Trust but verify.

Today I dumped half a canister of sugar on my head and received confirmation, once again, that I should not be allowed to live alone. It is fortunate I have all these ants to keep me company.

As children, my sisters and I lived in fear of a substance we called “milk water.” Milk water is what you get when you fill with water a glass that used to contain milk. If the milk glass was not thoroughly washed with soap and hot water and left to cool in the cabinet for several hours (until the milk-soap effect had worn off), it was unsuitable for use. Let me also clarify that milk glasses had to be actually made of glass, and that glass had to be absolutely clear with no coloring. On this point the sisters are divided; some contend that another suitable milk glass material is an opaque plastic (a barbarism learned from our father), and one of us has been known to drink milk from a “glass-glass” with a cartoon Pepe Le Pew printed on the side. Allowances can be made for personal preferences like these, but certain milk rules are universal.

1. One must not drink milk outside. (And an important related rule: One must not eat cheese in the swimming pool.)
2. One must not drink milk out of a rinsed-out Sprite bottle.
3. Milk sours as soon as you get up from the dinner table.

We don’t invent these rules — we just discover them.

When I grew up, my sisters brought other people into the family, and I became the ad hoc milk police, protecting the sensiblities of the overly sensitive and demanding better treatment of plastic souvenir glasses. I made one future brother-in-law very uncomfortable when in the middle of his first family dinner, I insisted he get a new glass if he wanted water instead of milk. I also managed to free my younger sister and myself from the burden of dinnertime milk altogether by asking for calcium-fortified orange juice. Our home was cleaner ever after.

But now it seems that my vigilance has been wasted. Yesterday evening I drank milk water. The person I brought into the family left his empty milk glass out on the counter (“I was going to have more later!” he says), and I, not noticing the ring of white around the bottom, filled the glass with murky, bubbly water and took a drink. Although he doesn’t share my feelings about milk water (and although he questions why anyone would drink murky, bubbly water), he did allow me to yell and then whine until I felt better. Fortunately, there happened to be dessert in the oven at the time, which led to my discovery of another milk rule:

4.In the case of accidental milk-water poisoning, a warm brownie is the only effective antidote.

I wonder what Dr. McCoy would have to say about this.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8058771.stm

If I were the type of person who maintained a weblog, here are some things I’d write about:

1. How the marathon went.
2. Rest, recovery, and re-injury.
3. The ants in my apartment.
4. The strangers in my apartment.
5. The search for a new apartment.
6. More adventures on the bus (loud people).
7. Significant improvements made in my cooking abilities (in terms of variety).

Is this what he meant about quiet desperation?

So I was sitting in a chair at the laundromat doing my homework, and there was this woman loading garbage bags full of clothes into the machine beside me. I glanced up, and she looked at me and said, “It’s hard you know, when your food doesn’t taste good.” I agreed that it was. She turned back to her machines and muttered, “I thought Chinese was always good…”

Working on commission

My new bus driver has a habit of pulling up alongside pedestrians and hollering, “YOU GOING TO THE LIBRARY?”

And we thought it was merely precious when she introduced herself to us, saying she was the new driver on the route and would be driving every day from now on except tomorrow because she has a doctor’s appointment, etc.

Having to do with running.

So today I was able to do my long run outside, and I was so excited about this that I just sort of plotted a rough course, put on my shoes, and left. I had enough presence of mind to take my ID so I could take the bus home if I got lost. What I did not think to take with me was food. Or water. I thought, “I’ll run by drinking fountains.” Tra-la-la.

The first hour was good. The second hour was fine. But in the fifth half-hour, I became thirsty, so I ran by my sister’s place to ask for a drink. She wasn’t home, so I ran to a park, but the drinking fountains were all turned off or something. I was pretty thirsty by this time, so I ran back to my sister’s place. It was a lot more like scuffing along than running like you normally think of running. She still wasn’t home, and I decided I couldn’t make it home myself and would wait for her to get back or the bus to come by. The bus came first, so I got on and rode across town in my shorts and baseball cap and felt pretty pathetic. I got off the bus early and ran the last six blocks as fast as I could.

Gmaps pedometer tells me I ran no more than 15 miles. My goal was 20. So I checked the time of the sunset and considered going out to run another 5 real quick. But my training chart shows that I still ran 39 miles this week. More importantly, I enjoyed the run immensely, despite the dehydration, and this is after all the most important thing. Certainly, if I’m going to continue to say that’s the most important thing, I had better act like I believe it.

“But I don’t wanna be in the luge!”

My sister and I were discussing the practicality of this whole marathon thing. In addition to the hours of my life I devote to training, I have to pay a fairly large entrance fee to actually run the thing. Not that I mind any of this, but it is something to discuss. She says they would bring in more money if participants were conscripted by the city. Anyone who didn’t want to race would have to pay an opt-out fee. Imagine what we could do for our public libraries with revenue like that.

The Boolean Cafe

Recently, my family had lunch at a make-your-own-stirfry place. You take a bowl up to the buffet line, fill it with ingredients, and leave it at the grill for them to cook. Later, a waiter brings it to you. There are the standard stirfry ingredients, but then at the end of the buffet line, there are colored sticks you can use to further customize your stirfry. There’s a stick that means, “I’m allergic to nearly everything, and it’s a miracle I’m even standing here today, so please cook my food on a separate grill.” There’s one that says, “I’m not sure why there wasn’t any tofu on the buffet line, but please throw some in if you see any back there.” There’s one that says, “Bread,” meaning “And give me some bread too.” And then there’s one that says, “Soup.”

Presumably, “Soup” is like “Bread.” It means “And some soup too,” or “I want both my stirfry and a bowl of soup.” It is not in keeping with the casual, conversational use of Boolean operators for it to mean, “I want the only combination of my stirfry and soup,” or in other words, “Please drown my stirfry.” “Bread” doesn’t mean “Bake my stirfry until it’s kind of like bread,” and neither does “Tofu” mean “Find a way to turn this stirfry into tofu.” So my father asked for soup. Stifry OR soup. But what he got was both stirfry AND soup. And messy.

The “Allergies” stick is a pretty powerful NOT.  It means, “This stirfry and absolutely nothing else.” You don’t have to specify, “Stirfry NOT peanuts NOT soysauce NOT strawberries NOT…”  And no one would think it meant, “Take this stirfry and add things I’m allergic to.”  There seems to be no consistency then, in the meaning of these colored sticks.  What they need are Boolean operator sticks you could stick in between the other sticks.  Of course then it would be too easy to get your money’s worth. “Stirfry OR soup OR bread” would mean, “Give me all the food you’ve got.” Really, an excellent deal.

Recovered

So now what will I write about?

My various food aversions seem to be subsiding. Within the past year I have eaten both eggs and potatoes, as well as cooked spinach, all on purpose. All these are foods I was previously unable even to discuss. Then on Friday, I purchased skinless boneless chicken breasts, with every intention of actually cooking them. And just now… I drank a glass of milk.