things to eat on a tuesday

Breakfast:
- Vanilla Chobani yogurt (what can I say, it's growing on me) with handful of Quaker Oatmeal Squares cereal
- Smallish banana with peanut butter
- 3 potato chips
- Large cup of coffee

Lunch:
- Large wedge of soppressata
- One chocolate-covered cake donut from Jewel-Osco
- One golden Oreo
- 3 mugs of water (soppressata is, apparently, quite salty. And greasy. And delicious. But I'm going to have to pee for like 5 hours later, which is great b/c I have a 2-hour commute home.)

Currently fantasizing about:
- Baked mezzi rigatoni covered with homemade tomato sauce and melted provolone
- Udon with tempura and poached egg (oh! what I wouldn't give to go to Tachibana!)
- Chocolate mousse cake from Dominick's (must convince Tyler to take me)

Why, yes, I am an adult responsible for all manner of very important things, such as feeding myself. I think the more I grow up, the bolder I become at flagrantly defying food rules. Which is kind of like saying, the more I grow up, the more I eat the way I wanted to eat as a child.

It's just a fatty kind of Tuesday. (A...fat Tuesday! Ha!)

So I need some advice: apparently I had purchased a large tub of cookie dough in May of last year, and I've only consumed about a quarter of it (it's a very large tub; and I know it was last May b/c I mark all my foods with dates). It's been sitting in my freezer all this time, frozen and forgotten until I unearthed it a few days ago in my search for ice cream. Can I still eat this cookie dough, or will it destroy me?

unsettling things at 6am

I was rounding the corner to drop off my trash before work when a man in a bright blue windbreaker suit stopped me in my tracks. He was standing or leaning against the outside of the outermost dumpster, the one I was heading for. I could tell it was a man even though his head and left arm were buried deep inside the container, the lid perched on his right shoulder.

Immediately, the whole headless-man-in-the-park thing from last year flashed through my head. Was this another victim of suburban violence?? Was he still alive? Should I run into the CTA and shout for assistance? I froze, trying to decide what to do.

Then the dumpster lid bobbed.

He was alive. Not a dismembered body, then.

But what on earth was he doing? Maybe he lost something? I swallowed hard and steeled my nerves -- I couldn't miss my bus, after all. And I had to get rid of my heavy, smelly trash bag.

He heard me as I approached and poked his head out of the dumpster. He was a middle-aged white guy, maybe only an inch or two taller than me, with wispy puffs of dark hair in a weird balding pattern. He looked at me, startled, his cheeks disturbingly stuffed full of something. It was clear that he had been eating from out of the dumpster. He held the lid aloft for me to toss in my trash bag. I thanked him and quickly ran to the train stop.

Something about it/him was deeply weird and a little sad. I peeked out at him from behind the safet of the billboards on the train platform. Was that a hint of mental instability in his eyes, in his movements? Or was he embarrassed at being caught in such a peculiar and vulnerable position? Should I have offered him my lunch? He rooted through the dumpster for a little while longer, then the ground behind the dumpster. Then he put something in his paper Whole Foods bag and headed out towards Dempster street.

I turned away, waiting for my train. On the other side of the train tracks was another middle-aged man, dressed plainly in washed out jeans and a practical jacket. He toed the edge of the platform, leaning over the tracks. Then, quite calmly, he pressed a finger first against one nostril and then the other, loudly heaving its contents onto the tracks.

Ummm. GAG. ME.

Between the dumpster diver and the snot spewer, I'm not sure which behavior was more disgusting. Great start to the morning.

sillyheads

For all the crap I write about my exes and all of my questionable dating decisions, it must be said that every guy I've dated has at least been entertaining.

Like my high school boyfriend, Pete. Pete was a nice guy, but we were incredibly ill-suited for each other in that we never had anything to talk about unless we were about to break-up. Looking back, some of my best conversations with Pete were when we were on the brink of ending. If nothing catastrophic was about to happen, he was the kind of guy who'd rather play Megaman than have a conversation, whereas I am the kind of girl who requires a LOT of verbal attention. (Poor Tyler, he can't ever get in a word edgewise.)

But I remember this one time, he came up to me with genuine excitement and said, "I've got a really amazing idea! WHAT IF...we did what Blockbuster does with videos, but we do it with books?? Like we just have all these books that you can rent out for free, but you have to take it back after a certain period of time! Then you wouldn't have to go out and spend money to buy them!!!"

"Pete. It's called a library," I said. Sillyhead. What can I say, he was kind of a genius. I have no doubt he's still out there coming up with brilliant and revolutionary ideas. ("What if you could download music directly to your computer???")

My current romantic attachment is at least two higher ed degrees above Pete, but that hasn't prevented him in the least from being just a little bit off-kilter. Yesterday, I met up with Tyler before his softball game and told him that I had a treat for him. This is the conversation that ensued:

Tyler: Um...I was told I would be given a treat. Where is the treat?
Me: [opens lunchbag] Here you go!
Tyler: [suspiciously] What is that?
Me: Half a sandwich! And a Coke!
Tyler: [crestfallen] Oh.
Me: [worried] Don't you like it? You need sustenance for your game.
Tyler: Well, it's just that when you said "treat," I thought it would be sweet.
Me: The pop is sweet.
Tyler: Okay, honestly, it's b/c when you said "treat," for some reason I had a jelly doughnut pictured in my head, so that's what I was expecting to get.

These boy-children. Sillyheads.