I don’t know if there’s an emoticon that sticks its tongue out and also barfs. That would be more appropriate. All these people from my high school still hang out with each other, and are engaged to one another and have babies and live in the suburbs and take vodka shots at TGIFriday’s together. And wear Hawaiian shirts and skirts with tennis shoes and go on cruises and think humankind’s best achievement is the blooming onion. This is why I hate Facebook.
And that is all for today because this is not a Tumblr.
Okay. Last time I went there was five years ago. But what I remember of it, and what I kept saying after I left, was Rio is paradise. That’s all I kept saying. Rio is paradise. I wish I would’ve studied abroad in Rio instead of BA. I will move to Rio immediately. All I want to do is be in Rio for my entire life. It was a place that existed my whole life, without me knowing about it, while I was existing elsewhere completely unaware that this paradise, where life is 1000x better, was going on. But then I found out about it and every day that I was not in Rio it hurt to know that beautiful Brazilian life full of sucos and pineapples and grilled cheese sticks on the beach was going on without me.
That was five years ago. So who knows what’s changed there and how I have changed that might make the equation different. It feels like a very distant memory and eventually the hurt that I felt for existing separately and simultaneously from paradise on earth faded. I fear that I will go back there and realize that there has been a gaping lack-of-Rio hole in my life for the past five years and that the choices I’ve made for myself that have led me further from Brazil have been a terrible mistake. I am not concerned that I will “not come back” because that is not an option. But I am highly concerned that I will rekindle the flame of “I want to get the fuck out of here.” Not because I dislike San Francisco. Because I’m addicted to living in new places and learning how to be a local. And I want to learn how to be a Carioca. SO BADLY!
The best way to stretch 10 dollars is buying a gallon of milk and a box of cereal. You will eat for days. Fact.
That being said, I’m eating Cheerios right now. Anytime I eat Cheerios it reminds me of sitting in my grandmother’s Tacoma house at 4am and munching on cereal. My mother, sister and I would always have jetlagged, middle-of-the-night rendezvous in grandma’s kitchen after flying in to visit from Greece.
Cheerios = nostalgia. Same goes for Kraft Mac n’ Cheese and orange Squeeze-Its. That is all.
People put a lot of pressure on Valentine’s Day. So much sometimes that they refuse to have sex on the magical love day because it’s too contrived. Ahem. IMO it’s just another day. And just like New Year’s Eve and 4th of July and any other loaded holiday, I always manage to have a good time.
This Valentine’s Day I hung out with my cousins and my cousin Robin’s friend, Allison. We decided to get take-out from a new Turkish restaurant in the Mission, Tuba. As the Greek-in-residence, which is almost like Turkish except for the raping and pillaging, I did the food ordering. Now, when I order Mediterranean food, I usually do it more meze-style. Some hummus here, a little pita there, throw in a couple of lamb chops and we’re set. Snack plate. So my ordering was not=so-generous and in reality was probably enough for three people, not five.
Robin, Allison and I went to pick up the take-out. Robin and Allison were both in jeans, looking casual, and I was looking even more casual, sporty even, in my workout pants and a sweater. Tuba, unlike most Mediterranean restaurants, is fancy apparently. So when we walked in to the couple date-heavy restaurant, which was all decked out for Valentine’s Day, we inherently stood out like sore thumbs. In fact, we probably looked like a group of three single girls who were going to eat some lamb chops and then cry while watching “13 Going on 30,” or some other chick flick.
Anyway, after awkwardly standing in the way and getting eyeballed by everyone in the restaurant, we got our food and left. When we got back to the house there was a unanimous decision that we were not an army of ants and I did not order enough food. So I called back and ordered more lamb chops. 2o minutes later, the three of us walked back into the same restaurant to pick up round 2.
None of the employees would look at us in the eye. Not a single one made eye contact! They looked shocked and embarrassed for us and said ‘…we’re you just in here?’ Yeah, dick, we’re back for the second feeding. Oh, I’m sorry that we wanted to pay your business more money to buy more food for the OTHER PEOPLE THAT ARE WAITING FOR US BACK AT HOME, I SWEAR THERE ARE MORE PEOPLE, STOP JUDGING ME. But nooooo, they thought we were some sad, single, overeating chicks were about to go weep into a kebab plate and shit-talk our ex-boyfriends.
