Tag Archives: gross

I don’t know if I’m going to make it

It’s been raining here for the past few days. I don’t know, maybe it hasn’t been that long, but it feels like I haven’t seen the sun in forever. This doesn’t happen that often, and so it’s really starting to mess with my head. I can think back, every once in a while we’ll get a stretch of like a week or a week and a half where it’s nothing but clouds and rain and gloom. And I don’t know how people in Seattle or Ireland cope, because, like I said, it’s only been maybe three days, but I’m feeling like I’m ready to give up.

I can’t get up in the morning. I never really want to get up in the morning, but most days I’ll just do it, I’ll hear the alarm clock going off, I’ll roll over, and I’ll get out of bed. But the past couple of days, it’s like I don’t even have any recollection of having been woken up. And my alarms are all set. So it’s like, I must be getting up while I’m still asleep, taking one look out the window, making a mental note of the pouring rain, and then turning the alarm off and going back to sleep for another two or three hours.

And then I get up and I’m all groggy, which makes the day not that productive. And then my dog doesn’t want to go for a walk. I can never get him to really do what he needs to do when it’s raining out. Usually I get up in the morning and he’s sitting at the foot of the stairs, his tail wagging so fast that it’s making a really loud thwap thwap against the wall.

But when it’s raining, he doesn’t even want to get off the couch. He curls up into this ball, and I have to drag him by the collar to the front door so I can put his leash on. I open the door and he fights it the whole time. I want to be like, come on man, I don’t want to go for a walk out in the rain either. But you have to do your business. That’s how this works. You can only hold it in for so long.

We’re outside and he’s just not interested in taking care of any business. He has his tail in between his legs and he’s constantly pulling his chain, trying futilely to will himself back to the house. And when we finally get back, after him not having done anything, he runs inside and shakes off. His stomach probably hurts so he won’t eat any breakfast.

And it’s the same for me. I’ve been out of milk and breakfast stuff for a whole week now. And every day I say to myself, nah, I don’t feel like going outside again. I’ll just wait until tomorrow, until this rain clears. But it just keeps raining. And the more I put off getting food, the more lethargic I’m becoming, making it even less likely that I’ll ever actually walk the three or four blocks to the grocery store.

It’s got to break soon, we need this to stop. My sleep schedule is becoming irreparably damaged. I guess I shouldn’t complain. Three or four days of rain isn’t really a big deal, especially with all of the droughts I keep hearing about out west. So I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.

Still, my feet have been wet for almost a week now. The basement is starting to get that wet smell. I don’t know how much longer I can take. I need to buy like a heat lamp or something, or a tanning bed. I think I’m getting vitamin D deficiency. I think that when the sun finally comes back, I’m going to be blinded, like my eyes and my skin have already adapted to a bleak, sunless future. I just … I don’t know if I’m going to make it.

Sealed with a lick

You know what’s disgusting? Licking envelopes to seal them shut. Who came up with such a gross way of performing a ridiculously mundane task? It’s a good thing that we rarely send out actual mail anymore, because I can’t imagine living twenty or thirty years ago, having to take care of actual correspondence with physical papers, being forced to lick a strip of glue just to seal my envelopes shut.

And stamps too. You used to have to lick stamps. I’m getting physically ill just thinking about all of this licking going on. Here, I’m going to send you a letter. Lick. Lick. Why do so many bodily fluids have to be involved? It’s like, sticker technology has been around for a while. How much cheaper or more efficient was it really, instead of printing stamps and envelopes with a layer of sticker, to manufacture them with a thin strip of yellow glue?

How did that meeting go down where they decided on the first generation of lick-it envelopes? “Hey everybody, I’ve got a great idea for a new type of envelope. We’ll somehow get some glue and dry it right on the flap. When you want to close it, you just take your tongue and moisten everything up with your own spit. Then you mail your letter and your spit to wherever it’s supposed to go.”

I can’t understand how such a boneheaded idea not only made it past the drawing board, but actually became the standard for both envelopes and stamps. It’s like, everybody remembers doing it, and you’d get that nasty glue taste in your mouth afterward. You know what that tastes like? It tastes like glue. It’s fucking chemicals that you’re putting in your mouth, and then you swallow them. Nasty.

