I've apparently taken a sabbatical from writing this winter. The term really did get off to a promising start, one filled with many juicy topics for columns: "My Life as a TA," or "Embarrassing Oneself in Front of 44 Students by Acting Out a 19th Century Romanticist Painting and Ending Up With Rug Burns," "Winter Does the Darndest Things" or "Wow! It is Cold in Hanover in January," "Katie Greenwood, Katie Greenwood, Katie Greenwood" and of course, the ever-popular "Rant Against Ex-Boyfriends Everywhere" or "Being Broken Up Means Get Your Hand Off My Ass." And I did, in fact, write quite a few columns. They just never made it to The Dartmouth. So what did I do with the time I had, since I wasn't publishing columns? Well I sure as hell wasn't "dating the editor," as we say in Miami.
Exercise, knitting, mind-altering drugs -- all normal ways people deal with and relieve stress. Baking two cakes in one night, roasting a chicken for a dinner alone and combing the Co-op for fresh cranberries -- not traditional activities associated with relieving anxiety. But, well, no one's called me traditional ever since I started mixing Cheerios and Frosted Mini-Wheats for breakfast back in '87.
Some people spend all their money on clothes or drugs or books. I spend most of my money on food that I bake, broil, steam, saut, wrap in parchment paper and julienne for other people.
This afternoon, when I found out that my yoga class was cancelled, I immediately thought to myself, "Oh good, I have time to go to the Co-op to get stuff for tomorrow's dinner. And I can bake that ricotta cheesecake." On my way to the Co-op, my heart began to race. I repeated my mantra: "Only stuff for dinner tomorrow. Follow the grocery list. Follow the grocery list."
I walked through the doors, embraced by the produce department, tantalized by the red grapes on sale for $1.99 a pound, the baby cucumbers fresh from Florida. "I'm from Florida," I reasoned with myself, "I have to buy these."
And then I remembered the sour cream sitting in our fridge at home, about to expire. "I have to use that up before it goes bad," I rationalized, "I better make a blueberry sour cream coffee cake." And once I started buying blueberries, there was no turning back. Ricotta salata, Nicoise olives, arugula, lamb, chocolate chips in bulk: I was unstoppable.
Soon I found myself using other people as an excuse for my habit. Like a social smoker, I pretended I was just a social baker, not an addict. I threw dinner parties, sometimes having more fun preparing the dinner than enjoying the guests. There's nothing like buying 15 pounds of chicken for a party of eight. I still have chicken in my freezer. Approximately five pounds of chicken in my freezer.
Of course, one can also rationalize eating at home because of the rampant disease-carrying bacteria and viruses on every surface of the campus. Forget how dirty the bathroom doorknobs are -- have the '04s gotten last fall's chlamydia and gonorrhea under control yet? And the BlitzMail computers? A veritable smorgasbord of Staphylococcus and E. coli, not to mention pink eye. Of course, those of us astute readers have known about the possibility of a pink eye epidemic since Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2001 (The Dartmouth, "The Pink Zone").
A full four months before The Eye gripped people's hearts and irises with terror, four months before friends were locked out of their own rooms and sent to eat alone at other tables, we were all warned about its perils.
Our own modern-day oracle, our own Rasmussin, Abbye Meyer '02, wrote: "Mine is a story to be read carefully and remembered, for maybe someday someone will be spared these tortures I have suffered On Tuesday, I was diagnosed with and treated for conjunctivitis, commonly referred to as pink eye. As I swallowed my pride and wiped away tears, the doctor sought to explain my case. 'Do you use public computers?'"
Meyer ended with, "Be warned." It seems no one heeded her tale of rosy woe.
I washed my sheets in hot water just in case some pink eye got on them when my friends (several of whom are afflicted) visited my apartment last night. I crammed them full of peanut butter cookies and homemade caramel, chicken and rice and espresso from Miami until they couldn't keep their grimy pink eyes open.
Hey, you know what they say: "Starve a fever, feed pink eye."
