not so vanilla

There was a period of time in my life when I would be late for school because it took me so long to swallow pills, even the small ones you could easily lose if you dropped on a tile floor. Now, I take several huge pills a day--calcium twice daily, fish oil three times a day, a multi vitamin with breakfast--all necessary to prevent a complete degeneration of my already debilitating joints. After dinner, as I sit at the counter popping the last round of pills, my family gathers in the adjoining room. The television is always on, and my sister pretends not to watch it as she does her homework. My father is either half-asleep and mumbling about the gym or releasing a full-throated laugh at Stewie's latest antics on Family Guy. My mother is either sending out emails and text messages, inevitably misspelled as she neglects to wear her glasses, or she is periodically shaking her arms during commercials, in efforts to build triceps. At times my father gains a sudden interest, and, filled with an arbitrary energy, he supervises my mother in her peculiar arm movements, shouting out instructions along the way. My sister yells at everyone to be quiet so she can watch her show, and then everyone yells at her to finish college apps, to finish her psych homework, to finish her breakfast every morning. When I finish overdosing myself, I sprawl across my mother's lap, stick my feet under my sister's butt to stay warm, and then loudly recap the contents of my lunch to no one in particular.

And after unsuccessfully resisting sleep for a few hours, we all head to our respective rooms, and four simultaneous screams of "good night" converge in the middle of the corridor, where they stay suspended until the first signs of morning.

Not sure about the other 6, but Sleepy definitely exists

Yesterday was Thirsty Thursday. I could say it was my first since I graduated, but that would imply that I used to be thirsty every Thursday, straying from reality of my addiction to the study lounge. Last night, the office stayed back to watch our boss debate her Republican opponent, Joe DioGuardi, a wrinkly old man who talks in the third person. There was wine, there was pizza, there were cookies, and there was a seemingly dysfunctional cable television. And yet efforts to exercise before dawn, efforts to defend President Obama's health reform to ignoramuses, efforts to comply with the harsh realities of business casual--all of it converged into some sort of inexplicable exhaustion.

So, instead of waking up refreshed by the anomaly of midweek festivities, I was borderline unconscious on the bus into the city, to the point where a slightly alarmed, older man had to shake me awake after everyone had gotten off. I awoke with a start, jumped of the bus, and walked in circles till I figured out where I was.

I can do without Thirsty Thursdays. But I think somewhere in between the lists of things to do and the plans to make plans and all the other in betweens, I need a nap. Not a nap on the bus, but a real one, with dirty sweats and a soft tee and no coffee-fragranced commuters next to me.

Till then, Thirsty Thursday may have to be put on hiatus, possibly for a Siesta Sunday.

we go back to the bad things for some good times

Real-life was no fun last week. I had a flu of bubonic proportions, and was surrounded by office politics and grown up street fights. All I wanted was Friday, the start of a 3-day weekend so I could just let loose, wear flip flops, breathe. And finish season 3 of 24.

On the eve of my sister's SAT, we decided to get a nice dinner so she could relax before the big day. The most obvious choice was Matt's, the overpriced, overrated, overcrowded diner in Waldwick. Wanting to forget our present lives in its entirety, we pretended it was one of those arbitrary summer days when the wind messed up our hair and the music on the radio could shatter the suburban silence without reprimand.

Unfortunately, it was a bit chilly. The flu left me weak, and I was not ready to run my fingers through the night air, and instead kept the windows rolled up. My sister protested, and suggested (with exasperation) I put on my jacket. I refused, and insisted the windows stay up. Besides my runny nose, the cold was also bad for my knee. Resigned to life with a geriatric sister, Manu could do nothing but fumble with the radio; finding nothing, we resolved to play her iPod. Since we didn't have the deck with us, we decided to improvise--we set the volume to the max, and I held up the headphones so that we could hear the faint rumblings of something remotely R&B. And so we drove to the diner, with but remnants of our carefree summer nights, headphones and shivers in hand.

Once we sat at the diner, thoroughly looked over the menu as if it had changed at all in the last 7 or 8 years. I told my sister I was really craving their veggie burger. "But I thought you hated it," she said as she briefly flirted with the idea of getting scrambled eggs. "Yes, but I am really craving it. I just want their awful veggie burger. It falls apart every time, but I want that mush." She shrugged her shoulders and went with the penne a la vodka.

Her meal came with salad, which was so unfresh we only ate the kidney beans and stale croutons. My burger was reliably awful, and as I picked it up it fell through my fingers, so that I was forking broken veggie patty doused in ketchup, with lettuce leaves and coleslaw. Once my nostalgia was satiated, I became angry at myself for intentionally paying for bad food. I then resolved to finish my sister's dish, which was just short of authentic Italian, leaning towards something like Kraft or Velveteen.

On our way home, we stopped at Van Dyks, to wash down our gourmet meal. I was too full from finishing 2 dishes, and still too cold from the October skies, but my sister got cookies 'n' cream. On the way home, I held the headphones in one hand and the ice cream in the other, and periodically fed her large spoonfuls so that she could drive with both hands on the wheel. We're all about the safety.

By the time I went to bed (after watching a couple of hours of Jack Bauer saving Los Angeles from a biological weapon), I had forgotten everything I had ever worried about, and fell asleep to the sounds of an undercooked veggie patty swimming uncomfortably in my stomach.