Like I said, this generation is beyond fortunate that we don’t have to deal with such antiquated technology. But it’s still around. Once every five years or so, I run out of envelopes, and so I have to put on my jacket and walk over to Rite Aid to buy another twenty-five pack. Usually it’s no big deal, like I said, the glue standard is thankfully no longer the standard. They’ve got these adhesive strips that automatically stick, so there’s no need to have a make-out session with a piece of paper.

But the last time I went, I accidentally brought home some of the old-fashioned relics. How did this happen? Did a case of glue envelopes get lost somewhere in the back, and now they were like, whatever, just sell them, like they’re just regular envelopes? I went back to demand a refund, but when it was my turn at the register, I realized that the whole pack only cost like fifty-seven cents, and so while I was still super pissed off, I didn’t really feel like getting into it with a cashier that probably had no idea that we ever had to live with such primitive pieces of paper in the first place.

It just goes counter to everything we’re taught as human beings. “Honey, don’t put that in your mouth,” our parents are telling us from an early age. Don’t lick the walls. Stop trying to put your tongue inside the electric socket. Stop eating dirt. But then it’s like, here, let me show you how to send a letter. Just lick, lick, lick, the more spit the better, and then share all of your slimy germs throughout the entire US Postal Service.”

Now I’m just really pissed off. I can’t even say anything that I haven’t already said. But I can think of like a million better ways to close envelopes. Tape. That’s much better. Glue sticks. Why couldn’t they just use glue sticks? Staples. Stickers. Melted wax. Come on, why did it have to be spit-glue? Half glue, half spit. One hundred percent disgusting.

Man, I didn’t expect to get this fired up. I’m just so surprised that the previous generation was so dumb. Thanks for the looming debt crisis. And years of inherited political gridlock. And climate change. Also, stamps and envelopes. You don’t go around licking random pieces of paper with glue on them. Period. Yuck.

I’ll take no for an answer

I’ll totally take no for an answer. No? That’s cool, thanks anyway. Like, I was at the deli the other day, I asked for a pound of peppermill turkey and half a pound of jack cheese. I went home to make myself a sandwich and I opened up those cold cuts. It wasn’t what I had ordered at all. Instead of turkey it was some sort of prosciutto, and the cheese, I don’t even know what this stuff was, it looked like army fatigues, you know, if instead of green and brown they used yellow and white and a slightly less yellow-yellow.

So I went back to the deli, I mean normally I wouldn’t even bother, but the deli is only like a block away from my house. Maybe they messed up my order? Maybe somebody elsen accidentally received my stuff? It was all within the realm of possibility. But when I went to the counter guy, when I asked him, “Hey, did you give me the wrong order?” he just looked at me and said, “No.”

And like I said, whatever, I’ll take no for an answer, I’m easygoing like that, I like being easygoing, I like imagining people talking about me, saying stuff like, “Rob’s really easygoing, never causes any problems.” I went home and made myself the weirdest sandwich I’ve ever eaten in my life. Prosciutto, first of all, I’m not like a huge prosciutto guy, but it’s usually sliced very thin.

Really thin, actually, the few times I’ve found myself talking about prosciutto or reading about it, the thinner the better, that’s what I’ve always taken away. But this stuff was thick, like Virginia ham thick. I didn’t even know how to go about building a sandwich out of this stuff. Like, I’ve had prosciutto with melon, prosciutto wrapped around asparagus.

You know, I said that I’m not a huge prosciutto guy, but now that I’m talking about it, I guess I’ve had more experience with prosciutto than I’ve let on. It’s not my go-to deli meat of choice, hardly, but yeah, I guess it’s in a lot more of my diet than I previously admitted. Like when you go to an Italian restaurant, whatever the special is, it’s always something either stuffed with or wrapped in prosciutto. Stuffed veal with prosciutto. Chicken cutlets wrapped in prosciutto with a wine sauce. Always.

I’ve heard you’re only supposed to use one slice, really, because prosciutto has such an intense flavor. But I was hungry, I had planned on making a piled-high turkey sandwich. I went for two, hoping to offset the taste with extra cheese. But even that, the cheese was so weird tasting. It was kind of smoky, but with almost jelly-like overtones. I’d never tasted anything like it.

