Quodlibets

I've noticed that when manufacturers

I've noticed that when manufacturers market "low-fat" or "lite" or "fat-free" food items, they tend to really push hard two things: sweet, and spicy. I don't care about sweet shit (although I have to admit, even though Edy's Cookies and Cream Frozen Yogurt is high in points, I purposely want to save those points to eat it. So unlike me.) but I'm all about spicy. I find myself wreaking havoc on my poor stomach, just because of the sheer amount of spicy I eat on any given day. Spicy baked beans? Check. Spicy Potato thingys? Check. Spicy salad dressing? Check. Spicy refried beans? Check. Spicy microwave dinners? Check. You name it, and if it's spicy, I'm probably eating it. Obviously, manufacturers do this to hide the sickening chemical-ly taste of their fake fats. For instance, most low fat salad dressing has this disgusting sweet, fake taste. But I've discovered that if it's spicy, it's passably good. I know too that most spices have very little nutritional value, in terms of quantity, so you can throw a whole bunch of cayenne pepper on something and add very little but taste to the equation. So chances are, if you're trying to make something completely icky taste better, you'd add spice. Listen, I'm not complaining. Spicy food is making my life bearable.

Also, I heard on NPR tonight, on the way home from four million errands, I heard a report that boggled. Apparently, 350 couples a year get married at the airport that serves Stockholm, Sweden. A VIP manager from the airport was being interviewed, and when the host asked him why, he said, "Honestly, we're still trying to figure that out too." Now, maybe where you live, the airport is nice, and would make a nice venue for a wedding. Am I wrong to say that I just don't think O'Hare or Midway has that kind of charm? I suppose that people tie the knot right before they hop on a plane to a vacation, which then becomes their honeymoon. But the VIP guy said that he already has bookings for February 2006. This couple obviously is PLANNING an elaborate wedding (and he said they often are) at AN AIRPORT. It seems so odd, to get married in a place where no one person has any meaningful relationship with the building. Or place, even. An airport is such a transient sort of place. In some airports, hundreds of thousands of people walk through every day. Why would you want to get married in a place where everyone, just by the very nature of their relationship with the building, is anonymous? It seems so sad! Then again, what do I know about the airport in Stockholm? Maybe it's not like that. But it seems very random to get married in an airport, does it not?

S and I had a

S and I had a really bad fight this evening, right before dinner. It was just a silly misunderstanding, when we got to the bottom of it, but the fight was pretty vicious. Lots of yelling, tears on my part, and exasperated sighs (that were so loud you could probably hear them upstairs). Then again, we don't really yell that loudly. We just raise our voices. But on the whole, this may have been the worst fight we've ever had. S just doesn't like to fight; he's not so fond of confrontation.

I don't know if it's good or bad that I'm turning him into a fighter. Good, at least in the sense that S is more able than ever before to voice what the problem is. At the beginning, he would just shut down, feeling like I was attacking him (which I kind of am, at that). He just doesn't like that (and I'm of course built for confrontation) and didn't know, at that point, what he was supposed to say or do. Over time, just out of sheer anger and frustration, he's learned to voice his side of the fight, and tell me why what happened bothered him, or what I did that bothered him. I'm happy about that. Because I can't modify a behavior if I don't know it's a problem. (And sometimes we fight because I can't modify a problem I know about.)
Usually, I cry because I end up feeling horribly bad that I've fought with S. He's such a genuinely nice man that it's really hard to know that I've been mean to him. And he's also very good about letting go of a fight, far better than I am. Sometimes I think that I feel far worse than he feels after a fight, though I know that can't be true. We both end up feeling wretched after fighting, because it seems that sometimes we tiptoe around each other afterward. We always end up a little better off, too, because we know just a little bit more about what ticks us off.

I think in general, we fight so little that fights that other people would consider minor, we consider major. I also sometimes feel relieved after a fight, because sometimes, the fight is the result of me or him holding something back that obviously needs to be said. And it's a relief, getting something like that off your chest. Maybe for S and I, a little fighting isn't necessarily the end of the world (even though I sometimes feel like it is).

And the fight? It was about when he came into the kitchen to help me with dinner. And it's THAT week. If you catch my drift.

I have two things that

I have two things that I want to blog about. So instead of posting twice, which I easily could do, I'll condense both into one post for the day.