So that’s what we did on Valentine’s Day. We enjoyed the All-Turkish Lamb Slam.
I was watching Law and Order: SVU yesterday, because a. I don’t care about the Super Bowl (but I *do* care about the Puppy Bowl and I *did* watch some of that) and b. that’s what I do every Sunday, ESPECIALLY when there’s a marathon. I noticed one of the actresses, the one that replaced Benson while she was mysteriously gone from the show due to a real-life pregancy, Connie Nielsen had a slight accent. I thought maybe German or Scandinavian but turned out to be Danish. Close enough. And via search I discovered that in addition to English and Danish, she also speaks French, German, Italian, Norwegian and Swedish. Cock.
I really need to step up my language game. I have the linguistic brain and learn languages way faster and with a better accent than most people. I’ve been sleeping on Portuguese and I need to start fallando melhor rapidamente. And I’ve been listening to hella French jazz and pop and trying to sing along so I believe I should learn that as well. If Connie Nielsen can do it…
At least I wasn’t raised Mormon.
Listen to some great French Canadian music now:
One of my favorite things about non-U.S. countries is their complete frankness with weight-related issues, their total lack of tact in telling you “you’ve gotten pudgy” and their judgment of your excessive wine drinking. Or my excessive wine drinking… Who’s counting?
One of the first weeks that I was in Argentina, my roommate Rose (of these and many other stories) and I went to a plaza in Belgrano, sat at a wine restaurant and proceeded to get debauch. We ordered a bottle of Malbec and drank the whole thing. It was only a couple of weeks after we met and, even though from the very first instant we knew we were sisters from another mister, we still had to get past the technicalities and “get to know each other.”
While exchanging many stories and much giggling, we decided to go into the cellar and scope out another bottle of wine. We chose one, thought hey, let’s buy another to take home and drink at some other point in the future, and returned to our table. Uncork went the second bottle, glug glug it went down our throats and before we knew it, we were out of wine. Naturally it was time to open the third bottle that we had purchased for some point in the future that was not to be that night. So we asked our waitress to bring us a corkscrew and ordered a profiterole because why would we drink wine and not simultaneously eat a pastry stuffed with ice cream and chocolate? Exactly.
The waitress looked us up and down, blinked and goes “you know, you’ll get fat eating like that.” We thought it was hilarious. “Did she really just say that? We’ll get fat?” Yes, she did. See, in Argentina people tip like 2 pesos no matter the occasion, so it’s not like that woman was hoping to wrangle some tips. And they’ve learned, over many generations I suspect, that just because Malbec is incredible it does not mean one should indulge in three bottles at a time.
And ultimately, the lady was right. We *did* get fat eating like that. Argentina makes this incredible little thing called an empanada, and it’s really delicious and deep fried and full of cheese, and if you eat a lot of those you *will* get fat. Also if you go to Bariloche and eat nothing but chocolate for a week, you’ll get fat then too. And if you drink copious amounts of vino along with those two other things. And many many tequila shots. Best six months of my life and totally worth eating and drinking like that and then getting fat, like the wise lady warned me.
So, really, after many miles on a treadmill to work off the circa-2005 post-LatAm gut, I’m totally grateful for our waitress’s attempt to warn us, not scold us, of the common sense, simple logic fact that that profiterole and three bottles of wine were the stepping stones to our journey through South America. Our journey of getting fat.
I know that Weird Fish is all about sustainably farmed marine life but, really, I am highly upset that they no longer serve catfish. According to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium seafood watch (question mark/shrug), catfish is one of the most sustainably farmed fish available.
So why did you do this, Weird Fish? WHY? No more buffalo boys. No more buffalo girls. And I’d take a gnarly whiskered catfish over seitan any day but I’m sure the vegan lovers of all things buffalo flavored are hella pissed also. I’d even stick with you for just the buffalo girls. But no deal!
And cod fish and chips? What is this, England? Are there parsnips on the menu now too? Is this a potato famine diet? Seriously… Fuck. Cod.
You are dead to me, Weird Fish. Dead.