The Time-Space Continuum (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} tuna_and_toast) wrote,@ 2008-12-05 03:11:00 |
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Silent Loud Music
I think originally I wanted to write about some bottled iced tea I bought at a gas station, and over the course of the day the post kind of evolved into something else.
I'll start with the tea because I was looking for some alternative to all the sugary sodas and such that line the shelves at these places, which I'll get to later. Not that Lipton isn't above using plenty of sweeteners, but this tea caught my eye. Apparently they've got a line of drinks now with rooibos as the primary ingredient, so I thought I'd try a bottle. This particular variety had blueberry and pomegranate flavor added, not to mention some actual brewed tea (which seemed odd to me that they would add camellia sinensis to a naturally caffeine-free tisane such as rooibos), but it was actually pretty good, since it didn't taste as sugared-to-death as some of the other bottled/canned teas out there. If you're looking for a new iced tea to try, I'd recommend it.
So the tea sounded really refreshing because it sounded all healthy and stuff--an alternative to the occasional Vitamin Water I've been drinking. The Hombre, however, doesn't like the fact that Vitamin Water doesn't like using very many capital letters on their packaging. At least they use proper spelling, grammar and punctuation besides that transgression, which is fine in my book for a freaking bottled fruit-flavored beverage, but hey, some people have higher standards than I do, and I can respect that. But I digress, sort of. The point is that I've been experiencing the waning days of a nasty head cold (with a strep throat intermission, though that seems to have cleared up with antibiotics), and I've been on a bit of a health kick as a result, or at least as much of a health kick as someone who feels rather helplessly surrounded by the array of fatty/salty/sugary convenience foods of a college student can be. I can't help but wonder if the Hombre and I and other recently-ill parties concerned haven't been digging our own graves with our poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, flip-flops-in-all-weather-mentality, and my own general Anxiety about Stuff.
I've been very much in the mood to point fingers: at the roommate who jacks up the A/C like some sort of half-penguin and somehow manages to booze away sickness, at myself for pulling all-nighters for school and murdering my immune system, at the Hombre and all my friends for seemingly having way more free time than I do and making me jealous of their apparent life of leisure. Right now I'm rather behind in my classes and have a very short amount of time to catch up. I'm leaving here in a week and would like to have some closure before then. There's something else I could go for but my illness discourages it. I suppose if I was a bigger fan of Christmas I could use it as motivation for overcoming all the obstacles I'm facing right now, but I guess I'm just another one of those grumpy pessimists lamenting the coming onslaught of commercialized forced artifice and excess. In a way I'm a bit envious of my sister, who has somehow managed to maintain a childlike enthusiasm for Christmas for the past 24 years. My sister is really kind of marvelous for that.
I think this points back to what I was saying about my Anxiety about Stuff. I'm pessimistic about the approaching holiday season, stressed (unnecessarily, I'd presume) about school, jaded (probably prematurely) in my attitude toward art, and all-around short with everyone around me, something I regret especially with regards to the Hombre, who's around me the most often and sees a majority of my yucky, bitter, unpleasant moments. Not that he'll be reading this, but I want to apologize. I probably will eventually, and maybe he'll probably say that I don't need to, but I just want to put that out there, have it be said. Perhaps when I'm done with my schoolwork for the semester and our ears have drained of whatever has been making us both half deaf, I can relax again. But right now it's 5 AM on a Thursday night/Friday morning, and "Under Pressure" has just queued up randomly into my music-induced bubble of solitude. Does it take a song about poverty to put things into perspective?
For those of you who are all "TLDR, fuck that shit": was sick, still kind of stressed, John deserves to have me acting less bitchy for once (and I deserve to feel less bitchy), and tea is yummy.
As a side note, one of the communities on LJ spotlight this week is for women who have had babies at 35 and older. My mother had her first child at 36 and, in retrospect, it had to be really tough for her to raise two daughters *and* be partner at an accounting firm all at once, and at her age. A lot of the moms of babies my age were probably not much older than I am now when they got pregnant. Regardless of how surreal it seems to me that my old middle school and high school friends are plastering Facebook with baby pictures, my mom was probably mostly peerless not only as the only female partner at her firm but also as being one of the only 40+ parents at PTA meetings (besides my dad, of course).
I need to give my mom a hug when I get home.
