EntropicByDesign
It's all so very confusing.
So, my niece is over for the weekend. Pretty common occurrence, she's usually here three weekends out of four. If she doesn't have plans with a friend or her scumbag father, she spends her weekends with me. Id like to be proud of this and think that it's because I'm so awesome that a 12yr old wants to hang out with a 35yr old and his 28yr old GF.. but despite quite a lot of evidence to the contrary - I'm not actually stupid. I have a nice computer, I have fantastic internet, I have a PS4, I buy her things from the store and she more or less sets the menu while she's here. I also have a lot of cats and often kittens. *I* have nothing to do with her visits.
Anyway.
I never really go SHOPPING.. I just go to the store. People go and buy a week or more's worth of groceries but I don't do that. I just buy things as I need them and I buy my dinner night-of 90% of the time. Decide what to make, or wander the store till something pops into my head.
So, this has given rise to a tradition when Aubrey is here.. whenever we go to the store to get dinner, she has to choose one "odd" thing to buy and try when we get home. Nothing that's more than a buck or two. Sometimes she tries an odd kind of drink or candy in the international food aisle, or she'll try something like Kimchi, different and odd vegetables or fruit, anything that catches her eye really. The rules are just that it has to be something she hasn't tried before and something that's relatively different than her every day food.
I have absolutely no idea if I'm doing any good, but my theory here is that I want to instill a basic sense of interest and wonder in her towards new experiences. The theme is expanded in to things we do together as well, like places we visit or movies she reads/watches, etc. I don't want her to be a xenophobe. The world is full of weird and interesting shit and the kind of understanding that helps you navigate the social and professional seas of adulthood can come from very basic things.. like understanding that entire cultures have a TOTALLY different approach to food than we do. I know I'm making a rather grand jump from buying Japanese jellied-fruit candy to understanding how to deal with the world at large in a healthy and positive way, but small seeds grow into big ass trees. Gotta start somewhere. Of course those big ass trees put also sometimes put roots through the plumbing, but risks have to be taken.
Aubrey's daily life is.. close. She lives in a small house with my Mom and sister. They don't have a car. They don't really go anywhere or do anything. They just sit and watch terrible television. My Mom is a step away from being an agoraphobe and my sister is pretty much (among a lot of other things) a xenophobe.. they are both scared of the world and don't understand it.. I'm terrified of this rubbing off on Aubrey and so I go out of my way to make sure she sees and hears and experiences as much as my liked reach will allow. I have no kids and I never will - I HATE kids - but Aubrey has always been different. I want her to succeed at life, at least as my definition goes, which is very simply to be as comfortable and content and happy as the human condition allows us to be.
So.. ehh, I got off track and kinda wandered off there, sorry.
Ehh.. so yeah.. we went to the store and got stuff for dinner (pan fried tilapia and veggies, I'm keeping it simple tonight) and Aubrey's "odd" choice was a prickly pear fruit. I usually join in as well, so I grabbed a persimmon, having heard of them my entire life and having zero idea what they taste like, or until the sign told me what they were, looked like.
I bring it home and we put everything away, got the fruits out and sliced em up. Prickly pear was quite good, just s sort of general berry flavor, seeds kinds ruin the experience though. Then came the persimmon. Now, why I listened to a 12 yr old I don't know.. but I asked if you ate the skin and she said yeah.. very knowledgeably, very matter of fact. Which lead me believe she knew this to be true given the speed and confidence she spoke with.
It was not true.
I bite into the thing like an apple (btw these are a different type of persimmon, slightly larger than a reg one, a little smaller than s typical apple).. and the first thing I think is "this is good, nice mellow sweetness, like a melon".. then it hits me. It was like someone threw a handful of chalk into my mouth. I don't even know how to describe it.. my mouth just went bone dry and I was hit with this awful bitter non-taste that coated my entire mouth. My teeth felt squeak and all the sweetness was gone.. I spit out the bite and ran into the bathroom to gargle some mouthwash, my GF and Aubrey laughing. Har har!
Yeah. Well, I come out of the bathroom, and am walking back onto the kitchen (in my apartment the two connect so it's like two steps) and I'm still bitching and trying to get this taste out of my mouth.. then I step on the mouthful I spit out. I had aimed it at a plastic bag but apparently missed. I step on it and my leg just skids off to the side all by itself, while my other leg was still in the process of catching up with my body.. so I very ungracefully kind of crumple. While doing so, my flailing hands dislodge the persimmon on the counter and the large knife I cut the prickly pear with. About the time my head smacks the floor, the knife falls off and lands on my left arm - point first - which hurts like a bugger. It didn't stick or anything, just lightly and not deeply at all stabbed me and fell over. My mind had time to register that just before the persimmon, which had also fallen , HIT ME IN THE FUCKING EYE. Bite side down. They aren't juicy but you still get some when it lands directly on your open eyebsll from about 3ft up. In addition to the pain of having an approximatly apple-sized-and-weighted object smack your eye after traveling straight down about 3 ft.
