and beer tends to get me full before it gets me drunk, so wine becomes a necessity.

The Trader Joe's people are awesome. Not only do they have some pretty great (really great, not like, just great to me) wines for not a lot of money, but they WANT to help. They WANT to talk to you about wine. And, they can't make fun of you. They're wearing Hawaiian shirts, after all. After watching me, on three separate occasions, sneak in to the wine shop and stare cluelessly at the $5.99 Prosecco (yum) and the $3.99 Vinho Verde (also yum) before sighing and dropping them both in my basket, the wise, bespectacled wine lady had had enough. She pulled me over to the tasting counter and, I am not making this up, opened both bottles. She had me taste them, explaining the difference, suggesting which one went better with cookies and which one with grilled cheese (I also have sophisticated culinary habits). And not once did she chastise me for repeatedly telling her that the more fizzy the wine, the more fun I had with it. I would have thought she was just like me, except later I overheard her discussing top notes and food pairings with another customer who quite clearly had a palatte more educated than my own.

My point is this: times are tough. Drink cheap wine that tastes good. And if you have trouble finding that, go to Trader Joes. Tell them I sent you (if you want them to pick you out a wine that tastes like Sprite, I mean).

Dirty Laundry (and dishes)

I didn't clean the kitchen today.

It's pretty gross, too. Last night I made whole-wheat spaghetti with eggplant, tomatoes and pesto. I strew when I cook: dishes, sauces, utensils. Despite the pervasive OCD-instincts running rampant in my habits, I don't clean as I go. That's because as long as I've been cooking, I've had a built-in cleaning system: my husband.

We had a pretty good routine going. He can't cook, and I hate to clean, so after I made dinner he would come in and bang, clang, and scrub and at the end of the evening we'd have full stomachs and a shiny clean kitchen.

Cohabitation is a tricky thing. I'll go so far, of course, to say it's even trickier for women. As women, we're expected to nurture, to clean, to manage the household. As modern women, we hate that shit and expect equality in household chores. But there's risk involved. It's tough to strike that balance between "My husband admires me and respects me as a partner" and "My husband tells me he's working late and spends all night at the airport Hooters fantasizing about remarrying." Add in your basic gender-based typical income disparity and you've got a Pandora's Box of issues sitting right in the middle of the kitchen floor. In our case, Joe made way more money but my work was more "important" and "exhausting." When it comes to cleaning the litter box, who's responsible--the provider or the martyr?

Now that I'm not working, things have gotten...sticky. The logical argument is that, since I chose to quit, since I brought this on myself, since I dumped the sole responsibility for our survival right in Joe's lap, I am obligated to take over all household chores. After all, what else do I have to do? Isn't it my "job" now to cook, to clean, to manage the household? That's only fair, right?

But, eff that. I hate cleaning the kitchen.

It's either this, or drink all the time.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

I'm almost thirty (gaaah), and I always assumed that by now I'd have figured it out. I was a total nerd in school, and typically successful, and it never occurred to me that I'd ever be anything other than whatever it was that I wanted to be.

I should have seen the warning signs when I still didn't have a job the day before college graduation. I should have really seen the warning signs when I still didn't know what the hell I wanted to do after four years of directionless wandering and a-la-carte class selection. Somehow I landed on a career in college student counseling, and embarked on a five-year career experiment after which all I could conclusively tell you is that college students are among some of the most entitled, bizarre, unhygienic creatures on earth.

But somewhere along the line, I found it--that thing I'm supposed to do, that job that's actually a career, that work that you don't mind spending 8-10 hours of your day doing. And despite all of the stress and the heartbreak and the death, I loved working in animal sheltering so much that I didn't care that my annual salary was less than most of my friends spent on clothes each year. I didn't care about the long hours and the abuse from the public and the constant hand-washing. And maybe I was giddy from all that passion and dedication, but two years in I made a stupid career mistake and left a secure job for something not-so-secure, something that seemed bright and shiny but turned out to be dark and toxic. After three days of the new job I was physically ill, crouched in the shower dry-heaving and shuddering with anxiety and hoping to get in an accident on the highway just so I didn't have to go in. I made it eight days before I turned in my keys.

Which brings me here. To my couch, and my kitchen, and my bed--my daily commute. To scouring the want-ads, to becoming intimately acquainted with daytime TV, to learning to cook every possible vegetarian meal that doesn't include beans or tofu. And to the subtle, silent panic that bookends each day; every morning as I wake up, every night as I fall asleep there's that looming question: what if I can't get back into it? And, How long do I hold out for a shelter job before I do something, anything, to pay the bills? If I have to go work at Target, who will I be? What am I without a career? What do I tell people at parties?

Because I thought by now I'd be someone. I thought I'd have a handy, impressive answer to that question everyone asks--at parties, on Facebook, at weddings. "What do you do?" shouldn't be a conversation stopper. But when the answer is, "nothing," I can't help it, maybe it's arrogant, but the question is begged, "Aren't I supposed to be more than that?"

It's a shallow concern, the issue of what you tell people. But it's a deeper, more menacing thing, the issue of what you tell yourself.