Not Goodbye, Adieu

I have never broken up with anyone before.
I married at age 19, to the first person I had ever kissed. Luckily for me, we still, after almost 15 years, like each other and more importantly still like kissing each other.
I dated guys before, but without an official break up. I usually phased them out, or they started phasing me out. This is how, we usually stopped dating.
This is the same with females in my life. We usually stopped calling each other or stopped hanging out and the plans to get together soon, halted completely.
Recently though, my best friend for the last couple of years, and I mutually broke up.
Our relationship had changed. I don't think it was intentional, I think it just happened. It happened at about the same time, with each of us spreading out in different directions. The strong pull we once had, was no longer there.
She e-mailed me and brought it up first.
I read what she had to say, and she was right. We were no longer "us", the "us" we used to be.
Our relationship began with one of us saving the other through means of being a "sounding board" for the other. This bonded us.
As the years went by, the obstacles were different. I didn't need to ask her for her opinion and she didn't need to ask me to figure out her puzzle either. And suddenly, very suddenly we no longer had things to talk about.
Thus the break up.
As I said before I have never broken up with someone before. I never had the courage to say, it's time, it's over.
Although there was never a sexual-anything with her, I still feel a deep sadness.
It was time. We both agreed it was the right thing to do. Moving on was the only thing to do.
But I still feel like a sliver of my heart was taken out. And that piece feels awfully hollow now without her.
I have this image or maybe a hope that we will be the kind of friends that enter and exit each other's life over and over again.
Maybe years from now we'll bump into each other and the conversation will be and as if the years hadn't passed us by, but rather had been put on "pause".
Perhaps this will happen, maybe it won't.
At any rate, I wish her luck. I wish her the best, and I wish her Adieu.

The Gandhi Complexion

Sometimes I want to just be in a bad mood. For no other reason than to be in a really rotten mood. This bugs and offends my husband a lot.
You see I am married to Gandhi, reincarnated as a 6 foot 3 inch Anglo Saxon. He doesn't understand why I get angry and why I can't just spin my upset into something positive. I respond with, "Because I can't" which isn't ever understood by him.
Thus, the Gandhi complex and thus why I can only pity Gandhi's wife.
I have this image I've concocted of Gandhi's wife (yes, he was married and had a bunch of kids, but of course, most people don't realize this).
I imagine Gandhi's wife, alone (Gandhi is missing dinner again), trying to convince her children to eat their vegetables.
"But I don't like Brussels sprouts!" One son is complaining.
"Oh, you'd better eat your Brussels sprouts, young man!" the tired and often lonely mother counters.
"But why? Dad doesn't have to eat his Brussels sprouts!"
"Are you trying to save your country? Are you? Well, as soon as you are saving your country like your father, then you don't have to eat your Brussels sprouts!"
*
I have told my husband my theory of his reincarnation. He asked me what he could do to change this (which is so...Gandhi-like in itself). I looked at him. And then I shouted, "Jeez! Would you just go eat a muffin Gandhi?"
To his infinite credit, he has tried (except he recently gave up sugar, so he'll have to figure out something else to eat instead...)
And so I am left to figure out how to get myself to eat Brussels sprouts and how I can spin it into being Hostess Ding Dongs.

Shoppin' Trip

Have you ever had one of those days? You know the one.
Well, I’m at the end of one of those days.
As I drudged back to Smith’s Market Place for the second time today, and the fifth time in two days, I started reviewing how many times I go back to the store in one day.
At least an average of two. Two times a day, six days a week.
And it’s not for groceries, or rather major groceries, it’s for simple things, one or two items I forgot, when I went major grocery shopping a few days before.
Or it’s for the three items I need to complete a recipe I want to try out.
And it gets more and more expensive each time I go on one of these “quick trips”.
The real problem is I live 1.7 miles away from the grocery store.
I can’t help but wonder if I lived further away, would I drive there so much?
Yes, I probably still would.
So tonight I found myself wanting to try out a frosting recipe.
Of course, I can’t make a regular frosting. I can’t even buy a less expensive ready-made frosting. I have to try a recipe I saw on The Food Network. And of course, I don’t have the ingredients on hand to do this.
I jump in my car, for my quick, secondary, jaunt and hurry into the store.
I always hurry into the store, as if I am competing in a grocery-store Triathlon.
I have my strategy already planned by the time I park my car.
My goal is usually to the tune of, “In and out in ten minutes”.
I don’t know why I do any of this.
I usually get the extra small shopping cart, thinking this will save me money, but never pick up just the basket because I always over fill those and it hurts hanging off my arm.
I dodge other “Triathletes” bobbing and weaving in and out of aisles, hurdling over and under people in my way of the Gelatin.
When I have gathered all my necessities, I sprint to the check-out and then decide it would be much faster to go through the self-check-out line. I am a pro-self-check-out-er.
After a day of feeling under appreciated and over worked, I have to begrudgingly explain I love going through the self-check out and not because it’s faster. The sad truth is that I secretly get a rush when I pull out my “Fresh Values” card and scan it.
I smile, every time, at the computerized voice, “Welcome Valued customer”.
A Valued Customer! Me! I know, I know pathetic.
But alas I never savor the moment, I am in a hurry.
I pick up my bag, (which incidentally this little trip cost me, $18, FOR FROSTING FIXINGS) and dash outside to my car that has a strategically placed scratch going from the driver’s side door to the back passenger door roughly the height of a grocery cart handle, and it is the second one I have gotten within two days.
One might wonder why I would do this, day after day, a couple times a day, and six days a week. I can’t answer that.
I can however answer why it was worth it this trip and it is because I am making brownies with chocolate frosting and anything that is chocolate and smothered in more chocolate is worth all other aggravations, that is if the frosting recipe actually works out.