Bleh.

A friend told me recently this would always be her home. I responded that I had none...not to be pathetic, but to explain my reality of perpetual foreignness: my family was never from where we were living--and living in a stream of small towns, my Otherness was quite palpable. Fleeing to cities and ignoring invitations to ten-year reunions, I realized how utterly free I am. I'm moving to D.C. in less than a year, and it's as easy to me as moving apartments. Moving comes naturally; transition comes naturally; being a stranger comes almost dishearteningly easily...But staying still, moving to the center from the periphery, becoming familiar: these things, they horrify me.

And now, I wonder if I'll ever feel the reverse freedom: the freedom of being tethered, of being comfortable and entrenched...
I kick and struggle against the lightest of reins--my commitment to a graduate program for 4 years has come with anxiety attacks--and I wiggled out of a final year by winning a fellowship relocating me to DC; my commitment to an occupation was only made palatable by the realistic possibility of complete job-switching within five years. I clearly have not yet found a similar fix for a commitment to a person.

I suppose it's all the same experience, but perhaps from the other side of the mirror. But it really can be quite lonely over here.

My Beefs with Fruits and Vegetables.

First up: Cauliflower.

I think this is the most worthless vegetable ever grown. My research leads me to conclude that it was created in a lab by suburban mothers hired by Kraft Cheese to invent a "healthy" conveyance for cheese sauce. And white veggies--unhealthy anyway--always seem to require further unhealthy accoutriments to become tastey (see cauliflower's pal, Potato, for reference). Who munches on raw cauliflower? Future serial killers, that's who.

>But what about the water chestnut, Lexi? It is white, and I have never seen one fried or buttered.

>>Fuck the water chestnut. Those things have been ruining salads and green beans for far too long.

Next up: The pink tomato.

Listen up restauranteers: if it ain't red, it's not a real tomato. Perhaps that crap flies in New Jersey, but goddamn, we live in California; can't we grow a decent fucking tomato? I went out to dinner last night and was served up some pink, pithy rounds masquerading as my beloved tomato. Anatomically, I suppose they were correct enough, but their sad, pale faces told me the truth. Would you serve me pink ketchup? Or pink spaghetti sauce? Nope. Because you all acknowledge that, in theory at LEAST, tomatoes were meant to be red. That's why we have a crayon called "tomato red"...not "tomato pink".

Stop trying to fool me!

Lastly: Iceburg lettuce.

I just don't get it. Would't it be easier to just chew your water?

>But Lexi, why are you ranting about fruits and vegetables? Don't you have anything better to do?

>>Yeah, I have 40 exams and 40 10-page papers about the theory of law to grade. Makes sense, now, no?