Menus make my brain quietly short-circuit. My consciousness crawls into itself and mews "help me" from some dark corner under the bed. I frantically cast about for some shiny thing to catch my eye and point "urg give me. daniel want" This results in my acquisition of such delicacies as the Arby's Berry something milk shake. A sickly sweet concoction of what tasted like whipped cream and some sort of viscous "berry" flavored syrup that made my teeth hurt and my head ache. Today I got a cookie-dough blizzard-esque thing from a local ice cream establishment simply because it was the first thing I saw on the menu. I do not like decision making any more. The overabundance of choices scares me. On a brighter note I avoided projectile vomiting said blizzard-esque frozen treat all over the car on the way home.
My mom made a ham for lunch/dinner today. My reservations about eating pork are suspended until I can convince myself to stop making a pilgrimage to the kitchen every 35 minutes for another slice. I usually eat it with my eyes closed.
There are things here of which I am unfamiliar. Yesterday my mom scanned her iphone at Starbucks. My jaw dropped. She and the cashier thought this was funny. I am still not sure what pinterest and reddit are. Or if they are actually different things. I do not know what a frappaccino is. Or even if that is how you spell it. The cashier at Starbucks asked me if i wanted one in lieu of a smoothie. I said "yes" because I felt like little adventure into the unknown. I have discovered that people think you are weird if you are a 31 year old white male and are fingering dimes and asking your sister if they have always been so small.
It is cold here. I sleep under my down comforter at night with the window open. Due to engrained physiological reasons, I can not understand sleeping without a fan on when there is one readily available. This might be due to months of laying awake at night in a puddle of sweat wishing I had a fan. Anyway, according to the weather men on TV, this is a "welcome cool-down" period. I shiver. 90f + humidity isnt hot. 120 is.
Along the same lines, I think that America has fetishized air conditioning. My mother and I went to see my great-aunt Ruth yesterday. She is in a very nice assisted living home, is 92, and probably will not last another month. It is a good thing I moved up my COS date. Anyway, we walked into her room, which is larger than my house in Togo, and she was in bed wearing a shirt, a sweater, and curled up under 2 blankets. I felt like joining her. She kept complaining that her hands were numb. My fingertips were cold. I looked around for a thermostat or something, but there wasnt one. We both would have been a lot more comfortable without a/c and the window open. Why does a residence/facility for the elderly need to be kept at near arctic temperatures? It seems like this is less for the residents and more for the people who work there.
The human body is extraordinarily capable of adapting to many different climates and temperatures. This is why people live in Africa as well as in Siberia. Air conditioning, and the 68 degree standard that seems to have been elevated to a natural right by this point, is another societal myth of happiness. Sort of like the myth that everyone needs to have a personal automobile.
Rant ended. Off for more ham.
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