My landlord came over this afternoon to see if I'd seen any mice in my apartment. (Not "a mouse" -- "mice," as in multiple.) I assured him that if I had, he'd have been the first to know about it -- screams carry pretty well in these old brownstones.
What Would Weight Watchers Do?
This afternoon I went to my fourth Weight Watchers meeting (it's actually my fifth week in the program, but I was in Florida last week, overeating and drinking too much with friends, so I missed the meeting). Once again, I weighed in at more than I weighed the week before. Am I the only person that gains weight on this program or what? My aunt, best friend and a handful of other people I know all dropped weight like crazy. The only thing I seem to be doing at Weight Watchers is watching my weight skyrocket, even after week after week of eating enough veggies and fruit to singlehandedly keep MA farmers in business for the next year year. (What's worse is that I've also cut down on my alcohol intake in the name of dieting, so I can't even console my fat self with a few glasses of good red wine.)
I'm going to give it one more week, but if I don't lose a few pounds at next Friday's weigh in, I'm throwing out my carrots and going on a chocolate binge. Why can't there be a chocolate and red wine diet? I could live happily on just those two things.
So, just a few minutes ago, I'm sitting on my couch, watching a Grey's Anatomy rerun on TV (I love that show), minding my own buisness, when a mosquito the size of a pterodactyl starts circling around me. This mosquito makes the ones in Florida, where I'm from, seem more like the size of newly hatched fruit flies. It's almost scarily big, like it's an extra from one of those old horror flicks where everything is about 500 times the size it's supposed to be and is creeping up behind you, ready to attack.
Except, like in Hedre's experience, I'm pretty sure this sucker is going to wait until I'm asleep.
I'm also pretty sure it's carrying the EE virus, of which another case was recently reported in MA. I live 26 years in Florida with no crazy virus scares, and now that I'm in the Northeast for two months I've got to worry about EE, Lyme Disease (I found a tick in my apartment earlier this week -- a tick!!! in downtown Boston!! what the hell?) and God knows what other obscure strains of Bird Flu, et al, and I live in the CITY. How those poor saps in rural MA aren't dropping like flies, I don't know.
Even though I'm pretty sure it hasn't bit me yet and I remain un-infected (for the next hour or so, at least, before lights out), I can't stop itching my arms and legs, because that's usually where they get me. It's like when amputees lose a limb and they can still feel it. Well, maybe not like that. But you know what I mean.
So, I figure -- what the hell? I'll blog one last time before I succumb to the tortures of the dreaded EE virus. Amittedly, I don't watch the news unless it's interrupting my daytime talk shows, so I have no idea what the symptoms or outcome of the EE virus is, but I figure since they're making such a big deal of it -- I mean, if I'VE heard of it, and I haven't picked up a newspaper in six years or voluntarily turned on a news channel in half that time, it's gotta be bad.
After much pressure from Hedre, I am returning to the blog world. One might think that after moving to an cosmopolitan city such as Boston I'd have more exciting things to blog about than my tri-weekly trips to the grocery. One would be wrong.
That said, I finally got around to buying my very own grocery carriage. After haggling with the guy in the Tru Value Hardware store on trendy Newbury Street (the last time I visited, I ended up leaving with two two-by-fours slung over my shoulder -- yes, that was me and no, it wasn't a dare to walk down Newbury sporting wood) on whether I should get the jumbo, medium or mini grocery carriage. I was going to get the medium, but in a rare moment of retail honesty, the guy told me that it wasn't good quality. So, faced with the tough decision of choosing between the "jumbo" and "mini" carts, I made the executive decision to get the mini only after being repeatedly assured by the sales guy that I could fit quite a large amount of groceries in it. The clincher was his "how many groceries could you possibly buy at once?" Rather than tell him just how many groceries I could buy -- and consume -- in a week's time, I bowed to peer pressure and bought the mini.
Eager to test out my new toy, I rolled on down to the nearest Shaw's and started filling her up. Watermelon? Check. Cantaloupe? Check. Cantaloupe #2? Check. (Give me a break -- they were buy one, get one free!) Half-gallon of milk? Check. Four yogurts? Check. Tomatoes, apples, potatoes, oranges, grapes, cucumbers, and every other piece of produce I could fit into my mini carriage? Check. I have to say -- the guy was right. You CAN fit quite a bit into a mini.
Satisfied, off I went down Boylston and then Newbury Streets, ignoring the snickers and stares as I wove in and out of evening foot traffic, mini grocery carriage rattling behind me on the cobblestone streets. I was blissfully impervious to the fact that to look any uncooler I'd have to have a couple of two-by-fours slung over one shoulder, silently laughing at the fools who could only have two grocery bags at a time (one for each hand) because they, too, had to walk home from the store. Not me! I had a whole farmers market and half the dairy case in my trusty mini. The bastards could snicker and stare all they wanted for all I cared.
Then, I arrived home to my lovely brownstone apartment, mini grocery carriage still intact (though one wheel already looked like it's about to literally fly off the handle). Once there, I encountered no more stares, but something far more intimidating: stairs. Lots of them. A nice trek up just to get in the door, and then two flights up (I live on the second floor). Suddenly my mini carriage loomed monstrous.
