Stupid Things Rachel Does Archives | Page 5 of 5
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Monday, December 22, 2003
what I learned about myself at the grocery store
a note of warning: There will be lots of parentheses today. I can feel it in my bones. Beware.
Things I learned at the grocery store this afternoon:
1. I am a grownup.
I was about to bag myself a head of Romaine lettuce (caesar salad for Christmas dinner) when I looked at the price for said lettuce, and made a dismayed noise. (you would have too. Funny how I'll drop $3 for a twelve-pack of aspartame and water, and think that's a fantastic deal, and then balk at the thought of paying $2 for enough vitamin A to last me four days). Anyway. The produce guy, whom I'd always thought looked vaguely familiar but put it off to the fact that he a) lived in the same town as me, which makes EVERYONE look familiar after a while and b) looked like every 30-year-old ordinary-sized blond guy you ever saw, jokingly called out, "Hey, what's the matter over there?" I laughed a little (very very embarrassed! damn!) and said, "Oh, whoops! You weren't supposed to hear my dismayed noise at the price of your lettuce." To which he replied, "ha ha! you must have been in drama." And I went, huh? He said, "You were in drama! [name of my high school, omitted in the naive belief that a stalker, should he WANT to find someone as anonymous and dull as myself, wouldn't be able to using other information in this diary if he made an effort], class of 1993?" Inside myself I was thinking, this guy couldn't have been in my class, he looks... he looks thirty! But he was. ANd then I went (still inside myself, I'm not THIS prone to saying stupid things in public), "duh, you just had a birthday, and you turned ... wait for it ... TWENTY-NINE! You're not old, dearie, but you are, in fact, nearly thirty!" And that was it, another moment of feeling like, whoa, I am a grownup. I remember when I was a girl and a teen, I used to imagine that there would be this day (my 18th birthday figured high on the list here) where I would Be Grown-Up. Then as I actually became an adult I started kind of waiting for the feeling of adulthood to magically just happen one day. I would stop feeling like a kid and be just like all those other adults I saw going around every day. Graduating from high school? Nope. Getting married? Yeah, some. Having a baby? Yeah, some more. This continued along, and then just today I realized, there will never be a day when that happens. I won't wake up and go, NOW, now I'm like all those other adults. It'll grow by degrees until I look at myself and see that I'm old and think, "when did this happen?" Which makes me realize, maybe a lot of other people go around waiting for the same thing. I dunno.
2. I am too soft-hearted.
Exhibit A:
Our town has two podunk grocery stores. One is larger and more modern than the other but a real supermarket would laugh to see that word on the bags for these places. They're big enough to have pushed out all the little grocery stores when they came in (waah! I STILL miss Jack's Market), but really, they're shoeboxes compared to the most modest Raley's. The smaller (and older) of the two is really more like a glorified convenience store, only with less beer and shorter hours. It is run by a really nice Korean family, who moved to town (in fact, they're my neighbors) and bought the place a few years ago. Ever since the bigger store went in when I was maybe ten, the older, smaller one has gotten more shabby and more quiet. This is the store where I generally prefer to shop if I'm feeling a little less well-put-together than ordinary -- I can go there with my hair looking awry and my tackier clothes on and feel less worried about running into someone who will care. Plus it's more personal, and I've shopped there since I got married, and all that. However, if I have more substantial shopping to do, I tend to go to the other store. And -- here's where the soft-hearted part comes in -- I feel SO GUILTY about this. I feel guilty for Sam, the man behind the counter hoping his store will make it. I feel guilty for not helping him -- I rationalize: "yes, but I need three pounds of broccoli today (broccoli soup for Christmas dinner) and Sam doesn't always even HAVE three pounds of broccoli, let alone three pounds of FRESH broccoli." But I still feel bad for going to the other store. I'm so sorry, Sam. Next time, I promise.
