I hate throwing away food.

I am cleaning and organizing my pantry. In it are lots of expired foods. Food I never ate and am now going to throw away.

It’s a terrible thing and exposes me as the ugly American that I am. I often buy a thing because I’m sure I will eat it or use in a recipe and then it languishes forgotten on a shelf.

3 years ago I lived in a car and quite naturally didn’t have a pantry of food. And this year I’m throwing away food. In just three years I accumulated enough to nearly fill the kitchen trash can with expired foods in packages.

I admit it – I have been carefully and thoroughly inoculated by the American Food Industry. I won’t eat their food after the little printed on date. I am aware that they are probably still safely edible. There is a whole ridiculous thing around food expiration dates in the US, which basically mean nothing.

Expiration Dates are triggers the manufacturers put on the packaging, sometimes by law, sometimes because it’s just damn good business. They make us feel that the food turned bad on that day but in reality it’s just a date, often fairly arbitrary, that the manufacturer claims the food won’t taste as good anymore. Of course it is also a nice way to get more sales. What it ISN’T is a date when the food is no longer safe. But consumers think it’s that.

But… But… there are a few foods that can go bad after a period. Not all of them have obvious warnings in smell. And that right there is just enough uncertainty for me to throw it all away if the expiration date has past.

The likelihood is that EVERYTHING I am throwing away is fine. A kitchen trashbag full of perfectly edible foods. Most free food pantries won’t take expired food either. So that’s not even an option. Plus that feels even shittier somehow – like throwing a moldy bread crust a starving man. So yesterday I bought $20 of non perishables for the free food store. Because… it felt like a bit of nonlogical atonement for my sin.

I live in middle of a boxing match in my head. The Intellectual knowledge and the guilt of throwing away food vs the FEAR of bad food. Fear has won. Guilt is throwing a wake for my morals.

animals-are-laugjing-at-us-behind-our-backs-yarpnews-4

Dear WordPress:

Look. I like you. Mostly.

But today. Today, you have pissed me off.

I got a comment on my blog post. I read it in your fancy schmancy hovering bell notification thing. I HATE the magic hovering stuff that pervades the web, but I get it – you have to keep up with the latest, even if it’s glitchy and pointless.

Today I responded with a rather lengthy and thoughtful comment to my kind commenter. I was quite pleased with my comment. And then when I hit send it disappeared and a notice came up that I had somehow sent my kind commenter to Spam Hell.

THAT, that right there, is the reason these stupid Hovery Magicy things are a problem. I’m sure I clicked something odd while it was moving mysteriously between one form and another. I certainly didn’t do it intentionally as I had no idea that was even a damn option. And the comment WASN’T spam.

I then fixed Your pointlessly created problem by Unspamming the comment, but I have no idea if my commenter was notified of this embarrassing mishap.

AND (and this is the crux of my anger) because it is UNFIXABLE, I lost my response to her comment. My thoughtful and rather long comment was LOST. Because of this UTTERLY pointless thing you have going with the hoverboard of notification hell.

I like the idea in theory – I want to have easy access to my notifications. But I’m all kinds of OK with them being in their own page. Being captured and STATIC is fine. The hovering stuff is more annoying than good. Stop the Madness. Lead the charge away from the sparkles and into the hard and fast reality of things that are FUNCTIONING PROPERLY AND CONSISTENTLY.

Sincerely,

Sara

Smiling like its normal

Yesterday SmirkPretty posted an amazing essay on 100 Blessings. Take a moment and read it. It’s worth your time. Seriously worth your time.

I decided to try it. Just look for a blessing, a small thing to be grateful for, a small thing that made me smile, a small thing of worth. 100 of those things in one day. I called them blessings, although I’m a non believer, because I think we all recognize that a blessing is a good thing in life, a thing worthy of gratefulness.

I really can’t tell you how ridiculous an undertaking this is for me. There have been times in my life, just as recent as last week, where I can’t find a glimmer of hope or light or good in the world because my brain has painted all the world into a deep void of darkness. On those days finding even one or two things to be grateful or happy about is an olympic level effort.

