There is chili on the stove right now, guys. CHILI. Like the yummy, filling carb-loaded delicious pot of amazingness known as chili. I wanted it so bad. I still do. But instead I made my broccoli and chicken and sat down to weigh it out for tomorrow. EASTER!

Since my grandmother passed away about three years ago, my grandpa has kinda let the holiday cooking slide. No big spreads like there once was. My grandma made most of that happen. I remember last Easter was so lame. We all felt jipped out of our Easter meal! But this year I was glad when my grandpa called and reported that Easter will be “casual” this year. Translation= The main attraction will be the ham, but I can expect the less-tempting wares featured last year: chips, hotdogs, and other finger foods. It’ll still be tempting but hopefully I can keep myself under control.

I really want to drink alcohol tonight. Like i want a margarita in SUCH a bad way. Like its almost to the point that I would give up my cheat meal tomorrow if I could just drink tonight. I wouldn’t even drunk eat/snack. Just get me a little schnockered. Buh. The fact that I’d trade alcohol for food is probably a very bad sign.

I prepared my meals for tomorrow just like I would’ve any other day so I’ll plan on sticking to my chicken, broccoli, and egg whites unless I absolutely cannot take it any more.

I wish Anthony was in town. We could support each other in our sobriety. He isn’t drinking either since he is training. We could stay in and watch a movie it something. He had to work today in the Lou, so he is staying up there got Easter. Bollocks. Having a friend doing it at the same time helps–especially when everyone is telling me that I just need to “live a little.” Well folks, living a little ain’t gonna help me drop the weight and become a beast!

I’ll leave you with a couple of pictures of some extra motivation I crafted to help me face the holiday.

I’ve always heard to try protein powder with milk but it didn’t mention that option on the back of the bag so I went with water, one scoop and 4oz of water. It was actually not bad! Tasted like a yoohoo or something! Lets see if it does anything for my workout! Headed to the gym now!

It’s Good Friday, and I am back home with the family spending time for the holiday. Me, Lillian, Ava, and Mutti all went to the gym tonight. It only lasted an hour, and it wasn’t the most intense workout I’ve ever had but it was fun spending time with my sisters and mom. They want to lose weight and tone up too, so it’s perfect really that they support me like that.

The bad thing about being home is that my mother is (of course) going to make the most delicious homemade meals. Fried foods, dessert, mashed potatoes, THE WORKS. And I will say…pass me the unseasoned broccoli and chicken breast? I have saved my one cheat meal for this weekend, which I plan on saving and using on Easter Sunday. So hopefully I can stay strong all day tomorrow.

I got protein powder today! And a slightly different multi-vitamin. Both from GNC. I’m super excited to try it tomorrow. I’ll post my review of it on here–but I have to warn you it probably won’t mean much since I don’t have much to compare it to. But alas, my loyal readers may enjoy. But until then, enjoy the photo shoot my family did at the gym tonight.

6 oz of chicken
Romaine lettuce
Light balsalmic vinegarette

I tried the pepper on the egg whites per advice from Anthony. It made them MUCH better. Not great. But tolerable.

I did arms in the gym today, and plan to do shoulders and maybe chest tomorrow? We’ll see. I’m going to do some research online about the best combinations of body parts. I’ve always lifted legs, arms, abs, and sometimes chest. But never really shoulders or back. SO I have some work to do. Is it weird I’ll have bad form and embarrass myself at the gym? There’s just so many people there at 5 when I go; I don’t normally get self-conscious about that sort of thing. But since it is new territory I guess I am more aware of it.

I’ve hot tubbed after my workouts the last couple of days, and I really kind of like it. It is relaxing, plus easy to do some post-workout stretching in there. Ok….So I took some pictures. After looking at my motivation pictures, i have a LONG way to go. I don’t absolutely hate what I look like in the, but I don’t really like it either. I look so…..fluffy. #gottafixthat. But I suppose everybody has to start somewhere! 

The first day went fine! I had all my food weighed out and measured. Egg whites without seasoning are super unappetizing. A friend recommended pepper. Zero calories. Will try tomorrow morning.

I had a really good workout–and had plenty of energy to get the job done. 50 minutes of cardio, and I focused on legs during lifting. I did a couple of ab/oblique things too. Even hot tub/stretched after. That was super nice

I got my blender bottle in the mail today that I ordered! It is gorgeous and beautiful…now all i need is protein powder…..more on that soon.

I’m sorry to anyone who happens to stumble upon this blog in the future that this first entry hasn’t been the most interesting read; I promise it’ll get better. Here we go!

Really? If this wasn’t so serious, I would be laughing.

Meanwhile, as conservatives feel it necessary to attack Mitt Romney for not being what ever it is they want him to be, the RNC was quick to come out with an ad attacking the President for his comments.

A Better Day

Emily only worked half a day on Saturdays, and she enjoyed her walk home from Hal’s for the first time since the beginning of summer break.  She walked fast, because it felt good to walk fast and there wasn’t anything to avoid going home to.  She stopped to talk to a few of her favorite neighbors, who she had been passing in a fog for weeks, and she waved hello to everyone, including the tiny girl with the mismatched dogs and the old lady who walked her cat every afternoon.