Finally, I took a bite, and it was like, I couldn’t even chew through the prosciutto, the ribbons of marbled fat proved way too much for my teeth. After sitting there chewing for upwards of a minute, I finally just tried to swallow whatever was in my mouth, and I almost choked.

Kind of defeated, I eventually just went back to the deli to have them make me a sandwich. Yeah, I felt kind of silly just throwing my money away, but hey, I don’t want to cause any problems, there are so many people just trying their best, going about their days. Who am I to cause a problem?

It was the same deli guy, I told him what I wanted, he didn’t say anything, he just went right for the meat, right over to the slicer. “Hey man, you heard me say peppermill turkey, right? Not oven-gold, right?” But there wasn’t any response, he put way too much mayo, even though I said, “Easy mayo, please.”

But it was fine, you’re not going to catch me whining about a sandwich. Maybe I’ll grow to like mayo even more after this sandwich. I’m just waiting to get really hungry before I take that first bite. I mean, right now, it looks a little unpalatable, but I’ll get there, sooner or later I’ll be shaking, everything will look tasty. And is that really such a big deal? So I have to wait a little longer to eat. I should have such problems, right? Because I’m not looking for a fight, I’m trying to be easygoing. Where everyone else causes a stink, just don’t worry about me, I’ll totally take no for an answer.

It’s getting real hot out there

I spent a fair amount of last summer complaining about the heat. I’d sit down to write something, but the sweat would be pouring out of my body, soaking my laptop, making it impossible to write anything of significance. As my fingers would slip on the keys, as the messages popped up on the screen, “Reminder, do not pour liquids onto your computer,” I’d think to myself, this sucks, I’m so hot, I’m not getting any writing done, and everything that I do wind up writing, it’s just this long whiney complaint about being hot.

Then the fall came, and that was great. Even winter was a welcome relief. And it wasn’t until about March or April that I really started to get sick of the cold. This year winter wouldn’t take the hint. It was like when you have your friends over and it’s three in the morning and you’re pretending to act like you’re still having a good time, that you’re not super tired, wishing that everyone would just leave already so you could go to sleep, and just when you think somebody might make a move for the door, somebody else sinks a little deeper into the couch and asks, “Anybody feel like getting a game of Monopoly going?”

But winter’s finally over. Spring made a delayed appearance for like a week or so. And then I woke up yesterday and it was summer again. The first day came and went and I didn’t complain. It wasn’t that hot, there was a nice breeze, I got to go outside in shorts. It was pretty pleasant considering how long winter took to finally melt away into warmer weather.

But then day two. I always bike to work and, not really thinking it through, I wore jeans and a t-shirt. Come on, I thought, it’s still May. It’s totally going to be OK. It totally wasn’t OK. The humidity was reminiscent of August. I wasn’t even halfway to the restaurant and, although you might not be able to tell just by looking at me, the entire surface of my body was covered in sweat.

It’s like, I love wearing jeans, but I can’t think of anything more uncomfortable than sweating through a thick pair of denim. The pants turn to sandpaper. Every step, every pedal on the bike, it becomes an exercise in exfoliating the skin on my legs, one layer at a time, until there’s nothing left but rash and raw.

And then I got to work and I had to change into my work clothes. I took off my damp jeans, my moistened shirt. And that wasn’t even the wettest part. My undershirt, my boxers, my socks, even though I’m going to be putting on a fresh change of clothing, everything underneath is heavy with perspiration.

I changed into my uniform. You know how it is, your body takes a minute or so to cool down. I thought my jeans were restrictive, but wearing dress pants, a shirt, tie, and a giant waiter’s apron, that was downright stifling. Not only did the sweating not stop, it actually picked up a little bit. I could start to feel my freshly laundered outfit starting to absorb it’s own layer of gross.

Man, and what the fuck? Why did it feel like the heat was still on? My restaurant is at the bottom of this gigantic building in Midtown. I can only guess that, in an effort to not be surprised if winter decides to make one or two more guest appearances this early in the warm season, they’re delaying the official changing of the thermostat for as long as possible.