And then on a whim, inspired by a gorgeous blog post, I just decided to do 100 of them. In one day.

I took the approach that anything in my life or that touched my life, that was good, was a blessing worth counting. I got 20 done in less than 2 minutes. After that the hardest part was remembering. My brain is not in the habit of looking for the sparkles of light in the darkness that inhabits my life. I’m busy feeling my way in the dark.

But when I remembered, I could just look up and find 5 in under a minute. Look up right now and you can too. For example in front of me is a book shelf of my absolute favorite books in the world. Curled up next to me is a fluffy ball of pestering love, covering me is a quilt made by my grandma, under me is a comfortable bed, surrounding me is a safe apartment… Later it was the smell of cut grass, the newly planted flowers at work, the laughter of friends, the job, the purple pen, the kindness of my boss, the hard work of a co-worker, the generosity of a co-worker, the safety of the water I was drinking…

As the day progressed my day became lighter. I definitely forgot about it for hours at a time. And I lost track of what number I was on several times. I have no idea if I accomplished 100. I do know I accomplished a personal moment of revelation. I became both lighter in heart and more aware of my surroundings by merely noting to myself the blessing. It made me far more mindful.

The real question is – can this be done everyday? Can I count 100 blessings every day? The idea doesn’t seem overwhelming. The idea makes me smile. Perhaps it feels doable because I’m not at the bottom of the Abyss this week. But I will take it because it feels like a celebration rather than an existence.

Can we discuss… Emoji?

Last night I sent a message to a person who is taking care of her boyfriend in the hospital. She was exhausted and feeling defeated and I sent her a tweet of sympathy and what I hoped was validation for their most recent and shitty choice. In it I put the “shit” emoji. On my emoji keyboard it’s just a pile of poo, no face. After it posted on twitter it had a face that looks like surprised, possibly smiling pile of poo. It changes the entire emotional impact of the thing. To say the least.

A new language is evolving. A language of emoji. But rather than everyone the world over having the same picture, we have let every goddamn company design their own emoji picture – and so now we can’t speak to each other in what could POTENTIALLY be a universal language.

Because you can’t trust that they are going to get message you sent.

Unicode specifies “pile of poo” for these ASCII characters but every platform can interpret the pile of poo differently. Adding a face to a pile of poo vs a wave of smell means those two pictures have 2 different connotations.

Take the grinning smile for example: Look below and tell me that which of those grins look like the grimace of someone on a toilet with constipation? 3318bad000000578-0-image-a-100_1460464915474

You know I’m right. Apple, Facebook, Emojione and Twitter’s Graphic Artists need more fiber in their diet. I’m not going to send that and expect that someone is thinking I’m thrilled with something. I’m going to be afraid they will think I’m begging for fiber.

Samsung and LG nailed it. But don’t use it on your LG phone just because it looks great on it. You friend with the apple is going to be wondering if you are in pain.

I don’t understand how this opportunity for creating a world language could have been so horribly missed. WHY in a world that constantly feels the language barrier problem could the idiots with power at Unicode not hire someone to make each emoji, and then handed those out with the code? WHY? They could have saved countless horrible and embarrassing moments.

Fucking Morons. 😤

I’m sitting in the Living Room.

This is so rare that I don’t even remember the last time I did it. And I know that in the 2.75 years I’ve lived here I’ve sat in here less than 5 times.

I sit in bed. It’s not healthy.

But I am waiting for the UPS guy and I won’t hear him in the bedroom, so I’m sitting in the Living Room like a normal person.

I opened the blinds, which are always closed. Its actually quite bright and cheery despite the greyness of the morning. Huh. Lily is all kinds of interested in this new development and is sitting on the window sill. This is probably not wise, since she is kind of a lease breaker, but the management is aware of her and pretending she doesn’t exist because I keep her litter clean and she’s not destroying the place. And they are a service for mental health. Not having her would destroy my very tenuous path to mental health.