She was pondering the mismatched dogs – a grim, muscular pitbull, a fat, lazy bulldog, and a tiny white fluffball, which could only have ended up in the same household through a “variety pack” deal at the pound – when she realized how much better she felt.  Losing Greg was offset by the improved atmosphere at home, and Emily felt like a bloodsucking parasite had been removed from her chest.  The Fortune Cookie Man was right.  Greg had no place in her life plan.

Emily let herself into the house just before two and found her mother trying, unsuccessfully, to make Johnny say the names of the things he was eating for lunch.  Johnny was in a high chair, wearing a bib and a hungry expression, and her mother crouched over the center island, guarding a plate of cut up fruit, cheese and bagel.  She got the impression that they had been this way for quite some time, and that her mother and little Johnny were tired of each other.

“Hi mom,” Emily said, as Johnny grunted in response to an offering of cantaloupe.  Emily’s mother sighed and dropped the cantaloupe back in the dish, then dropped her head into her hands.  Johnny’s eyes followed the fruit, hopeful as she picked it up, dejected when it fell back into the plate.   “Hi Emmy,” Mrs. Grayson said, her voice muffled by her fingers.  She sounded tired and looked sticky.

Emily patted her mother’s shoulder and put the chunk of cantaloupe on Johnny’s tray.  “Hi Johnny,” she said.

“Hi Auntie Emily,” Johnny answered, and Emily wondered if he was actually talking, or if she was developing a mental illness that caused auditory hallucinations.  Her mother’s stunned expression convinced her that this was not the case. “Cantaloupe,” Johnny announced, gripping the cantaloupe in one fat little hand and holding it out to Emily before stuffing it into his mouth.  Juice dripped between his fingers and onto the floor.

“That’s really good, Johnny,” Emily encouraged.  He beamed at her.  Mrs. Grayson shook her head slowly, and Emily felt bad for her mother, who slaved to teach the baby how to talk only to have him refuse to say a word to anyone except his grumpy Auntie Emily, who hardly paid any attention to him.  Emily gave Johnny a generous helping of fruit, cheese, and bread, which he identified correctly and without prompting.  “Good boy, Johnny,” she said, brushing blond hair off his forehead.  “Now you can eat your lunch.”

Dating So Soon?

Emily glanced at her mother to confirm that Johnny would, in fact, be allowed to eat his lunch, then sat down at the kitchen table.  “Mom, I was thinking…” Emily began.

Mrs. Grayson put a plate of fruit in front of Emily.  “Eat this,” she ordered.  “You look like you need vitamins.”

Emily nibbled a slice of apple.  “I was thinking,” she started again, after her mother finished telling Johnny how to say “apple” in Italian, “that I’d like to go out with Allan Ashbern.  If you still think that’s a good idea.”

Emily’s mother stopped in the middle of the kitchen.

“I’m  not making any promises,” Emily clarified.  “I didn’t like him in the sixth grade, and there’s a good chance I won’t like him now.  But I haven’t exactly made the best decisions in that department and I’m willing to let you give it a try.”

Mrs. Grayson didn’t jump for joy the way Emily expected her to.  “If that’s what you want, honey,” she said, her eyes drifting to the window.  “I’ll let him know he can call you.”

“Yes,” Emily said decisively.  “That’s what I want.”  The statement sounded impressive and grownup in the kitchen, but less so in Emily’s head, where Allan Ashburn was a pitiful figure next to Greg the jerk.

Princes, Frogs, and Strangled Flowers

Emily felt 14 again, waiting for a call from a boy in her childhood bedroom, tensing every time the phone rang, then listening for footsteps on the stairs and the much anticipated “Emmy?  It’s for you.”  Except now she felt more dread than anticipation, and much of her waiting time was lost in a battle to mentally transform Allan Ashbern into someone a girl might look forward to receiving a call from.

When he did call, exactly 5 and a half minutes after Emily’s mother informed Allan’s mother that Emily was available, he had morphed, if not into a prince, at least into a more charming, less lumpy frog in Emily’s mind.  She couldn’t muster up any real excitement over their date – he asked her out for an early dinner on Sunday night, after all – but she was able to say yes with a straight face.

“You look nice, Emmy,” Mrs. Grayson said, before letting Allan into the house the next afternoon.

Emily smiled and crossed her fingers behind her back, but it didn’t do any good.  Allan stood on the front step, clutching a bouquet of white flowers so tightly that Emily suspected they were wilting from suffocation, and she remembered, with hideous clarity, everything she didn’t like about him in the sixth grade.

[Come back next week for a new installment!  And please share this if you can!  Thank you for reading...]

Saved By A Broken Heart

Emily walked into her parents’ house with her head down, but no one noticed because Emily’s head had been hanging somewhere between her collar bone and her belly button since she arrived home for summer break.  Her mother called a dismissive hello from the living room, where she was examining a CD entitled “Teach Your Child Italian.”

“Maura, sweetie?” Mrs. Grayson said to her older daughter as Emily crossed the living room.  “Why don’t we put this on?  I think he might respond better to a new voice.”

Maura, taking an unusual evening off from work after her big deposition, was at one end of the couch with the “Bilingual Baby” book while Johnny watched her distrustfully from the other end.  He also had a book, but his was so mangled that Emily couldn’t tell what it was.  “Sure, Mom,” Maura agreed.  “That’s a great idea.”

Emily searched for a hint of redeeming sarcasm in Maura’s voice, but didn’t find it.  Maura honestly thought it was a great idea.