1. I went to a website called belief.net today on the recommendation of another blog, and found it a very interesting experience. On the site, you can take a test that will tell you, based on a cursory examination of your beliefs, what faith you are. It's probably not a surprise, but I'm 100% a secular humanist. Frankly, I think that's just about right. It also gives you a list of 26 other things you "might" be, and fourth on my list was Mainline Protestant. That's striking, don't you think, considering that I don't believe in god, really, and I made that perfectly clear in my answers to the questions. I did find it an interesting exercise though, and it sorta confirmed for me my idea of myself. (Note to sister: Take the quiz! I think it's called the belief-o-matic. I'm interested to see how you stack up to me. There are several non-god faiths, so it will be interesting to see which one you are. And then tell me.)

2. I'm addicted. I'm addicted to fashion reality shows. I have no trouble admitting that I really got into America's Next Top Model last time it was on, and now, I am IN LOVE with Project Runway. Obviously, (and I'm going to share one of my deep, dark secrets right now), I love fashion. (That's not the secret, though.) The secret is this: if I could be absolutely anything in the world, I would be a fashion designer. In high school and college, I doodled clothing all over all of my notes. To be honest, I'm not very talented or creative at that sort of thing. Pretty much I had three different designs with about four million incarnations. One of my most common themes was Asian influences, with dresses like kimonos and cheongsams practically on every page of my notebooks. I've never seriously considered being a fashion designer (and Project Runway pretty much confirms my suspicion that I would be awful at it) but you can see why a show like this is like crack to me. It's like, my dream life. I hope that it's successful enough that they do at least one more season of it. (And can I just say that if Kara Saun, Jay and Austin aren't the final three, I'll seriously have to scream. Robert sucks booty, and Wendy is a brat. I liked Kevin, too, damnit. He was like a dreamy trendster indie boy. Yes, please!)

Muffin Originally uploaded by

Muffin Originally uploaded by manogirl.

I'm sad to report that, in the contest of whose dog would outlive the other, my family's dog, Maggie, has won. S's family's dog, Muffy, unfortunately was put to sleep today. I'm pretty sure that in the almost three years I've been dating S (and the almost four that I've known him), Muffy never did remember who I was. And I was at his house every day for two years. She was not in a good state, ever. Once, I watched her stare at a wall, nose pressed to it, for a good ten minutes. It was sad, and I know she had been, at the last, having some problems with making it outside to do her business. Not to say that Maggie is any better. Maggie, in all probability, will only outlive Muffy by a week or so, for while Maggie is still sweet and sane (as opposed to doggy senile), she has to pee every hour or so. And she's already on incontinence pills. The cat, Allie, of course will trump both animals, and is probably going to live forever, just because she's so mean-spirited and anti-social (though she's gotten better). To survive, however, she having radioactive material shot into her body to kill her thyroid, which is killing her. (Lest you think my mom just can't handle or doesn't want to handle elderly pets. She's forking over a shitload of money to save the cat, so....if Maggie could be saved, I know she would do it.) The procedure is called Radio Cat, and apparently it's legitimate. Interesting, huh? (And Allie's poop will I guess be radioactive for a couple of weeks afterward. Weird, huh?)

I'll probably post a picture of Maggie on the day that she passes out of this world, but for now, here's Muffy. It's a sad day (though not unexpected) for the S family.

I really should be doing

I really should be doing my homework and the laundry, which is what I was doing until about 15 minutes ago, when it all went to hell when I got up to go to the bathroom. A further detour to the kitchen for a few pickles and a diet coke has even more greatly diminished my desire to be productive, so I'm going to pick up where I left off last night.

I think a lot of talk, recently, has been devoted to how catty women are to each other, and how women are our own worst enemies. It's not women vs. men, per se, but women vs. women. I think that it's mostly bullshit. Most of my best friends have been women, and currently, besides S, most of the people who are deeply involved with me are women. I'm not necessarily the standard, but I do think that many, many women have close friendships with women.
Yet the fact that these friendships exist does not mean that they are easy. There is an immense pressure to "compete" with other women, and to some extent, I think we're always in competition. But if we can define competition in ways other than competition for love and attention, then maybe we can make some headway into the dangerous territory that women often get into.
For instance, in high school, my closest friend, whom I loved dearly, and still have contact with (though the contact and relationship is almost devoid of any intensity), stole men. I wouldn't say that she was always successful, but it was her aim (whether she knew it or not) to gain the attention of whatever boy her closest friends liked. In high school, that's painful. And she was a cute girl, and I was not, and so most of the time, she didn't have a problem. As a junior, she went to prom with the boy I really, really wanted to go with. I babysat. Now, I wonder why I didn't rip her hair out and scream at her, but then, I just chalked it up to her nature. I was much more forgiving then than I might be now. (Although I was slightly nervous about introducing her to S, and will probably always limit contact between them, just because. When she told me that she thought he was an amazing guy, and how much she liked him, I internally cringed. Reflex, I guess.) Her stealing men, it never affected how I felt about her. Other things, having to do with personal beliefs, that is what ruined our close friendship.
I think that at some point, I made a conscious decision to not let men be a point of competition between us, and to some extent, I like to keep to that with all my friends. We can compete over small things, over things that have no bearing on our friendship, but the big things remain taboo. I think that we have to make the decision to not let society define for us what we should be competitive about. We have to pick our battles.

