sandwich

I've been spending the greater part of my first day of Labor Day weekend revamping my website. This is not because it needed it, necessarily. I rather liked the old design, which had the joint advantages of being extremely simple and requiring absolutely no maintenance. I felt towards it like a child does with his favorite Tinkertoy, which has survived sucklings and teethings, beatings against the sibling's head, and more than one traumatic trip down the alimentary canal. (Not necessarily in that order.) Redesigning my web page isn't prompted by dislike of the page design. Rather, it's an expression of my mid-life anxiety, a reaction to the tap-tap-tap of Death counting out a waltz on my shoulder with a bony forefinger.

It's possible that this experience of turning 30 has had a debilitating effect on my morale.

It will take me more than a few days to finish this redesign, as I fully expect to add graphics and style. This will be a little traumatic for you and me both. It'll be rather like watching your mother try out the Las Vegas swinger lifestyle after forty years of baking Betty Crocker. On the up side, this creative venting will give me a surrogate on which to focus my attention, a distraction from the itching awareness that I'm 30 years old, unmarried, childless, and will probably die shortly of some tragic accident involving a Swingline stapler, a water balloon, and an amorous Shih-Tzu. On the down side, the general lack of color means that the text is far more readable, which means you might actually start to notice the fact that I don't write so much as I do drivel on the keyboard.

In the clinical practice of journaling, I'm the Novocaine.

***

This afternoon, I picked up a copy of Anne Lamott's book, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, another Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, and Pamela Ribon's first book, Why Girls are Weird at the bookstore down the street in Menlo Park, Kepler's. Kepler's is a respectable independent bookseller in a fairly upscale neighborhood, much frequented by Stanford students and oxymoronic well-to-do intellectuals. Despite the fact -- or maybe because of the fact -- that it's an independent, it manages to get some rather spectacular authors in for speaking engagements. This fall the lineup will include Garrison Keillor, Dave Barry, Margaret Albright, and Neal Stephenson. And if that's not enough, they cap it off with Dav Pilkey, creator of Captain Underpants!

Even for a huge evil conglomerate like Barnes & Nobles, this is a fantastic lineup. When you take into account that Kepler's is a good, slightly expensive bookstore that has yet to sacrifice goats to large publishing houses or pay tribute of virgin hamsters to literary agents, the issue becomes inexplicable.

My personal theory on this is that Kepler's is run by the Freemasons.

I started with Bird by Bird, partly because I'd heard so much about it, and partly because it happened to be at the top of the pile in my lap on the way home. One page in, I laughed. Four pages in, I was addicted. I bought the book, not because I thought it would help me with my writing -- because much as I cringe and apologize for it, if I were really honest with myself I'd admit I don't actually care -- but because I love to read good writing. I plaster my face to the window of the peep show, an upright, respectable housewife with a bewilderingly intolerable urge towards exhibitionism, and have an epiphany: so that's how it's done!

In one of the chapters, Lamott talks about giving her students an assignment to talk about school lunches. During the half-hour interlude, she sat down herself and started to write.

. . . The contents of your lunch said whether or not you and your family were Okay. Some bag lunches, like some people, were Okay, and some weren't. There was a code, a right and acceptable way. It was that simple.

Your sandwich was the centerpiece, and there were strict guidelines. It almost goes without saying that store-bought white bread was the only acceptable bread. There were no exceptions. If your mother made the white bread for your sandwich, you could only hope that no one would notice. You certainly did not brag about it, any more than you would brag that she also made headcheese.

I put down the book and felt oddly, malevolently triumphant. "I knew it," I was thinking to myself. "I knew there was a code."

School lunches were always a bit of a trial in my youth. At the time, Asians were not common in our small school district; those that sat in class with us had the advantage in that they were aggressively, proactively banana without any of the inhibitions or embarrassment that came with uncomfortable racial awarenesses. Banana -- yellow on the outside, white on the inside -- was for them not so much a habit as it was a state of being. Smaller children would ask them, "Are you Asian?" and they would answer, honestly bewildered, "No."

English was still my second language, and would remain stubbornly uncomfortable on my tongue for at least a couple years more. Social niceties were different as well; I had no context for relating to my peers, convinced as I was that they were laughing at me, sneering at me, or planning something behind my back. I was deeply suspicious of Caucasians and their rainbow of eye colors -- how could they see with those things? I felt superior to my classmates and ached to switch places with them at the same time, and while I didn't know that much about their home lives, I soon became aware that not every 6 year old at Somerset Elementary had the Japanese Consulate General over for dinner once a month, nor did they hold formal, full-dress tea ceremonies to honor the Emperor's birthday.

As a result, the awareness of difference between me and the majority Caucasians in my class was acute during my first few years of school. I fiercely envied my banana classmates during those years, watching them fit in better, talk better and be popular with our age group in a way I never could.

For one thing, I smelled different. Other girls smelled like Bounce or Barbie Fashion Perfume. I smelled like pickles. For one awful, endless year, I smelled like fish. Smelt, to be exact. Everything I wore was either two generations too old, two generations too big, or one generation too small. Plaids and polka-dots were an acceptable pattern combination in my family; when the fashion for little plastic jelly shoes came in, I came barefoot to school -- having hidden my shoes under the car on my way in -- and painted the lacy shoe patterns on my feet with permanent marker.

And then there were the lunches.

Good God, those lunches.

Other, more normal parents thought of lunches as events for nutrition or reward, packing a neat brown sack or -- oh, envy! -- giving their children $1.25 to pay for the cafeteria's offering of the day. My mother thought lunch bags an opportunity to express culinary creativity, and a spectacular chance to empty out the refrigerator.

Other children opened their bags to find treats. I opened mine to find lifelong psychological scars. There were the little dried fishes in the plastic baggies, hastily dumped out and scattered in the playground to the general mystification of the groundskeepers. There were the long strips of salted seaweed that started out as hard as concrete and had to be saliva-softened before they could be swallowed whole; teeth had no effect on them. There was the time we received a food dehydrator from some well-meaning acquaintance. For weeks Mom dehydrated everything too apathetic to run away: dried avocado, dried banana, dried beef, dried peaches, dried squid, all mixed together into an orderly little ziploc as a lunchtime treat.

In an odd way, those strange addendums to my meals gave me an ephemeral popularity. Classmates would gather at my table, the objects they wanted to trade momentarily forgotten in their hands while they watched the unveiling.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeew. What's that?"

