Ode to PB

   I found myself at the grocers again last night and as usual I had my standard line-up of goods: a 5-lb jar of peanut butter, some tuna fish, a few gallons of milk and three loaves of bread. The woman behind me in line yelled out "is that peanut butter?" when I hulked the massive jar onto the conveyor belt. I smiled and nodded as I imagined a week or two of sustenance in paste form.

    I love peanut butter. And that's not to say that I enjoy a PB & J every now and again. In fact, I try and refrain from adding jelly to the mix. For that matter, its not to often that I combine bread with my mound of molten peanut nectar: I'm kind of a food purist, I don't like my carbs mixing with my protein/fat.

    And its not just that I eat a lot of peanut butter, or eat it frequently (both of which are undeniably true). The fact is that the jar of peanut butter in my closet says "Hey . . . look at me . . . you don't have to worry about running out of food, I can sustain you for days with my legume-delicious-nutritiousness.

    I learned part of my peanut butter affinity from my mother, who was a stickler about serving sizes, and used to scoop exactly one tablespoon of peanut butter into her mouth for a quick meal if we were heading out the door. I do the same thing. Except, well I don't let myself be limited by the social constraint system known as the "serving size" nor the "2,000 calorie diet" (seriously, have you ever tried to eat less than 2,000 calories in a day? I'm pretty sure there are days when I come close to passing that benchmark before the 9-5 workday starts. Oh, and the other reason I don't eat spoonfuls of peanut butter is because spoons are a relative scarcity in my household these days. I've found you can wrap up a delicious nesting of the salted goo by spinning a fork in the vat a few times.

    There are days (like today as a matter of fact) that I consume nearly nothing but peanut butter. Okay, well, lets make that essentially nothing relative to the amount of peanut butter I consumed (I admit, I did have a pork chop sandwich at some point during the day, but all that protein hardly sticks to me).

   The reason I find peanut butter so irresistible is the same reason I drink a lot of water: it's readily available (at least at my home), relatively cheap, requires zero preparation, and has an awesome caloric density for when I know I need something but can't decide what (obviously that last tenant applies only to the peanut butter).

Anything you can do . . .

One of the more annoying tendencies I've noticed in myself is the defensiveness whenever someone makes a disparaging comment towards me. For example, whenever someone asks me, when does your summer break start? I explain, that it starts in late May, but its not really a break because I have to study for a board exam in July the whole time. Inevitably, my response is ignored by the nostalgic mental break in my partner in dialogue. Followed by, "man, I wish I was in school." and the inevitable, "yeah, enjoy it while it lasts, because the real world doesn't give breaks."

Generally I am pretty good at ignoring the urge to backhand the other person, but I always embarrassingly try to one up them with something like "yeah, but I'm not going to miss seven hours of lecture a day," or "yeah, but you know I'm going to have to put in those crazy 100 hour resident shifts" or something otherwise ridiculous. Because honestly, I am in still a student, and all of my stress is pretty much self induced as of right now. And I have no idea whether or not my experiences are more difficult than anyone else's and the truth is that it is completely irrelevant (or should be).

And even if my experience in school is way harder or easier than someone else gives me credit for, trying to prove it during a five minute conversation simply won't work. And what would be so bad if either a) my life was easier than the other person's or b) that other person held a misconceived belief about my, as Darryl from the office put it to Michael, "Nerf" life. All I know is I'm not going to start throwing watermelon's onto trampolines about it.

Grilled Cheese

I don't think there is a better sandwhich than extra sharp cheddar on Aunt Millie's Hearth Crunchy Oat with Honey Wheat bread. And I finally fingured out how to make it without burning the bread (yeah, I've been doing this for years, and I'm finally able to do it without running around the apartment opening windows and turning on fans to avoid setting off teh smoke detectors). 

Hard Day's Night

I spent a day out in what those of us who reside in the bookish purgatory like to call "the real world." I spent my morning at a health fair and an afternoon at another site in Detroit doing "hands-on"-ish activities. I studied for a bit before I left but since then haven't so much as looked at a lecture. And it feels glorious. I feel as if I have done --well nothing but -- something. I came home tired. I can't remember the last time I was tired from actually doing something.