I think that the temptation to blame all this on the *nature* of women is dangerous. I don't think that it is in our nature to be catty bitches. I think that we're very, very quietly conditioned to be this way. Women are expected to be nice. All the time. "Be a nice girl, darling" is not an uncommon admonition, even now, in the 21st century. Men, of course, face far less pressure to be nice to women, and aggression between men is often very overt. Not so, women. We don't talk about our issues, we talk behind the backs of those we have issues with. I've done it; I'm not immune to the pressure to be nice. And in fact, one of the things most often said against me is that I'm not *nice* to everyone. I try to be civil, but beyond civility, I find myself fighting really hard not to feel the pressure of being *nice*. It's easier to not be passive-aggressive when you are able to express your feelings naturally, and without being mean, per se. And passive-aggressive behaviors can really trip up friendships. So I may not be nice to everyone, but I'm able to refrain from the jealous, cattiness that traditional niceties can make almost necessary. It's not a perfect system, but it's given me the ability to have some close, wonderfully rewarding friendships with women.

I was reading blogs earlier,

I was reading blogs earlier, and this entry really caught my eye. The subject, "girl-sting" vs. "boy-sting" (ie how you feel after a break-up with your girl friends vs. your boyfriends), really boils down, for me, to this: Friends vs. Lovers vs. Dates.

I do agree with the main thrust of the entry: break-up from friends can sometimes be WAY tougher than the break-up of a casual relationship, or even from a deep, heavy relationship. I think that there are a couple of reasons for that. I think that when you live with a lover, when the relationship begins failing, you have indications. And most likely, unless things are too far gone, you take steps to save the relationship (and it works) or you must learn to put down the relationship softly. Live-in relationships (unless some odd circumstance is working) lead to reasons why the friendship/love is dying.

But with friends, often there is no warning. Someone stops calling. Why? I also torment myself. I'm still hanging on to friendships from college, wondering why they don't call, and how can I want these people for friends still? But my relationship from college, that's dead. That's well, and truly, dead. It hurt like hell when it ended, but when the hurt subsided, it really subsided. And it hardly ever twinges. But I can honestly say that all the lapsed friendships in my life, they still rankle. Daily. Like Smitten, I think that sometimes it's easy to understand why a lover doesn't want you. But secretly, I think many of us want to see ourselves like Carrie, in Sex and the City. Not the glamor, or the life, but the friends. We want to be the center of the friendship. Carrie was best friends with all three girls, but you got the sense that they were only best friends with her, and not each other.

Secretly, I want to be like that, to draw friends to me with that strength. When a friend leaves me, I feel that I failed, ultimately, on the promise of our earlier relationship. *I* didn't keep up my end of the bargain, so I deserved what I got. When a *love* relationship fails, it feels different. I can't explain it, but the losses of friends that I've faced through the last 10 years, well, it hurts deeply. I find myself hanging onto a friendship now that I'm not sure is good for me; I have, in past years, loved this friend intensely and deeply, but we've both grown so differently that it seems silly. But the loss of another friend, right now, in what seems like a couple of years of intense loss, well, it seems unbearable. I still can't let go of another, different friendship that's been breathing its last breath for over a year.

Maybe I'm just bad at letting go, but maybe too we're not taught to get over these frienships the way we're expected to get over *love* relationships. What are the rules for ending a friendship? Is there any ever closure? I've never had any, though I think that there is often a never-ending quest for closure in *love* relationships. And really, in this country, at least, friendships are often the second-class relationships in your life, meant to take a back-seat to the ultimate "life-long" relationship that your life should revolve around. How can we build better friendships that are meant to last as long as our other relationships? I think this is an issue that is so HUGE for women, and I also think that we just don't talk about it. We don't, as women, sit down and try to understand our friendships. But aren't our friendships fraught anyway?