"Squid."

"Eeeeeeeeeew. Yuhri's got squid." It is doubtful they knew what squid was. However, anything with that many tentacles had to be on the low end of the third-grade epicure's list of delights.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeew. What's that?"

"Pickled plums."

"Eeeeeeeeew. Yuhri's got pickled plums."

The pickled plums I actually liked, plump, salty, tongue-shriveling things that they were. Even today I love them, nauseating the Guy by popping them in one after another before diving for a vinegary-sweet kiss. Rolled out on the palm, they look like the heads of little old women, pink and rosy-cheeked and wrinkled just enough to be cute.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeew. What's that?"

"Graham crackers and cheese."

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeew. Yuhri's got graham crackers and cheese."

For all that, it was in the subject of sandwiches where Mom really shone. Mom didn't believe in trimming the crust off of bread; it was a waste of bread, and Mom didn't believe in waste. It never occurred to us to ask her. From the day we were born it was drummed into us: wasting food will cause your stomach to swell up like a balloon while demons eat your entrails from the inside out. Mom didn't only not trim the crusts off, she often used the last pieces of two different loaves of bread to make a single sandwich. One half would be gaunt and attenuated, sourdough crusted and flaky; the other half would be Wonder Bread, so squashy and transparent a wet sneeze would cause it to dissolve like tissue.

And the fillings! Here she outdid herself. Peanut butter and salmon. Strawberry jam, cream cheese, and tuna. Curry. Carrots, deep-fried breaded mashed potato balls and mayonnaise. Every lunch I would draw out my sandwich and excavate through the layers under my classmates' avid interest, discovering strata of dinners past between the bedrock of the bread.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeew. Yuhri's got a chicken and peanut butter sandwich."

No bologna for us, oh no. When Mom bought groceries, they had to be able to serve their turn in any, and sometimes every, meal of the day. I would watch enviously while my schoolmates drew out beautiful, geometric, perfect sandwiches sliced around paper-thin, geometric pieces of bologna and cheese even Hercule Poirot would approve of. My bag would produce a rice ball the size of my head, or a sandwich made of half a bagel and the bottom layer of a croissant.

It's funny how time will change memories of horror into sweet nostalgia. My sister and I occasionally reminisce over the shared experiences.

"Remember when . . . "

". . . and that time she got that smoker, and . . . "

". . . oh, and the jumbo tub of peanut butter someone gave her."

"I thought that was Goodwill."

". . . and she dehydrated it!"

We would have sacrificed our 6-year old souls for a Hostess Twinkie. A Ho-Ho. A piece of pizza or even something as tame as blueberries. Undehydrated, simple blueberries. My friend Lonnie would bounce his across the cafeteria table, singing the Smurf theme song, and midway through slam his fist down on the innocent fruit to squash them flat. His sound effects came complete with raspberry. By the end of lunch the table would be painted black with blueberry juice, stained with a hundred little Smurf corpses while I, jealous and deprived, nibbled gloomily away on the charred skin of a dinner eel from three nights past.

Nowadays I eat bread by the loaf, popping it into the toaster slice by slice to eat it plain -- a little bit of butter, nothing else -- for dinner. It's a simple, wholesome way to eat, if not necessarily healthy. It satisfies my craving for bread. Keeps me regular, that's what it does. A little sourdough, a little rye . . .

. . . but from time to time, there's that odd ping in my mind when I look in the refrigerator. A small tub of feta. A battered head of cabbage. Leftover curry. And some jam . . .

Anyone want lunch? I'm buying.

face nipple

Those of you who have seen me in person already know that, in addition to the disfigurations of a short, flat nose that renders my face two-dimensional, a pair of bushy eyebrows that yearn incestuously for each other, a pair of Asian eyes that, snake-like, avoided the extra development of eyelids and yet somehow manage to close anyway, and a mouth that was originally engineered for someone with a head four sizes smaller, I also happen to have on my left, marshmallowy plump cheek, an extra nipple.

No, really. I swear. An extra nipple.

It's an odd growth that started when I was two years old or so, a small, raised, pink bump that grew larger and larger until it was about a centimeter across. The skin there is different than the stuff that pooches across the rest of the ugly mug. It's much, much darker, much redder, and much less soft. If you run your fingers across it, it feels like someone pasted a small block of velvet on a piece of cardboard, glued it all to my face, then shaved it.

It's always been there. I've stopped thinking about it. When I was younger, I was acutely self-conscious; now that I'm older I realize there are a lot of other things about my face that don't make any sense either, and that taken as a whole, there's an odd kind of harmony about the entire "random nipple on left cheek" phenomenon. When it first grew in, my parents -- being first time parents -- were anxious, and took me in to a plastic surgeon to have it removed.

"She were so brave," Mom says proudly to all who ask. "She sitting on the tabur," (table) "I think, oh, so hurt, she will cry, but she sitting up so straight and looking so serious, and she never cry or complaining." She always emphasizes that I sat straight, as though this is a vitally important insight into my character.

In all the years, it never seems to have occurred to her that the plastic surgeon, operating on a 3 year old, might have had the common sense to apply a local anaesthetic. And that the straightness and seriousness might have been the glassy, inattentive stare of an intellectually negligible child, attempting to count to four with pauses in between to stare at air molecules.

I've never disillusioned her. And anyway, the growth grew back. My parents, being pragmatic philosophists and oblivious to the oxymoron, decided that it was meant to be there, and let it be.

Of course, that didn't mean that other people did. In grade school and middle school, children have a refreshing bluntness with their curiosity. When a person heaves into view with something different about them -- a differently colored eye; a disability; poor dress sense -- a child will stare fixedly and make a straight-forward comment. "You look stupid," for instance. "Your eyes are squinty." "Are you pregnant?" "You have a bug on your face." This, I can deal with. Children are small. They can be squished.

Once children become high schoolers however, social niceties begin to take a fell and terrible hand in their behavior. Gone are the direct stares and the forthright remarks about your personal appearance. In their place are sidelong glances, giggles, and carefully coy questions that miss being subtle like a brick misses being tender.

The one benefit to this new tactic is that the question, "What the hell is that blob on your face?" becomes a thing of the past. Until, that is, college. Recall that I went to a music conservatory for my degrees. In the main, music students who actually go as far as to enter a music conservatory generally have the social skills of your more ferocious Pomeranians, and tend to treat their objects of curiosity with the lusty, animal directness used by that same Pomeranian towards particularly shag-worthy legs.