Exhibit B:
I was finally done putting things in my cart and I was ready to check out. I picked the line for the elderly male checker, who's new to the store, because I figured he'd be more likely to be slow enough for me (I hate when I'm still fumbling for my checkbook in my purse and the super-efficient grocery drone woman is blinking bright-eyed at me with her hand out). And he was, he was comfortably slow and friendly and a little unsure of what he was doing, just perfect. Then I started picturing to myself (as he was trying to figure out how to ring up my broccoli when it was sold by the bunch instead of by the pound) his job interview with the store owner, a friendly but tough guy who actually moved here from New York twenty years ago, nobody moves here from New York. LA, yes, Bay Area, all the time, but we're generally too soft for New York people. Anyway. I was imagining the interview, and this elderly gentleman (maybe he was looking to supplement his retirement. Maybe he was lonely after his wife died and wanted something to do where he'd interact with people) assuring a guy twenty or twenty-five years his junior that he'd do a good job, and I almost actually had tears coming out of my eyes. WHAT A DORK AM I. (at least I don't feel sorry for uneaten vegetables that have to get thrown out, because of the smiling personified vegetables on produce boxes feeling left out and unwanted, like my husband used to when he was little. When he told me that I KNEW I had to marry that man.)
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Saturday, December 13, 2003
ouch
note to self: When adding wood to the wood stove, for pete's sake remember that the wood stove has a top. It's wise to avoid contact with said top if possible if the stove has had fire in it for any substantial amount of time.
ouchie.
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Saturday, November 22, 2003
ouch
brief entry. cut wood, pulled brush today. free heat all winter is nice, but i think i may never move again. typing painful. had a nice hot-dog roast though. more tomorrow.
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(later)
I'm feeling slightly more mobile, but not entirely better. However, while piling up brush today, I managed to poke myself in the eye (why no, my name is not "Grace." What made you ask?). I was quite surprised that I could still see out of it -- in fact, based on the amount of pain it caused, I was surprised to discover that the copious quantity of fluid (well, copious relative to the amount of fluid that usually comes out of an eye; not copious compared to, say, Yosemite Falls in April) pouring from my eye was not blood, or any kind of weird eyeball stuff, but just tears. In fact within minutes I felt pretty much normal, except that I had (and have) this really strange headache behind my eye. A bruisy kind of headache. No pressure or I'd be dashing straight to the ER, imagining brain swellings or something. You know me, Miss Rational. And now the eye is beginning to sting again. Infection maybe? It kind of feels like an infection. Oh, those get so pretty, really happy to think about having one during Thanksgiving week, don't you envy me? I am really hoping I do not have to go to the doctor about this. It's amazing, our insurance company saves tons of money, I'm sure, by simply making it such a freaking hassle to get them to pay medical bills that their subscribers would rather go to their local Native American shaman* and pay in animal hides than make an appointment at the clinic. I won't go into examples, there are too many and my hands still aren't totally back to normal and it would just raise my blood pressure unnecessarily.
* no Native American shamans were harmed during the typing of this entry.
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Tuesday, November 11, 2003
keys have been found!
My keys were turned in at Albertson's! That's almost good enough news to actually cheer me up today. I feel all down and grumpy for some unknown reason. Ooh, I have a Symphony bar in the refrigerator too, and I haven't had lunch yet, think I'll have a Symphony bar for lunch just this once; who can blame me? Getting cheerier by the minute...
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Sunday, November 09, 2003
lost keys
Isn't it amazing how hard it is to think about anything else when you've lost something? Tonight I lost my keys. I don't think I've actually lost (as opposed to misplaced) a set of keys since I've been married. It's a really long story, but here's the short version: I had them in my hand, absolutely for sure, when we got in the car after being at one store. We went straight (LT driving, with his keys) from there to Albertson's. At the checkout at Albertson's, I'm pretty sure I had to move them aside in my purse to get my checkbook. When I got to the car (in the pouring, pelting, driving rain, no less) immediately after that, no keys. Nobody has turned them in yet at Albertson's (two hours later). I retraced my steps around the parking lot (yes! still in the driving rain!), cleaned out my purse entirely, checked all my pockets, checked all T's and the kids' pockets, even went back to the 99c store and looked in that parking lot. When we got home I practically dismantled the car looking for them. And I can't get the bleeping things out of my mind for more than half a second at a time. It is driving me crazy. Granted, it'll be an expense (even if we don't replace the really pricey keyless entry thingy, the ignition key for our car has one of those computer chips and those make replacement keys cost around $50 from what I understand) and a hassle and I'll always be wondering if whoever picked up MY keys and didn't turn them in is going to go drive around parking lots pushing the trunk button hoping to hit a 150,000-mile-but-still-quite-nice gold mine (at least we live 40 miles away from where I lost them -- but still, I do a lot of shopping there). But we can manage the expense right now, what with the overtime, and chances are everything will be just fine -- so why can't my brain just let go and move on? I dunno. sigh.