Admittedly I was probably more of a hindrance than a help at the health clinic. I pricked two fingers and then squeezed for like ten minutes just to get enough blood for the test. Then I proceeded to put the sphygnognomometer (aka sphygnometer or blood pressure cuff) on backwards (not my fault, I'm used to doing it by hand, not these autonomic jobs). Side note on medical school: the funny thing is with my knowledge base right now, if I were in some sort of life threatening crisis, I would take someone with six weeks of hands-on training over someone like me with 2 years (after a 4 year degree) of book knowledge. But back to the story at hand, I had fun and actually got to interact with people in the morning.

In the afternoon I did a sort of activity that may loosely be able to be described as manual labor. And sometimes, there is a satisfaction in seeing a visual representation of work accomplished that cannot be reached by reading a test score on blackboard (unless, maybe, I actually did well on a test or something, but still).

All this to say, I can't wait for July when I actually start waking up and going to work (kinda, at least going somewhere). I'm kind of dreading August, however, when I start waking up and wishing I didn't have to go anywhere and curse myself for not enjoying April more.

Now I suppose I'll have to go take in a few lectures before the Office comes on tonight. Whew, Hard day's night.

PS

On a related note I accidentally bought tuna in vegetable oil instead of water. It couldn't seem more like I was eating catfood if I ate it with a saucer of milk next to me. Which, I guess after eating the rice krispies was kind of what I did have next to me. I will now go try and catch a laser pointer.

Chatting up Cashiers

I usually make an effort to make conversation with the cashiers when I go through the checker line at the grocery store. Or rather, I usually attempt to go along with the efforts that they make to converse and encourage more conversations. Invariably the conversation touches on the subject that both of us are at the present time extremely tired, a momentary discussion on the length of time till the cashier’s shift ends or lunch break occurs, and finally, some sort of comment on how I must really like peanut butter or tuna fish. The conversation’s purpose is really to fill the void of silence when you are going to be interacting with another human being in close proximity for several minutes, but occasionally, I am imparted with extraordinary tips for living.

            A few weeks ago, when the weather was still cold enough to wear a scarf, I was informed by the cashier that she too had a Burberry (or however you spell it) scarf. I was about to inform her that this scarf was in fact a knock-off which was re-gifted to after my dad received it. I never expected to wear it, but scarves are actually extraordinarily warm. The friendly cashier informed me that her little cousin had borrowed the scarf for months and she detailed her exhaustive pursuit of the scarf for months. Which, of course she had to get back, if only because it went with the rest of her entire ensemble. Which is to say she had a purse, a hat, and perhaps some other accessories that I am not remembering that went with the scarf.

            She then proceeded to discuss how she told her cousin she’d buy her a cheap knock-off. I almost interjected in here again to say, yeah, that’s what I’d do because I have one, but in what would prove to be a wise move, I remained silent (except, of course to comment that I indeed enjoy a good 5 lb jar of peanut butter, and no, the Salmonella scare wouldn’t discourage me).

As she was scanning the last few items, the cashier informed me that in no circumstance should I be traveling out and about with only one Burberry item on. If I was going to where the scarf, I had to where the whole ensemble. Honestly, I’m not sure if this was a circuitous route to expose my faux pas of wearing Adidas snap pants with an old suede jacket, or whatever ensemble I had traipsed out into the social realm of the grocery store in. Or, if she was trying to expose the farce that I was living pretending I was wearing a two-hundred dollar scarf. Or, perhaps she just legitimately believed in the intrinsic goodness of coordinated outfits. Whatever the case, I left better informed about how I should be doing things in the wardrobe world, but with even less motivation to act on said knowledge base.

The peanut butter, however, was worth every penny.

Learning Swahili

In retrospect, the request probably seemed as bizarre as the person making it, but at the time, requesting that I be allowed to do my own laundry seemed like a good way to my host mother. She did not speak a world of English, and her husband Jose (pronounced yo-say, differently than the Spanish homograph) spoke only limited phrases. However, when he asked if I wanted my laundry done, and in a very subversive eschewing of patriarchal tradition, I requested that I merely be supplied with the necessary items for the task. I am guessing that I was viewed more like a control-freak than a helpful hand, but the fact that I was a Westerner taking up his lodging deep in the neighborhoods of this former colonial outpost outside the capital of Tanzania.

