On Vacation
August 4, 2009 § 1 Comment
We’ve never driven to Canada through the Vermont before, where the curving mountains touch the underbelly of the grey sky and tendrils of clouds cling to the trees.
As we pass the lush landscape, I muse about all those who explored these lands before we built these highways. What was it like to carve a path through these forests without the protection of a car and the knowledge that food could be obtained at the nearest exit?
//
I’m always waiting for my brother to show signs of maturity, but so far the only indications I’ve noticed are a deepening of the voice and hair growth on his legs. The petulant teenager has been nothing short of a little demon on this trip, and there are times when I have literally thought about strangling him to death, mostly while dealing with his exasperating antics in the backseat.
His sinful nature is at work, but I also blame my parents. The older I get, the more I can see the flaws in their parenting — I was an easy child to raise, but they messed up on Larry. My mother, who spends the most time with him [while I am at school and my father travels], spoils him incessantly, which I have already detailed rather exhaustively.
Larry was not in a good mood when he found out that we were visiting the Newport mansions in Rhode Island, and he truly did his best to make everybody in the family hate him for the few hours that we were there, lashing out both verbally and physically.
For The Love Of Fat
July 6, 2009 § Leave a comment
“America’s Unhealthiest Meals,” my mother read off her laptop screen. Ever since our cable broke, she has resorted to perusing the ABC News website for her daily dinnertime news fix. Engrossed, she read parts of the article to me and Larry.
“Deep-fried macaroni and cheese, quesadilla burger, and mega-sized deep dish sundae,” she said, skewering the pronunciation of quesadilla. “Is macaroni and cheese normally deep-fried?” she asked.
“No,” I responded. “Stupid Americans just love to deep-fry anything.”
“Hey, deep-fried stuff is delicious,” Larry interjected.
“Like I said…”
I rolled my eyes as mother continued reading aloud. Really, ABC News? What health magazine has not already covered the country’s most fattening meals, when you’re just now jumping on that bandwagon? OMG AMERICANS EAT LOTS OF CALORIES WHAT A SHOCKER!!111! This is no longer news; it’s a fact of life that can no longer be reported on creatively. Subjecting yourself to a 6,000 calorie meal for the sake of journalism? You really didn’t need researchers from the University of Maryland to tell you that it will corrupt your diet and arteries [also, wtf is a quesadilla burger?].
“The article says that ‘the USDA recommends that adults our age eat roughly 2,000 calories per day,’ but your friend XZ told us that for our size, we should be eating around 1,500 calories,” mother told me.
I absolutely hate being told information that I already know as if I don’t already know it. This is one of the things that annoyed me the most when XZ went on a food-deprivation-and-hyper-exercise diet a month ago. As she became deeply entrenched in her new obsession, her enthusiasm for calorie counting could not be contained, and she lectured anybody who came within hearing distance, from me to my mother to anybody who would listen, really.
I gave her my attention the first time just to hear out what she had planned for herself, but it was all information that I knew already. I mean, I took advanced health class in high school because I’ve always had a keen interest in nutrition [I even chose dietitian for my career project in 8th grade], and I only stopped reading nutrition & exercise blogs because I felt like I already knew all the practical information I needed.
When XZ came at my mother with her “a pound of fat is 3500 calories and 2000 a day is too much” knowledge, my mother saw fit to recite it back to me whenever she thought it relevant. Not only did I despise the attitude of self-loathing and incessant caloric calculations that XZ was inspiring and aspiring to, I really did not appreciate my mother treating me as if I didn’t know anything. Really, the interactions we usually have leave me feeling unhappy enough; I will not be made out to be a blundering idiot in this area as well.
Of Mouse & Woman
June 24, 2009 § 2 Comments
“There’s a dead mouse on the driveway,” my mom said to me when she got home today. “Do you want to clean it up for me?”
In my head, the part of me that has an intense fear of dead things [necrophobia] shouted, “WTF NO!”
But the part of me that wanted to suck up to my mom because we got into an argument last night over the stupidest thing and the part that deep down, feels like she doesn’t love me as much as my brother and so I have to win her love by being the obedient older child said, “Uh what?” And I ran outside to take a look.
It couldn’t possibly be that tiny speck on the driveway?
Oh.
Poor thing.
It was the saddest thing I’ve seen all day, and it was indeed tiny — about the length of my pinky. I was charmed by its cuteness [sure beats cleaning up dead flies], but still had to try very hard not to think about what I was touching when I disposed of it with my hand in a rubber glove in a plastic bag, then tied up in another plastic bag.
It looked like it had just suddenly dropped dead on the driveway, but when I put it in the bag, it started bleeding from a wound on its back. I think one of our neighbor’s cats probably got to it and left it for us as a present.
Purple-Stained Fingers
June 18, 2009 § 1 Comment
Last Friday when I came downstairs, my father was eating lunch. On the table before him was a lone blackberry sitting in a plate.
“Where did that come from?!” I demanded. I had not been aware that we had any blackberries in the house, and I definitely would have known, because they are one of my absolute favorite fruits.
“Guess,” my dad said, smiling.
“…From…the fridge?” I felt pretty stupid. Where else could it have been from? What was he getting at?
“No, it’s from our house,” he responded.
My eyes widened. “We have a blackberry tree in our backyard?!?” The very thought of it imparted great joy as well as disbelief. I had never noticed a blackberry tree in our yard before…
auradis 