So college, and my first encounter with a freshman, who stared at my face and demanded, "What's that red splotch on your cheek? Is it a birthmark? Can I touch it?"

And, taken aback, I blurted the first thing that came to mind. "It's a nipple."

Clear your mind of any impression that this answer dissuaded him from wanting to touch my facial bumps. Quite the contrary. However, it did give me a new, succinct answer to give people who asked -- and many asked, those first few days -- until my schoolmates had grown accustomed enough to my face that it no longer even registered on their awareness.

It has been years since college, and out in the real world, few people are so tactless as to ask directly about facial flaws. Most grown-ups know that for every remark they make, there's an equally blistering home truth about their own faces that can be shared in turn. If they know me well enough, they also know that I'll have no compunctions in sharing it with the world.

A few months ago, I glanced in the mirror and actually noticed the nipple for the first time in weeks. I inspected it. It was different. It was redder, for one thing, and the shape of the damn thing had changed. It was puffier, like it was infected.

I forgot about it and went on with life.

A few weeks after that, I noticed it again. This time it was redder still. It was getting marginally bigger. And, odd, it was getting bumpier and harder.

Out of sheer curiosity, I scheduled an appointment with my doctor, who referred me to a dermatologist. The dermatologist, a pleasant, charming man, did a three millimeter punch biopsy. I bled copiously, stuck a bandage over the new hole in my cheek, and ambled happily to Aikido.

For the period of a month, I had no word.

Today, word.

"The lab was confused," the doctor explained, in the middle of apologizing for the delay. "They weren't quite sure what to make of it. The sample was abnormal, but not abnormal enough to be melanoma -- you don't have melanoma, we think -- but it wasn't normal, either. It was ... unusual."

"Yay!" I chirped. I'm unusual. I have a nipple on my cheek, and that's unusual too. I'm all-around unusual. I felt a warm glow of pride.

"So they sent it to Stanford to get a second opinion, and their opinion was that it was also strange. You've had this since childhood, you said?"

"Since I was two. Or three." My nipple wasn't only unusual, it was strange. I patted it affectionately.

"Hm. And the last time you had it removed?"

"It grew back," I supplied, helpfully. "We just left it. It seemed emotionally attached to me."

"Well, anyway, Stanford agrees that it's probably not melanoma, but they strongly recommend that it be removed immediately, so we'd like to set up a plastic surgery appointment for you in Santa Clara."

"They're going to just ... remove it?" the Guy asked dubiously when I told him about it, a few minutes later. "They're just going to make a hole in your face?"

"I already have holes in my face. There's just going to be one more. Besides, it's plastic surgery. It's not like they're just going to hoe it out and leave it."

There was a small, thoughtful silence. "Plastic surgery? Are you going to have something else done while you're at it?"

Another small silence, this time on my end. It wasn't as pleasant as the one that had just taken place. "Are you saying I should have some other plastic surgery done?"

"Er...no!" This was the sound of a belatedly smart man, scrambling for cover. "I just thought...."

"Because if you are, I should warn you that you're walking out on dangerous territory right now."

"I wasn't--" The Guy giggled nervously. "I should, um, go. I have to get back to work."

"Very dangerous territory," I said ominously.

The Guy backpedaled and hung up. Behind me, one of my coworkers was attempting to smother mirth in his computer screen.

It occurs to me that breasts are to women what balls are to men. I mean, think about it. The shape is about the same. Each gender has a pair each. And if breasts are the feminine equivalent to balls, the nipple must be the distilled essence of breastness. Balls-ness. "He has balls the size of Texas." "She has breasts the size of Canada." It could be an entirely new wave in the popular culture of language.

Asian chick, two o'clock. And check it out: she has nipples.

turning 30

I'll be turning 30 on Monday.

3.0. I'm a third version product. Three decades. A trimester, on steroids.

30.

Am I upset? Not at all. Not fixating on the fact that I'm now middle aged -- am I middle aged? 30. It doesn't bother me a bit. No changes. No worries. No sudden hot flashes or stabs of depression, anxiety because I haven't done anything with my life, written the book, climbed the mountain, become the parent, nope. I'm okay with it.

Ooh, look. Baby. Hold on. I'll be right back....

Really, I'm just fine. No biological clock ticking. No mood swings. How far away is menopause? And really, I should be grateful; think of how inane, how shallow, how callow I was in my 20s. The 30s are where you really start to live it up. I'll start developing real character. I'll explore the intellectual depths -- is that supposed to be intellectual heights? I get confused so easily -- of my potential. (No, I think it was supposed to be depths.) I'll discover the richness of the female mystique. I'll get drunk for the first time in my life.

This is the decade I'll discover makeup, and maybe even use it once in a while. I'll learn another language. I'll become a good cook. I'll get my finances in order, pay off all my debts, maybe even save something for retirement and move into an actual home instead of a waystation for my stuff. I'll read more nonfiction, plan ahead, do some good with my life, and maybe buy a pet fish. People will start to take me seriously. No, really. I'll be a grown-up.

Crap. Be right back. This guy wants his baby back, selfish wanker...

...Hah. Showed him. Father, my ass.

There have been some aches and pains lately, I'll admit. Nothing to be concerned about, I'm sure. I injured my foot in Aikido, for instance, so I've spent the last two days waddling about like a constipated penguin, but that's not a symptom of old age. And lately I've woken up with a stiff back, but that's probably because our bed is a little old and sagging in the, well, everywhere. These are not significant in the grand scheme of things. I've accepted the fact that I'm no longer at an age where I can partake of a jalepeno pizza without paying the consequences. Jalepenos don't burn as pleasantly going out as they did going in.

Need a second to wipe that image out of your mind? I know I do. Well, that is to say, I need to wipe it out somewhere lower. Residual burn. Yes yes, okay, I'll stop. Moving on.

About the only good thing about getting ol... turning 30 that is, is that I've been getting gifts. I like getting gifts. My mother bought me five glass chickens in Seattle. The Guy got me a beautiful leather jacket in Canada. And my sister and her boyfriend gave me an awesome blouse from Guatamala. I look hot. In fact, for those of you who like to continue this outstanding tradition of gift-giving to the person of the day, feel free. I even have a wish list on Amazon.