“What’s eating you?” Maura asked, in the same voice she would have used to say “What’s that awful smell?”

“Nothing,” Emily mumbled, and resisted the urge to run for the stairs.

“Not so fast.”  Maura stood up and discarded the “Bilingual Baby.”  “I know that look.  What happened, did the jerk break up with you?”

Emily bit her tongue.  Crying would give Maura too much satisfaction.

“He did!  He did break up with you!”  Maura clapped, and Emily saw her mother wince.

“Maura, honey…” Mrs. Grayson extended a hand toward Maura, who stopped clapping.  “That’s a little cold, don’t you think?”

Cold.  If Emily hadn’t been so miserable, she would have laughed.

Maura rolled her eyes and returned to the couch.  “Whatever,” she said.  “Maybe with the jerk gone you’ll come to your senses.”

Emily considered telling Maura that she still wasn’t going back to Harvard in the fall, or becoming a doctor, or dating boring Allan Ashbern, but she wasn’t confident that she could get through another argument without crying. Crying in front of Maura was unacceptable, so Emily stood in the doorway, silently wishing the couch would eat her sister while her mother gave her an awkward and entirely unexpected hug.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said, holding Emily at arm’s length and examining her for physical signs of heartbreak.  “I think it’s for the best, you know that, but I’m really sorry you got hurt.”  She pulled Emily close again, and Emily froze, afraid to break the spell.  “Why don’t you take a shower and put on something more comfortable.  We’ll go out for ice cream.”

The sad tears that Emily held back turned into relieved tears and threatened to make a break for it, but Johnny lumbered over and tugged her purse, saving her from weepy embarrassment.  She knelt in front of him and he grunted sympathetically.  “You want to go for ice cream?” she asked.

Johnny’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open in a big, drooly grin.

“Can you say ‘ice cream’?” Emily asked, and shushed her mother, who immediately began to offer the word in French and Italian.  “Ice Cream,” she repeated.

Johnny gave Emily a hard look, then, like he sensed how much she needed something to go right today, started working his mouth silently around the words.  The room held its breath.  “Ice Cream,” he said finally, his voice clear and surprisingly grown up.  After a moment of shocked silence, everyone clapped.

Emily didn’t think about Greg again until she was alone in her room, crying in bed after a very comforting dinner composed almost entirely of chocolate.  But she was more angry than sad, and murderous tears don’t lend themselves to sleep as well as heartbroken ones do.  With a 6am alarm looming, she gave up crying over Greg and went to sleep.

Emily wasn’t even sure what she was upset about.  Losing Greg, in the grand scheme of things, was a lot like losing a really ugly purse.  Yes, it is inconvenient to replace all your credit cards, but it isn’t like you have a sentimental attachment to the thing and you know you’ll be happy to buy a new one.  What Emily really mourned was the tour, which promised to be the first great adventure of her life.

Emily woke to find the freeze-out still on hold, presumably due to her broken heart, so she tried to look depressed at the breakfast table and enjoyed a pleasant conversation with her mother, who cooked scrambled eggs and told her she’d feel better in a few days, and her father, who grumbled about work and didn’t even mention Emily’s “dead end job at the grocery store.”  She arrived at Hal’s in a very good mood, all things considered, and danced through her morning cheerfully, in spite of Judy, who was in an extra foul mood, and Carol, whose terror of Judy sent her scrambling for cover at least once every fifteen minutes.

Another Visit From The Fortune Cookie Man

The Fortune Cookie Man arrived at noon, bought a muffin and a cup of terrible coffee, and settled himself at a table in the café.  Emily was already there, eating the peanut butter and jelly sandwich that her mother handed her on the way out the door and thinking about how much better lunch tasted when someone else made it.

“Emily the Friendly Bakery Employee!” he announced cheerfully, pulling a chair up to Emily’s table.  “How are you doing with that life of yours?” he asked.  “Living it?”

Emily put her sandwich down.  “Actually,” she said.  “I tried that.  Didn’t work out so well.”

The Fortune Cookie Man sipped his coffee.

“So I guess your cookie wasn’t right, after all,” Emily prodded, determined to make him admit it.

“Nope.”  He broke a corner off the muffin and chewed it thoughtfully.  “Can’t be that.”  He concentrated on something just over Emily’s head, then hoisted his backpack into his lap.  After quickly examining its contents, he turned his attention back to Emily.  “Why don’t you tell me what happened, and we’ll figure it out together?”  He spoke like a man who was about to diagnose an illness, or fix a broken car, and not like a man arguing with a stranger who thought his magic cookies were full of crap.

Emily would have walked away, but she had 20 minutes left of her lunch break and not much else to do, so she explained everything to the Fortune Cookie Man, who listened intently, nodded encouragement now and then, and patted Emily’s hand sympathetically at the end of the story.  “So you see?” she asked when she was done.  “It turns out Greg was a jerk.  So much for living my life.”

The man jumped up, stabbing his finger in the air, and Emily wished a floating light bulb would appear over his head to complete the picture.  “That’s it!” he cried.  “That’s just it!  Don’t you see?”  He sat down and leaned forward, clasping his leathery hands on the table and crushing what was left of Emily’s sandwich.  His fingernails were cleaner than they were the day before, she noticed, but also a little red, like he had been scrubbing them. “You weren’t living your life.  Think about it!  What did this Greg character represent to you?”  He leaned back, oblivious to the blobs of peanut butter clinging to him.

