America

Anne and I just spent an hour and a half looking around Eastport for a bar or restaurant that was both playing the American League Championship Series and had open seats. They were all full on this crisp autumn Friday night, the Irish pub, the steakhouse, the boat-themed bar, the pizza parlor, the ribs restaurant. Who are these people going to bars just because it's Friday? I know, I know--almost everybody. But Greg is not almost everybody. I was going to see the game, because I don't have a television. They were there to feel people all around them, be seen in their fashionably stupid club clothes, drink watery domestic beers and eat like primitive humans. Can you tell that I don't like these people? Oh, and also, someone's ass was in my damn seat. I don't know which seat was mine, but somebody else's ass was in it. No justice.

Then, because we failed to find any place to watch the game, we went shopping for groceries. (That's logical, right?) And since we were hungry, and it's been more than a week since we shopped, we got a lot of food. Like, a lot of food. How much food? A lot of goddamn food. $175 worth, to be exact.

Our shopping list probably accounted for a fourth of that. It was great fun, though. We just went from one aisle to the next like a ship of fools, loading the cart with sale items and all those things we were hungry for, all the things we would have been eating had we found an open bar seat with a television playing the ALCS. I have long been a sucker for retail therapy. Kay Duffy once saw me shopping for books and CDs at the library--this is many years back now--and said, "you're like a girl, aren't you? You shop when you're sad." Yes, I do shop when I'm sad. I don't think it makes sense to say this makes me like a girl because, well, which one?

But anyway, this was the first time shopping for groceries has ever had the same therapeutic value for me. Usually I feel anxious in the grocery store, never knowing what to get, always feeling like I can never think of the things I want when it's one in the morning and I need something to get me through another 100 lines of translating; when it's a cold weekday and I want something hot for lunch; when there's no plan for dinner and nothing in the house is fresh.

But this time, I thought of all the things.

Granola bars on sale? Sure, let's get two boxes of them. We got three bags of Utz potato chips, and five boxes of cereal. Beans were on sale, ten cents less per can than they are even at Trader Joe's, so we got six cans. I got wheat germ and yogurt, like Xhuliana once offered me when I stopped by her apartment at 3 a.m. on New Year's. I've never eaten pork and beans before, but that sounds good, I'll get a can of that. Hot dogs two for one! Ballpark franks aren't the best, but would that really bother me as long as there are hot dogs? Bread flour on sale! Celeste frozen pizzas ten for $10! What about those mixed nuts, do those look good? Sure, let's get two pounds of them. And ooh, caramels and apples! And some pumpkin spice tea!

I think I'll send the receipt to Eric in Berlin. I'll write on it, "America, fuck yeah."

Now we're home, and the game is over and was just archived on mlb tv, and we're going to have home-made "chicken wings" made with chicken breast, and we've already had a Celeste pizza each. Sometimes life is good.