Family, especially extended family, tends to suffer from a fleeting shelf life of three days, with each additional hour a window of opportunity for wholly justifiable homicide. A single breakfast together isn’t so bad, however, though I will freely admit to RSVPing to this past Saturday’s gathering with a “maybe” initially, citing golf of all things as a potential excuse from the festivities. Yes, golf. Holy Aunt Jemima alive! In the end, I decided the Pancake House would be more tolerable, even after pulling up to it and discovering, much to my disappointment, the House was made of brick instead of cake.
The choice made economic sense. I mean, you’ve got free food on one hand and green fees on the other. It was also a chance to be normal. I’ve found it’s far easier to be introspective during times like these–the Great Recession, so deemed by current parlance–rather than boom times. Maybe it’s because the latter ceaselessly bears you to the next big thing, beat by beat, from plasma TV to car to promotion, whereas this era calls attention to what is, which in this case was a pancake-fueled shot at normalcy.
And normal it certainly was, where for more than an hour I remade myself into the person I knew I should want to be: genial, collected, freely dispensing both hugs and talk, drawn to society. My granduncle inquired at one point why, despite only living half an hour away from them, I’ve only visited once, and the truthful answers flashed across my mind: because interacting with people triple my age simply doesn’t interest me, or because I can be an apathetic bastard, or because there’s a hard limit to my capacity for familial obligation.
“It’s just been so busy,” I replied.
It was partly correct and mostly a white lie, one of those untruths we offer to preserve the bonds of cordiality. I was content with leaving it at that because sharing the same family tree isn’t enough. There needs to be more, right? When ties are based solely on blood, there seems to be a very real chance of having them clot and scab over.
A few weeks ago I tasted, however briefly, the vegetarian lifestyle when I bit into a Morningstar breakfast patty, ruminating as I chewed one of the food industry’s most cunning inventions. What was cobbled together from soy, more phosphates than modern science ever thought possible, and a laboratory’s worth of chemicals should’ve by rights resembled the very cardboard that wrapped it. But it didn’t. The first bite truly registered as breakfast sausage, though each subsequent piece was subject to the law of diminishing returns, not to mention edibility.
Still, I consider my mind a little expanded, since vegetarianism previously meant eating cows that once ate grass. I was also struck by a seeming inequality in the dining landscape. Why do companies manufacture products that simulate meat and blatantly disregard the inverse market? Easy answer is because people don’t demand it, but this doesn’t address the injustice within. After all, why shouldn’t there be apples made entirely out of pepperoni, or broccoli florets lovingly crafted with beef and cheese? It’d be gross, that’s why.
The health regimen continues to hum along. You probably won’t ever see me invest in a fitness membership in this lifetime, because I’ve discovered the same sedentary lifestyle that may be powering the blog this very minute keeps junk food out of my house. I might crave chips or cookies one afternoon, for example, but the same laziness that glues me to this chair also prevents me from gunning it to the supermarket. The pantry is accordingly empty these days. There’s a tube of oatmeal. Some frozen vegetables. A thing of sugar.
And a box of dirty rice, which I attempted to cook yesterday. For the uninitiated, dirty rice isn’t morally reprehensible, nor is it tainted with melamine or depleted plutonium, as the name might suggest. It’s simply seasoned rice that is Cajun in origin. That didn’t stop me from opening the package and wondering, for at least 45 seconds, whether the small, round black things were beans or rat droppings. The dish turned out fine, but it was a firm reminder that I could benefit from cooking more, and wouldn’t you know it, the local resort is featuring an “All Things Louisiana” cooking class in a few weeks. It almost seems like fate. I’m just not sure if it’s fate to the tune of $85 plus tax and gratuity.
The first snowfall in Charlotte brings with it a number of comforting traditions, chief among them a kind of localized apocalypse, and today was a timely reminder of what exactly goes into the list. There is, of course, the subdued panic the night prior, marked by a silent run on the supermarket for nonperishables, followed by overexposure to dire news coverage. Then, there’s the waiting. Oh, the interminable waiting. And when the snow finally hits–the whole terrifying quarter-inch of it–chaos is unleashed. School districts close. Parking lots empty. Cars plunge into ditches. The lone snowplow owned by the state deploys, only to find itself trapped in that one confounding cul de sac. Truly, the end of days is come.
People die. Graveyards tear asunder, pouring out their grim harvest, until the Charlottean zombies realize the snow has now accumulated to a third of an inch and promptly retreat. And today, my normally four-minute commute ballooned to just over 40, courtesy of two pile-ups not more than 15 feet apart. As I sat there in gridlock, it dawned on me that if an abnormally longer commute qualifies as a problem, then life must be pretty good. There are many who would want the problem of a commute these days, you know?
It’s time to lay off, in a manner of speaking, the news a bit. Day in, day out, there is a steady influx of articles about jobs lost. While these cuts are certainly happening, I realize reporters need to eat as well, and what could be relayed to the public in a few dispassionate sentences instead transforms into three-page exposés. Sure, I enjoy scanning headlines, but I’m at the saturation point and up to my neck in survivor’s guilt. It’s, like, with everything imploding everywhere, why am I still setting my alarm for 7:40 AM? When will the corporate reaper come to collect? But then, a deep breath. The three- to five-inch snowfall they reported yesterday? Try less than one, and by mid-afternoon it had melted under a clear blue sky. Newsflash! Action news blackout, coming up next.