TAKE OFF YOUR VEIL

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I really really really like food. Just yesterday, I was thinking, is there anything better than a perfectly ripe avocado? I’m always worried that I’ll cut it too soon, and that underneath the skin it will be all tough and flavorless or that I’ll wait too long and the inside will have gone all horribly brown and mushy. I always get such a feeling of joy whenever I pop that baby open and see nothing but beautifully green and creamy fruit.

I think that writing about food would probably be my dream job. Although, being a vegetarian, I could never be a food critic, unless I only covered the dessert beat. I just love food. There is nothing better than a well-prepared meal. I like nice, clean food. I can, on occasion, be a bit of a food snob, but at the end of the day I’m not a picky eater. I’ll eat anything as long as it doesn’t contain animal bits and doesn’t burn my tastebuds.

I actually started a dessert-themed web site earlier this year (http://www.dessertgirl.blogspot.com). I was really excited about it. I get really excited about food. Sometimes, I wiggle in my chair just thinking about it. Anyway, dessert girl only lasted six days. I never even sent out a "look at my new web site" e-mail. I just thought that the whole thing would be too time consuming. Sometimes, I think about starting it up again. I feel terrible about abandoning it to the graveyard of forgotten web sites.

Maybe I should create some sort of food section on this web site. "Pictures of food" or some sort of food project. Hmmmm . . . I’ve only had the idea for two seconds and look, I already have images of coconut snow balls dancing in my head.

One of life's little pleasures: eating Better Than Bouillon Vegetable Base straight from the jar.

On the street where I grew up, there are five synagogues and two churches. I’ve grown accustomed to seeing people walking to their place of worship. There’s something comforting about it. As if walking, instead of driving, denotes some sort of special dedication. Of course, this is literally true in some respects, as there are certain religious sects that require you to walk to service, but, in general terms, a person who chooses to walk seems willing to spend more time in the process. They don’t seem intent on getting it over with, of simply getting in and getting out. The other day, I was at my mom’s house, and I saw two Hasidic Jews walking to temple and for some reason, it just made me feel good (maybe it was the beards). I actually feel kind of uneasy about saying anything positive about religion, as I think the negative aspects of religion far outweigh the positive parts, but I don’t believe my reaction has anything to do with religion. I think it’s more about dedication or, maybe, even walking. I think walking is an extremely underrated activity. There’s just something undeniably pleasant about being outdoors, about being leisurely and unconstrained, about stumbling upon life. Even if you’re in a hurry, there’s something more rewarding about running to get somewhere. Driving seventy-five miles per hour just isn’t as satisfying. Maybe the reason I get so much joy from seeing people traveling by foot is because I live in a city where people drive from one end of the parking lot to the next, just so they don’t have to walk to the next store. Maybe if I lived in a city that required me to walk everywhere, every day, in the rain, in the snow, I’d start to curse the day god invented blisters and look at each passing car with just a little bit of jealousy.

One of life's little pleasures: writing with a Sharpie. I don't know why I like it; I just do.

Recently, for reasons I don’t even completely understand, I decided to fill out the online personality quiz on the dating site eharmony.com. It was . . . a sort of experiment, at least that’s what I told myself. Most of the time, I'm actually quite annoyed by the whole eharmony phenomenon. It's not the concept that bothers me, but the commercials. You know, those ads that seem to last a lifetime and are always cropping up on women friendly networks like Oxygen, WE, and the Soap Opera channel. I can just picture the meetings in the eharmony offices. “Let’s try to appeal to all the desperate women out there. I bet we can really suck a lot of cash out of those chicks!” Fuck, can’t I watch episodes of Felicity in peace?? It’s bad enough that I have to watch Ben Covington and Noel Crane fight over Felicity (yeah, that’s realistic), but now I’m force fed supposedly happy couples blabbing on about how eharmony hooked them up with their soul mate. Needless to say, I have a pretty strong anti-eharmony stance, but like any good Libra, I was willing to admit that maybe there was another side to this whole eharmony thing. Maybe they knew something that I didn’t. Maybe they had the magic key to eternal happiness. Maybe not. I decided to see for myself what this eharmony was made of. All I had to do was fill out the free quiz and the eharmony super computers/pimps would do the rest.  I would have to give them my credit card in order to get any real info on my future husbands, but this would at least give me some sort of idea of the potential bliss waiting for me. Little did I know just how much detail is involved in the eharmony quiz. I pretty much buzzed through that sucker and it still took me well over an hour to finish it. With all the endless questions, I began to wonder if maybe there was something to this matching system after all. I completed the quiz, and like a horny Queen Elizabeth, prepared myself to be wowed by all the awesome dudes about to be laid out before me. Then it happened: Unable to match at this time. There it was, in print. I am UNMATCHABLE!! Apparently, eharmony takes their whole complex matching system so seriously that they feel it’s best just to reject you, rather than make a bad match. I sort of respect that, even though it means that I’m not compatible with anyone within a 60-mile radius. Please, tell me something I don’t already know.

Songs That Make Me Wiggle My Hips

Jaan Pehechaan Ho - Mohammed Rafi
Cruel to Be Kind - Nick Lowe
Natural Born Lover - Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
Eli's Comin - Laura Nyro
ABC - Jackson 5
I'm the Man That Loves You - Wilco
What I'm Looking for - Brendan Benson
I Feel the Earth Move - Carole King
I Will Dare - The Replacements
Hung-up - Madonna

I ran into the wall the other night. Not with my car, but with my body. I woke-up in the middle of the night, got up, and walked straight into the wall. Well, I was walking fairly quickly, so I pretty much ran into the wall.  Splat! It hurt like hell. I was quite sure that I had internal bleeding and that I’d probably die in my sleep. I now have a huge, multicolored bruise covering the upper portion of my knee, and a smaller pale green bruise on my forehead. This is actually not the first time this has happened. A few years ago I slammed into a sliding glass door, thinking that it was open. That same weekend, I also slipped in the shower and accidentally stuck my hand in a moving ceiling fan. Good times.

Where I cracked the wall, with my head!

Prepare to have your world rocked...Osmond style:  http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/BT/osmonds.wmv

If I were Cupid, I’d outlaw blind dates. I know that some people really enjoy them. They feed off the possibilities of an unsoiled relationship, the excitement, the newness of it all. I’m not one of those people. I know I really should have a better attitude, that I should be grateful for the opportunity, but I must say that I hate dating. I’ve never been a fan of the beginning. I prefer the stuff that comes later: ease, boredom, and genuine laughter, not that horrible “I don’t think you’re funny, but I’m being polite” laughter. I want to feel comfortable enough to say completely perverted and disgusting things. I want to do really bad impersonations of King of the Hill characters. I want to listen to Madonna cds and wiggle my ass all over the place. I don’t like difficult small talk among strangers, feigning interest. I don’t like wondering when he’s going to kiss me or grope me or leave me. I don’t like being afraid...of everything. I just want to fast forward to the moment where I can lean into a man, and not have to wonder what it means. I wish I could skip over the beginning part and go straight to the middle.