For now, a sneak peak:

Lobstah!

An upscale Piggly Wiggly--who would have thought?

This is life right now:

• We spent Sunday afternoon in Myrtle Beach, exploring, and we found two places we’d not been before. The first was a trashy flea market where we walked in the heat, melting, my long summer dress clinging to my legs, and looked at cheap guitars, gaudy turquoise rings, old cast iron skillets, pocketknives. A woman was selling used books for outrageous prices and as we drove away I complained (“You can’t sell a used paperback for five dollars. It just isn’t done!”) and Jesse remarked, “You sound personally offended,” and I paused and thought and said, “Why, yes, I believe I am.” Then we drove past the beaches and the beach hotels and ended up in a ritzy part of town, a new development it seemed, where we found, to our great amazement, a ritzy Piggly Wiggly. We immediately stopped the car and went in, and then spent probably a solid half hour wandering through the store, exclaiming things like, “A whole display just for imported Belgium beers?” and “Check out these cakes!” The Piggly Wiggly in our town sells beef tongue and smells funny. This Piggly Wiggly was the nicest grocery store we’d ever been in. We bought Little Debbie snacks and milk and ate in the parking lot.

It wasn't an illusion--the inside was as nice as the outside!

• We spent that evening in a mall, talking about New York. It seems that the jobs I am both qualified for and interested in are all in New York. The fact that we’re discussing this both excites and terrifies me.

• In the event we do not move to New York, and honestly we probably won’t, I am exploring my employment options in North Carolina. They are few and far between. I’m applying for everything right now, including jobs high schoolers apply for, and this has been more of a hit to my ego than I expected. I’m three years away from thirty and have a master’s degree. I started to apply for jobs at Harris Teeter, but I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. I know this blog might prompt worried emails from family members, but I’m sorry, if you can job hunt in the middle of a recession in a city that didn’t have good jobs even before the recession, if you can do that without getting a little bit depressed, then I’m worried about you.

• Saturday was by far the worst—the day I almost applied for the Harris Teeter job, the day I got the most discouraged about my employment prospects, the day before we started talking about New York. That evening, I read a blog Sabrina posted about fried rice with SPAM and I knew instantly that SPAM was the only thing that would brighten my mood, so I dropped everything and ran to Wal-Mart (you can buy SPAM at Harris Teeter, but why would you?). It’s been years since I’ve had SPAM, and I wondered if I’d be able to find it, but as I looked at the signs over the aisles I realized I needn’t worry: Wal-Mart has an aisle specifically marked “Canned Meat.” In said Canned Meat aisle, I saw a row of familiar plastic pouches and thought, “Oh, what the heck,” and grabbed two packs of Ramen noodles. Might as well. And? Turns out I was right. SPAM helped.

• I am starting a new book and I’m pretty sure it’s about zombies.

• Yesterday, Jesse came home from work early and on the way home stopped at the grocery store to rent a movie. I had watched both A. and M. that morning and was exhausted. I didn’t mean to, but I had fallen asleep on the couch, and Jesse came in and woke me up with a kiss and a rose he’d gotten for me. I love that man.

Jesse goes to get his stitches out today. He had something removed from his back, a little persistent thing, and since the biopsy came back negative I haven’t thought much of it, except to put Vaseline and a band-aid on it every morning. I could not be a nurse, cringing at the sight of the stitches. I don’t know if it was the stitches themselves, or the fact of them on that back, where my stomach says they should not be.

There is the futon; since my in-laws left, I haven’t moved the featherbed off it, so now it’s folded up on the couch, lengthwise, and it dips slightly in the middle, making this perfect little nest, exactly the right thing to take a nap on. Which I did yesterday, a solid hour of staying in exactly the same position, dreaming about something I can’t remember anymore.

And of course, a bit of frustration with myself over the yard sale thing. Jesse got in touch with the lady, and she acted, I don’t know, confused? Said, the money’s in the account. And she was right. It was there. On the one hand, I’m glad I let Jesse handle it. He had what I lacked—compassion, a willingness to suspend judgment. So, letting him take over was the right thing to do. But on the other hand, I wonder, why is it I still can’t keep myself from jumping to conclusions? Why am I so quick to see the bad in people, to think the worst? Yes, it looked bad. I’ll give myself that. The bad phone number was what did it. And there still hasn’t been an explanation for that. But, goodness, I of all people should know there’s an answer for everything, there’s a reason, whether it’s obvious or not. So, I’m sheepish today over this, the fact that I couldn’t extend just a bit of grace and wait before thinking I knew everything I needed to in this situation. And, the story of the servant whose debts are forgiven, going straight out and throwing someone else in jail because of what he was owed. Ugh.

(But, Michael, what you suggested about the local crime ring is probably true, and once they knew I was hot on their trail, they aborted the mission, put the money back in the account. I’m sure that’s the most reasonable explanation.)

I saw a shooting star last night. Well, it didn’t appear to be shooting as much as it seemed to be falling. It seemed so close. Ridiculously fast. There in one part of the second, and gone in the next. Maybe it wasn’t a shooting star after all, though I’m not sure what else would make light do that. So, that is what I’ll land on today, my day of many thoughts to think, and while I do laundry I’ll try to get reoriented, to remember to have perspective. And, because I have too much to do, I will try very very hard not to take a nap.

• A couple Saturdays ago, Jesse, exhausted from a yard sale, sits on the couch, watching bluegrass on PBS, while I’m in the kitchen making baked ziti while wearing a floral-print apron. The buzzer goes off on the dryer, and I fold clothes while dinner’s in the oven. And I look at the two of us and wonder: are we in our late twenties, or our late sixties? And I don’t care which. What a lovely way to spend an evening.
• Oh, and making hamburgers for dinner one night with a side of homemade, home-fried French fries. Cut-up potatoes, soaked in sugar water, then tossed into a pan of hot lard. Lard, yes! They were the best fries I’ve ever made, perfectly crispy on the outside and still soft inside. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to bake French fries again…or buy frozen.
• Since we’re on the topic of food (still), this Saturday night we went to Boleros for dinner to use our $25 gift certificate. The one catch was we had to spend $35. So, cell phone-calculator in hand—to try and hit as close to $35 as possible—we ordered a chicken quesadilla appetizer with a side of plantains, two entrées (Barbacoa enchiladas for him, Cuban sandwich with side of black beans for me), and followed it up with a fancy coffee drink for me. I thought, surely this is what it feels like to be rich. Our table was overflowing with food. Plates everywhere. More food than we could eat. We took home two boxes of leftovers. (Well, okay, probably if we were rich we wouldn’t have taken the leftovers. Or used the calculator. But still.) We never order appetizers and it’s not unusual to see us ordering water and splitting an entrée. So, an appetizer, two entrées, an extra side, and fancy coffee? Living large.
• On the subject of not-food, it’s freezing here. Last night, we slept with two extra blankets on top of our down comforter, and this morning we were so blissfully comfortable under all those blankets that getting out of bed into a sixty-five-degree room was particularly painful.
• And, I have a cinnamon-scented stick-broom-thing from Publix, thanks to my fantastic mother-in-law.
• Staying out late Friday night at Chili’s with the small group, talking about couponing, health care reform, the perils of renting your house and then leaving the country. Sleeping to eleven the next morning.
• And curling up on the futon with a zombie book, wearing Jesse’s black sweatshirt, both cats snuggling with me, all warm and purring.