This is all Iran’s fault.
You see, I read the news a lot and I also watch Downton Abbey a lot. I’m also bored a lot of the time since my boss thinks editing an Excel spread sheet is good for about 3 days worth of work to do and my classes tend to be a little, um, easy. Well, except this year I finally get around to taking Introduction to Epidemiology, and WTF it turns out to be “hard” and require “real work.” Are you sitting there thinking “aren’t you working on a thesis and trying to get published too or something?” And to that I say, “don’t remind me.”
The combination of these three things – News, Downton Abbey, and Boredom, have resulted in me becoming convinced that Iran and Israel are about to start World War III and I will be left to feed our family on bread made from home made grain and the milk that comes from our goat. We don’t have a goat, but in this scenario we do.
This weekend our toilet broke. Not “oh just plunge it” or “turn off the water and reconnect that little chain thing” broke, thankyouverymuch, but wouldn’t fill up with water and according to google needed a new part broke. Luckily we were house sitting this weekend for a couple who has four working toilets. Remember, we are pauper students who have one, a fact that the Res Life center was wholly unconcerned about and kept insisting it was a holiday weekend and there was absolutely no way to get a plumber to our apartment. Now I realize normal human beings only use a toilet once every 72 hours (at least according to Res Life), but me having a chronic bladder disorder and all, I do not like to be apart from one at all if I can help it. I understand, of course, I would hate to rip someone away from their family’s President’s Day celebration, singing carols about Jefferson and Monroe and what not. Oh wait, I think they only do that at William and Mary…
So we spent the weekend over at the house we were sitting. At which I became bored, and decided I should learn to make cottage cheese. Again, to you who say “don’t you have stuff to do?” I say “blasphemers! All of you!”
And so I headed over to the nearest grocery store to buy some milk. The grocery store, which I am sure you are all aware of as it was immortalized in the song, “Apology Song” by the Decemberists, is the Orange Street Food Farm. And the Food Farm has one magic corner known as the “cheap shelf.” While most of the products in the store are pretty mundane, there are always incredibly odd and discounted foods on the cheap shelf, ranging from Halva, a sesame candy, to pear juice. This trip, people were congregating and talking in front of the cheap shelf, a mortal sin to most who live in this town. Etiquette is that three, perhaps four at most, stand silently in front of the shelf, searching for that One Great Deal, taking care to not another’s view.
Whilst trying to peer around the chatty woman and her food cart (double sin), I spied it.
If you ever fly Delta and choose “peanuts” or “pretzels,” excuse me, but you are an idiot. Because the Biscoff cookies are really the choice of champions. Buttery, crunchy, flavorful – I love them. And here was a spread made of that very same foodstuff. It was like Nutella for people who can’t eat chocolate or hazelnuts. It was magic; I had never even dreamed of such a concoction!
I turned over to look at the ingredients and was not deterred by two simple words that usually leave me dropping a food in horror and swearing at the world: citric acid. See, citric acid is not the friend of someone on a low-acid diet. But I reasoned it away, and gladly spread a few spoonfuls onto a baguette.
By the way I made the cottage cheese, and it tasted and looked more like mozzarella. Oops. Domestic fail.
Fast forward to that evening. We reasoned that our toilet works, kinda sorta enough, if you don’t flush the toilet paper and fill up the back of the tank with water. So we went home, watched Downton Abbey, and attempted to fall asleep.
Let me tell you something. I went to the bathroom somewhere around twenty times that night.
You know how people say, “Oh gosh, I ran like a hundred miles” or “I read a million pages for class tomorrow,” and they don’t really mean what they say? I mean this. I went to the bathroom about twenty times that night. I stopped counting, granted. But when you go to the bathroom about five minutes after you lay down on the bed for somewhere around 3 to 4 hours, you’ve hit the 20 mark. Trust me. There have been times where I have contemplated sleeping on a toilet. (There was actually a time in JVC where I slept in the bathroom. I fainted off the toilet and wound up with an IV drip. Oops.)
Long story short, if there Iran does ever get the bomb, I’m screwed.
HEY! Did you ever hear of D-Mannose Powder for IC? Here’s a reference:
http://www.modgblog.com/2012/03/01/why-hello-materialism-ive-missed-you-stuff-i-like-the-toddlerlonely-mom-edition/