So, after 15 minutes cursing and trying to lug my mini carriage and its contents up the stairs, one step at a time, I realized that I'd learned an very important lesson that I'd like to share with you. Listen closely, boys and girls: In life, it's not the size of your carriage, it's what's inside that counts. Remember that next time you're scoping out a pair of cantaloupes.
I just returned from one of my tri-weekly trips to the local grocery, Shaw's Market. (Don't let the "Market" part of the name fool you - this is no quaint five-stall greenmarket with friendly farmers proffering their homegrown wares - this is corporate consumerism at its best. Even better, the store was organized by an evil masochist and the checkout lines are manned by high school dropouts who spend more time texting on their phones and shouting incoherent insults to each other across the aisles than learning the key-in codes for fresh produce. Buy apples, bananas or, God forbid, green beans, only if you're prepared to spend 10 minutes waiting while the kid voted "Most Likely to Be Paroled" scours the single-sided cheat sheet looking for the number to key in for nectarines and inevitably keying in the number for peaches, which are 49 cents more a pound, not that he can tell the difference between the two. How these kids aren't dead of scurvy is a mystery to me. Oh, and a word of advice: pay the extra 49 cents. If they have to bring a manager over to take something off the bill, you may as well set up camp for the night.)
But I digress.
A few things I learned on this trip to Shaws:
1. Dairy is heavy. (Buying a half-gallon of milk, a pint of ice cream and eggs on the same trip is not recommended if you have to carry everything four blocks home. Unless these are the ONLY things you buy.)
2. Show some constraint in the produce section. If not for the reason stated above, then because a large apple, three nectarines, four vine-ripe tomatoes and a cucumber the size of a... well, let's just say it was large... in addition to the above dairy products bagged in cheap, thin plastic bags have a tendancy to cut off the circulation in your hands so that by the time you do get home, you can't feel your fingers and it takes you two minutes to use your numb pointer finger to fish out your keys from your purse and unlock the door to your apartment building.
3. Only get in the "Express Line" if you're feeling suicidal.
4. When you have a grocery cart, it's survival of the fittest. Take no prisoners in the frozen foods section.
4. Double check that all your groceries have, in fact, made it into the cheap, thin plastic bags. Nothing is more disappointing (to me, at least) than finally getting home and realizing that the M&Ms you just paid for have not made the four-block journey with you. Because then you don't even have the sugar rush to console you after your traumatizing trip to the grocery.
So, Planned Parenthood is a scary place. I don't know if you've ever been, but I'd advise against it. No soft colors on the wall, no strains of classical music wafting through the room, no fancy art prints or fake flower arrangements. Instead, a semi-crowded room of ghetto-looking girls and college students that don't make eye contact with anyone, as well as the odd scared-shitless guy sitting next to a few of them. When you check in, next to each worker is a checklist entitled "Bomb Threat Check List." The first item on it is as follows:
1. When is the bomb going to explode?
Also, when they call your name, they're very discreet -- they only use your first name and last name initial.
An overall lovely experience.
Erin M.
I've got spark. Sparks, actually. Plural. As in everytime I plug anything in, sparks fly out of my sockets. You know, I'm pretty good at setting things on fire all on my own (i.e. putting pita bread in the toaster last year and setting my kitchen on fire; setting my friend's kitchen on fire in seventh grade when I was trying to make breakfast) without the help of faulty electrical wiring. I think this may be the way I meet my maker -- one morning I'm going to plug in my hair dryer and that'll be it. I'll die in a fire with frizzy hair. Even if I was able to recover from the shock itself and stumble to my feet, I wouldn't be able to escape the ensuing fire because the super in my building painted my windows shut -- including the one to my fire escape.
Here's the key to riding the T: Never, ever let your guard down. Never.
I know not to talk to anyone on the T. I know this. A man actually tried to talk to me at the Park Street station last week and I was so caught off guard that I instinctively jerked away from him and almost fell onto the track, only narrowly avoiding electrocuting myself on the dreaded third rail. Which - ask anyone - is a better fate than having a conversation with a stranger while waiting for or riding on the T.
This man didn't look crazy - he looked like a Harvard grad student (small glasses, loafers, in need of a haircut, the works). He asked me "What's that smell you're wearing?" (He can smell my fear?) I mumbled something incoherent and then inched away from him, conversation over. Or so I thought.
He inched over, too. "That smell reminds me of Michelle, and when I smelled it on you I thought of her. Not that you look like her, but you smell like her. Like Michelle." I made no reply and tried to will him to go away.
"I'm not saying you're wearing too much," he tried to assure me (as if this were my main concern). "I'm on medication that makes all my senses more alert, so I can smell things others can't." Like a dog?, I wanted to ask. (I didn't ask - again, you don't talk on the T. You just don't do it!)
Luckily, after another minute or two, he slinked away, whether because he finally realized I wasn't going to reply and was inches away from throwing myself in front of the oncoming train or because Michelle had reincarnated herself in the form of someone else and he was off to harrass, er, find her.
Then, today, I'm at the Prudential station and I sit down on a bench next to a woman to wait for the train. I'm not a masochist - had it been someone that looked like a gangbanger or a homeless person, I would have remained standing. But this woman looked perfectly normal. Recently showered, casually dressed (complete with shoes) - basically she looked like someone's mom. But this mom had lost her cookies.
Not seven seconds after I sit down, she starts talking. Not to me, not on her cell phone, not to anyone standing around us -- not to any person except the one(s) in her head.
