#312

When you aren't making millions on Wall Street, but instead find yourself at Goodwill shopping for 79 cent paperbacks, you occasionally spot a gleaming jewel, although it's brilliance may be hidden — an unfamiliar title or author — until you take it by the spine, examine it, sample it, and go for it; it's an investment (79 cents feels like shoplifting but time is precious), and then later set upon it with knife and fork — or pencil; I underline, bracket, and star — to lustily feast and confirm it's something very rich indeed. A treasure. From Goodwill. Cheapskate? Sure. But I tell myself it's also very green. Book recycling. And some titles are out of print. My latest discovery is a gem called Logbook for Grace by Robert Cushman Murphy. It's a scientist writing to his new bride, Grace, while collecting specimens aboard a whaling brig in 1912. The writing is at times humorous, tender, lyrical, gritty, and as good as Melville. And Megan's middle name is Grace.

I am a world champion lunch-maker. School lunches. I'm a pro, a master, a gold-fuckin'-medalist, whatever, M 'n' m get awesome lunches. I pack 'em while slamming coffee and maybe doing a few countertop push-ups. But usually not the push-ups. Feels good to hit a task out of the park so early in the morning. Even if it's just cramming sugar-laden, over-processed, half-plastic crap into two containers. Megan's goes in a cute, pink, zippered, nylon thingy, and Michael is a brown-paper-bag man. Inside both, quality, variety, abundance. Some of it's fresh, some of it will look the same a thousand years from now in a landfill. I never get complaints. Except from Meg. But she grumbles about everything, and that's only a 50% customer disapproval rating. Better than the airlines. I ate hot lunch as a kid. Plastic pizza, rubber tacos, hockey-puck burgers, and once — this is true, I shit you not  — I ate a raw chicken nugget. I gagged and heaved but it stayed down. I remember the sensation of my stomach turning and my mouth undergoing a pre-vomit watering, once I realized the nugget's chewiness had a perfect explanation. But I didn't puke it back up. Great story! Oh, thanks :)

Michael wears a shirt for five minutes then throws it in his dirty clothes. Of course, that will change when I stop doing his laundry. My clothes can practically walk and talk on their own before I toss 'em in the washer. (Not true. Mostly not true.)

We had MTV. Now they have YouTube. It is exactly a zillion times more nonsense than we had. Although, some of it's good and useful; I'm on YouTube a lot also, for TED talks, lectures, interviews; content that's a far cry from the unimpressive stuff M 'n' m watch, imitate, and howl at. And the stuff they watch only gets like a hundred million views... must not be very good.