I am wondering if I could rearrange the furniture in such a way that I would be more likely to use the Living Room. I think if I had the small writing desk in front of the window, with a chair, I might sit in here more. It’s kind of nice to look out the window and see the world.

The heat is still on in the apartment. Low, but on. Because it’s run by an agency that is NOT always super efficient. They usually turn ON the heat in mid November to Early December. This is the first year where they forgot to turn it off though. I may have to call. sigh.

Anyway, that’s life in my house this morning. I feel like I’m in a stranger’s apartment because I’m sitting in the Living Room.

Did you know Mothers Day is NOT supposed to be a Hallmark Moment?

Listen to the memory palace podcast for the best version of this story but to summarize Mother‘s Day was supposed to be Mothers’ Day. A Day to fight for and recognize the work that women do in a home as equal in worth to work outside the home.

It was an idea created by Anna Jarvis when she wanted to pursue the work done by her mother. Her mother was also Anna Jarvis and in the mid 19th century she was an activist for women’s rights. She spend her life teaching women about healthcare and their workplace rights.

After she died, her daughter wanted to continue that legacy by bringing her campaign for women’s work into proper respect and she thought that if we had a Holiday it would raise awareness and respect for the work women do inside a home. A day that would bring women together to fight for their rights in their unpaid work. So as a legacy to her mother she focused herself on that task and won. Congress declared Mother’s Day.

And almost immediately it became a commercialized day about saying I love you to your Mom. Which upset Anna Jarvis A LOT. Because it was supposed to be about the bigger issue. It wasn’t supposed to be a Hallmark Holiday that exploits your love for you mother into a money making venture.

So instead of being able to rest on her laurels, she spent the rest of her life fighting the commercialization of a Holiday she created to change the perceived role of women in our culture. She died alone in a nursing home surrounded by Hallmark cards and candy that her oblivious fans continued to send her. She was never a mother.

Now, of course, no one knows the real reason Mother’s Day was brought into existence. And it’s hard to call the celebration of our affection for our particular parent a bad thing, because of course it’s not.

But it’s also true that we still have the problem of getting respect for the unpaid labor of Moms. That terrible term Mothers Who Don’t Work continues to plague us. We have started to head more into the direction of shared parenting, but it remains a cultural norm that women are the responsible party for all child rearing and house care and men are just helping. Clearly a holiday isn’t the route to take on improving that though.

Did I ever tell you about my Mom?

My mother was not always a great mom. She was an active and very drunk alcoholic until I was 21. I never really knew her until I was an adult. When she finally sobered up, she changed and it was like meeting a new person.

People loved my mom. I continued to be surprised by how much. I guess I had seen her be such a bitch for so long, that when people gushed about her, I was just sort of surprised.

And it’s not like she was just a bitch when she was drunk. She apparently was … uh… let’s say high maintenance as a teenager and young adult. She threw some fairly colossal fits.

She was beautiful when she was young. Not in an ordinary way, although she was a nice looking woman. It was the way she carried herself and her style. And although the alcohol stole her physical beauty and replaced it with bags and wrinkles, she never stopped carrying herself with a certain style and attitude.

But more than any of that, my mother taught me several important things. She taught me the importance of equality and tolerance. She taught me that being smart was the most important thing I was. She taught me that helping people was the gift you gave yourself. She taught me that family was important. And she never really told me those things directly.

But she taught them to me, despite being drunk and mean and not very reliable. And when you think about that, that is pretty fucking impressive.

But the biggest and most important thing she taught me was that it’s possible to change. It’s possible to pull yourself out of mire of misery and self destruction and make your life good again. Because she did. She sobered up and changed her life completely. She did it after 20+ years of being at least some level of drunk 90% of the time.

She did it at the age of 60.

She became one of my best friends. And I miss her so much.

Cemeteries and gravestones

I don’t want to be buried, I want to be cremated. I think funerals are a big scam on the vulnerable.

