megan + burritos = 4EVER

I may have created a new holiday tradition wherein I eat as many burritos as I want. This lasted about two weeks, and it was wonderful. Last night, it ended tragically. I don't know what to blame: bad avocado, undercooked potatoes, not enough hot sauce, or an over-toasted tortilla. It was all wrong, and I'm left me with an empty feeling in my heart.

As a diabetic, food is not always enjoyable. I can regularly be found stuffing my face with handfuls of raisins at 11pm in a dark kitchen, scrounging for old sugar packets mid-afternoon at work, or just miserably eating anything at anytime. Sometimes I eat because I have to, and I hate it. Actually, I am usually eating because I have to. Food is sustenance, energy. Food is the thing that keeps my blood sugar steady in a way that nothing else can. When something is forced upon me, I usually hate it, even if I previously loved it. If you tell me I must do something, I will cease to love it. I really don't like to be told what to do.

Burritos are enjoyable. Burritos I can do. I also love sandwiches, just less. And if I love something that I can also eat (which will not be a bad choice for me food-wise), the heavens open up for a glorious moment and let me enjoy food. It's a precious thing, and I savor every bit of it.

Except for last night. Damn you bad burrito.

Makin' pancakes.

I guess I tend to blog when I'm trying to figure out some big thing in my life. Perhaps when things are good, I avoid overanalyzing. Perhaps things are good because I'm not overanalyzing. Touché.

All the Salvation Armies had "half off everything" sales yesterday, so naturally, I bought a ridiculously expensive camera and am attempting to sell it. Girl's gotta eat yo.

Speaking of eating, I am still eating several burritos daily weekly, but have now been cooking in my new kitchen on a somewhat regular basis. It's hard to get used to having a kitchen. Someone gave me a cookbook for Christmas, and I had the thought, "Does this mean something because you've never actually seen me cook, and I have no food in my fridge?" Asking myself that question was some sort of  necessary therapy, and I'm happy to say that I ate pancakes for dinner this evening.

Last night I listened to Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings records, whilst listening to someone wax philosophical about the meaning of old school country music. I think at some point there was also dancing, so yeah, life is good :)

Rummage Sale Planning - Part 3

Very unique vintage square dance skirt - just sold :)

When I was in college, I was really interested in event planning as a career. So I got into large-scale athletic events, events that get planned all year long, take a lot of human power and time, and are fun to participate in. I ended up on my knees one year in San Francisco, taking ankle monitors off of hundreds of open-water swimmers as they came out of the water, freezing and exhilarated. That was a good hair day, the last one I can remember clearly. I think it was the salty sea air.

Rummage sale planning is very different. There isn't a lot of "planning" that I'm able to do on my own. I have the idea. I execute the idea. People come alongside me to help, and somehow it happens. If I were more organized, I imagine the sale would be more organized. I don't know how to make that happen. I'm sure that other people do. For the time being, people will bring things to church this week, I will spend Thursday and Friday organizing the donations, and several hours on Saturday trying to sell it all. That may not be enough for some people, but it's enough for me.

Last night, while running an errand for a friend, I happened to pass by one of my favorite burrito places. The sign was down and the place was empty. I haven't eaten there in months. I guess unbeknownst to me, I'd been keeping them in business ;)

Sterling silver :)

The ultimate thrifting problem: non-working watches

So I was out-of-town yesterday for a meeting and needing a thrift fix before I drove back home. I stopped at a large charity store en route, and was happy to see that they were open 'til 6 (it was already 5).

I wasn't very excited, until I remembered that I, as a reseller, actually look for specific things, and that I might find cool stuff (I know, I'm weird - thrift wandering is good on its own). So I walked over to the mugs, looked through the vintage ties, found a man excitedly looking through records, all with empty hands. I found some red Vara bow Salvatore Ferragamo shoes, but they were in bad shape, and they were size 7AA, so I didn't feel up to fixing them, only to have them sit in my shop for a year.

Behind the front counter, the store had small plastic tubs, filled with jewelry. I asked the employee to let me see them, which he gave me one at a time, and I slowly went through the hundreds of pins, earrings, and necklaces, all in small plastic bags, looking for sellable pieces. In the end, I found about 2 ounces (over 50 grams) of sterling silver jewelry for a little over $4. I can't quite explain it, but it made my day. It made me feel smart and thrifty and productive for the day.

I finished off this awesome day with a taco truck burrito and a crazy-exciting high school girls basketball game. The team I was there to see was up by eleven in the first few minutes, only to find themselves down by two, with two minutes left in the 4th quarter. A foul, followed by two perfect foul shots (Ack! One minute left!) and a three-pointer with 21 seconds on the clock. Booyah. Great game.

Hello Thursday!

The recycled tape is everything I dreamed it would be. It's like big strips of envelope that needs to be licked in order to stick. And it makes my packaging completely recyclable! I feel so good about that. I'm usually a 90-95% kind of girl. I do a lot, but not everything. I split my lot between two worlds. I do this because it keeps me sane. I do it because it's who I am.

