Odds and Ends

On Eating Your Words Off Paper Plates

A week ago, I had my friend Brandy over for dinner, not for any special reason, just so that the two of us could hang out and catch up without spending money at a fancy restaurant. I was making spinach and arugula polenta with a sun-dried tomato puree, and I was trying to use my old and stubborn blender, and I couldn't find the lid.

"Just put a paper plate over it," Brandy suggested.

My eyebrows almost flew off my head in horror. "Excuse me," I said, snottily. "There's no paper plates in THIS house. Do you even KNOW how WASTEFUL they are?"

Brandy, appropriately chastened: "Oh. I just suggested it because there are some paper plates right there on that shelf." She pointed.

I spun around, and sure enough, there were paper plates. Whoops. "My mother must have brought those when I moved in a year and a half ago," I mumbled.

Brandy, because she is a sweetheart and a half, didn't give me the hard time I so deserved, which made my crow-pie all that much harder to choke down.

Lessons at Goodwill

In the same way that everyone should spend some time at Farmers' Markets, everyone should, at some point, spend some time at a Goodwill. Not only for the bargains, but for the visual reminder that everything you are buying new now will be junk in a year, and barely worth the shelf space it takes up. I got three books for 2.26, and this amount makes me ashamed to admit how many books I have purchased full-price in airport bookstores to entertain myself for a mere three hours, only to never read said book again. Ugh.