Emily scooted her chair back.  “I don’t know… I guess he was… a little dangerous.  Different.  Artistic.  What can I say?  I like bad boys.”

The Fortune Cookie Man flicked her comment away like a professor disappointed in a student’s answer.  “No.  I didn’t ask why you liked him.  That’s obvious enough.  I’m asking what he represented to you.  Why did you hear ‘live your life’ and think ‘run away with bad boy Greg’?”

Emily’s eyes slid across the table as the answer became perfectly, horribly clear.  “He was the opposite of what my parents wanted,” she whispered, startled by her own predictability.  She stuffed her ruined lunch back into its paper bag and handed the man a napkin.

The Fortune Cookie Man grinned proudly, his head bobbing up and down like Emily just solved a difficult equation.  “Exactly,” he agreed.  “So you see?  You didn’t fail at living your own life.  You saved yourself from living someone else’s.”  He paused to peek inside the backpack again.  “The question, of course,” he said, shaking his head at whatever he saw inside the bag.  “Is what to do next?”

Neither one of them had an answer, but Emily’s lunch break was over.  “I guess I work the rest of my shift next,” she offered.  The man nodded absently.  He was done with the conversation for the day.

[Find out what Emily decides to do with her life next week!  And please consider sharing this.  I know I beg you to do that every week and it must be getting old, but I really want more readers!  And thank you to everyone who has been posting this all over the internet and making my blog statistics less depressing - you're the best!]

The War At Home

Returning to Hal’s the next morning with two large iced coffees and an apron full of Easter candy that must be past its sell-by date, Emily was grateful for her crappy job.  After arguing with her parents, Maura, and know-it-all Ted for two hours after the anniversary dinner, she thought moving in with The Creep might be better than spending the rest of the summer with her family.

This argument was, by far, the worst one yet, because everyone attacked at once.  Since returning home, Emily’s main method of defense was to avoid any situation that involved more than two of her family members in the same room at the same time, because she knew her shaky life plan wouldn’t survive an all-out assault.  But they caught her last night, tired and covered in play dough and grape juice, and told her exactly what they thought of her bad attitude, future prospects, and no-good boyfriend, otherwise known as Greg.

Emily’s family had an excellent plan for her, if only she would follow it.  It started with a respectable summer internship that her parents could tell their friends about without receiving condolences.  Then, of course, there was Harvard, where she would return in the fall to work hard, but not too hard, for straight As.  She would go from there to medical school, and at some point she would marry boring Allan Ashbern.

“I can get you a date with him this weekend,” her mother promised, as if doubt as to Allan Ashbern’s availability was the main thing keeping Emily and Greg together.  “He will drop everything, to see you.”

Emily didn’t doubt it.  Dull, clumsy Allan had been dropping everything for her since second grade, and she was never going to be interested in dating him.  This revelation did nothing to improve her standing with the family, and she retreated to her room in tears, not quite sure who won the argument.  She listened to her mother, cooing goodnight to Johnny, and wished she was three years old again.

The Dim, Flickering Light At The End of The Tunnel

Greg was Emily’s only legitimate escape route from her summer of torture.  Sure, it would be uncomfortable to join Greg on his summer couch surf, which would take him from one friend’s grungy basement to another until the tour started in September, but it was an option, and Emily clung to the idea like the life raft under an airplane seat.  You don’t want to need it, but you’re glad it’s there.  Emily gave his phone number a hard look, sure wasn’t that desperate yet.

“What the heck took you so long?”  Judy snatched her coffee and reached into Emily’s apron to scoop out the candy as soon as Emily entered the bakery.

Emily considered yelling “sexual harassment” just to see what color Judy would turn, but the memory of Carol and the fruit display kept her quiet.

“Oooooooooooh!  Cadbury Eggs!  In June?”  Judy held two handfuls of shiny gold eggs out to Carol and beamed like she just won the lottery.

Emily hoped the chocolate would give her food poisoning, partly because she deserved it, and partly because it would force Emily to work late.  She grabbed an armful of bread and started slapping stickers on the bags, hard.  If she had been working in the produce department, her bad mood would have bruised a lot of fruit.

An Interesting Visitor

“Excuse me?”  Emily glanced at the clock, then at the customer, who was smiling at her from the other side of the counter.  She couldn’t believe that she lost a whole hour to labeling bread.  “Excuse me,” he repeated, when he saw that he had her attention, “do you have any more blueberry muffins?”  He spoke politely and pointed at the empty space behind the “blueberry muffins” sign.

Emily shuffled back to the kitchen and returned with a tray, which she slid into the display case.

“Thank you so much.”  The customer selected a muffin and slid it into a bag.  “Can I pay you and eat it here?”  He indicated the little cluster of round tables just outside the bakery department.

Emily shrugged.  She could imagine nicer places to eat on the top of an active volcano, but he was free to spend his morning at Hal’s Grocery if that was his idea of a good time.

“Thank you so much.”  He placed the muffin, along with a cup of weak grocery store coffee, on the counter, and she rang it up.  “Your name is… Emily?” he asked, squinting at her name tag.  “And you’re a… Friendly Bakery Employee?”  Emily sighed and nodded.  “It’s nice to meet you, Emily.”