            After proceeding through the language difficulties and navigating around gender presuppositions Jose supplied me with two requisite buckets and a bar of soap. My next difficulty was that although I’d been living away from home for two years, my ability to do laundry was still quite limited. That is, in the context of a washing machine, I knew how to press a couple buttons and ensure that my white boxers didn’t turn pink when washed with my red t-shirt, but beyond that I was clueless. The man filled one bucket up with water for rinsing, poured soap and then water into another, and even demonstrated on one of my shirts the process of dunking and then scraping one area of the shirt against another to brush the dirt off.

            Immediately my mind was reminded of a sermon I had heard before leaving the states about how Christians were supposed to be like the new high efficiency washing machines. Not that they were supposed to be uber-efficient (I believe that is somewhat antithetical to the Christian life in some sense), but rather that Christians were supposed to be like those washers in which the tumbling of an article of clothing knocked the dirt off the other. So, along the same vein as iron sharpens iron, one article cleans another. This was of course, juxtaposed against the former washing machines in which a massive plunger spun and externally jarred all the dirt out of the clothing. Finally the washing machines had gone full circle and gotten back to how things used to be done. And were still done where I was.

            What happened next was perhaps the most beneficial part of the experience. Perhaps because my strange white skin attracted them, or the site of a male doing laundry in a queer clearly inexperienced manner, or more likely because I was not surrounded by a group of my fellow travelers for the first time outside in this city, a group of young children gathered around to watch me learn how to wash my clothes. Even the son of the house I was staying at ventured within five feet of me, which to this point he had been to even approach or make eye contact. Later he would even engage me when he found I could speak a very limited Swahili. Still, even later he would tell his father that he wanted to learn how to speak “mzungu” or “white person,” which his father had a chuckle over.

            I attempted to engage the youngsters in conversation and may have even startled them when I greeted them with a variation of hello that was correctly conjugated for the number of people I was addressing. And with that, one young boy proceeded to spew a sentence of rapid Swahili which I had not a prayer of understanding. Instead, I threw out a couple of my rehearsed phrases such as “I apologize,” “I don’t understand,” and “I know only a little Swahili.” He looked severly disappointed.

            I tried to encourage the young man, and displayed my knowledge of another phrase “this is” which coupled with the universal climbing of intonation implied that I was asking a question. And with this, the children’s eyes lit up as a group of them barked out the Swahili word to tree in response to my finger pointing. Instantly, I had been transformed from strange man doing strange things strangely to strange man doing strange things strangely, but wanting to know what the children knew.

            And for the next hour we played the vocabulary game and became more and more comfortable so that we even joked. I demonstrated that I knew the phrase “I know (blank) but I don’t know (blank)” and the children responded by expanding the vocabulary game from my finger pointing to their imagination. So that, one child when ask “do you know (blank)” and I would respond either with the affirmative to a delighted response or to with the negative to an even more delighted communal pointing to the object or entity in question. Of course, I had no idea whether they meant cloud, sky, or up but the intricacies of language in order to tease out the difference escaped me.

            I like to think of that moment kind of as the symbol of the trip. I was doing something that I thought would be a convenience to someone else. More than likely, them having to prepare the buckets for me and teach me how to wash was likely more of a hassle than actually doing the laundry. But I learned from it. And likewise, when I put myself in a strange position, I was able to learn more from an equally unlikely group of teachers. And, just as a blind person has a slightly enhanced sense of hearing, I believe that because I couldn’t understand the language I was slightly more enabled to appreciate the wonder of taking a moment to learn from a group of curious strangers.

Spring Break Chronicle Part IV

Note: Just for the record, I am aware this is excessively long, but I told myself I would write this up and while I doubt a soul will read this all the way through, its a good exercise for me to practice writing. That said the other sections are linked here:

I,  II, and III

          Part IV - New Beginnings

Again, however, just past the Texaco, we were transported into a world of natural beauty. After being inundated with man made drudgery it took my mind several minutes to truly believe that the river running by the side of the road may have actually not been constructed by human hands and was truly a wonder of natural beauty. Inside the park, it seemed ludicrous to think that just a mile back down the road the atrocities of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, existed. We were still on a road and plenty of cars were around, but things were different. The park rangers, for example, were driving around in Honda Priuses (which somehow, due to the magic of modern marketing, seemed like they had simply spawned from the earth naturally in order to jauntily bounce upon the national park roadways).

