I felt terrible. I've not been able enjoy any book I read or anything I do for about two weeks now and most of that I've felt like I was on acid. Moreover, I keep pouring beverages down my throat and spending money. I didn't want anything material, but I wanted to want something. Saturday I was all ready just to sit in the usual patio seat at the cafe me and Linda go to and enjoy a cold tea, but even before I opened the tea someone kept interjecting comments to us without actually asking if she could join our conversation so I could say no. Linda didn't seem to mind her, but I felt like there was a flat plane separating my head into an upper left half and a lower right half. Then I went inside the cafe and got on the net, but that went all wrong. We still had to go to Rite-Aid for pills and buy ingredients to cook something vegetarian for dinner. Experience was telling me I needed to pray and also try to coax the active part of my nature from looking for what I can take from others into looking for what I could give. It's true I was missing a lot of what I usually feel I need in order to be there for others, but I also decided a few years back I wanted to be so much a part of the solution that you could actually throw me into a national disaster area with nothing that anybody else didn't have and I'd still be trying to help people just as much as I'd be trying to help myself. My experience Saturday is telling me I still have a way to go. I was good about not grouching at anyone, but I still needed more "retail therapy" to put my head back together. Namely, when Linda was driving us to Rite-Aid I asked if I could shop in the Goodwill bookstore while she got her meds and I also asked if we could shop for dinner at Trader Joe's instead of at SaveMart.
I got Aesop's Fables at Goodwill and read one of the Fables. Cool. I also got a book about haunted happenings in our area (Monterey Bay region in California). The Greeks almost always make me feel better when I read them. I think throughout time a lot of different people from a lot of different cultures have felt that way about the Ancient Greeks, or even the modern Greeks. I should probably find out more about the modern Greeks.
So we ended up at Trader Joe's not knowing what we were going to buy, but I find I can actually shop there that way and end up with a better menu than if I go to a different market with a list. It illustrates exactly what I mean by package culture, because the sections are arranged more the way I think of the different foodstuffs than the sections in most markets are. And if I know a package of green beans are Fair Trade and grown in Mexico-- basically if I know where they're from specifically-- then I might feel like they are a delicacy and I might make a meal out of just green beans, but I get ahead of myself.
So I scanned the chips and salsa and dried fruit shelf just because it was the first one I saw and I was looking for inspiration. I said to Linda, "You don't like polenta, do you?"
She said, "It's all right."
"Could you get into eating polenta tonight?"
"I guess. I mean, I could." But we had never made it before and didn't know the ingredients exactly. So I looked at the stuffed pasta and sushi. None of it looked good to Linda and it looked too expensive. There was a readymade butternut squash and tomato and meat sauce and cheese thing that looked really good to me, but it was five dollars each. Ordinarily I would have bought it, but we were trying to meet each other halfway on our decisions. Besides, Linda's daughter has a garden so she eats a lot of butternut squash. I was talking about how sick I was of stir-fried vegetables and rice, because I've eaten then so much in my life, but then I said I still like basmati rice and Linda asked what that was. I said, "You've had it before. It's very perfumy. It tastes life saffron. It's in a lot of Indian food."
"Like curry?"
"Yeah." My eye glanced over at the fresh sauces and I though of the package of green beans with cheese sauce and basmati rice on the side. Linda didn't like the thought of cheese sauce, but we still had half a thing of fresh pesto at home and though it doesn't go with green beans colorwise it might actually taste good. We actually agreed on that and then picked up a pound of mozzarella just to have around for the fat content (it being winter and all) and I even had the presence of mind not to buy a beverage, because we still had half of a two litre bottle of Sprite at home.
Dinner turned out great. What made shopping different was I started thinking more like my family raised me to when I went into the store. that is to say, I pretended to be French. Less is almost always more. Of course, that expression is more Californian than French, but it has je ne sais quois.
I got Aesop's Fables at Goodwill and read one of the Fables. Cool. I also got a book about haunted happenings in our area (Monterey Bay region in California). The Greeks almost always make me feel better when I read them. I think throughout time a lot of different people from a lot of different cultures have felt that way about the Ancient Greeks, or even the modern Greeks. I should probably find out more about the modern Greeks.
So we ended up at Trader Joe's not knowing what we were going to buy, but I find I can actually shop there that way and end up with a better menu than if I go to a different market with a list. It illustrates exactly what I mean by package culture, because the sections are arranged more the way I think of the different foodstuffs than the sections in most markets are. And if I know a package of green beans are Fair Trade and grown in Mexico-- basically if I know where they're from specifically-- then I might feel like they are a delicacy and I might make a meal out of just green beans, but I get ahead of myself.
So I scanned the chips and salsa and dried fruit shelf just because it was the first one I saw and I was looking for inspiration. I said to Linda, "You don't like polenta, do you?"
She said, "It's all right."
"Could you get into eating polenta tonight?"
"I guess. I mean, I could." But we had never made it before and didn't know the ingredients exactly. So I looked at the stuffed pasta and sushi. None of it looked good to Linda and it looked too expensive. There was a readymade butternut squash and tomato and meat sauce and cheese thing that looked really good to me, but it was five dollars each. Ordinarily I would have bought it, but we were trying to meet each other halfway on our decisions. Besides, Linda's daughter has a garden so she eats a lot of butternut squash. I was talking about how sick I was of stir-fried vegetables and rice, because I've eaten then so much in my life, but then I said I still like basmati rice and Linda asked what that was. I said, "You've had it before. It's very perfumy. It tastes life saffron. It's in a lot of Indian food."
"Like curry?"
"Yeah." My eye glanced over at the fresh sauces and I though of the package of green beans with cheese sauce and basmati rice on the side. Linda didn't like the thought of cheese sauce, but we still had half a thing of fresh pesto at home and though it doesn't go with green beans colorwise it might actually taste good. We actually agreed on that and then picked up a pound of mozzarella just to have around for the fat content (it being winter and all) and I even had the presence of mind not to buy a beverage, because we still had half of a two litre bottle of Sprite at home.
Dinner turned out great. What made shopping different was I started thinking more like my family raised me to when I went into the store. that is to say, I pretended to be French. Less is almost always more. Of course, that expression is more Californian than French, but it has je ne sais quois.
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