Besides that, however, there's not much joy in the old bean for this particular holiday. (There's that word again. Old.) I feel a sprightly nineteen. I look -- thank God for Japanese genes -- mid or maybe late twenties. I'll probably continue to look mid or maybe late twenties for the next twenty years. Japanese women do that. Irritating, aren't we? And except for the fact that my life is over, hell, everything's just fine.

30.

30 years old.

Sucks, man. SUCKS.

***

Okay. I'm over it now.

***

As the people on my notify list already know, I've taken up Aikido again. It turns out that there's a small dojo four blocks away from my current job at the Purple Monkey Factory. Classes start at 6:30, which is just enough time for me to finish whatever I'm doing at the end of my 9:00 - 6:00 day, answer one last phone call, write one last email, chat with my cubemates, pack up my desk, and go. I could walk there in the same time it takes me to drive there, and but for the fact that I usually go to work wearing shoes that wouldn't stand up to a good Seattle rain, I'd do just that.

See, it turns out that with my cholesterol level and diabetes, I am currently what doctors term a "CTD" (Circling The Drain) or "DWW" (Dead Woman Walking). The doctor's appointment I had regarding my cholesterol took place as follows.

Doctor: "Hello, Yuhri. I'm Dr. X."

Yuhri: "Hello, Dr. X."

Doctor: "I hope I haven't kept you waiting long."

Yuhri: "Not at all. I've actually enjoyed the breeze on my ass."

Doctor: "That's probably because you're wearing the exam robe backwards."

Yuhri: "That could be it, yes."

Doctor: "Why are you wearing an exam robe?"

Yuhri: "Habit."

Doctor: "Did the nurse ask you to put one on?"

Yuhri: "She must have forgotten. I had to dig this one out of that trash bucket there. You really hide these suckers, don't you?"

Doctor: "Mm. So do you know why you're here?"

Yuhri: "I cheated on my math final?"

Doctor: "Actually, your regular doctor has noted that your cholesterol is rather high, and has sent you to me so that we can talk about how to control it a little better."

Yuhri: "Are you sure I didn't cheat on my math final?"

Doctor: "So I have your chart here, and, let me see, your cholesterol level was ... oh. Oh dear."

Yuhri: "How long do I have?"

Doctor: "Well, I wouldn't be buying any goldfish if I were you."

There wasn't a single maximum I hadn't overshot, nor a single minimum that I hadn't missed by a mile. The entire page was ablaze with red numbers. See? my heart was bugling in my chest. I told you! I told you I was sick! It wasn't my imagination! You bitch. Call me a hypochondriac, will you? And here I'd always thought it was skipping beats because it was lazy.

Cumulative cholesterol, 257. For those of you who have never had your cholesterol checked, this is a Bad Number.

Yuhri: "Am I special?"

Doctor: "You're ... have you been injecting any lard intravenously that I should know about?"

Yuhri: "Today?"

We discussed my diet at some length, which was rather irritating because the doctor insisted on delving into detail over subjects that I preferred to gloss over.

Doctor: "And it's made with ... spam?"

Yuhri: "Well, it's an ethnic dish, see. Korean, actually. I'm not Korean, did you know that? I'm Japanese."

Doctor: "And you eat this?"

There was also the rather annoying trait she had of instinctively recognizing every single food I liked and ruthlessly marking it Off Limits.

Yuhri: "But..."

Doctor: "No."

Yuhri: "You just said that chicken was better."

Doctor: "Than regular beef."

Yuhri: "And, I mean, an egg is from a chicken, so by transitive property..."

Doctor: "No."

Yuhri: "It's only five or six a week!"

Doctor: "NO."

Not only did she have a way of marking the foods I liked Untouchable, she also had an instinct for finding the foods I didn't like and adding them in copious quantities to my diet. Vegetables, for instance. I have no particular objection to vegetables. I've met some very nice vegetables in my time. I've just never wanted any of them to become an intimate member of my family, is all.

Doctor: "And then there's fish."

Yuhri: "What about it?"

Doctor: "You should have more fish. Twice a week, at least."

Yuhri: "You just told me I shouldn't buy any goldfish."

Doctor: "To eat, Yuhri."

Yuhri: "Look. Just because I'm Japanese doesn't mean I eat goldfish. I haven't eaten goldfish since.... and anyway, I don't eat dogs, either. That's racist stereotyping, that's what that is."

Doctor: "Could you excuse me for a few minutes? I need to go take some aspirin."

The issue of cheese also appeared to give the doctor much pain. Yellow cheeses, it turned out, were -- in the main -- worse for you than white cheeses. I absorbed that fact silently.

Doctor: "Why are you looking so smug?"

Yuhri: "Nothing."

Doctor: "That's only with the most popular cheeses, mind. Like, American cheese, swiss cheese, as opposed to cheddar, for instance."

Yuhri: "Okay."

Doctor: "You're thinking brie is white, aren't you?"

Yuhri: "How did you--"

Doctor: "You can't eat brie."

Yuhri: "CRAP."

At the end of the appointment, during which all joy was systematically stripped from my life, the doctor appeared to mellow into pity.

Doctor: "If you just use a little bit of common sense and restraint in your diet, you'll be just fine. And you'll need to exercise more, to raise your HDL. Your HDL is good cholesterol, and your body produces it naturally when you exercise. It'll actually cut down and clear some of your LDL cholesterol, the bad cholesterol, and improve your overall cholesterol level."

Yuhri: "Exercise?"

Doctor: "How much do you exercise now?"

Yuhri: "Exercise?"

Doctor: "Okay. Here's what you need to do. You need to exercise."

Yuhri: "How, um, much?"

Doctor: "At least thirty minutes a day. Here's a handout. You should check your heart rate while you exercise...."

Yuhri: "A day? How many days?"

Doctor: "Oh, six or seven should do it."

Yuhri: "Six or seven days? A month?"

Doctor: "Six or seven days a week, Yuhri."

Yuhri: "A ... week?"

Doctor: "Are you okay?"

Yuhri: "How odd. The world sort of ... flickered, for a second there. What were we just talking about?"

Doctor: "Exercise."

Yuhri: "Exercise? You think I should exercise?"

Hence, the Aikido. Three times a week now, I return to a small shed-like building a few blocks away to be thrown, battered, and generally abused for the betterment of my heart. Next week, I'll start going four times a week. In three months, I should be up to six times a week. In exchange, I'm assured, I might live long enough to buy a fish tank. Maybe even some fish to put into it. Live ones.