Emily smiled again, wishing creepy men wouldn’t pay so much attention to her.  But this customer wasn’t really creepy.  He was dressed normally enough, in jeans and a black shirt, and he took dollar bills out of a respectable leather wallet.  He had a baseball cap on and an old, patched backpack over his left shoulder.  The largest patch said “C.O.W.S.” and the brightest one, located on the strap, right over his heart, was a little cluster of glittering stars.  Emily tried to decide how old he was, but couldn’t.  The lines on his face didn’t match the muscles on his arms.   He tipped his hat gallantly as he relocated his coffee and pastry to the sad little grocery store “café.”

“Emily, you’re on ten minute break!” Carol squeaked, her eyes darting from Emily to the clock.  “Judy will…”

“I know, I know, Judy will be mad.  I’m going.”  Emily clocked out, poured herself a cup of coffee, and joined the customer in the café.

Fortune Cookies

“Emily the Friendly Bakery Employee,” he announced as she seated herself at the farthest possible table from him.  Since the café only had five tables, and none were bigger than a large dish, this put her approximately seven feet away from her new friend.

She nodded agreeably, then pulled a book out of her purse and slowly scanned the first 20 pages without reading them.  She glanced at her watch, then at the man, whose bright blue eyes twinkled at her from across the café.  They were kind eyes, she decided,  not creepy ones.  She stood up and stretched, ready to label more bread bags.

The customer cleared his throat. “You need to live your life,” he commented.

Emily stopped in her tracks.

“That’s what this says.”  He held up a little strip of paper, and she saw the remains of a fortune cookie on the table in front of him.  “I think it was for you, not for me.”

Emily wondered if his backpack was full of crumbled fortune cookies traveling the world in search of their true owners.  They certainly didn’t sell any at Hal’s.  He was holding it out, expecting her to take it.

“Umm… thanks,” she said, accepting the little white paper.  His hand was rough when it brushed against hers, and his fingernails were black around the edges, like he had been working with something greasy.  “I’ll… see what I can do about that.”

“Good!” The customer stood and brushed crumbs off his pants.  “Because you’re a bright girl, and you should be making your own decisions.”  He slapped Emily on the back like a gym teacher.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Great, Emily thought.  He’s going to make it a regular thing.

Desperately Calling Greg

She returned to the bread bags and tried to push the strange customer out of her head, but she kept feeling around in her apron pocket for the fortune, and thinking about the phone call to Greg.  Finally, at 5:16, with Judy bellowing behind her and Carol huddled under the cheese counter, Emily dialed his number.

“Um, hi, I’m calling for Greg?” she said uncertainly to the woman who answered the phone.

The woman giggled.  She wanted to know who was calling.  Emily felt her heart drop to approximately knee level, then lurch back up to mid-thigh.  Keeping her wits about her, she pretended to be Greg’s sister.

“Hoooooooooney,” the woman crooned.  “Honey?  It’s your sister.”  Her voice dropped to a stage whisper.  “Want to call her back after we have es-ee-ex?”

Emily heard a wet smooching sound, then another giggle.  Her heart toppled into her sneakers.  Her brain, stubbornly detached, wondered what made the girl think that Greg’s sister couldn’t spell.

“I’ll call her back later, baby,” Greg whispered, planting another loud kiss on the girl.

The line went dead, and Emily dropped onto a bench.  So much for the life raft.  She found the fortune, crumpled it up, tossed it between her feet, and ground it under her shoe like it was on fire.

[Please, if you liked this even a little bit, share it with your friends!  Thank you so much for reading!  And don't forget to come back next week...]

Mythical Hal, Pineapples, and the Rest of Emily’s Workday

Although Emily spent her work days wishing she could go home, she was never happy to get there, and she found herself inventing extra tasks to keep her in the bakery after her shift ended at 5pm.

“Aren’t you off now?” Carol whispered, leaning close to Emily like she was telling a big secret.

Emily shrugged and continued scrubbing the counter.

“Judy will be mad if you don’t clock out on time,” Carol reminded, anxiety tugging her eyebrows up in the middle and down on the sides.  She fluttered between Emily and the clock like a very tall, flightless bird.

Emily glanced at Judy, then at Carol, then at the clock.  It was 5:05, and Carol was right.  Judy would be mad if Emily didn’t clock out on time.  She would turn red, and yell, and make vague threats about reporting her to “Headquarters,” the mythical place where the Mythical Hal reviewed complaints about his minions.  None of this bothered Emily, who had  no interest in impressing Hal, or Judy, and didn’t live in fear of losing her crappy summer job at the local grocery store.  But the last time Judy got angry, Carol hid behind a fruit display for an hour, and Emily feared another outburst might cause a total mental breakdown.

Emily imagined Hal’s Grocery on lockdown while the police begged Carol to “put down the pineapples and come out with your hands up.”  It was an entertaining fantasy.  But then she looked at poor Carol, vibrating with nerves in the middle of the kitchen as her mental health puddled around her, and she pushed the idea away. “You’re right.  I better clock out,” she agreed.  “See you tomorrow.”

The Freeze-Out

Emily walked the half mile to her parents’ house very slowly, backtracking twice to save worms that were caught on the sidewalk and once to read a shopping list that someone dropped in the street. She never had to think of it as her “parents’ house” before, but she had never been a 19 year old college “drop-out” before.  She had always been an obedient little honor student, and obedient little honor students were allowed to consider their parents houses their own.  Once you decide, without consulting your over-achieving mother and father, to take a year off from Harvard, you lose certain privileges.

