3

week two of my kentucky amuse bouche (since this stint's just eight weeks) has begun, and though i'm relieved that a schedule and routine of sorts has begun to take shape, new stress has swept in. part of the deal of me getting this job was agreeing to go wherever i was placed. and now i've gotten a list of seven offices and have to rank them by friday. there's a very good possibility that i'll get my sixth or seventh pick, since i'd guess that most peoples' rankings will be pretty similar, but i have to think that my input'll matter somehow. and so now i'm frantically trying to visit as many of these places in the next few days as possible and conducting google search after google search in the alternative.
it's hard though, because i'm not exactly sure how to express what i'm looking for. i tried to make a spreadsheet, since that's what responsible people always seem to do when faced with decisions (irresponsible people only make pro/con lists, and as so many romantic comedies have taught me, pro/con lists 1) never work and 2) invariably fall in the wrong hands), but i don't know how to quantify my criteria. i mean, i could survey each place to see whether there's a local NPR station and what the produce aisle in the grocery store is like, but i only started listening to NPR two weeks ago, and as i like to imagine it, i will be growing most of my own produce or buying it from local farms anyhow (oh michael pollan--your dumb books have set me up to feel guilt every time i buy non-local fruit or vegetables or anything, really). plus, if i absolutely needed organic farms and liberal chatter, i should have just stayed in northern california.
so much of liking a place or not comes down to whether i find kindred spirits (too bad anne of green gables can't exist and live in 2009 kentucky) and there's no easy way to quantify that. this whole "making friends as an adult out of school" thing is confounding, and it makes me feel like i missed something crucial at some point. small talk is easy, but that move from acquaintance to friend? one of the most miraculous transformations ever. and hopefully one that's possible in any of the places, but it's hard to know beforehand. so instead i'll look at real estate prices and unemployment rates and drive through the streets and look for people who look friendly, hoping all the while that trolling around at fifteen mph in a car with california plates doesn't look too creepy.

2

when particularly tired or frustrated (like i seem to be a lot these days), i turn into scarlett o'hara. or at least i find myself proclaiming "as god is my witness, i'll . . ." in order to spur myself on. while the pile of unfolded clothes on my bed did look overwhelming, it wasn't exactly post-sherman tara proportions.
i also find myself incredibly self-congratulatory about the smallest things, as if i know that i'm overwhelmed with moving and dealing and so the fact that i did fold and put away the clothes, or wash the dishes, or finally buy a red onion (not that i have a knife yet to cut it with; today's missing discovery: no baking sheets) is adequate grounds for celebration. or at least a silent "woo hoo."
i am trying to collect observations about kentucky and turn them into wry "southerners! they're not just like us" anecdotes. and there have definitely been some: the extensive grits selection at meijer, the so-thick-as-to-qualify-as-dripping accent on the coordinator at my bar class, getting interviewed on the local news last night at dinner about "billy suing". but just like luke says that smart is smart, strange is strange; if i weren't here, i'd be somewhere else collecting snippets to share about that place's wackiness. not that i'm going to stop, but i wonder how long it'll take me to stop noticing the grocery stores or the accents or start thinking of calipari as a potential savior and not an inveterate cheat. to crib badly from the grapes of wrath, when does the "i" become "we"?
all this navel gazing makes me nostalgic for birkenstocks; if i'm going to muse like i'm sixteen, i might as well dress the part.

1

Oh man, did I need Meijer today--thank god the closest one is only a mile away. This was an especially expensive trip because the woman I'm subletting from, Q, and I have some different ideas about what exactly is needed around the apartment.
A partial list of what I just bought:
1. a non-plastic mattress cover, to replace the not non-plastic one on there when I arrived.
2. one kleenex box. My mom raised us to always have a kleenex box within arms' length (I'm too tired to figure out where that apostrophe goes--this looks the least wrong) and now places without kleenex boxes make me uncomfortable (maybe this was at the heart of my issues with law school?). I had three boxes in my room at school, but even I realized that was overkill.
3. a bath mat. There wasn't one here when I moved in, which makes me think either that Q hid the bath mat because she doesn't trust me not to pee on it or that she doesn't own one at all and steps out of the shower onto linoleum. I can't figure out which is more offensive.
4. silverware. Q's from China originally, and I was sort of curious to snoop through the kitchen and see how it differered (no peanut butter but several jars of pickled stuff in the fridge). I already put away the rice cooker that was on the counter and packed up the eleven different bottles of black and brown liquids, and I guess I sort of thought that was it. Until I opened all the drawers this morning looking for a spoon and realized that there wasn't one. Or a fork, or knife. Instead there's a cup mounted on the wall with chopsticks in it, which is all fine and good except that, unlike Suri Cruise (see here), I cannot eat all my food with chopsticks. Especially yogurt and cereal, two key staples in my diet. I had to go buy silverware at Meijer just so my slovenly white American self can get Cheerios to mouth. Only now I wish I had done an even better job snooping, because in putting away my nine bags of stuff, I also realized that there aren't any knives at all in the house except for the cleaver.

And while it's true that I am not an Ish-level cook and the prospect of making it through a summer with only a cleaver and dinner knife does make for a limited but potentially hilarious blog, I don't think it's going to cut it (ha!).