Hand me that celery stick, would you? I feel the need to suck on something. My thumb's out-of-bounds. My doctor tells me it's red meat.

cooking credit

I have to take a break from my vacation chronicles, which are taking on the consistency and excitement of sugarless molasses thinking its way down a wheelchair ramp. Not that there wasn't fun and adventure in my vacation, mind, but there's only so far one can recap the glorious days of yore without starting to get that Teflon Peeling Off the Brand New $600 Pot feeling about the memories.

So, a break. Just for one entry. You can give me an entry, right?

"Hi. My name's Yuhri."

In chorus, now. "Hi, Yuhri."

"I'm a kitchengadgaholic."

I am William Sonoma's whore. Cooking.com? I'm their whipping girl. Crate & Barrel? Bring on the latex! And as long as you're at it, hand me that combination apple-corer-peeler-dicer-minter-carver-sander-painter. Have it in red? No? You have it in teal? I'll take it anyway. Oh, send me the red one when you get it in.

Haha! I don't eat apples. Joke's on you. Here's my credit card. Oh, and my ID. No, don't send me your catalog; I already get four copies every month. No, wait. Send me another copy anyway. I don't think I have one for the bathroom. Telephone number? Are you going to call me with credit card propositions and featured sales? No? Why? Here's my work phone number. Oh, and my cell phone. I carry that with me all the time, 24/7. Only my clients know that number. They call it for life and death emergencies. They're doctors, so that means something, hahaha! Oh, and my mother, she knows it, but she doesn't call it for emergencies since she prefers not to worry me when she's given the kiss of life by paramedics because she's been found dead on the kitchen floor after a lethal yellowjacket sting. I jump when that phone rings. My heartbeat jumps to 160 beats a minute. You go ahead and call that number whenever you have a special on mashed potato molds.

Part of the trouble is the Guy, who has an open mind insofar as consumerism is concerned. I have to be careful about what I comment on, whether during those rare commercials that sneak past my TiVo-conditioned remote control finger, or in passing during some glance through a magazine or webpage. All it takes is one idle remark, "Huh, look. Someone invented a strawberry deseeder," and he'll have the credit card out, ready to go. In a normal world, this would be a dream come true: a boyfriend who wants to buy me presents. My own, personal enabler, folks. Pass me the Tiffany's catalog.

A couple of months ago I gave in and bought a mochi maker, which is basically a big rice steamer with a motor in the bottom. Mochi, if you remember, is Japanese for Squished Rice, which pretty much encompasses the phenomenon of mochi in a nutshell. Basically, you steam rice, you bash it into a pulp, and then you eat it.

For this, you need a machine. A machine that not only steams, but pounds. A rice cooker with strong groinal muscles. One that cracks the tile when it vibrates. "Why can't you just eat it without squashing it? What's the difference?"

Shut up.

Mochi isn't something I eat all that often. As a diabetic, it's fairly high on my list of no-nos. In the past, I ate mochi twice, maybe three times a year, and even with a mochi maker it wouldn't go up much higher than that. But that's not the point.

Buying a mochi maker is not easy. For some unfathomable reason, Americans apparently prefer to eat their rice unpalpated. I have to respect that, however irrational; these are the people who brought you Spam, after all, so you have to acknowledge that there are perfectly sound reasons for Americans not to trust anything mashed beyond recognition.

At the same time, there are enough Japanese folk scattered around the United States -- we don't like to collect in groups of more than 10. It attracts attention from authorities; you know what rabble-rousers the Japanese are -- that there's at least one or two web sites dedicated to the sale of rice makers and their bigger, lustier cousins. I tried visiting San Francisco's Japantown, but found little by way of satisfaction.

(Note: You can probably count on one hand the number of cities that have a "Japantown" as well as -- never "instead of" -- a "Chinatown." San Francisco's is mostly owned by Koreans, Chinese, and non-Japanese in general, which is an interesting payback for that whole Japan-Bought-Hawaii incident in the '80s, not to mention ... well, a decade of brutal occupation and oppression, but that's another topic altogether.)

The new mochi maker, when it arrived, prompted no little amount of comment from my coworkers, the majority of whom happened to be Chinese. Mochi is not unknown in Chinese cuisine, although it's apparently eaten dipped in sugar. In my mind, this is somewhat like eating chocolate cereal in orange juice: two basic food groups that should never mix.

"Why do you need a machine?" they asked. "Why don't you just use a mix?"

A mix? "Like, uh, Uncle Ben's?"

"It's a mix you get out of a box. Rice flour. You mix it with water."

I had to pause to take that in. "You mix rice flour with water to get ... mochi?"

"It's easier," they pointed out.

"Do you mix ice with heat to get water?" I demanded.

They blinked. "Yes."

"Never mind. Ignore that. That's not what I meant."

"It's cheaper."

"Shut up."

"Do you eat a lot of mochi?"

"Shut UP."

A few weeks later, I bought a crepe maker. Do I eat crepes? Sometimes. Do I like crepes? Sure. Do I make crepes? No. Have I ever made crepes? No. But now I might, with the Tibos Nonstick White Electric Crepe Maker. You'll notice that this is not a crepe pan, which would be unworthy of my consideration because it would: 1) not be a gadget; 2) not be electric; and 3) cost less. Besides, who would buy a pan over the Tibos Crepe Maker 9000? This fabulous device not only provides you with a flat, non-stick surface -- just like a pan -- it also allows you to evenly distrbute the batter (just like a pan) and cook it (just like a pan) and flip it (just like a pan) over controlled heat (just like a stove), then add fillings and serve. Just like a pan.

But here's the coup de grace. Unlike a pan, it comes with a handy dandy spreader device made out of wood! Not to mention a little wooden spatula that you use to flip the crepes. And, look! its own little ladle, perfectly sized for a small crepe. Isn't that worth $128.95 plus tax and shipping?

I've sworn off large purchases for a while. Before my vacation I made the mis...that is to say, I prudently sent away for my credit report, which appears to have -- hahah! -- some errors in it. I can't possibly owe that much money. Can I?

Here, why don't you read this catalog for culinary-direct.com while you wait. Don't mind the stain, that's just drool. I saw a really neat escargot smoker on page six....

vacation voodoo

On Sunday, we drove to the Oregon Coast.

Two words. Nice Sand.

Two more words. Ocean Cold.

Two final words. Tourists Suck.

Pictures.