            A bit of the over-crowding that Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee (I have to use the whole name because kind of like the opposite of Cher or Madonna, only the full name can partially convey the grand scale of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee), came in handy when we hid our car amongst the several others illegally parked on the side of the park road and figured that there would be enough traffic so we wouldn’t get towed in the four days we would be gone. We changed out of our civilian clothes and into our backpacking guerilla ware. And with that, we hoisted our packs, which would be permanently glued to our backs for the greater part of the daylight hours of the next several days.

            The worst part of the few trails I’ve been exposed to, is the walk until you get to the trail. This walk featured a washed out road past an “Authorized Vehicles Only” sign and a row of abandoned houses with broken windows next to the road (note: if I wanted to see that, I wouldn’t have left Detroit). We passed a couple with packs on their backs as well and I expected a cordial exchange. The woman kind of looked puzzled at us, but was pleasant, and her companion looked like he had never seen such hate-able creatures. “We just aren’t used to seeing people start so late.” I looked at the sky, and the sun seemed pretty high yet; I guessed it was maybe six-thirty. The man didn’t try and explain his icy demeanor he just started. And so with no reservations, we proceeded on our path.

            Soon the wide dirt road was replaced with a narrower, but obviously well trod gravel pathway. We continued marching up this at a decent grade until the pathway got narrower and narrower and we finally felt like we were on some sort of hiking trail. The initial vegetation we saw was decidedly unremarkable. The trees were mostly still bare from the winter and the moss and fallen leaves were things I saw everyday outside my parents home in Michigan. Soon, however, once I became accustomed to the standard vegetation, it served a rather soothing purpose. The bare trees and leaves became the norm and pleasant.

            We began to pass a few creeks along the way and the sound of natural water always seems unnatural to me. I suppose it’s a sad realization that the first reaction I have to the sound of water rushing over rock is to look around me for the ornately constructed synthetic waterfall thing that middle aged women like to have in their homes. Instead of it being nature imitating our imitation of nature, its simply nature being. And I get to partake in that experience; I just need a moment to realize that I am directly experiencing it, not observing through some other medium of perception.

When I was a kid, I bought a cassette tape of an album called Twilight Jazz because they had one of those giant display boards in the store where you could press a button and hear part of the song. I don’t know why an eight-year-old would want to buy that cassette, but I must have wanted to bad enough that my parents let me get it as some sort of present. I imagine that I found the sounds of nature irresistible and wanted to experience them in some form. I am not sure whether to regret that I experienced them in a glossy package along with dubbed in trumpet playing, or be glad that I got to experience them as a youngster and that somehow I appreciated the synthesis of natural beauty as well as created beauty in the jazz. For the sake of glass-half-full-ness I’ll take the later.

Diversions aside, we trudged along the trail until after a quick three-miles we found our campsite. Well, specifically we found two tents and some dying fires and figured we must be at the campsite, which of course, we were. Amazingly, less than two hours after departing from our car, we were dumbstruck to see not one group, but two groups of people invading our isolated nature experience. When desiring and expecting solitude (or a small duo as we were), discovering you will have to share your experience with others is frustrating. Especially when the others (note: I’ve only seen like two episodes of lost) seem like a group of 14 year-old girls.

Spring Break Chronicle Part III

To View Part I Click here

To View Part II Click here

Part III – Gatlinburg (I)

            After Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, Gatlinburg looked like a podunk town in the mountains. Which, apparently it was until fifty years ago. This time, the road was only four-lanes and some buildings actually seemed to blend into the landscape. Still, Ripley’s offered multiple attractions, and I actually saw two working chair-lift operations. One took you to the top of the mountains, assumedly for a view without all that bothersome walking and sense of accomplishment, the other took you somewhere where you could enjoy hillbilly golf (note: not the unbelievably enjoyable game made from PVC pipes and golf-balls tied together, but putt-putt apparently at crazy angles).

            However, despite Gatlinburg being an improvement over Pigeon Forge, it was still jarring. Miles of bumper to bumper traffic, but at least this time, the foot traffic was also present. I’ve never been in a scene I felt so well-suited to the phrase throngs of people. I don’t even really know what it means other than that there were throngs of people on the streets. Gatlinburg was also further proof that in a lesson from the Kevin Costner baseball classic (the one in Iowa, not the other two) if you build enough gift shops, they will come, and they will be decked out in NASCAR gear.