This means that I am not a protester. I do not compost my own feces. I drive a car. I shampoo my hair. I use electricity. I shop at the grocery store. I do not have a vegetable garden. I humbly eat food that I am given, and shop at stores with picketing-protesters in front. I eat pre-prepared food and Mexican drive-thru burritos. I have $10 in my bank account, and am currently using my credit card to eat. Yup. That's me.

I am not perfect. I am human. I'm also awesome. True story.

A spacey afternoon

I'm probably not thinking very well at this moment because I've [kind of] eaten lunch, but not really. I ate a protein bar and a large glass of vegetable juice, but no insulin, so I'm spacey, not low blood sugar spacey, just low calorie spacey; there's a difference.

When I'm anxious, or my life is just completely stressful, I have a lot of trouble eating. For a long time, this wasn't a problem. My hormonal imbalance was so crazy that my body didn't reflect how I was treating it. But now that everything is in right, working order, my eating troubles are becoming more obvious (no not to you, but they are to me). And I have to admit, that's not always something that concerns me. I like being thin. As a kid, I was indoctrinated into the "looks is everything" camp, and this metronome still clicks inside of me at a steady beat: "Be thin. Be beautiful. Be thin. Be beautiful [and so on and so on]."

There is no counter narrative here. This is really what I believe. Writing about it reveals some sort of ambivalence, sure, but not enough to act differently. This isn't something that I consciously choose like, "I'm not going to eat lunch today because I want to stay my lovely thin self." No; I think, "I'm not hungry. Bleh. But I have to take care of myself, so I'm going to eat what I'm able to eat, something that doesn't make me feel sick." The latter is my real adult self. The latter doesn't always eat burritos because she wants to. Sometimes she eats them because she makes herself.

Racisme: Parte Deux

Where I live, people sell food on the street. It gets dark outside, and they park their food cart out in the middle of a dirt corner and set up plastic tables and chairs, and suddenly this once-dead corner is a hot spot.

During the day, men (always men, now that I think about it) ride down the street selling bags of fried pork rinds. It's been a while since I've seen a man with popsicles, but in the town where I grew up, we didn't have men with pork rinds; we had men with paletas. My favorite paletas are strawberry and lime (just water; no milk).

Just a few blocks from my house is a Mexican panaderia and cafe, and while I was walking to Starbucks a few weeks ago for the internet, I passed it and thought, "Maybe I should stop." I still had a mile to go to get to Starbucks, and I was a little motivated by the exercise, but honestly, I didn't have the energy to try a new place.

While reviewing burritos last year, I went down to little Mexico (as I like to call a particular part of town down the street from my school) and walked into a place that I'd always driven by, and looked like it sold food. Wow. They did not want me there. One of the other customers asked me if I was a teacher, because I looked like one. There's no way around that one-that is what I look like, for no other reason than that I'm white and wear glasses. I ordered a rice and bean burrito, and that's what I got: rice and beans. It makes me sad to think about it. There wasn't even any salsa. They just wanted me to get out of there. I made them uncomfortable.

So today, even though this is now my actual neighborhood for the second time, I still feel a bit weird going into a new place by myself, like that panaderia, or a food cart on the side of the road (but not the pork rinds man, because I don't eat meat) not because I'm afraid, but because I don't know what the cultural expectations are. It isn't right that the city is racially and economically segregated, but it is, and I don't want to step on anyone's toes. Even if I dressed and acted differently, I don't think I could ever fit in.

Dear burrito, I love you.

So I'm back to my burrito-a-day habit. Let's assess:

Monday: Vegetarian burrito from Chipotle; guacamole; pico; fajita veggies
Tuesday: Bean and potato burrito with red sauce inside from Arsenio's
Wednesday: No memory of having eaten a burrito
Thursday: Same as Tuesday but with a jamaica agua fresca and I forgot to ask for red sauce inside so I had to dip, which is annoying

A friend asked me why I eat the Mexican fast food that is Arsenio's. I can only say that it got me through my Corinthians class a couple years ago. We talked about sex in the bible and I ate a burrito made from refried beans and potatoes. A perfect Monday night, it was.

Also, there's less jaw clicking when I eat mushy food. When I was a kid, my jaw would get totally stuck during the night (too much stress on my tiny eight-year-old mind), and it doesn't do that so much anymore. It does, however, click all the time. I took it up with my dentist and we all (me, my dentist, and the hygienist) spent ten minutes trying to figure out if it was causing damage. I said, "It's causing damage to my love life!" but that wasn't sufficient (I didn't really say that. Usually we just talk about my Slavic roots because my dentist gets excited every time he meets me, because he's forgotten me since the last time I came in, when he got excited about my Slavic roots.).

Last time I was at the dentist, actually, I took the time to interview my hygienist to assess whether she was a thrifter, and whether her demographic would come to my then-soon-to-be store. We had a great conversation about consignment stores in the area, as well as the time investment it takes to be a good thrifter. I realized that I had to consider that in the establishment of a thrift store. There may be a lot of people who would like to thrift, but don't have the time. I don't know how to solve this problem.