But, that said, I am a little bit sad that I won’t have a gravestone. My grandmother taught me the importance of cemeteries. On the western Iowa and Missouri border, there are many cemeteries filled with my ancestors. They are physical genealogy markers.

Grandma Allen would get a bunch of relatives in a car, or two cars and we would take an all day tour of cemeteries. We would drive on dirt and gravel roads for miles and stop at small rural cemeteries that looked like no one had been buried there for years.

We would walk around and look at the markers and hear how this person and that person was related to us. We would hear where their farm was – sometimes you could see it from the cemetery. We would hear how they died or some fabled family story about them.

Then we would get in the car and drive to the next one. Sometimes we would stop at a farm of some far flung relation, who had inherited a farm that had been in the family for generations. They always greeted us with warmth and took us on a tour, gave us something to drink and sent us on our way with a suggestion or two of who or what to visit next.

My relatives weren’t rich. They were farmers. But I also love to visit the big city cemeteries where the wealthy built crypts that look like mini cathedrals, and put beautiful stone angels and Greek goddesses on their graves. Often they put a beautiful poem or quote on the marker. Its a lovely way to be remembered, even by strangers.

spring-grove-cemetery-30796 These days very few people are quite so extravagant with their graves. I find it kind of sad. Which conflicts heavily with my first statement, doesn’t it?

Well, in the unlikely event that there is lots of money available at my death, I will ask for a bench to built. I want it be in the shade and to be designed to last for centuries. I want it be comfortable and inviting. And on it, I will put an inspiring thought or poem. And my name and dates, of course. My ashes can be scattered somewhere pleasant that my relatives would like to go on vacation, but the bench will mark my life.

Because, in the long run, who will remember me? I have no children. I will be the unremembered maiden aunt and quite forgotten by later generations. No one will tell my stories at the dinner table, the way we tell stories of my great grandparents and grandparents and parents. And even those stories will be forgotten by the spread of time.

But the stones, they last a bit longer. Its a silly human desire to be remembered. A desire of the living for something that will mean nothing to the dead. But I still want it.

Cleaning the Bathtub…

This apartment building is 75+ years old. The bathtub is also that old. It’s no longer a shiny slippery white enamel. Its got a fine tooth of many scratches from many scrubbings which have accumulated enough to create lots of surfaces for dirty to just settle in and just roost.

For a long time I struggled with it. I used every type of cleaner on the shelf, EXCEPT Comet. I was taught never to use Comet powder on enamel. But this bathtub would not get properly gleaming clean. So I started to waver on the Comet. It’s not like I could ruin an already ruined surface! That day past at least 30 years ago.

Anyway, I finally broke down and used Comet with Bleach. And then like some sort of mad woman I scrubbed my bathtub at 11 pm last night. I’m sure my neighbors though I was crazed. And it was like a sweet song of relief. Comet works in this bathtub. I was happily and vigorously scrubbing for 45 minutes last night. Its cleaner looking that it’s ever been. Significantly cleaner than it was when I moved in.

It’s clean enough that I am contemplating an actual BATH. Baths are like nirvana to me. But this bathtub always looked so gross even after cleaning that I couldn’t bring myself to soak in it. Only shower. But now!!!

Tonight, I BATHE!!!

I’m smiling like a maniac just anticipating it. I know – only a mad woman would add a boring post about scrubbing the bathtub to a series about Smiling. But seriously, I’m full of joy over this little thing.

bath-988502_960_720

“There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.” ~Sylvia Plath

Listed Under Appallingly Bad Idea

The CIA’s twitter account is doing a rerun tweeting the Osama Bin Laden’s Assassination as if it were happening today.

This is so… bad taste.

This is so… dangerous.

This is so… typical of our narcissistic American Centric view.

I’m embarrassed for this country. I’m sorry that Obama is making this sort of thing into a sideshow carnival ride.

I’m continually stunned by the choices people make. People who are supposed to be smarter than this.