Posts from the ‘Textual Selfie’ Category

Mickey Finn Meet Ruby Tuesday

Ack, I’m home sick for the second day in a row (I just spent the week entertaining my sister and her husband who were visiting from England. It was all fun and good, despite their vegetarianism, until I caught the creeping crud or whatever virulent bug they brought with them from Europe. As if it wasn’t enough that our dollars are chump change to them. I can barely hear, breathe or swallow and was convinced I had a deadly fever but my temperature is only 97.1. I hate when people say they have fevers and it’s not true so I wanted to make extra sure before declaring one) and have no typing energy.

But I can’t ignore stories involving chain restaurants, especially ones involving Ruby Tuesday, roofies and vigilant waiters named Colt.

Heavens, I don’t want to live in a world where single women with master’s degrees aren’t even safe in family restaurants.

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L’Eggo my Eggo

In my nine-and-a-half NYC years, I’ve pretty much managed to re-buy all the kitchen appliances and utensils I left behind in Portland and then some (though I’ve never been able to justify another juice machine and toaster oven).

But I don’t think I ever had a waffle maker and finding one is more problematic than I realized. It seems that all they sell now (at least at mainstream stores like Target and Wal-Mart) are Belgian-style waffle makers. I don’t want big squares and fluffiness. I never even eat waffles, but I might if I could make ones that were crispy with lots of close together crisscrossed ridges.

Eggos aren't Belgian-style, Waffle House doesn't serve Belgian..why are Belgian waffle makers the standard machine?

And is it my own fault for shopping at big box stores or is this a rampant epidemic all over?

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Fighting Tooth and Nail

Maybe it’s because I just got a filling (those eight years of dentist-avoidance are starting to catch up with me. I never used to get cavities. I fear that my 20/20 vision is the only thing still going for me. Now, it’s only a matter of time before cholesterol, diabetes and other inevitables start ravaging my system. But I’m definitely having second thoughts about picking a Brooklyn dentist, the original logic being an office I could walk to in case I ever had to be anesthetized. It’s all stereotypes you could imagine. While drilling my teeth, the phone repair guy forced his way back to our room and got into an altercation about a job taking too long even though the dentist had given him $20 to work quickly, and the repair guy didn’t speak English and the dentist didn’t speak Spanish so they were angrily translating through the dental hygienist, all the while the pressure and pulling in my mouth got more aggressive as this situation escalated. I will definitely not return to this office when and if I ever decide to get my wisdom teeth out) or because I’m at my bedroom computer, which I rarely use since I got a laptop for Christmas, but I’m out of sorts.

There’s no excuse for feeling irrationally downtrodden; it’s Friday, the weather is finally crisp, I’m leaving for China in twelve days, there’s a fun food adventure planned for tomorrow, my copy of Dead Boys showed up at the library last week and it’s really good (reading fiction before going to bed instead of browsing websites [urgh, I almost typed Web sites, which is the wrongheaded style I must use at work] is so much more satisfying)…but I’m one of those moods where I hate everything and want to lay in bed for a week. Is that indulgent or pitiful?

The grunginess of the spaces between the keys on my keyboard is bothering me, and my irritation starts at my fingers and spreads outward to infinity. I can’t concentrate because I’ve run out of room on my shelf for magazine storage and now there’s a foot-high pile of newish issues stacking up on a speaker, my cat hasn’t stopped pooping on the floor and peeing on my clothes since spring (I had to remove all of my clothes from the bottom shelf they’re stacked on—not having drawers for nearly a decade also irks me—and now they’re piled in my windowsills, which is doubly irksome), the zipper on my only decent winter coat has been broken since last year and I don’t know how to fix it, the prospect of dyeing my rapidly graying hair dark brown for the rest of my life only to have it fade to copper a few weeks later is demoralizing, letting it just go gray is even more demoralizing, I need to move my old Tripod site to save a few bucks a month but never find the time, this here blog makes me crazy because the design was only meant to be temporary and it’s not like web weaving is my forte, plus I’m sick of the name, and I don’t mean to write about food so much but I’m too old to regale the world with personal foibles, and now I’m annoyed for even saying that because I don’t really believe that personal foibles ever get stale, long live personal foibles, I want my apartment to look stylish and thought out rather than being a junk heap—I would be fine with a ReadyMade or the low end stuff from Domino look, there’s no need for Elle Décor or Dwell…

Do you know how ridiculous/embarrassing it is to complain about a two-floor apartment in NYC with a dishwasher, washer and dryer and two refrigerators? That’s like weighing 120 pounds and thinking you’re fat (unless you’re a dwarf, in which that case might be tubby). See? Now I’ve crossed the line and annoyed myself, which is great because now I feel much better and can shut the fuck up. But seriously, what do you do with a grown cat who refuses to use a litter box even when you clean it twice a day?

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