February 19, 2002
find the finger
Ah. So, yes, we haven't finished with Valentine's Day yet.
Later, the same evening, the doorbell rang. Despite all these countless interruptions by evangelists, I've never yet been able to remember to peer through the I-see-you hole in the door -- I know it has a real name, but hole-in-the-door pretty much conveys my meaning to everybody -- to find out who's on the other side. Part of the reason I don't is because I'm too damn short, and anything that requires me to get onto my tip-toes to operate is just not going to get operated.
Anyway, as I said, I answered the door. The Guy was on the other side, dressed in the bright yellow Danger-Large-Chicken-Passing-Through jumpsuit he uses for motorcycle riding. In one hand he had his helmet. In his other hand, he proudly bore a halfway decapitated bouquet that he had brought me, on his motorcycle, from the store.
Motorcycles are good for a great many things. Carrying flowers isn't one of them.
It was the thought that counted, however, and really it's quite sweet if you think of all the trouble that he went to to actually get any of those stems to me with the flower head still attached. I popped what was left of them into a vase, (I hadn't the heart to throw out the stems that still had some of the petals attached), gave him the kisses he deserved, and giggled helplessly in private so as not to hurt his feelings.
Least anybody think less of him, I should add that a couple of days later, he bought half the local Safeway's inventory of post-Valentine flowers, which we brought home.
In a car.
These are now flooding my dinner table in a massive display of disorganized color. If anybody wants to see them, come on by.
I'm hungry.
I only mention this because I've been to Costco three times during the weekend, not including President's Day, and during those three trips I've gotten enough supplies to provide me with peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches from now until July.
It's one of those sad facts about being unemployed that you lose a lot of interaction during your day. You end up writing about your visits to Costco and your boyfriend and, oh, hey, finally unpacking those boxes that you brought home from your old job -- did I really put those office supplies in there? Whatever was I thinking? Who the hell is going to end up using fourteen red dry-erase markers? -- and peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches, and the fact that you used up a two-point-five pound bag of spinach last night, (wow! roughage!) and are feeling incredibly smug because, darn, you've never managed to do that before so it's kind of a hallmark deal for you.
The kind of accomplishments I mark down in my Book o' Life these days aren't anywhere near as flattering to my self-discipline as the ones I managed when I was employed. Back when I was employed it was things like: fixed so-and-so application which will save the company $100,000 next month. Now that I'm unemployed it's: showered.
Not-so-secret news to my friends who've encountered me during my unemployment period. Bathing is for people who leave the apartment and encounter other people. No, not post-office people and supermarket people. Real people.
(Hah! Just kidding. I took a shower just yesterday. Even shaved and used soap.)
I am a shame to generations of sweet-smelling, clean Japanese. Even back when the Europeans were doing things like stealing Chinese inventions and spreading (optional "like a" inserted here) disease across the face of the earth, the Japanese were taking full advantage of hot water and bathing facilities.
In fact, that's the real reason why they wouldn't let the Europeans into Japan back in the seventeen and eighteen-hundreds.
Important Japanese Personage One: "I don't trust them. Their eyes are round and strangely colored. Also, they have large, protruding noses that make their faces disturbingly three-dimensional. It's all quite vulgar."
Important Japanese Personage Two: "I find their smell is quite distasteful. I believe that I saw insects moving about in their hair. I do not believe they bathe regularly. If they enter our clean country, they will make the entire place smell bad."
Important Japanese Personage One: "That settles it, then. Go kill them all."
Japanese Personages En Masse: "Hurrah!"
I'm sure they bathed after the whole Slaughter The Europeans thing.
Oh. About that spinach.
We've started a book club. And when I say "we" I mean "she," because my roommate started a book club, but I live with her and nodded agreeably when she presented me with the idea, so I feel I played some motivational part in the entire book club venture.
Tonight was our first meeting, held at our increasingly dingy apartment. "I'll cook," I offered when my roommate told me our plans: dinner, dessert, and movie. "I mean, I'm unemployed. It's not like I have a whole lot of other things to do."
"Great!" she said. Two days later, she surprised me with, "Oh, gosh, I just found out that my friend and her friend who're coming are vegetarian. Is that a problem?"
Hence the 2.5 pounds of spinach. Being the mad chef, I managed to cook up a completely vegetarian meal, in which the 2.5 pounds of spinach played a significant and fiberactive role. Appetizer consisted of half a sourdough baguette, hollowed out and toasted, with quartered white-cap mushrooms that had been cooked in two tablespoons of skim milk, two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, and two tablespoons of lemon juice, all covered over with parmesan cheese to glue the mushrooms onto the toast.
Okay, normally I wouldn't go into all that detail with the food, but I'm pushing this recipe at y'all. It's good. I mean, yum.
(I want to know how to pronounce Worcestershire. Crap. I'm dating a Brit. I could just ask him, couldn't I?)
Dinner consisted of spanakopita, (2.5 pounds of spinach!), stuffed bell pepper/tomato surprise -- it didn't taste right when I was cooking it, so I started throwing in everything I could find laying around in the kitchen and voila! No post-dinner stomachache, which is what I consider a success, -- and roasted portabella mushrooms.
Five women, including Tara, sat down and had dinner and chatted briefly about the book -- The Red Tent, which I think I've mentioned before -- and then ended up by gradual degrees talking about menstruation and The Pill. It made sense in the context of the book. We made plans to read some other thing, the title of which currently escapes me, and then broke up around ten o'clock.
What I'm wondering is how the conversation would have went if it was four women and a man. Menstruation and Viagra?
A quick note before I close off this entry: ever since Dan Quayle had that little problem with the plural for 'potato,' I've had increasing amounts of difficulty remembering what the plurals for 'potato' and 'tomato' are. Which one has an 'e'? Which one doesn't? Until he'd made that very public gaffe, I was just fine with the words. Now I have to depend on dictionary.com to carry me through.
It was just like that with the whole right-hand left-hand capital 'L' thing. I used to have no problem with telling apart my right and left hands. No pianist -- no pianist with an IQ over single digits -- would. However, one day my sister told me that the way that she keeps them sorted is to hold her hands out in front of her with the thumbs at right degree angles to her palms.
"The one that's shaped like a capital L," quoth she, "is my left hand."
Well, all very well and good. But.
No, I haven't started having problems telling my right and left apart.
However, I have started having problems figuring out which direction the stem in the capital 'L' faces.
If anybody out there has a neat trick for remembering how to walk, please don't share it. With my luck I'll end up confused and be wheelchair bound for the rest of my life.
(Although I will accept any suggestions on how to remember to get fatter...?)