And I need to give my dad a hug, too, for being there for my mom and us.
I think originally I wanted to write about some bottled iced tea I bought at a gas station, and over the course of the day the post kind of evolved into something else.
I'll start with the tea because I was looking for some alternative to all the sugary sodas and such that line the shelves at these places, which I'll get to later. Not that Lipton isn't above using plenty of sweeteners, but this tea caught my eye. Apparently they've got a line of drinks now with rooibos as the primary ingredient, so I thought I'd try a bottle. This particular variety had blueberry and pomegranate flavor added, not to mention some actual brewed tea (which seemed odd to me that they would add camellia sinensis to a naturally caffeine-free tisane such as rooibos), but it was actually pretty good, since it didn't taste as sugared-to-death as some of the other bottled/canned teas out there. If you're looking for a new iced tea to try, I'd recommend it.
So the tea sounded really refreshing because it sounded all healthy and stuff--an alternative to the occasional Vitamin Water I've been drinking. The Hombre, however, doesn't like the fact that Vitamin Water doesn't like using very many capital letters on their packaging. At least they use proper spelling, grammar and punctuation besides that transgression, which is fine in my book for a freaking bottled fruit-flavored beverage, but hey, some people have higher standards than I do, and I can respect that. But I digress, sort of. The point is that I've been experiencing the waning days of a nasty head cold (with a strep throat intermission, though that seems to have cleared up with antibiotics), and I've been on a bit of a health kick as a result, or at least as much of a health kick as someone who feels rather helplessly surrounded by the array of fatty/salty/sugary convenience foods of a college student can be. I can't help but wonder if the Hombre and I and other recently-ill parties concerned haven't been digging our own graves with our poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, flip-flops-in-all-weather-mentality, and my own general Anxiety about Stuff.
I've been very much in the mood to point fingers: at the roommate who jacks up the A/C like some sort of half-penguin and somehow manages to booze away sickness, at myself for pulling all-nighters for school and murdering my immune system, at the Hombre and all my friends for seemingly having way more free time than I do and making me jealous of their apparent life of leisure. Right now I'm rather behind in my classes and have a very short amount of time to catch up. I'm leaving here in a week and would like to have some closure before then. There's something else I could go for but my illness discourages it. I suppose if I was a bigger fan of Christmas I could use it as motivation for overcoming all the obstacles I'm facing right now, but I guess I'm just another one of those grumpy pessimists lamenting the coming onslaught of commercialized forced artifice and excess. In a way I'm a bit envious of my sister, who has somehow managed to maintain a childlike enthusiasm for Christmas for the past 24 years. My sister is really kind of marvelous for that.
I think this points back to what I was saying about my Anxiety about Stuff. I'm pessimistic about the approaching holiday season, stressed (unnecessarily, I'd presume) about school, jaded (probably prematurely) in my attitude toward art, and all-around short with everyone around me, something I regret especially with regards to the Hombre, who's around me the most often and sees a majority of my yucky, bitter, unpleasant moments. Not that he'll be reading this, but I want to apologize. I probably will eventually, and maybe he'll probably say that I don't need to, but I just want to put that out there, have it be said. Perhaps when I'm done with my schoolwork for the semester and our ears have drained of whatever has been making us both half deaf, I can relax again. But right now it's 5 AM on a Thursday night/Friday morning, and "Under Pressure" has just queued up randomly into my music-induced bubble of solitude. Does it take a song about poverty to put things into perspective?
For those of you who are all "TLDR, fuck that shit": was sick, still kind of stressed, John deserves to have me acting less bitchy for once (and I deserve to feel less bitchy), and tea is yummy.
As a side note, one of the communities on LJ spotlight this week is for women who have had babies at 35 and older. My mother had her first child at 36 and, in retrospect, it had to be really tough for her to raise two daughters *and* be partner at an accounting firm all at once, and at her age. A lot of the moms of babies my age were probably not much older than I am now when they got pregnant. Regardless of how surreal it seems to me that my old middle school and high school friends are plastering Facebook with baby pictures, my mom was probably mostly peerless not only as the only female partner at her firm but also as being one of the only 40+ parents at PTA meetings (besides my dad, of course).
I need to give my mom a hug when I get home.
And I need to give my dad a hug, too, for being there for my mom and us.