***

Being a tourist in the land of your birth is sort of disconcerting. For one thing, if you read a guidebook, chances are there are things about your hometown that you didn't know anything about.

Meet the troll, who lives under the Fremont bridge.

I knew about the troll -- he's sort of a landmark in Seattle -- but I have to admit that I'd never actually seen the troll before. First time I'd actually gone looking for the troll. The thing under his left hand is a small VW bug. The brightly colored insects crawling all over him are children, one of who inevitably fell down and started to bawl.

That troll probably has to listen to an awful lot of crying children. No wonder he's always so depressed.

"A few years ago, there was terrible accident here," Mom offered by way of colorful commentary as we strolled around beneath the bridge. "A big bus, it fall over the bridge, and everybody die."

There was a moment's appalled silence. "Oh," the Guy said lamely.

"I remember that," I said, also lamely.

"Once, we come down here to purify this, because spirits of dead people here," Mom added with characteristic cheerfulness. "Maybe trapped. It very very sad."

The Guy said nothing. I suspect he thought she was hinting something. At him.

***

Mom was in the middle of the Japan-Seattle Suzuki Institute, a yearly one-week workshop that began almost fifteen years ago with Dad as idea-man and director. Monday, as it chanced, was her half day; she took us to see the troll, and together wandered the quirky, alternative streets of the Fremont district. At one small gallery, she stopped to buy me a set of five glass chickens: my birthday present.

"Peese," she said when I began to remonstrate with her about who should pay for them. "I get for you, or else I have to thinking present for you on ther birthday."

That ended that argument before it began. Last year she gave me a white wicker purse that she had found in her closet. I've interred it in mine. I thought it at least deserved the mercy of a charitable burial. Some day I'll pass it on to my children and thus carry on the curse.

The ostensible reason we were in Seattle was to take Mom out for dinner. "Might as well," the Guy said. "Since I'm going to die young."

It's odd to me how the Guy can't seem to let this thing go. He's convinced my Mom wants him dead. Every time the subject of my mother comes up, he inevitably makes some remark about his impending demise. Most times, he also adds a darkly ominous comment about how he's been cursed.

I pointed out to him that it's completely unreasonable for a network engineer in the twenty-first century to believe in voodoo.

He pointed out that his parents were from a small island in Africa, so he could believe whatever he wanted. And that if anybody could wish someone to death, it would be my mother.

"I hope you do die," I said heartlessly, at one point. "I hope you drop down dead. It would serve you right."

He eyed me gloomily. "You're just like your mother."

Hear that? 'Just like your mother.' Last refuge of the damned.

For dinner, we narrowed down the choices to Thai, Italian, and Japanese. It was hot outside, and we stood around the car, staring blankly at each other; none of us was willing to commit to a specific cuisine, laboring under the anxious certainty that someone was hiding a desire for something else. This is the Japanese way. It drives the Guy insane. Variations on this mental ataxia have taken place most nights in our relationship. The only difference was that now it was a menage-a-trois.¹

"Do you want Thai?"

"We could have Thai."

"Or we could have Japanese."

"We like Japanese."

"What do you want?"

"I don't mind. Anything is good."

"Do you want Greek?"

"Greek's good."

"No, really. What do you want?"

"Anything's fine."

"You don't have a preference?"

"No. I want anything you want. What do you want?"

"I . . . don't know."

"Thai?"

"Thai is good."

We would have quite contentedly starved there, making little darts towards culinary supremacy only to retreat just short of decision, if Mom hadn't been on the diabetic's timetable: food at 6, 12, and 6.

"Japanese?" she suggested, tentatively.

It was the closest we'd come to a decision. As this was the first hint of an inclination on her part, the Guy and I decided sycophantically that Japanese was exactly what we wanted, and jumped into the car.

We went to a restaurant called -- get ready for it -- "I [heart] Sushi."

Really.

No, really.

"It's called what?" The Guy whispered me when we saw the sign. When my Mom had described the place, its name had been clearly articulated as, "I Ruv Sushi." That was bad enough. Actually seeing the sign and realizing it wasn't only 'I Ruv Sushi,' it was actually 'I [heart] Sushi,' was a blow to right-thinking Japanese-food lovers everywhere. Who did their marketing? Sanrio?

You know what?

It was good.

It was delicious. Sashimi, sushi; we gorged on fish and loved it. And, because it was a treat, I brought some back to my Mom's house to share with the ancestors.

At a place called "I [heart] Sushi," too. Who would've thunk it?

Figures. Trust Mom to know where to find a good piece of tail.

***

I really wish I hadn't just written that.

***

The institute required Mom stay on campus at Seattle Pacific University, the site of the celebrations, which meant that Mom's house in Bellevue was a child's dream come true: big, empty, and without parental authority.

That night, Binky came to visit with her dog, Cheeseburger. The name Binky, as my regular readers will know, is a pseudonym which refers to a polar bear in some distant zoo who once -- very properly, I'm sure -- ate a small child and left only a shoe behind. We cannot but applaud this intelligent act on the part of an intelligent animal. Many a time has passed when I've wished I, too, could have aided a belligerent sprout of humanity past that last inch into Darwin Award territory.

Cheeseburger, it will interest people to know, is not a pseudonym. There is no notable resemblance to a cheeseburger anywhere about the dog, save for a slight paunchiness around the middle. On the other hand, by the time they left, the name Cheeseburger came to feel peculiarly appropriate. Prior to meeting him, I'd always pictured cheeseburgers as grave, ponderous, contemplative things that occasionally licked their genitalia like bestowing a benison, much like a Great Dane or a particularly plump tabby. Now I've come to the conviction that in private, cheeseburgers are eager, frantic, needy, desperate things. After all, what's the difference between a cheeseburger and a hamburger? A slab of processed cheese. I know what processed cheese does to my intestines. Is there any reason to suppose it doesn't do the same thing to a cheeseburger?

After Binky left, we cleaned the house and planned to go to Mount Rainier the next day. "It's beautiful," I assured the Guy. "It's considered the sister mountain to Mount Fuji."

"Didn't it explode?"

The house was empty except for us. No Mom. On the other hand, God was there. So were the ancestors. They had an altar each, down the hall.

We slept in separate rooms, just in case. Never can tell if an ancestor's got a big mouth.

***

 

1. I really wish I hadn't just written 'menage-a-troi' in reference to a group that consisted of me, my boyfriend, and my mother. I really do.

