A little bit of crazy

I looked at the unfamiliar sorroundings. Somehow, the three bland colored cublicle walls seemed somewhat comforting in its bareness and conformity.

They said that the last person in my position had to leave due to 'extentuating personal circumstances'. Whispered murmurs floated around about his sanity, how he seemed to have gone to a different place mentally and sought comfort there. a place where our subconscious does not shed light. Did he know he was slipping?

I wonder how different he was to me. Did he sit here and ponder on the starkness of the jarringly white overhead light? did he notice the slightly crooked angle of the air vent and mentally straighten it out a thousand times to an exact horizontal? I wonder if the job had anything to do with how he ended up. Suddenly I laughed out loud dismissing these thoughts. Startling myself, I quickly looked around to see if anyone had heard. Surely i'm not going crazy. But then again, how would I know?

Mushy cereal

I’m immobilized on a bean bag chair in green fleece capris, my favorite yellow baby tee and with only one cowboy boot on. Cute, right? I don’t even have the energy to get off the chair, let alone pull on the second boot.

One side of my mouth is slack, half my lips sloping downward. I look frightful. It’s nothing serious, just the effects of the local anesthetic from my root canal earlier today. I find it funny that the effect of the Novocain wearing off is causing more pain than the root canal itself.

I desperately want to eat so I thought I would venture out in the cold and grab a milkshake from McDonalds. I would really like a sheesh kabab and some naan, but seeing as I’m limited to mushy food, I guess a chocolate milkshake will have to do. Go the route of the Americans. Become a native.

I never make it out the door and down the block to those shiny golden arches. This pain is killing me.

So now, I’m camped out on the couch with a bowl of Honey Nut Oats (with peaches, no less) drowning in milk. One thing you must know about me – cereal is my specialty, and I don’t like mushy cereal. My cereal has to be crisp and crunchy. The milk is just an accessory, not a way of life, when it comes to cereal.

This whole experience makes me reconsider some of the things that I take for granted. Before you roll your eyes, I know that’s a blanket comment, but just hear me out. With all the moaning and groaning, and all the hatred for tourists/crazy cab drivers/inflationary pressures/heavy work loads that comes part and parcel with living in New York City, I’m glad for this brief come-back-down-to-earth pull. That’s the extent of my lecture. I leave you to make of it what you may.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go add more milk to this cereal mush and I have to refute Zoha’s insistence that my cheek is swollen. [Its fat, my dear. Its ok, I’ve come to terms with it, you can stop euphemizing!]

but WHY dont you drink?

So I went to lunch today with two people who are newly hired into the group. This place, being a fancy french restaurant ofcourse had its very own appetizer wine menu, lunch wines, dessert wines...you get the point. So ofcourse, i'm the only one that doesnt drink, and in a bad mood, and it was gray and rainy outside!!

So we are getting drinks - (diet coke for me), and diet coke, which so unusual and strange, never fails to evoke the quintessential questions:

"You dont want a drink"?
"No"
"You dont drink"?
"No" (gauge my mood, and stop right there)
"Can I ask why"?
"Its a personal preference" (was in a bad mood, didnt feel like going into details- she really should have stopped here)
"Do you have siblings?"
"Yes"
"Do they drink?"
"No" (its going to be monosyllable answers until you stop the questions. where is your darn tact filter?)
"Not even a glass of champagne"? (last i checked, that had alchohol in it too)
"No"
"Do your parents drink"?
"No"?
"Not even on new years eve"?
"No" (omg!! stop the questions! do you not see the grey cloud over my head?)
"Why dont you drink"?
"its a PERSONAL preference"
"do you think its wrong"?
"No, I dont judge"
"Well, I have friends that dont drink, they just have a reason for it" (I'm going to clobber you with my shrimp salad right now!!)

anyhow, the shrimp salad was not amazing (i'm also going off shrimp- with the halal thing, this is going to be a problem! i also dont like tuna...sigh ), but on the plus side, the dessert was SO good-

it was a thinly layered pistachio cake with a layer of dark chocolate and a layer of pistachio mousse- on the side was a scoop of vanilla ice-cream on a chocolate cookie, with pomegranate sauce drizzled all around. mmmmmmmm

:)

Spilt Water

I knocked over a glass of water. As I knelt down with paper towels, I looked closer at the water cloud covered floor, and saw fragments of liquid separated into a million molecules. I looked closer and saw the universes. In it I located earth and its vast bodies of water. In this state of lucidity, continents became clear, countries, cities, a house, a window. And through that window, I saw myself peering at the floor frozen in concerntration. Startled, I look up. Closed what lurks in the confines of my memory and revelation.

The water had caught around my bare knees. like rings around a teacup. Insidious water bits and pieces. Like my mind. flowing memories. in bits and pieces.