pink things

i ate a grapefruit for breakfast this morning. and read the newspaper (when i went downstairs to get it i could hear hannah in 3w's music blaring- joni mitchell's california- right on!) in a sunbeam with the rainbows from the prism all around. i should have had milk and toast and honey, perhaps, but i was getting all contemplative about my graperfruit. it's this big ugly lump from the grocery store- they remind me of fake boobs. and then there's this process- the steps you must go through, and then the ones that i think create the perfect way to eat a grapefruit. i felt like i should write a long how-to paper about it- use a serrated knife to cut it in half, then cut around the edge of the flesh, then sprinkle the top with sugar- just a teaspoon or so, so that it gets dissolved. if there's white sugar setting on top you've put too much on. then you gently stick the spoon down between the segment at 3 o'clock and the fleshy sectional divider farther from you. once you have it off the one side, just peel it off the one closest to you. working counter-clockwise, eat about three segments in this manner. then you have enough space to scrape the left over bits of fruit off the rind and out of the bottom. now is also a good time to start eating spoonfulls of the juice gathering in the bottom. and so on. it was very "breakfast as an experience" rather than breakfast as nutrition or even breakfast soley as yummyness.

in yesterday's mail came the BVS booklet of projects for this year. (t has a pink cover. that's how it fits the topic.) goddess, it's so tempting to leave everything behind here and go to germany. there's two projects i could see myself working on this year- one in minden, one in bonn. the one is organizing peace camps and conferences all over germany, the other is lobbying the german goverment about a north-south initiative to end global warming. once i'm graduated, why not? this should be one of my last chances to make a major life change. and i feel so stagnant in chicago- it's time to move on. i want to live in germany, and this seems the best way to do it. but my stuff. goddess, i'm so attached. i can live without my stuff for two years, no problem. but giving up my appartment? moving it all back to pa? it's crazy. or putting it all in storage here- i can't afford 2 years worth of storage for my whole apartment . but i can't give away my bed and my desk and all my clothing and books and kitchen appliances! the project booklet says pack for orientation and have folks back home ship you what you need. my life right now isn't really set up that way. but i still remember 5 years ago sitting in my bedroom at home, having just returned from my first trip to germany, trying to figure out what to do with my life, and calling dan, and having him say, get a BA, learn german, then we'll talk. and that's about to happen. ha. yeah right. since when did i ever have that much gumption? i can't even get it together to get my americorps money.

wrote all morning. have been a good fiction writing student, with my raspberry ginger brew and pretzel goldfish. ginger will always and forever make me think of l, i think. i imagine being this tiny old woman on an airplane 65 years from now, drinking my ginger ale and telling my bored seatmate about her. i think it's kinda pinkish, too, being raspberry, but it comes in a brown bottle, so i'm not sure. anyway, it's all procrastination to get away from my drawings. it's only 5 of them. but i've been putting them off for HOURS now. started reading dorothy cannell's the thin woman again. i bought it at the last gerber hart booksale- such a good book, i'm glad to own a copy. however, paired with michelle embree's manstealing for fat girls, it makes me obsessive about my eating habits and the habits of those i love. i think every character in manstealing has her own individual eating disorder, and i got so involved in the characters it made me project them onto all of my friends. i know a's been in a depressed sort of discontent and that messes up her eating, and then i was iming z and she told me she's going on a diet and i kinda flipped out on her, just cause i've been in this book where the protaganist pops dexatrim for breakfast and lunch. her friend carrie has a 7 year plan- this year she's fasting one day a week. after a year, her body should get used to it, so next year she'll do two days. she'll keep adding a day every year, so by year 7 she'll just photosynthesize. perhaps this is why i was so obsessed with my grapefruit process this morning. so everyone- i love you. please be happy and healthy. eat what you're longing for when you're hungry. stop eating when you are full. digest the food you eat. when bad things happen, find other things to cheer you up. because it makes me so sad and worried for you when you don't, because i really do love you all.