Memoir Mondays!

I think I’ll probably spare you the amount of detail with which I go on about my shopping trips to CVS, but today at Stop&Shop I was pretty proud of myself. I was able to save a lot AND walk out having spent $48, which is under my weekly budget of $50! I haven’t been under my budget in a few weeks, so that makes me pretty happy.

With that $48 I was able to get myself three good size bags full of produce and other perishables (including not one, but two, containers of Presidenté Fat Free Feta cheese – oh, yeah) as well as an insanely overpriced bag of Timothy Hay for my guinea pig, three boxes of cereal, and TEN bottles of Diet V8 Juice! Sidenote: While I praise water and usually don’t even remotely condone juice-drinking because of the crazy-high amounts of sugar and calories… I love V8 Juice. And, no, they aren’t paying me to say this! Their juices are low-calorie and chock-full of heaping servings of vegetables! If there is a perfect juice, it’s V8 Tropical Fusion.

Lately, I’ve been reading My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler. I’ve also read Are You There Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea,also by her. So far I’m a pretty big fan of hers. She has a great comedic talent and, while I’m sure many of her stories are embellished for the book’s sake (as is, in fact, the job description of a comedian – so it’s okay), is a hilarious and ingenious writer, which I find impressive as her work is based almost solely upon public speaking. I imagine that it’s hard for most people in her line of work to put pen to paper so impressively.

Her narrative style gave me an idea for a new series in my blog… Memoir Mondays! I started this blog to share my love of cooking and healthy living, but also as a way to exercise my creative writing skills. I love to write, but don’t usually get everyday practice, even though I’m majoring in English. So this blog was a fun way to encourage myself to do it more while incorporating another love of mine (food). Every Monday, I’ll tell a story from my youth in a humorous light. And I’ll try not to be too narcissistic. Just kidding. I will be very narcissistic.

My first friends growing up were Katie and Jessica, sisters four years apart (one younger than me, one older), that lived diagonally across the street from me. As a four-year old, I looked up to Katie because she was six and knew everything. She was in the first grade and had experienced so much more than I had. She was even allowed to cross the street without asking her mom first. As worldly as she was, she decided that life on Harris Avenue wasn’t for us. We lived a life of hardship with bedtimes and timeout. It was time to run away immediately. We saw children on television do it all the time. Obviously if Stephanie from Full House did it, it was our destiny as well. The only problem was that it was December in Rhode Island. But that wasn’t going to stop us.

She outlined her plan… We’d each pack up a backpack full of food to last us while we were away, and at 12am I would go to her house where she would be waiting for me, wide awake with anticipation. Midnight was the most glamourous time of day imaginable. It was a time that I’d never been able to stay up to before, no matter how hard I tried. It was a time that I knew existed, but I’d never experienced first-hand. And I was ready.

For the next couple of days, I snuck away pudding snacks and pop-tarts when my parents weren’t looking and hid my stash in the coat closet where nobody would find it. Do vegetables actually do anything good for you? Probably not. On the decided night, I stared unblinking at the clock for three hours. Finally at 11:55pm I knew it was time. I crept out of bed in my floral cotton nightgown and slipped on my socks and shoes. I knew the best outfit for braving the snow would be my jammies. I quietly walked down the stairs, noting that my parents were already asleep, so I was probably safe. I opened the downstairs closet and pulled on my ultra-stylish floral winter coat, and completed the look with my fur-lined hood and red mittins. As I walked across the street I shivered in the cold winter air but knew our plan was still alive. When I got to the door I realized Katie hadn’t specifically told me where we were supposed to meet. I tentatively opened the screen door to their side of the duplex and knocked. No answer. I knocked again.

I grew angry as I waited for her to answer the door. It was cold and she was keeping me waiting, this was already off to a bad start. Maybe we weren’t cut out for this after all. Suddenly the door opened and I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I realized who was at the door. I pleaded with her dad not to call my parents after he explained that Katie and Jessica were both fast asleep in their beds. Terrified at the thought of hoofing it in the Woonsocket wilderness without Katie, I rushed across the street and back into my bed. As the door of my parents’ bedroom creaked open, I knew I was in for it. I stuffed my backpack underneath my bed and pretended to be asleep. Unfortunately it didn’t occur to me that Mom and Dad might think something was up when they saw me sleeping with my winter coat on. Damn my not yet fully-developed frontal lobe!