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I probably shouldn’t have dragged them all that way.
If I had a conscience, I’d feel guilty, but I got rid of mine sometime around the 10th grade, when I let a boy touch my boobs for the first time.
Thank goodness for that. The conscience-ridding, I mean. The boob-touching was less to rave about (teenage boys lack the tenderness that mammaries require).
Sometimes eating at chain restaurant won't leave you feeling dirty and sad inside. Really.
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In high school, I ate fast food nearly every day.
While my colon now involuntarily spasms at the thought, I lunched at Burger King on Mondays through Fridays for the better part of my junior and senior years. And yet, miraculously, I was far thinner than I am now. It was clearly a superpower of youth, one that I am unable to explain. In the words of Madonna, life is a mystery.
How have I let so much time pass without telling you about these?
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It is late Sunday night, and I’m staring at my computer screen, trying to figure where the time went.
“How is the weekend already over?” I wonder (even after years of having no real obligations on Monday morning, I am still sad when it approaches).
And just earlier today, I asked a friend how, exactly, it was December already. And how can 2012 possibly be weeks away? How – sweet lord in heaven – how am I thirty-one years old and still have to stop myself from answering “Sixteen!” when people ask me my age? (And why, while we’re on the topic, do people keep asking me how old I am? Is it that much of a mystery?)
I close my eyes tightly, trying to take a mental catalog of the last few hours, days, weeks, months, and years. Did they all pass by so quickly? Did I miss anything? Did I forget to tell you anything?
"You killed my father ... prepare to die."
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I was a vegetarian for 6 weeks when I was 19. It was a confusing, misguided time for me. I was dating a young man who didn’t eat meat, and, well … who hasn’t done something stupid for a boy? When he broke up with me, I treated myself to a dinner out: bacon-wrapped shrimp followed by a rack of baby-back ribs. I might have had a pork chop for dessert. I don’t really remember (it was, after all, ages ago).
The thing I realized as I nibbled on those ribs- or the thing I had started to realize at least (because I wouldn’t really get the message until I met Rand) is that you’ve got to be yourself, and you have to find someone who will love you for it. In my case, being myself involves eating meat. It’s not something that I hide from, it’s not something that I’m ashamed of.
It’s with a bit of guilt that I tell you about the Donut Whole in Wichita, Kansas. I just got back from Peru last night, and while I loved the trip, there were times when Rand and I both looked at each other and thanked the heavens that we were born with all the privileges and opportunity and excess that comes from living in America.
We live in a land where pork is put into desserts and cakes and doughnuts, and that is no small thing.
In Wichita, I had no less than three bacon-scented sweets: a bacon caramel chocolate (I deemed it mediocre), a cupcake sprinkled with bacon bits (not bad for breakfast), and a maple-bacon doughnut (YES). This last confection, by far the most superior of the three, was courtesy of the Donut Whole. A small, eclectic shop downtown, they specialize in cake donuts, of which I am a fan because IT MEANS YOU CAN EAT CAKE FOR BREAKFAST. If you are partial to yeast donuts, or a vegetarian, you may want to skip this post altogether. I’ll understand.
The shop itself is shrine to … I don’t know. Something. Really, you tell me:
Let's just go with "America."
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Rand once told me that people are happier when they’re given fewer choices. He’d read an article on it. Something about how we still like to have options, but when we’re faced with too many of them, we get overwhelmed. Our instinctual reaction is try to limit our options to only a few, and failing that, to curl into a ball and suck our thumb until someone makes a decision for us.
By the way, that latter technique? TOTALLY works.
He mentioned this phenomenon to me one afternoon while I was standing in the middle of an IKEA on the verge of one of my patented and adorable nervous breakdowns. If you are unfamiliar with the Swedish furniture mecca that is IKEA, let me tell you now: it could drive the most resolute soul into a mad rage, could reduce the happiest of mortals into sniveling mess. In 1998, Gandhi punched a dude who was trying to snag the last OMSORG shoe tree in stock. True story.
My family members do not always understand me. I feel like a foreign exchange student in their homes – I’m most definitely welcome, but damn it, I’m strange. My accent is funny. I don’t eat pasta daily. I don’t have several gallons of sauce sitting in my freezer, in the event that we might have unexpected company. I purchase pre-made gnocchi, and I don’t drink wine out of a box.
And most significantly, I like sweets. This is perhaps one of the biggest things that separates me from 80% of my blood relations. They are perfectly content to go days, if not weeks or lifetimes, without anything that even remotely resembles sugar. I’ll never forget the time my aunt once told me not to frost a cake that I had made.
“You know,” she said, gently, “because some people don’t like frosting.”
“Bwa-whaaaaa?” was all I was able to sputter out before promptly fainting. She might as well have asked me not to bake the cake, too, so ridiculous was her request. (When I came to, I frosted it anyway.)