So not only can I not win sets in Inj.. I can't take a round off a piece of fruit.
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Anyway.
I never really go SHOPPING.. I just go to the store. People go and buy a week or more's worth of groceries but I don't do that. I just buy things as I need them and I buy my dinner night-of 90% of the time. Decide what to make, or wander the store till something pops into my head.
So, this has given rise to a tradition when Aubrey is here.. whenever we go to the store to get dinner, she has to choose one "odd" thing to buy and try when we get home. Nothing that's more than a buck or two. Sometimes she tries an odd kind of drink or candy in the international food aisle, or she'll try something like Kimchi, different and odd vegetables or fruit, anything that catches her eye really. The rules are just that it has to be something she hasn't tried before and something that's relatively different than her every day food.
I have absolutely no idea if I'm doing any good, but my theory here is that I want to instill a basic sense of interest and wonder in her towards new experiences. The theme is expanded in to things we do together as well, like places we visit or movies she reads/watches, etc. I don't want her to be a xenophobe. The world is full of weird and interesting shit and the kind of understanding that helps you navigate the social and professional seas of adulthood can come from very basic things.. like understanding that entire cultures have a TOTALLY different approach to food than we do. I know I'm making a rather grand jump from buying Japanese jellied-fruit candy to understanding how to deal with the world at large in a healthy and positive way, but small seeds grow into big ass trees. Gotta start somewhere. Of course those big ass trees put also sometimes put roots through the plumbing, but risks have to be taken.
Aubrey's daily life is.. close. She lives in a small house with my Mom and sister. They don't have a car. They don't really go anywhere or do anything. They just sit and watch terrible television. My Mom is a step away from being an agoraphobe and my sister is pretty much (among a lot of other things) a xenophobe.. they are both scared of the world and don't understand it.. I'm terrified of this rubbing off on Aubrey and so I go out of my way to make sure she sees and hears and experiences as much as my liked reach will allow. I have no kids and I never will - I HATE kids - but Aubrey has always been different. I want her to succeed at life, at least as my definition goes, which is very simply to be as comfortable and content and happy as the human condition allows us to be.
So.. ehh, I got off track and kinda wandered off there, sorry.
Ehh.. so yeah.. we went to the store and got stuff for dinner (pan fried tilapia and veggies, I'm keeping it simple tonight) and Aubrey's "odd" choice was a prickly pear fruit. I usually join in as well, so I grabbed a persimmon, having heard of them my entire life and having zero idea what they taste like, or until the sign told me what they were, looked like.
I bring it home and we put everything away, got the fruits out and sliced em up. Prickly pear was quite good, just s sort of general berry flavor, seeds kinds ruin the experience though. Then came the persimmon. Now, why I listened to a 12 yr old I don't know.. but I asked if you ate the skin and she said yeah.. very knowledgeably, very matter of fact. Which lead me believe she knew this to be true given the speed and confidence she spoke with.
It was not true.
I bite into the thing like an apple (btw these are a different type of persimmon, slightly larger than a reg one, a little smaller than s typical apple).. and the first thing I think is "this is good, nice mellow sweetness, like a melon".. then it hits me. It was like someone threw a handful of chalk into my mouth. I don't even know how to describe it.. my mouth just went bone dry and I was hit with this awful bitter non-taste that coated my entire mouth. My teeth felt squeak and all the sweetness was gone.. I spit out the bite and ran into the bathroom to gargle some mouthwash, my GF and Aubrey laughing. Har har!
Yeah. Well, I come out of the bathroom, and am walking back onto the kitchen (in my apartment the two connect so it's like two steps) and I'm still bitching and trying to get this taste out of my mouth.. then I step on the mouthful I spit out. I had aimed it at a plastic bag but apparently missed. I step on it and my leg just skids off to the side all by itself, while my other leg was still in the process of catching up with my body.. so I very ungracefully kind of crumple. While doing so, my flailing hands dislodge the persimmon on the counter and the large knife I cut the prickly pear with. About the time my head smacks the floor, the knife falls off and lands on my left arm - point first - which hurts like a bugger. It didn't stick or anything, just lightly and not deeply at all stabbed me and fell over. My mind had time to register that just before the persimmon, which had also fallen , HIT ME IN THE FUCKING EYE. Bite side down. They aren't juicy but you still get some when it lands directly on your open eyebsll from about 3ft up. In addition to the pain of having an approximatly apple-sized-and-weighted object smack your eye after traveling straight down about 3 ft.
So not only can I not win sets in Inj.. I can't take a round off a piece of fruit.
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