I’m going to try and stop complaining. There’s nothing I can do about the heat, and it’s still May. It’s only going to get hotter and hotter. But man, I’m so f’n hot. I wake up in the morning and my mouth is like sealed shut because it’s so hot out and it makes the inside of my mouth so dry and then I go and try to get my day started but I get out of the shower and I’m already soaked through with sweat again and by the time I sit down to write even though I’m telling myself not to write about being so hot I can’t help it it’s all I can think about I can’t stop writing I can’t even make commas or periods I’m so fucking hot.

Mike, you going to eat that sandwich?

Hey Mike, it’s Rob. I just wanted to ask you about that chicken parm hero you left in my fridge last night. Were you planning on coming back for that? Did you just forget it? Let me know, because I’ll eat it if you don’t want it. Or if you want me to bring it with me the next time I see you, I could do that too. Just, yeah, just let me know. All right. Bye.

Mike. I just got back from work and I’m starving. I’m looking right at that sandwich and I’m so tempted to just pop it in the microwave and dive in. Would that be OK? I don’t want you to show up later and to not have that sandwich. You did forget it, right? I’ll wait a little bit. Just call me back when you get this, OK? Thanks.

OK, so I waited a couple of hours but I couldn’t take it any longer, so I went out and got some McDonald’s. Swing by and pick up your food whenever you feel like it. Or just call me back, just shoot me a text, if you want me to hang on to it for you, if you’re not interested anymore, whatever. Do you want me to throw it in the freezer? The sauce might last a month in there, but the bread? I don’t think it’s going to thaw out well. I’ll just keep it where it is. Call me back.

So I think this is like the last day that we can possibly do something with this sandwich. I’d eat it today. It’s definitely not as fresh as it was when you put it in there, or even yesterday, but it’s totally edible. I lifted back the wax paper and swiped my finger through the corner – is that cool? I just wanted to taste it, to see if it’s still good. It’s still totally good, but I can tell it’s about to turn any second. I’ll eat it. I’ll still totally eat it. But if you want to eat it, seriously, that’s cool too. But one of us should eat it. It’s still perfectly good. Perfectly … acceptable.

All right Mike, I think we blew it here. Your sandwich has definitely passed over to the other side now. I’m not going to eat it. So, I mean, I don’t know what you’d want with it at this point, but I feel bad doing anything until you give me the go ahead. Hit me up. Thanks.

Mike, I know that I told you yesterday that the sandwich was bad, and yeah, it doesn’t look too great at all. The bread is definitely a little grayer than bread it supposed to look. But I did the finger test again today with the sauce and I’ve got to tell you, I’m pleasantly surprised. I probably wouldn’t eat the bread, maybe not the cheese either, but the chicken? The sauce? I think that’s potentially salvageable. What do you say? Call me up. Stop by. We can share it. Or you could take it back, it’s your sandwich.

OK, we’ve absolutely crossed the point of no return here. There’s mold all over. I don’t know if it started from the bread, or if it’s contaminated the whole sandwich, but it’s gross. The wax paper wasn’t doing a good enough job keeping everything together. Well, I don’t really know how long that sandwich would have lasted even if it were sealed. And a totally closed environment? That might have spelled the end of the bread even earlier. Anyway, it’s not happening. Just come by and throw it out, whenever you’re free.

Mike, the mold from your sandwich is starting to make me a little uneasy. It’s really splotchy, furry. I’m worried that it’s going to contaminate the rest of the food in my fridge. Can you come get rid of it, please?

Mike, I just had to throw out a pineapple. It was perfectly good. There’s no way that it should have been able to grow mold on it so soon. Mike, come by, take the sandwich, throw it out, bring me a new pineapple.

Mike, my cheese drawer is in bad shape here. You free later?

Mike, I can’t even open the fridge door anymore. It smells terrible, unbearable. Bring some bleach.

Mike, I threw it out.

Mike, I took it out of the trash and put it back in the fridge.

Mike, OK, yeah, I got rid of it. Sorry man. I’ll make you a new sandwich sometime. Are we cool?