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duck

The Guy and I had, it turned out, two completely different ideas of what our vacation would be like. His, born in the steamy chaos of motorcycling and Jack Kerouac -- there we go again with Jacks -- was a devil-may-care, let the chips fall where they may creation that involved dust, sweat, occasional, random stops to see (for instance) the biggest ball of twine in the world, and crashing at motels when we felt like it.

My idea of a vacation would have done Martha Stewart proud. It would have involved a carefully mapped line of attack, complete with little flags for rest stops and refuelings. There would have been reservations. A checklist of "To See" items. Embroidered handkerchiefs for warm days, and Gucci sunglasses.

Some inkling of the disparity between our views came home to me on Friday, the day before we were to leave.

Since the Guy had had three weeks off already, and the entire concept of the vacation was his plaything, I'd trustfully left all the plan-making to him. "Let's hit Vancouver," he said at one point. "I want to see Canada." And: "Let's head back down through Montana. I hear that's great."

All this had led me to suppose that he was actually making reservations and planning routes of travel, and it wasn't until a few nights before our departure that I actually bothered to ask.

"Did you book any hotels or anything?" I asked.

He looked up from his laptop, which was presently exploring the wild and woolly world of Baldur's Gate. "Nope," he said, cheerily, and went back to playing.

I fretted, but in silence. It is the Japanese way. When one finds something irritating, one bites one's tongue and lets one's irritation ferment and grow until it finds release in an ulcer or domestic violence.

On Friday, coaxed into unwilling agreement by a quarrel and subsequent making-up, the Guy finally made reservations for two nights. In Eugene, Oregon. Home of the Ducks and, we were to discover, Teutonic hippies. That's a story for later, however. That same night, listening idly to the British Broadcasting Corporation news on NPR, we learned that Vancouver was sort of on fire. So was Montana.

"On fire? How big is it?"

"Uh, big."

"How big is big? Is it big? Or just big?"

"They're evacuating people."

"Does that mean we shouldn't visit?"

"It's on fire, Yuhri."

"Is that bad?"

With the exception of the reservations and dinner with my mother on Monday night in Seattle, Vancouver and Montana were the only definites of this entire vacation. I might have been a little loathe to give them up.

We piled into the car on Saturday morning, a little later than my good intentions the night before. I set the alarm for 7 am. At 7:10 am, I rolled over and slapped snooze. And then again. And again. When we finally left, it was 10:00 am. It was optimistic of us to think we would've avoided traffic by the earliness of our departure. I mean, 10 am on a Sunday, sure. 10 am on a Saturday?

Our lack of a coherent plan meant that we discovered ourselves entangled in San Francisco traffic before we'd thought out what our route should be. Before we knew it -- and yes, we are just oblivious enough to enter San Francisco without noticing -- we were wedged behind a puttering Neon on vacation from Arizona, and an SUV with Hummer-delusions that obviously thought "off-road" meant pulling into a three-car driveway.

I sunk down in my seat with hatred in my heart. It took us an hour to get out of San Francisco.

I-5 was uniformly boring. I don't recommend it. Don't get me wrong. As a means of transportation from Point A to Point B, it has a lot to say for itself. It's fairly straight. It doesn't contain a lot of distracting features like Natural Beauties and Sights. It has successfully reached the minimal level of cow-grazing-by-roadside phenomenon that, yes, is explored in such loving detail by both Highway 99 and Highway 199 en route to the Cow. On the other hand, it is the fallopian tube for semi-trucks, headed from their home ovaries to the warm uterii of their destinations. It took us eight hours to reach Eugene; at one point we drove by Ashland, site of much fun and frolic last year during the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

"Want me to stop?"

"I guess."

"You don't sound like you want to stop."

"No, let's stop."

"Look, there's the hotel we stayed in."

"It was a dive."

"It was."

"It wasn't even a hotel."

"It was a motel."

"What's the difference between a motel and a hotel?"

"A motel has, um, jive?"

"That's stupid."

"So should we stop?"

"Sure."

Silence.

"Why aren't you stopping?"

"I didn't think you sounded serious."

"I was serious."

"We can stop."

"It's too late. Look. We're in the next town."

"Oh."

Silence.

"Want me to turn around and go back?"

The same conversation took place several times over the course of the next eight hours. Jack Kerouac may have nailed the romance of the open road, but he'd failed to compensate for the indecisive mind.

The city of Eugene is a college town, built around the University of Oregon. The University of Oregon's mascot is a duck. Therefore, by transitive property, the City of Eugene is built around ducks.

There's something wrong with a college that chooses a duck as its mascot. Don't get me wrong. I like ducks. Ducks are inherently likeable animals. They have charm, and waddling dignity; they look good, taste better, and you'd have to go far to find another animal that believes so strongly in recycling food. On the other hand, insofar as your standard, "Hip Hip for the old alma mater!" inspiration goes, the duck sort of leaves you, well, cold. And glossy. And a trifle plump around the midriff. ("Quack for mommy! Quack! Quack!")

On the other hand, and here's probably the motivating factor in its selection as Oregon's college mascot, ducks tend to be, by and large, waterproof. Not only are they waterproof, in times of flood, they float. This is not a small thing in the Pacific Northwest. Weighed in the balance with their function on the food chain as prey, the waterproof buoyancy issue almost outweighs the negatives.

We unpacked at the hotel and went for a walk. The city was obviously built with college students in mind: brick sidewalks, jazz cafes, late night restaurants, and small gourmet groceries. It was late -- 10 pm -- on a Saturday night; all the little stores were closed, and with the exception of a few late feeders at two of the clubs-slash-restaurants, the only activity was a free tango class taking place in a small square, and skateboarders exercising freedom of expression in some alleys.

And, oh, the ducks.

Did I mention that there were ducks everywhere?

The Guy and I spotted them in the foyers of hotels, behind glass in banks, dressed as Egyptians, as Elvis, and as patchwork quilts. They were well over six feet tall, made of some implacably jolly waterproof plaster, and painted, one and all, in a display of primary colors. In shop windows there were little yellow rubber ducks, sandwiched in between displays of china and antiques. The jazz store had an electronic kiosk that appeared to be dedicated to the bathtub duck perched jauntily atop the terminal. We were, I will not hesitate to admit, disturbed by the ducks.

"Look at this," the Guy raved. He was shiny-eyed with the excitement of fowl-sightings. "There's one in Wells Fargo."