Tomorrow I'll talk about dynamics among women, and how I understand them; it's a troubling subject, and one that should be talked about more, I think. So check this out tomorrow afternoon or so, and I'll continue--women and friendships, part II.

And the headache won't go

And the headache won't go away.

Tomorrow night, my sister and I are introducing my mom and her best friend to Indian food. (S will also be going, but just for the naan, and SS might join us as well). I'm very hungry right now, so I'm thinking about food, and trying to push my snack as late as possible. There is a possibility that I'll be going to dinner with The High School Friend (THSF, as it were), and I'm concentrating on saving all my points for that dinner so that I can save all my flex points for Indian. I'm chugging Crystal Light right now, trying to fill the gaping hole in my stomach.

Back to the Indian. My mom (and her friend) has never eaten Indian, and I think she's pretty apprehensive. When I was a kid, I thought that all Indian food probably tasted the same--like the generic smell of curry, if that makes sense. (Well, THSF just called and said no on the dinner, so I'm going to go into the kitchen and eat something. Dammit! Now I have NO idea what to eat for dinner, and it feels way too decadent to eat Chinese alone. Curses.) I'm sure my mom will enjoy the Indian. If both of her daughters can stand it--my sister being a whole lot less tolerant of food than I am--then I'm sure she will at least like what we like. And frankly, if S can eat any of it, it's probably pretty innocuous. S doesn't eat ANYTHING unless he's super-sure of it.

Visions of paneer are dancing through my head right now. It's dawning on me that it might be a bad idea to watch the food network all day while on a "lifestyle change path". Maybe I should change the name of my blog to "Foodie on a Diet" because that's how I feel. (Oh, sweet buffalo milk mozzarella, how I love thee, how I miss thee.) But then I might as well just give it up (which I'm not, never fear, sister), for having to look at the word "Diet" every day. Nothing like a word to fence you in. Off to the kitchen I go....

I'm not a big fan

I'm not a big fan of the multi-national corporation, in general. The bigger, the badder, it seems to me. I know that there are gradations of bad, and that some corporations really do prize their employees, and work hard to make sure that they take care of their employees. In reality, those corporations are probably (if I was guessing) smaller rather than bigger. I think that the pursuit of profit can be honorable, and it can be done ethically. But I do believe that sometimes, it can get out of hand: CEO salaries that are completely out of hand, profits that are so large as to be silly, and the abuse that employees can take in the form of illegal doings by the executives of the corporation. And of course, I still buy things from corporations, and use services offered by major corporations. I like to buy independent when I can afford it, and I try to avoid completely the worst offenders. I also know that corporations try to buy off our support by donating money, and doing outreach.

That said, after I watch Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, I feel the need to go shop at Sears. And tonight, I felt like I should ONLY fly on Southwest Airlines (did you see the show? Tears, people, tears.). I personally don't know if Sears and Southwest donate so much because they need the good publicity, or because they care. I wonder a lot about that show specifically, because the people on the show do such good things for people that really do deserve it. I think my all-time high tear total was for the deaf couple with the autistic son (and the normal one), but I just felt so happy for the family. It's the kind of show that somehow muddies the line between good and bad. I don't want to give any corporation a pass--if you treat your employees poorly, it doesn't matter how much you do for one family at a time--but I feel tempted to think better of these corporations simply because of HOW MUCH they seem to do. If that's what Sears and Southwest are looking for, well, they're doing a fantastic job of making sure it gets done.

And what about the charity foundations that often help out? On this past episode, Jim Kelly (the former Buffalo Bills quarterback) provided some help to the family, through his foundation (one of his children has the same condition as the girl in the show). I certainly believe that Kelly can't possibly be doing this for good publicity. And frankly, it's not bad if this publicity allows him to collect more money/stuff so that he can in turn, help more people. Obviously, I don't feel much conflict about that. Though, if the person helping is just, you know, one person helping, that can be bad. Ben Affleck has a bad year? Donate something to Extreme Home Makeover. Voila! Extreme Affleck Makeover. You see what I mean?

Basically, the ultimate question of the last paragraph is: Does altruism really exist? I'm pretty cynical, because I believe that most of the time, true altruism is non-existent. I think that when people do good things for other people, they do them because they get a little thrill, or a better feeling about themselves, or a release from guilt out of doing the good thing. Ultimately, the giver gets something (whatever it may be) from the giving. And yes, I believe that about the builders and crew on Extreme Home Makeover. It doesn't mean that we should all just stop doing good things; we really should do more than less. Regardless of our motives.