Emily walked up the long, winding driveway, dreading the strained small talk she would have with her mother before escaping to her room until dinner time.  She had endured the punishment, which she referred to as “freeze-out” and her mother denied entirely, since announcing that she would take a year off from Harvard to travel around the country with her boyfriend’s band.  Emily didn’t know if the freeze-out was a standard punishment for wayward daughters, or if it was something invented by her mother, but she knew she hated it.  It was like the silent treatment, but worse, because it lacked the silent treatment’s one redeeming quality: silence.  When properly executed, the freeze-out makes its victim feel like she is universally disliked and also going insane.

Emily’s mother was a freeze-out professional, delivering minimalist lines with the perfect amount of cool disapproval.  Her father accomplished his part in the play effortlessly, although Emily wasn’t quite sure he knew the rules.  He was just at work or too exhausted for conversation almost all the time.  After two weeks and four days of the freeze-out, Emily crept around the house like a criminal, avoiding any interaction that might require a walk across the thin ice that was her mother, Anna Grayson.

A high powered attorney turned full-time Grandma to Emily’s nephew, Anna Grayson approached babysitting with the same hard work and determination that made her a terror in the courtroom, and Emily came home after work to find her on the floor, engrossed in a book entitled “The Bilingual Baby,” while the baby, three year old Johnny, sucked on a toy truck.  She didn’t look up when Emily entered.

“Hi Mom,” Emily said, already defeated.  Johnny looked up and grinned around the truck.  “Um… He probably shouldn’t eat that,” Emily suggested, reluctant to criticize her mother’s child care, but equally reluctant to deal with the aftermath of her nephew’s very avoidable choking death.

Emily’s mother whipped the toy out of Johnny’s mouth and pulled him into her lap, pointing resolutely at a picture of a giraffe.  “La girafe,” she said seriously, placing Johnny’s chubby finger over the picture.  “Can you say that sweetie?  It’s French.”

Johnny lifted the book, and Emily’s mother gasped in anticipation, believing her hard work was about to produce a French speaking baby.

Johnny experimentally poked the corner of the book into his mouth, and Emily’s mother deflated as her dream of a European vacation with her perfect oldest daughter, Maura, perfect handsome son-in-law, Ted, and perfect, bilingual grandson, Johnny leaped a little farther into her future.

Emily rolled her eyes, annoyed by her mother’s fixation on the trip.  Originally planned as a family vacation, it was now set to be a “bonding experience” – Maura’s words – for Emily’s mother and Maura’s family. Emily couldn’t imagine a bigger waste of an expensive vacation, and she constantly told herself that it was a blessing not to be included, but she still wanted to pull Maura’s hair out every time the subject came up.

Johnny drooled down the “zoo animals in France” page, then repositioned the book and started to chew it.

Mrs. Grayson hadn’t stopped talking about the European vacation since Johnny was born, and Johnny’s grasp of several foreign languages was, for whatever reason, a prerequisite to booking the plane tickets.  She spent the better part of the past three years and almost $25,000 on language learning programs and French and Italian speaking nannies, while little Johnny patiently gnawed the furniture.

The result of her efforts wasn’t so much a bi-lingual child as a not-at-all-lingual child.  Johnny identified what he wanted by pointing, resorting to guttural sounds when he wasn’t immediately obeyed.  Although his grunts were occasionally tinged with something that might have been a French or Italian accent, his primary response to his grandmother’s lessons was to retreat from language entirely.  The extent of his vocabulary was the word “Mama,” which he applied to anyone who fed him, including a succession of nannies and even Roberto the gardener, who brought him cookies on Wednesdays.  Emily didn’t doubt that he would, eventually, learn to talk, but she suspected that foreign language classes would always give him panic attacks.

Mrs. Grayson took the book out of Johnny’s mouth and flipped to another page.  “Here,” she said, pointing out a picture of a happy family around a dinner table.  “That’s a father, you see?  In French, father is un peré.  Can you say that?”

Emily considered asking her mother why she was teaching Johnny a concept in French that he clearly had no grasp of in English, but she didn’t have the energy for an argument over Johnny’s education.  Based on his development so far, it probably wouldn’t matter much.  Emily tiptoed past her mother, intending to hide in her room until dinner.

Miserable Maura and her Cave Man Baby

“Oh, Emily?”

Emily stopped.  “Yes, Mother?” she asked, her formality earning a glare from her mother and a barking laugh from Johnny.

“We’re taking Maura and Ted out for their anniversary tonight.  You’ll be watching Johnny.”

Emily groaned.  She hated watching Johnny.

“That is no way to respond to the prospect of an evening with your nephew,” Mrs. Grayson scolded.  “And I hope you remembered to buy your sister an anniversary card.”

Emily hadn’t even considered buying her spoiled brat big sister an anniversary card.  In her opinion, four years with know-it-all Ted Arlington was nothing to celebrate.  But she kept that to herself, and made some halfhearted noise about plans for the evening.  She figured she had nothing to lose.  The punishing night of babysitting was already on the table.

“You, my dear, do not have the luxury of plans while you live in this house as a college drop out.”

