At least food will never let me down

It's been a very, very rough past couple of days. Luckily, I work around 45 hours a week, which takes my mind off the various bullshits of the personal variety that have reared their stupid, ugly, philandering heads. . .but what to do once I've clocked out? Booze is an option, but after all those martinis we had the other night when the bartender tried to steal my credit card and we ended up being the only white people dancing at Michael Jackson tribute night at Café Montmartre and I couldn't peel myself out of bed the next morning, I am forced to acknowledge the dysfunctionality of that route. No money yet for other sorts of recreational drugs. And while yes, I am surrounded by lovely friends who would gladly indulge my desire to bitch, I don't feel like I can confront any 'feelings' just yet without completely losing what few marbles I may have had left.

So where do I turn?

marinated mahi-mahi

Sorrento salad mix with Gorgonzola, candied walnuts, and champagne pear vinaigrette

and Lisa made an amazing batch of chocolate chip cookies

Let's take one more look at these puppies. Oh fuck yes.

P.S. Don't forget the Bell's Oberon. I didn't say I was swearing off booze completely. Come on now.

Summer Indulgences

It’s a hot, hot day under the Madisun, and baby, I’m sweatin’ like a whore in church. I can’t decide whether it would be nicer to sit outside, where the vague possibility of a fresh breeze might be just that, or to stay here on the couch, where two fans circulate the warm air throughout the living room. I don’t mind the heat, though, especially when I think about how wretched the winters here are. I could easily live in a place where it’s hot all the time.

Before I go to work, I am indulging my hot-weather tastes as much as possible. I have had at least five glasses of iced coffee, I’ve spent some quality time with Love in the Time of Cholera, and I’m waiting for rice to cook so that I can make curry. There’s just something about spicy food and magical realism on a day like today.

I highly recommend pairing curried rice with the fine malt beverage of your choice.

Oh god macro food porn. . .

Scratch that, I am always fun to be around

A day off!

What a week. Starting two new jobs has meant forty hours on my feet, dozens of names to remember, frantic bike rides, 7am start times, hundreds of wine cases lifted, maintaining the required maniacal cheerfulness, maintaining poise, getting rained on, killing gnats, filling water glasses from heavy metal pitchers in a partially-lit dining room, et cetera et cetera et cetera. I would kill for someone to rub my shoulders. I came back to my house last night from a party that was a block away to use the bathroom, and after sitting on the couch for a second, realized I wasn’t going to be able to stand up again. Oops. Hopefully these jobs will whip my pansy ass into shape pretty soon.

And just to make this clear: I’m really happy that I’m working, that I have work, that I’ve been working so much. I don’t mind waking up early, or doing some heavy lifting, but my normal sleep schedule and my skinny arms are rebelling. And hey, I work at a place that does frequent tastings and Sandwich Saturdays. I for goddamn sure can’t complain about that.


But anyway, zonked out early last night without warning. Woke up today, made myself some iced coffee, a fried egg on toast, and settled back into bed for The Onion’s crossword puzzle and this week’s worth of Daily Shows and a box of Joe-Joe’s (uh, they’re like Oreos). Bliss, right?

Well, that was the idea. Ugh. Fucking Mike Huckabee. Who’s he again? Oh, right, he’s that guy who tried to run for president in a fit of epic failure, and he’s the governor of Arkansas, and he shares a name with that sort of amusing movie with Jason Schwartzman and Marky Mark. Oh, and he’s a huge douchebag.

First of all, I’m pissed because he ruined the entertainment value of my little Daily Show watching time to which I had so, so looked forward. Like I said, it’s been a long week.

But more importantly, Mike Huckabee ruined the radiant and sunshiney joy that Jon Stewart brings to my life with his decision to discuss his bullshit old white guy opinions on the government’s right to my vagina. Not only do I not care for one goddamn second what he thinks about abortion, since he will never have to consider getting one, but this is an issue I have already spent three slightly rageful, slightly weepy long-distance hours arguing this week, and I emotionally exhausted by it, and it’s now fucking up my day off.

The intensity of said argument was apparently my own personal prejudice against people who love Jesus, or who love babies; I was told I have some sort of appalling incapability to lend a sympathetic ear to powerful white males and the women who love them. Please. I think babies are great. Everybody thinks babies are great. Abortion is sad and expensive and dangerous as any other invasive medical procedure. Duh.

But hey. I don’t care if Obama went to that silly Catholic university with the football team and shit and gave a nice diplomatic speech about hey-guys-can’t-we-all-just-get-along, because a) I'm starting to think he's full of shit anyway (for more reasons than just that, believe me), and b) I am aware that babies are great, and most people think babies are great, but if we’re going to talk about Mindfulness and all that quasi-New Age-y bullshit invented by grad students who smoke too much cheap marijuana and can’t get real jobs (more eloquently described by an incredible man of genius who sadly could not live by these words*), then it should be quite obvious that the issue for which there needs be more awareness is the subtle ways in which women are marginalized. And by subtle, I mean ‘less obvious than the adorableness of babies.’

Seriously. The world is currently a misogynist place, and it pretty much always has been. Maybe there are very few people who maintain a conscious and literal mantra of hatred towards women, but there are many, many more who complacently operate within a social and political structure designed to keep the powerful white guys in power. For those who have read the DFW speech above, this is water. This is fucking water.