I haven't resolved anything, have I? Ah well, off to watch Iron Chef.

Maybe I should have stayed

Maybe I should have stayed on the treadmill for an hour. Not because I need the exercise (although I do), but because it would have been an hour break from this apartment. The Great Blizzard of '05 has liberally dumped snow on our part of the world, and S and I decided that maybe going out was a bad idea. Coupled with the fact that our apartment complex REALLY REALLY sucks at the plowing thing, we've been holed up in here all day. I think we've pretty much exhausted the entertainment activities of the apartment.

• We caught up on the Tivobot's extensive backlog. I watched "What Not to Wear" and S watched "24" and "Overhaulin'."
• We watched a movie (Raising Helen).
• S played Halo2 (on X-box Live) for a couple of hours this morning, and is playing right at this very moment. Ah, the soundtrack of bullets and dying; it's so lovely to my ears. And while we're on X-box Live, today is the first day of the headset that my fear has come to pass. Yes, S was talking to people through the headset today, provoking mirth on my part, and I think slight embarrassment on his. While I don't condone that situation, as long as he's not screaming and I don't have to hear the other people talking, I'm okay with it.
• S posted his picture of a day; to do this, he took pictures while I was cooking my dinner and eating it.
  
• I cooked dinner for myself (vegetarian sloppy joe, melba toast and cheese, and baked beans) and helped S figure out how to make his dinner (a smoothie made with frozen strawberries, silken tofu, banana, reduced fat vanilla ice cream, and strawberry/banana smoothie in a bottle) because we were both unsure about adding the tofu.
• Showered.
• Did the only homework that I could do.
• Read.
• And the only other thing available to you when it snows and you live with your partner. Look, it had to be said. I'm sure that 9 months from now, a little boom in Blizzard Babies will happen, though I'm not saying that it'll happen to me.
• Played the computer. One thing that sucks about having a Mac is that the gaming is very limited. And especially because I don't want to play any game that involves killing, unless it is Oregon Trail. Then I'm hunting to feed my family, and that's okay. But I don't even have Oregon Trail for Mac, and so I've been playing "Railroad Tycoon 3." It's better than nothing.
• Read blogs.
  
• Talked to my mom on the phone to kill some time while S watched some dumb "Rocky" movie.

And that brings us to right now. I'm so bored I'm thinking of just packing it in for the night and going to bed. Pretty lame-o, huh? Suffice it to say that S and I will brave the tundra snows of the Midwest tomorrow and run errands, or else I might go crazy.

When I was little, and

When I was little, and my sister was littler, we attended Vacation Bible School (pretty ironic when considering Kate and I, right?). One day, someone came and made us Vacation Bible School balloon animals. Apparently, balloon animals were very cool to me, because when I got home, I couldn't wait to show my mom and dad the balloon. Unfortunately, we were having a babysitter that day (which was a rarity when I was little), so I had to carefully guard my balloon animal for that special moment when I showed it off to my parents. I must have REALLY loved that thing. My sister's popped at some point, I remember, and I was horrified. I felt so guilty that mine was still extent, and I could show my parents the wonder of it. In fact, at that moment, I knew that I would give my balloon animal is only Kate could have hers back. Looking back, I've realized that this is concrete proof that I love my sister. In fact, whenever anything bad happens to her, I feel embarassed and horrified, and secretly wish it was me, so that she wouldn't have to go through it.

Tonight, S and I went to Roly Poly for dinner (since I had lunch out with a friend--whoops! there go all my points for the day), and he ordered his Roly without any vegetables. He specifically said, "No onion and no mushroom." When we got home, he bit into it, and spat out a mushroom. "Is that a mushroom? Are there mushrooms in this thing?" After some careful attempts at dissection, we ascertained that in fact, there were a shitload of mushrooms running through the thing. He had to throw it away. And now, he still hasn't eaten. At first, he thought that he would order a pizza, but the place that he wants to order it from doesn't have a restaurant around here. So now, he's sitting on the couch, hungry, with nothing to eat. I feel terrible! I wish it would have been mine that was wrong (oh wait, it was. but mine was edibly wrong) because at least then he wouldn't have to suffer. I feel nervous and embarassed for him, and will until he eats food that he wants to eat. Apparently, I also love S.