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Sunday, September 28, 2003
really embarrassing stuff
Here's a dubious milestone: My Google Toolbar's Popup Blocker has just blocked its thousandth popup. I installed the program maybe a month ago. This says a lot about both the prolific nature of popup ads (thank you, Google!), and the amount of time I spend online. *ahem*.
I am taking advantage of the fact that the kids are watching a home movie from a camping trip we took in Morro Bay a couple of years ago -- my parents, my brother and his family, and our family -- to sit here lazily with a diet peach Snapple, instead of folding the bazillion loads of laundry that are patiently waiting in their baskets for me. The most memorable thing about that trip was the weather. Everyone had told us that wintertime is really underrated for beach camping -- no crowds, mild weather, all that. So we braved it, and apparently we came during the worst week of weather they'd seen in years (day after Christmas through New Year's, 2001). It rained. It was unbelievably windy. It was foggy. The sun almost never came out, and we ended up going home after only three days or so, instead of six. And yet we had a wonderful time -- LT learned to ride his bike without training wheels, we saw sea elephants and otters, we took up chess and brought home a pile of fun memories. One particularly funny episode occurred: my parents had taken the kids for a walk down the beach, and T and I took off for a loverly stroll in the opposite direction, but quickly decided to take a quick walk back to camp and, er, make good use of the rare time alone. We rejoined the rest of the family as the kids were digging a deep hole on the beach. My brother asked, conversationally, where we'd gone on our walk. So I said, intending a wink-wink inside joke with T, "Oh, nowhere in particular, just up and down, you know." A totally innocent remark, right? We went up and down the beach. They were all supposed to imagine us picking up shells, holding hands, exclaiming about the view, watching the gulls, whatever. I think most of them did. But immediately my mom started trying to stifle a laugh. Then she started failing. I joined in. So I was sitting there nearly having hysterics with my mother -- both of us still making a valiant effort to look as though we weren't laughing at all -- about my sex life. It was truly a surreal moment.
I can't believe I just told you that.
While I'm embarrassing myself, though, I could have died yesterday; I definitely have a new story to add to my "Most Embarrassing Moment" rotation. I was at Smart and Final, my new favorite grocery store (12-packs of Diet Peach Snapple for $8 were my irresistable temptation this time around), and there was this fresh-out-of-puberty boy checking my purchases. While I wrote the check he asked me to stand aside so that he could bring my cart through and put the bags in it. So I did, only somehow my purse got snagged on the edge of the cart as he pulled it through. It was sitting there open, because I had just pulled out my checkbook, and it fell off the check-writing tray and dumped all its contents on the floor. Including two super-plus tampons. The guy felt so bad about dumping it out that he immediately bent over to pick stuff up; I got there first, fortunately, but he was blushing and avoiding my eyes as he handed me my change. Not that I was exactly meeting his. I don't know if I can ever go there again, in spite of my physical addiction to the chicken burger patties I can only find there; anytime that checker sees me he'll remember me as The Woman Whose Tampons Fell Out Of Her Purse. I know I shouldn't care; why should I care? But I do. sigh.
