26 April 1999: Giggling

Holy shit. I was just browsing around shoving my name in search engines and came across the LOLHS alumni list. Oh yeah, I remembered, I haven't checked that in a while. And what to my wondering eyes should appear? My late high school crush is right smack-dab there. (Sorry--I tried for scansion. And I mean that he was late in high school--late for high school often too--not dead.) How pathetic that crush was. He liked Huey Lewis and the News, which is all you need to know and all I should have needed to know. Remembering him and how stupid I was around him makes my skin crawl. I was one of the first people on the alumni email list, and if he checked the page after he added himself, he must have seen my name--but I haven't received any email from him. I guess that means (sob!) he really doesn't love me.

The high school crush. I'll just skip over that, 'kay? Really too humiliating. The best part of it was getting over it, eventually. For about the second half of the school year I knew how stupid I was being (not that that stopped me asking him to prom, just in case), but I hadn't officially thrown in the towel yet. In the beginning of summer vake, on a bike ride, I came across a classmate of his and talked to him for a while. He told me a bunch of stuff that confirmed what I had known all along--what a lack of faith I had in my own judgment--and after that chat, I rode away free as a bird, completely over him without a backward glance. That modifying phrase implies that I knew all along that I lacked faith in my own judgment, and although my intended meaning was that I had known ugly truths all along but didn't Know them, the syntactical meaning is yet more valid, so it stands.

The second best part was the next spring, after I had my licence and could drive the Torino. I was driving along Lyme Street and saw another classmate of his walking home from the Bee and Thistle and pulled over to give him a ride. The friend just ambled up to the car, which he didn't recognize, and then when he peered into the passenger side window to turn down a stranger's offer, didn't recognize me for a moment, until after I addressed him by name. I'd had my hair cut since he'd seen me, plus got rid of my glasses and braces, and, for the day, my bike. He approved. That was gratifying.

After Shelley's latest, I want to throw in yet another towel. I nearly peed my pants.

The most recent bunch of bananas had about twelve pieces of fruit on it. This morning I separated the last two and stared at the hairy spider of stalk in my palm. First I left it on the counter, hoping RDC would find it as amusing as I did, but then I put it in his bathroom sink, so he'd see it first bleary-eyed thing.

He usually calls me in the morning before he leaves for work. He didn't today.

Saturday I watched the last chapter of "Brideshead Revisited." Hello? Are we to assume Sebastian will die content in his monastery? If we are, can we at least be told if Aloysius came with him? Doesn't anyone care about the important things anymore?

I've got "Murder, Tonight, in the Trailer Park" in my head. Specifically the first verse:
Murder tonight in the trailer park.
Mrs. Annabelle Evans found
with her throat cut after dark."

Lyrics to the contrary, I'm in a quite good mood. Those meerkats.

This weekend I read most of Eight Weeks to Optimum Health. Some of his suggestions are spot-on, like Western medicine not caring about anything they haven't proven within an inch of our lives and the dangers of pesticides. Some I find too environmentally unsound to be comfortable with, like to run water for 3-5 minutes in the morning before using it to drink or cook with because of toxins that build up. My first use of the water in the mornings the shower, which I seldom drink unless I'm just parched, but I'm usually not parched because I've just swallowed a full pint. I usually fill the Brita in the morning; so I'll just hope it filters out whatever he's talking about.

He talks about the dangers of animal fats and not just because it's fat but more for the toxicities that build up in animals' fat tissues more than they do in muscle tissue. (For the same reason, anesthesia remains in your fat cells for months after you've woken up.) I can easily cut out most four-legged meat from my diet as long as I don't have to swear never to eat it again in my life, but cheese? Gives me the shivers, the idea of a cheeseless life.

I've converted to soy milk easily enough. We don't have cow milk in the house at all anymore. RDC can drink it straight, but I need to dilute it in chai. Maybe eventually. Right now I don't drink milk straight at all and have soy milk on my cereal, which is fine. I only need milk with cookies or brownies and otherwise drink juice or water. I've never liked soda [N.B.: when I say soda I mean soda and when I say baking soda I mean baking soda and when I say pop I'm making fun of someone] much. But no cheese? No butter? Is he insane?

There are different steps you're supposed to take every week:

• In week one, walk ten minutes three days a week building up to 50 minutes 5x a week by the eighth week. Our usual walk is 50 minutes, but doing it is another thing. He prefers walking to all other exercise, and if he wants only five times a week, that leaves me two days for step. (Swimming, as always, doesn't count as exercise. Swimming is swimming.)
• Also in week one, eat broccoli at least once and in week two, substitute soy for animal protein. This is where his instructions get hard to follow. We already eat weird leafy greens--including and weirder than spinach: kale or chard or worse--at least twice a week and broccoli twice. Steam anything with enough garlic and olive oil and it's edible, so that hasn't been hard. We're already not eating four-footed meat and hardly any two-footed; at this point so little of anything legged that I'd rather splurge on Angus tenderloin than turkey.
• He gives all this cute advice about week six (an indication of how difficult a step it's perceived to be) on how to include garlic in your diet. Who needs help? I would eat it with every supper, except then I might get tired of the spice in everything

He encourages cold water fish like salmon, mackerel, herring, and sardines. Salmon: yes, grilled, smoked, or raw. Mackerel: raw, except I can't forget someone saying they're a dirty fish. Herring and sardines: I would buy those fish only if I had a cat. Ha!

The one thing that I can't see me doing as much as I ought is volunteering. That's not until week seven, though.