My voter's registration card arrived in the mail two days ago. I registered, like, two and a half months ago. Took those fuckers long enough to send my card. I'm really very excited about voting. I get to tromp down to the election site and pull some levers and know full well that my vote doesn't count for jack shit. But it's still exciting to me anyway. I'm not really sure why. Especially since I can neither drink, nor watch the results come in on television.
(Yeah, hey there Mr. President... Maybe you can fix the economy a little bit so that people like me can get jobs and afford basic cable if I wanted it? 'Cause as it is, I can't even afford condiments; I've gotta steal ketchup and creamer from fucken fast-food joints... Maybe if you can promise a bottle of ketchup and a quart of half-and-half on every American table, I'll vote for you...)
Tonight, my household carves pumpkins. I've very excited about pumpkin-carving. I'm still trying to decide what kind of a face mine will have. I'm usually pretty good with the fine motor control -- and the patience -- it takes to carve a decent pumpkin, so I'll probably try to do one that's sort of ornate. Not just all triangles and squares, in any case. I think I'll make a happy face. With a tongue sticking out.
But in any case, after the carving is sort of done, I'm planning on starting a pumpkin-slop fight with at least one or two of my dear room-mates. Sh. Don't tell them.
A couple of weeks ago, one of my room-mates bought three cans of chili. Only, she mistakenly bought the fat-free kind with no meat in it. It has meat on the picture on the label -- only... only it's not real meat. It's like... soy meat or some shit. Meat shaped from tofu. Ugh.
[Neil refers to the meatballs in Franco-American pasta as "little orbs of meat paste," which is unappetizing, but hilarious to me. Still, I'd FAR rather eat a little orb of meat paste than a freaking can of soy meat in tomato paste and chili powder... NASTY.]
So, three nights ago, with nothing better to do, I went to the grocery store where the canned fake meat was purchased, and asked if I could exchange them for regular chili. The lady said: "sure." I said: "Even if I've got no receipt?" She said: "sure." She was a pleasant lady, with pretty black eyes.
And so last night, I gathered up the nasty-ass fake soy crap, and brought it to the grocery store.
And all of a sudden, these people are throwing a shit fit. "You can't return things without receipts; don't you know that if we take food items back, we have to throw them away; nobody here would have told you that it's okay to make returns on food without the receipt!"
I asked the lady behind the counter to call the manager. The manager apparently backed her up. I asked her to have the manager come out to the desk and look me in the eyes.
I said: "I got this chili here about a week ago without realizing it was this nasty-ass fake-meat, no-fat crap. And I came in here the other night and a lady told me it would be fine to exchange them as long as I brought them in, even if I didn't have a receipt. And NOW I'm hearing that I can't do that, after I walked ALL the way down here with this bag of fucken gross-ass cans of crap."
The manager, who was about seventeen years old, had an honest-to-gahd look of genuine sympathy in his eyes. He told me it wasn't their usual policy, but that this time it wouldn't be a problem.
As I walked home with three GOOD cans of chili, I concluded that I had several things going for me in my little argument about the stupid fake chili. One, I am a stubborn Pollack and never give up on anything. Two, I am a New Yorker, and I swear all the damned time. I think I might have actually frightened the grocery store employees a little bit, despite the fact that I think of swear words as rather ordinary vocabulary. Three, I'm a reasonably cute pregnant lady, and who the hell wants to fuck with THAT?
Yeah, nobody.
Here's to meat paste. REAL meat paste.
Gahd, I lead what SO many people would consider an uninteresting life...
Ah, but those people are SO wrong...
Today, I think I will attempt to make sugar cookies. I also think I will go to the store and pick up a couple of copies of The Stranger to spread over the floor during the pumpkin-carving festivities. Probably, while I am performing both of these activities, I will be humming to myself a gahd-awful rendition of "Ramblin' Man," by the Allman Brothers. I'm in a weird mood today.
Off to be weird...
~Helena*