            Eventually, Mark’s  bladder control was weakened to the point that he had to venture into the crowds, wade through them, and stop in a McDonalds. Meanwhile, I continued down the gentle stream of traffic. When Mark left McDonalds, inexplicably, traffic let up and I was caught up in a flow at the breakneck speed of 20 miles per hour. I had to stop at the world’s dirtiest Texaco at the edge of town in order to wait for him. He had to break into stride on the street and fly past sidewalk gawkers in a failed attempt to reach me. Worst of all, the momentary separation forced both of us to get “back on the grid” (meaning we had to turn on our cell phones in order to figure out where to meet up). In thanks for a truly unique bathroom experience, I went looking for sugarfree gum in the station’s convenience store only to find that apparently aspartame is illegal in Tennessee and my only option was six pieces of Bubbalicious for the low, low, price of $1.50. I was just glad Mark showed up before my car got in trouble for parking in the world’s only gas station parking lot that carried a $5.00 flat rate parking fee.

Continue to Part IV here

Spring Break Chronicle Part II

If you haven't read part I - click here to read

Part II – Pigeon Forge Tennessee

            My former roommate, Mark, and I left early Saturday morning in order to get to the trailhead in time to put a couple of miles under our belt be for we set up camp for the first night. As is always the case, our well laid plans came to ruin at the hand of some external force. The first external force: Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Few experiences change me as dramatically and convincingly as the experience of sitting in grid locked traffic in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Honestly, I felt as if I was in a movie about where materialism is headed in twenty years. Only that movie was made in the 1980’s so everything looks ridiculously old and simultaneously futuristic at the same time.

            The initial roadside shops did not appear to be so bad. In fact, the world’s largest knife store evoked a kind of stir inside me to the effect that I couldn’t believe that I was going to bypass the opportunity to be surrounded by so many sharp objects at once. Alas, however, the trail awaits, and so on we must press. The Comedy Barn of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee decided that it must monopolize every Billboard in town and somehow decided “As seen on YouTube” was a clever slogan. We past the As Seen on TV store, where I can only assume you can buy assorted unnecessary goods and similarly unnecessary prices (although, my pursuit of the ever elusive Snuggie may have ended if I had submitted to my desire to pull into the boob tube shop).

            Soon, the shock and awe of gaudy stores, and ridiculous tourist trap destinations (let’s just say Ripley’s had multiple storefronts in this town, if that’s any indication of the quality of attraction we are dealing with here) wore off and the drive became not unexpectedly fatiguing. Outlet malls almost seemed mundane compared to the spectacle of the “Miracle Theatre” and “Mystery Land” which featured a giant mansion completely upside down. Still, I was tempted to pull over and play “Firehouse golf” or ride on “Earthquake: the ride.” What I was most disappointed in was that every fifth storefront was a closed down pancake house. I’m not sure if it was because the delicious breakfast flap jack market was saturated, or people were too busy playing novelty-themed putt-putt, but I was deeply saddened to see that in a market where clearly any bad idea could thrive, the griddles were going begging.

            To get the proper mental image, one must consider that this was not some two-lane trek through a block of ridiculousity. I was on a six, seven, even eight-lane road in bumper to bumper traffic, allowing ample time to consider the finer points of Wild Woody’s Go Karts. And maybe it was because I didn’t need to touch the gas pedal for an hour, but the street and traffic seemed to go on forever. It surely covered at least 5 miles. And to cap this all of, I had to resist the urge at the end of the trip to hang a left and travel down Dollywood lane to prove to myself that somehow, one can parlay prominent assets into not only a county music career, but also a theme park (which amazingly is not sponsored by the chicken wing empire which parlayed similar goods to an atrocious restaurant chain despite decidedly mediocre food).

            Finally, once we were past Dollywood and the multitude of hotels featuring colossal water slides traveling out and back into the building, we seemed to be instantly transported into another world. The lanes on my side of the road went down from five to two and the jarring landscape was changed from gaudiness to natural beauty instantaneously. There was a branch off to the right for the Gatlinburg bypass, which I didn’t see until the last second and didn’t fully understand till the next slow-down ensued.

Click here to read Part III