"Peking Duck," I said, dreamily. Dinner had consisted of a regrettable stop in some roadside Denny's, five hours ago. "Duck l'orange. Duck under glace. Smoked duck."

"There's no graffiti on any of them," the Guy pointed out. He sounded deeply disapproving. A college town had no business laying out monster ducks as provocation and then not acting on the temptation. It had a 'holier-than-thou' feel to it that left a bad taste in the mouth.

"Duck soup," I said hopefully.

I was born in Seattle, home of University of Washington. The mascot of the University of Washington is the husky. You don't wander about in the middle of the night and wonder wistfully how husky meat would taste under a glaze of pear juice, apple, mint and Calvados, served with a side of wild rice and steamed vegetables.

You see what I mean about picking a prey animal for your college mascot?

leaving the path less travelled

Big Feet and Little Feet went on a vacation.

"Whee!" shrieked Little Feet. "Vacation!!"

"Shut up," said Little Brain. "We'll talk about this one like grown-ups."

"Wheee!!" Little Feet frolicked happily. "Vacation vacation vacation vacation! Talk about vacation!"

Well, now that that's settled....

***

The Guy has been on a month-long vacation from work, a badly needed respite from an 11-to-7 job that has been testing his rather limited store of socialization skills. In the normal course of things, the Guy's opinion of his fellow man is only marginally higher than his opinion of pond scum, and his current position -- the title of which contains the word 'Quality' and 'Assurance,' neither of which have anything to do with each other -- is hardly the kind to improve his views in this regard. While in normal life he's as good a man as ever buttered bread, it can't be denied that he sounds like he's a bit of a trial in the workplace.

"He's really good at what he does," a colleague once assured me. "It's just that he doesn't have much tolerence for idiots."

Much as I love him, this is not the description of a man who should be working with other people.

As part of his month-long vacation, he wanted to go out and hit the road. "I want to see America," he said in a yearning, grumpy way. "We could drive up to Canada. Maybe visit Banff."

Barring the logic of seeing America by going to Canada, this instantly sparked in me a qualm, and no little qualm either. A big qualm, one that wedged itself in the throat, like an egg swallowed whole come back to revisit the nostalgic scenes of its consumption. My childhood was full of road trips going out to See America. My father was afflicted with a glorious delusion of the nomad life, the joys of the road trip. I can only think that at some point in his life, some malicious ass had given him a copy of a Jack Kerouac or Jack London book -- Jack is such a common name, don't you think? -- translated into the Japanese.

Once a summer, he would announce we were going on a road trip, pile his reluctant family into the car, and drive off into the sullen sunset with us whining peevishly in the back seat. Mom handled the mechanics of food, planning, reservations, sites; he was more the idea man, a delegator with vision. Even the driving he delegated, innocently popping a few beers at dinnertime while my mother's back was turned, thus condemning her to a long night spent at the wheel while he napped contentedly in the trunk. I know at some point in my golden years, those memories will come back to me all rosy-colored and happy. Right now, they consist mainly of long hours of oblivion interspersed by boredom, embarrassing cameras, and motion sickness.

Riding in an automobile acts on me like Civil Liberties 101 on George "Dubya" Bush. I turn my head and snore.

It's a sign of what love will make one do that I choked back the majority of my protests, and agreed that a road trip might be fun. "Banff sounds good," I said wanly. The Guy brightened out of his depression while I nobly hid mine.

In due course, I had a week's paid leave from work, and the Guy had tentatively mapped out a trip that hit the entire western half of the United States, and some of Canada to boot. Listening to his happy plans, it occurred to me that he really had very little concept of distance. After all, he'd grown up in England. A strong man's fart could span that island in under an hour. What scale did he have to measure the size of the United States by?

"You know we only have a week," I reminded him.

He glared at me. "Because you couldn't take more than a week off of your stupid job," he grumped.

This was undeniable. I added more qualms to my already fully matured one. There was quite a little party happening in my thorax; by the time the vacation started, I would have a complete set.

After a dinner out one night, we wandered over to the bookstore to see what they had in the way of maps and travel guides. My stomach was making odd gurgling noises, and chatting in an ominously confidential way with my intestines and bowels, if you get my drift. There were embarrassing body noises in the offing, and I tottered towards the high, isolated stacks at the back of the store, thinking to hide my shame in privacy.

The Guy diverted me mid-step and steered me, mutely suffering, towards the travel guides. "Here," he said, and waved a map at me. "What do you think?"

It was a map. I stared glassily at its cover. The crayola covering was waving at me. "Looks fine," I said. "Let's get it." And tried to make a break for it.

He, however, was relentless. "Look," he carolled, and waved a guide book at me. The Pacific Northwest, from Lonely Planet. I eyed it wistfully; it was big and hefty, just the sort of book one could use to brain a grown man. "Let's get this."

"Sure," I said desperately. The travel section of the bookstore, unlike the rest of the place, was fairly populated by last-minute browsers like ourselves. One was parked cross-legged on the floor next to me. I started to hear little snuffling sounds from my hip. I sidled self-consciously away from the sniffer, pretending I had nothing to do with his sudden congestion. There was a bathroom somewhere at the back of the store. There had to be. I ached for it, like a puppy bereft of the teat. So to speak.

"And look," enthused the Guy, oblivious. He has nasal passages of steel. Another hefty volume joined the first. Canada, from Lonely Planet. The resulting pile of books and map could not only brain a grown man, it could be used to dismember and bury the corpse.

Say what you will about travel book writers, they have a refreshingly laconic attitude towards book titles. Let's not beat about the bush, they seem to say. Our reader will be a weary and careworn man. Shall we confuse him with poetic meanderings about the wild frontier? Shall we compare our subject to a summer's day, or make comparison to the heartfelt yearning of the repressed frontierman possessed of an SUV? No! There will be no 'Bountiful Beauties of BC,' or 'In the Secret Sands' from us. We will be bold, and direct, and say what we mean, like honest men. What ho, Canada it will be!

"What's it about?" I asked, to distract the Guy, and skittered determinedly towards the hidden bathroom.

He caught up with me as I was negotiating the stacks in a painful waddle. "Where're you going?" he asked, in that sane, patient, sympathetic tone of voice one uses for children and the mentally insignificant. "The store is closing. We have to pay for the books."

I whimpered a little. We hadn't even left and the vacation was already off to a bad start.