Emily wanted to say that she wasn’t dropping out, she was taking a year off to travel, and the two concepts were worlds apart.  Free-spirited but sophisticated and intelligent young women “took a year off” to broaden their horizons.  “Drop out” implied a bum under a bridge, drinking cheap wine straight out of the bottle and using textbooks as kindling.  But after having the same argument every day for more than two weeks, Emily could recite both parts and it always ended the same.  Her parents were pretty committed to the bum under a bridge interpretation.

“Whatever,” she said instead.  “I’m going to take a shower before I start my night of indentured servitude.”

Her mother shouted something about attitude as Emily disappeared upstairs to her bedroom and climbed over her disassembled dorm room and a semester’s worth of laundry.  Emily stood in the blissful silence of the shower until her skin wrinkled and dried out.  If she could count on anything, it was that no one in her family would bother her as long she had no clothes on.  But she couldn’t stay in the shower forever, and she wasn’t ready to take up nudism full time, so after an hour she dried off and dug a pair of relatively clean jeans out of the pile on her bed.

“Eeeeeeeemily!” Maura stomped upstairs, calling Emily like a dog, and Emily reluctantly emerged from her room to accept sticky, grunting Johnny from his impatient mother.  Maura held him at arm’s length to keep her dress clean, and he was grabbing at her pearls like a tiny drunk.  Emily, fresh from the shower, gingerly placed Johnny on the floor at her feet.

Emily evaluated her sister’s outfit, searching, in vain, for something nice to say.  Maura, who put her profession on like a uniform the day she graduated from law school, always looked like she was wearing a business suit, even in an evening dress, and tonight was no exception.  She was practical, with her simple black dress, conservative string of pearls, short, no-fuss hair, and square figure. Emily didn’t think she would win any points with Maura by saying that out loud.

“There you are.  Geez, I thought we were going to have to take him with us.”  Maura scowled, running one hand through her short, painfully highlighted hair and smoothing her dress with the other.

Emily wanted to say that Johnny was Maura and Ted’s fault, and he was also the only thing holding their marriage together, so they should take him out for their anniversary, but she kept her mouth shut.  She didn’t know how much the kid could understand, and it wasn’t his fault that he was an unattractive cave man of a baby.  She put him down and wished Maura a happy anniversary.

You Never Outgrow Free Candy

Emily looked at the crumpled bills on the counter, slimy from Judy’s buttery fingers, and scrunched up her nose.  “Can’t someone else go today?” she asked, but no one else would go and she knew it.  The question floated out of her mouth and into the bakery, where it was lost in the purr of a food processor.

“Get me a vanilla,” Judy shouted.  “Carol wants mocha.”

Emily choked back another complaint, flattened the slippery money, and dropped it into the front pocket of her apron.

“And bring all the candy back,” Judy added, as if Emily was a stupid, dishonest child.

Emily made a face at Judy’s fat bottom, which quivered like two overfilled jelly donuts inside her black, spandex, just-barely-work-appropriate pants, and reached under the counter for her purse.  Sure, she thought, I’ll bring it back.  Candy is exactly what you need.

“Don’t listen to her,” Carol whispered, scurrying up behind Emily and patting her shoulder lightly.  “It’s your candy.  You can have as much of it as you want.”

Emily forced herself to smile kindly at Carol, who looked like a terrified kangaroo and acted like she expected something heavy to fall on her at any moment, and they glared at Judy’s ass together.  Emily didn’t want the candy any more than she wanted an iced coffee drink from the gas station, but she was the youngest bakery employee at Hal’s Grocery and Judy ran everything on a strict seniority system, so she was the errand girl.  This arrangement might have been negotiable under other circumstances, but when Emily returned from the first coffee run with free candy, there was no going back.  Judy liked free candy.

Carol, who was only promoted from insect to regular employee when Emily arrived for work on the first day of summer break, tried to be helpful.  But she wasn’t entirely immune to an apron pocket full of half-melted chocolate.  “See if you can get a peppermint patty this time?” she asked shyly, peeking out from behind a mountain of bread dough.

Emily wanted to ask why on earth Carol couldn’t just buy a peppermint patty at the grocery store they all worked in, but she swallowed the question and left in a hurry.  It didn’t matter how old people got.  Logic never applied to free candy, and arguing about it was as pointless as distributing apples and toothbrushes on Halloween.

The Creep

Hot, wet, parking lot air licked Emily like a huge tongue when she passed through the automatic doors that separated Hal’s arctic climate from the rest of the world.  She squirmed inside her heavy shirt, which said “What can I help you with today?” and indicated that she was a “Friendly Bakery Employee.”  She didn’t feel friendly, she didn’t want to help anyone, and she wasn’t excited about returning, sweaty and shivering, to Hal’s refrigerator after her trip across the street.  She wanted to go home.

But Emily couldn’t go home.  She had to go to the gas station to fetch two frozen iced coffees while The Creep followed her breasts around the store with his beady eyes and silently pushed candy across the counter in a strange courting ritual that only he understood.  This had been Emily’s morning routine for exactly two weeks and four days, and would be Emily’s morning routine until sometime in early September.

Emily took a deep breath and plunged into the convenience store, which smelled like dirty feet and cigarettes and was empty except for The Creep.  An oldies station competed with the roar of static spilling out of a radio behind the counter, and flies buzzed ominously around a faded red shopping cart adorned with a sign that read “Fresh Produce.”  Something dripped thickly from the bottom of the cart, adding another layer to the convenience store symphony.  The Creep jumped when the little bell over the door jingled.