On a positive note, I have lost another pound and I'm now at 174, which means I have lost 20 pounds total so far in, hmm, nine weeks or so. That's a nice feeling. Two pounds more and I'll be at a double milestone: halfway to my goal and my prepregancy weight from my first pregnancy. So far, though, one thing is disappointing: not one single person has asked me if I've been losing weight. I've been kind of waiting for that. Maybe by the time I'm actually done losing weight, it'll happen. :)
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Friday, September 19, 2003
nap, and the Friday Five
T shifted his work schedule today -- went in two hours early so he could get off two hours early as well -- and when he came home, he was going to take our trash to the dump. Both kids inexplicably wanted to go with him. As an aside, garbage time is one of those times I am SO glad to be a woman, married to a big manly man. It's his job, I don't have to go to the stinky smelly dump and throw bags of nasty trash into a hole or a huge dumpster or whatever they have set up for the purpose for that trip. Hey, I'll bear the children and do the cooking and cleaning up and child-teaching and nose-wiping and 2:30 a.m. tending and stuff, if he'll be the one to get up at five every weekday and go work his hiney off 40 minutes from home so that we can have a roof over our heads and food to eat and stuff like that... if he'll go to the dump too. That's the deal. Anyway, I digress. The kids both wanted to go with him, so I got an unexpected nap, which was just what I needed. I lay on the couch with two cans of diet Coke, two Advil, an Outlander book, my heating pad, my three pillows, a blanket, and a deep sense of pervading joy. I took the Advil with the first drink of diet Coke, and pretty much slammed the whole can right down; then I drank the second can slightly more slowly while I read for a while. Meanwhile my heating pad was not cooperating -- I'm not sure it was even reflecting my own body heat, let alone producing its own. Granted, it's a very old heating pad, and you know how they all say on that read-this-or-thou-shalt-surely-die warning label thingie that you should never lie on them? Well who pays any attention to that? Of course we've been lying on it for the entire nine years of our ownership of it (and I think we got it from my parents when they got a new one, so it was probably well-used before that also). Anyway, maybe there's a reason you're not supposed to do that; maybe they just sort of stop working after ten or twenty years of being laid upon. Who knew. I ignored it though, and figured I could sleep without the extra heat, but I'd snuggle my lower back up against it really nicely just in case it decided to do its job. Then just as I was about to drift off, I started getting this bizarre tingly-fingers feeling, and my heart rate acted a little funny. Now, in retrospect, I know that this was most likely just the effect of having drunk 24 oz of caffeinated soda just prior to lying down and attempting to sleep -- all that drug-induced energy had to go somewhere, so it was just kind of fizzling through my body looking for an outlet, is my thought. At the time, however, just on the verge of sleep (last night at this stage I had a long and detailed semi-dream about meeting Diana Gabaldon on a shuttle bus in Yosemite, for example), I was relatively certain that it was that heating pad seeking revenge for having been relentlessly laid down upon for so many years by slowly electrocuting me. Hey, I was on the verge of sleep, shut up.
At any rate, I was too tired to care, and I had such a nice long solid nap, so solid and long that I woke up with that dreadful slept-in-the-daytime feeling just as T and the kids arrived home. I consoled myself with another diet Coke and a chicken caesar salad, and everything looked so much brighter.
Tomorrow T and LT are heading for San Diego overnight, and C and I will be having a ladies' weekend in, for the most part. We'll play "dress-up princess" (in other words, she'll try on all the hand-me-downs I just got from my aunt for her, to see which ones will go in her drawers/closet and which ones will go in a box for next year), and I have made us a reservation at our favorite semi-fancy restaurant, where we'll wear nice dresses. This is to make the time special for us too, since we couldn't go with the boys on their Charger-sheet-metal pickup trip. I've been looking forward to it as much as T has been looking forward to acquiring his rear quarter skins, or whatever they're called.
Here's the Friday Five.
1. Who is your favorite singer/musician? Why?
I am awful at this question and I can never pick one person/group/artist. I like such a variety of music. If I had to pick one artist to listen to for the rest of my life, I'd probably pick, hmm, Mozart.
2. What one singer/musician can you not stand? Why?
I don't know any names, and one benefit of adulthood is that I don't have to listen to music I don't like, so I'm not highly qualified to answer this question. I don't like rap, I can say that for sure.
3. If your favorite singer wasn't in the music business, do you think you would still like him/her as a person?
This is a bit of a strange question. Liking someone as an artist doesn't imply liking him or her as a person to begin with. It would vary with the person.
4. Have you been to any concerts? If yes, who put on the best show?
n/a, never been to a concert. I have been to The Phantom of the Opera during its extended run in San Francisco a few years ago, and it was just incredible.
5. What are your thoughts on downloading free music online vs. purchasing albums? Do you feel the RIAA is right in its pursuit to stop people from dowloading free music?Well, I think this is not necessarily the artists talking. It's the recording industry, and they do have a lot to lose if people don't buy CDs. But I see them as a middle-man with a foot on the neck of the public, exploiting artists. If I were a famous artist right now, I'd cut my ties with the recording industry, offer my music for free or really cheap online, and give really awesome concerts that drew large crowds.
One possible solution as I see it would be for the artists to arrange to have pay-per-song downloading. This way you could get a CD you liked for $15, instead of one that has two songs you like and a dozen songs you're ambivalent about. I think that problem is the reason for a lot of the downloading that goes on -- I know it's been mine at times.
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