the past few days...

1. I realize my sloth has hit its peak when, after thirty minutes of staring at my reflection as it disappears and reappears in the spitty salad of partially digested food in the porcelain toilet, I think to myself, "Maybe with all of the contractions of my abs as they reject all of the fried green tomatoes, lemon meringue pie, and king crab legs that comprised of this evening's gluttony, I've done the caloric equivalent of one hundred stomach crunches?" I’ve got to get out of this mindset, or at least out of my grandmother’s kitchen.

Speaking of, as winter has finished taking its proverbial dump on Louisville these past few days, I've been spending quite a bit of time at my grandmother's house. And, between my bouts of binging, I've wandered around her bathroom and medicine cabinets and can't help but feel as if I've discovered another dimension. Never before have I seen so many combinations of consonants together on a pill bottle. For a moment, I felt like Michael Jackson, though without the vitiligo and that dreadful habit of not lifting my feet as I walk backwards. 

Continuing. Longing to be a bit tragic and therefore Winona-esque, I considered popping a pill whose name looked vaguely familiar, however stopped myself after remembering how I hyperventilated at age 12 when I stupidly thought I was going to die after swallowing two of her "dietary supplements" under the notion that they were "diet" pills. Anna Nicole had just died, and when I wasn't practicing the Pythagorean theorem I was thinking about the dangers of Ephedra. Thus, nine years later and some the wiser, I decided I'd rather not puke again by thinking that my grandmother's prescription-strength stool softener was some exotic form of hydrocodone. Instead, I put on some of her bright red lipstick and felt just as glamorous as the next bleach blonde bohemian from LA. Oxy moron? Precisely. 

2. In yet another attempt to rouse me from a state of “whatdoesmyfuturehold” anxiety today, someone asked me what the first thing I want to do is when I wake up each morning. That, the person said, is what I should do with my life. It is my “purpose” or “passion,” per se. I immediately thought of my ceramic turquoise bowl filled to the brim with Corn Flakes. Because in reality, all I ever want to do when I wake up (and on most occasions, really) is eat cereal. With that said, it appears that the only avenues to which my “passion” will lead me are failure or trade school. Thus the anxiety continues with the pace and strength of a Roman chariot, but now with milk dribbling down my cheeks.

3. I despise artisan sandwiches. Not the “sandwich” so much (as I think that most anything can only benefit by two additional pieces of bread), but rather the “artisan” aspect. I’ve seen that name slapped on the sides of faux-rustic restaurants all over the suburbs to make things seem, I don’t know, slightly more upscale. Worldly, even. Less Pontiac, more Peugeot. To make one forget, albeit momentarily, that while they are eating something with vaguely European connotations and are thus feeling slightly superior to the Subway customer across the street, that they still are in a strip mall and are wearing sweatpants with elastic ankles. And oh yeah, that their fancy Havarti cheese and aioli sauce add-ons just made their sandwich have more fat than a Big Mac. Whose meat probably comes from the same grain-fed cow yet is at least three dollars cheaper.

But the fact of the matter, really, (and this is something that bothers me even more than elastic-ankled sweatpants) is that artisans weren’t even classy back in their heyday. They were plebeians. Not even artists, these were the people who weaved ugly straw baskets and shared their meager meals with their family that consisted of dying mules.  The ones for whom, if bitten by a snake while on the Oregon Trail, you would not slow your pace. An artist is to an artisan as a sculptor is to an expert Chinese finger trap maker. You’d never put a finger trap on layaway, so why pay more for an equally subpar sandwich?

 4. And finally, according to an anonymous tipster, I write like a vague, shitty hipster. And to that I say thanks. As one who regularly trips over her ankles, along with having a past filled with recesses spent alone in the computer lab, both upper and lower braces, as well as spending years thinking that the pedestrian crossing sign (re: PED XING) was pronounced "zing" and not "crossing," I have never really felt hip in my life (let alone like a hipster), despite the time in Statistics class when my teacher docked points for my use of the Helvetica font in my final presentation. But really, thanks for taking the time out of your busy day to read my stuff.