“Good morning.”  Emily kept her voice light and cheerful because she felt bad for The Creep, and also because he was the kind of guy whose mug shot would be featured on one of those news reports about murdered women that terrified Emily’s parents into believing that their daughters would be raped, tortured, and dumped in the woods if allowed outside after dark.  Emily walked the endless 20 feet from the door to the coffee machine, self-consciously flicking her wavy brown hair over her shoulder in a way that probably looked like flirting to the ever-hopeful Creep.

The Creep tried, and failed, to look appealing while his eyes crawled up and down Emily’s apron.  A few damp strands of red hair stuck to his bluish white forehead and his eyes were bloodshot.  His unnaturally red lips, always slightly puckered, were cracked, and pink blotches punctuated his neck in a way that suggested skin disease.  He was short and bony, with a surprising pot-belly and sharp fingernails.  Emily knew about the fingernails, because he tried to touch her hand every time she paid for the coffee.

“Hot day today,” she commented, as she placed a cup in the machine and pressed the crusty “Vanilla” button.  She found The Creep easier to deal with if she pretended to have a conversation with him.

He made an agreeable noise that had nothing to do with the weather, then leaned over the counter to get a better view.

“It’s almost Friday,” Emily added enthusiastically, filling the other coffee and taking the long way back to the counter to avoid the moldering produce cart.

The Creep attempted a winning smile, which made him look like a sick dog, and punched numbers into the cash register while examining every inch of Emily’s face.  She stood perfectly still, like a woman undergoing a delicate medical procedure, and pretended to be somewhere else.

“Thanks!” she chirped, placing exactly four dollars and twenty-seven cents on the counter, then snatching her hand back quickly.  Exact change spared her the five minutes it took The Creep to count coins while gazing at her hips, and she made sure she had it every day.

The Creep quivered as he took her money, then pushed a handful of chocolate hearts at her.  He looked up, his sick-dog grin a little wider, and she rewarded him with a forced, please-let-me-go smile.  His face stretched to painful proportions, then crumpled into an ugly grimace.  Suddenly he brightened, reached under the counter, and produced a bag of orange gummy cats, which he gleefully added to the handful of chocolate.

Emily thanked him and tried to leave, but he shoved a candy bar at her.  She thanked him again and stepped back, which caused his eyes to bounce like overheated frogs.  She stopped, afraid he would have a stroke and a 911 operator would insist that she touch him.

Satisfied that Emily wasn’t an immediate flight risk, the Creep cringed back under the counter and popped up with a candy ring, which he offered with a flourish.  She looked from the ring to The Creep, wondering if this was some kind of sugary marriage proposal, and thought about how nice it would be to go home.

[Come back next week to find out why Emily is having such an awful summer.  And please share this with your friends!  I'm really bad at advertising, and I need more readers...  Thank you so much for reading!]

CLICK HERE to see the article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution

Yes you read correctly. The fast food giant is trying a leaner and more healthy style of meal in some metro Atlanta restaurants. Yes it is a step in the right direction, but I firmly believe that it is not the job of the corporation to provide the healthy food, the parent should be providing the health food by not going to McDonald’s for breakfast every morning. Then we have to ask the real question, why does this parent have to take their child to McDonalds every morning? It’s cheap, fast, and always open. Our lack of societal stability keeps parents flowing into McDonald’s and every other fast food restaurant due to convenience and price. Keep the prices low and the fat content high, and you will continue to keep the customer happy. That is all for now…

He’s not the first one. Before him there were some other people including Malaysians who didn’t know how to speak in malay (Can you imagine being a Malaysian but cannot speak in the national language?). At first I was very nervous, since I can’t replace my lack of vocabulary with malay words, so I have no choice but to force my mind to think of something to say. It’s a practice for me. After a while I find myself looking forward to it XD

I’ve taken one more step ahead in my life.

I’m so tempted to resign…LOL j/k (not really). I’ve only worked for about a month. And I’m about to die out of boredom. My daily working life is, everyday I wake up at 6.00-6.30 am, get ready, then head out to bustop before 8. The time took for me to reach the showroom where I work is less than an hour, 40 minutes at most (if there’s no traffic jam). My working hour starts at 9.30. When I arrived, I sweep the showroom and the stairs outside~that took me about 15-20 minutes. Then I sit….waiting for customers to come in. there are days where no one even comes in. So yeah…now you understand why it’s so boring…and I’m all alone too in that room…9 hours a day…6 days a week…

someone please talk to me.

But recently I began to see my work as an advantage. In fact, I think there’s no better job for me. The free time I have in between tending the customers, I use to read, about entrepreneurship. I’m just starting, btw. So there isn’t much input I got in my head yet. And also, my work is about selling (it’s a kitchen cabinet showroom). Just what I need. Learning how to sell. The most important skill in an entrepreneur.

I’ve taken the first step. A HUGE first step.

A Step in the Right Direction is a sneaker based wearable technology project designed by MSTRPLN in collaboration with Ubiq boutique.

The idea of footwear was pushed further by converging elements of digital culture with fashion and design into a wearble technology. The end product is a sneaker designed to detect Wi-Fi wireless internet hot-spots wherever the user may roam, with every step.