Here’s the deal. Nobody is allowed to mess with my vagina unless I give my explicit permission. This includes but is not limited to: my boyfriend, my gynecologist, the government, Mike Huckabee, and Jesus.

There is no reason a woman should face the consequences of an action a man also performed, yet the man is able to walk away with impunity.

If this offends you, then I support your choice to go read something else. Also, please suck it.



Postscript. I still love Jon Stewart. Obviously.



* highly recommended

I'm not always fun to be around

I’m sure there’s a certain place between the second and third circles of hell for those of us prone to food lust, and it’s called the two weeks before my first paycheck(s). I now spend thirty-two hours a week making mountains of organic produce and rearranging fresh crusty breads and glass jars of tapenades, and roughly seven hours a week surrounded by tempura king crab with truffled béamaise and big square platters of octopus salad. Incidentally, we actually have a maki called the Dante: hamachi (whitefish), cucumber, mizuna (a Japanese mustard green), and a habanero tobikko relish (very spicy fish eggs).

As I type, I am boiling black beans and rice for the millionth time, and I don’t even have anything to go with it. I have avoided checking the coffee can for fear that I might not have enough to make it to work all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed by seven in the morning.

There’s something singularly upsetting about having less than $5 in one’s bank account. Don’t gasp; I do actually have three jobs, and I’ll make rent, and I won’t starve, and I even still have some beers squirreled away. Just the same, peanut butter sandwiches and beans and rice get old real fast.

A sea of purple outside the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago

I went home to Chicago for my sister’s graduation last weekend, which, for the most part, was great—I got the chance to see my aunt and grandma and hang out with the rest of the fam, ate some delicious food (there’s a great place for cannoli and gelato in Lincoln Square, if anybody cares), visited the shiny new Modern Wing at the Art Institute (I have to do a separate post on that later). And oh yes, I had the privilege of witnessing that thrilling rite of passage that is the High School Graduation.

I’m not being a dick, I promise—I’m just saying that it was about as exciting as any high school graduation. I recall not wanting to go to mine, but maybe that was because I had just spent three days in the hospital and wasn’t on speaking terms with most of my friends (the two were unrelated). The salutatorian did his thing, there was Pomp, there was Circumstance, there were crying babies, there was a fairly innocuous little senior prank involving the principal and some colorful stickers. The valedictorian got up to do his personal thing, and then it hit me-

Holy shit. These kids have no fucking idea what’s happening to them. The speeches were all we will remain the close-knit community that makes us strong! and this high school was so special and wonderful to have prepared us to succeed as we face challenges ahead! and we’re going to change the world!

For the first time, such naïveté made me really sad.

I understand that graduation is a very special day for hyperbole and absurdly inflated parental pride and maybe a sort of giddy optimism forced by a fear of what’s ahead. I also understand that I am jaded, and I am a jackass (beat you to it, Dan).

Maybe I’m jealous. Maybe I wish I still felt that way, if I ever did (I can’t recall, but I kind of doubt it). Maybe it’s because I hated high school and made a hash of college, and now that some rich assholes killed our economy, a college graduate can’t even get accepted to be a fucking volunteer, let alone find a job (What's the number of employed recent graduates now? 21%? Holy shit). Maybe it's that I never thought, as I listened to my own shiny-faced classmates' bombastic overtures of misguided optimism, that I would have less than five dollars to my name, eating beans, and excited to wake up at an ungodly hour to work at a grocery store.

I don’t know. As usual, I have no conclusions. I’m just going to eat these beans and read my book until I fall asleep. For now, here is the best part about going home for family functions:

Heineken and homemade guacamole

The Bean Eaters
Gwendolyn Brooks

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,
Tin flatware.

Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.

And remembering . . .
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that
is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,
tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

Dispatches from a high-risk lifestyle: volume 1

The fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich is a gateway sandwich. Containing approximately 36 grams of fat, beloved by such men of infamy as Bill Clinton and (of course) Elvis Presley, this sandwich is obviously the first step of many towards either a) the most successful political career possible in the Western World and a couple of blowjobs, or b) rock and roll, hair product, celebrity as a sex symbol, drugs, obesity, and eventual death on a toilet.

And someday, maybe twenty years from now, when I’m awaiting my undignified end on the bathroom floor of a disreputable nightclub, bad heroin coursing through the veins of my horribly bloated body, my vision narrowing, sweat soaking my sequined jumpsuit, I will rue the day I ever touched a frying pan. Until then. . .

Waiting for my Skype date

So, the boyfriend left for London a week ago. He had his first day of work (marketing for some company that owns shit in outer space) today, and I'm anxious as all getup to hear about it. But where is he?

. . .hello?


. . .are you lost in the London Underground somewhere? Probably.


Anyway, here was our fabulously romantic going-away dinner we managed to scarf down while packing. Rather, I did most of the packing. And I also made dinner. What was he doing during this time? Legit question. Sorting out which socks he wanted to take with or something. . .

candlelit spinach pie with Miller High Life (the champagne of beer!) and a gift wrapped in my pillowcase

did you catch that? yes, it's the Union Jack.

Alright. Time to make some coffee and do something with my life.