Aya

It’s a jungle out there.  In my apartment complex that is but let me gross you out first. My training is finally becoming rough and my body is weary.  I had a strange feeling in my foot the whole time I was jogging (indoors, if I may add).  Not a burn or an itch, not even a cramp.  More like someone took sandpaper and was removing 15 layers of skin.

Anywho, I came home on Saturday, took off my beat up sneakers but not my socks as they had fused with my skinless foot.  It took 30 minutes of gasping pain to free it and I earned myself a wonderful do-nothing Sunday at my balcony with my camera.

I’ve spent the better part of my life in urban areas, mostly rife with sore-filled indigents, psychotic cops, and gun-touting grade 3 drop-outs.  When I could move, I moved to a gated community just around the corner.  There are still psycho cops and smelly crazies around but they have good credit.

Despite the fence and fancy cameras, I can see a love hotel from my window. It is an hourly rate hotel (a whorehouse for those of you living in a civilized part of the world where whores and Johns hide their nastiness).

What’s so special about my neck of the concrete jungle this time around?  It mixes the quaint with the degenerate.

Fellow bloggers and lurkers meet Pool Boy Extraordinaire.  A young, slight, cheerful boy who spends hours and hours picking wayward toads and fake leaves from the pool.  I’ve always wondered about pool boy tales. What does the pool boy have that the FedEx dude or the fridge guy with the hairy crack doesn’t?  I have no idea but they are hag magnets.

Speaking of hags, please meet La Slut d’Unit A.  A woman who sunbathes for hours, exposing her lumpy body to all and scaring young children.  She would go up to the poor boy and start rubbing his shoulders.  I get this urge to club her with my tote bag as I walk to the mailbox.

Apparently I’m not the only one with the urge.  The boy’s mother (who also works in the complex) witnessed his molestation once and did not approve at all, making for a perfectly trashy afternoon fight.  Why can’t I be somewhere in New York going to a museum or seeing a Broadway show instead of this? Sigh.

Finally, meet ex-prince charming, my summer long companion (okay maybe a couple of weeks).  He scares me every morning when I step out of the apartment.  I tried to take his picture but he’s too fast so I got a picture of his cousin.  He stares even if I point my shoe at him. What? I think he’s telling me something. Break your spell? Not on your life!  Not after you had litter with the hussy frogette next door.

What’s with shameless people?  Huh?  What?

I’m sick of strangers who think that they can walk up to you and tell a dirty joke or talk about their sex lives.  I am sick of people.  No, I don’t hate people.  Okay, maybe I do a little.  But my problem is with fools who have no sense of shame at all.

This Asian woman from the HR department shows up out of nowhere.  Starts talking about her husband’s diabetes.  No problem.  I gave her my usual 60 second mental deadline before I cut her off.  At 48 sec., she starts talking about his problems with keeping an erection.  WHAT!  I think I threw up in my mouth.

I’ve seen a picture of her husband on her desk, they’re both in their late 50s.  All that sagging skin rubbing up against each other.  Dammit I have a vivid, cartoonish imagination.  “I can always tell the difference, you know”, she says.  WTF!  No, I don’t know.  I could’ve gone to my grave without the details and the damn imagery.

And then this idiot from acquisitions walks into our office space and grins.  His fat face and triple chins distracting to no end.  “Guess what?, he exclaims.  I’m on the phone with a client so I try to ignore him but the fool in the next office asks “what”.  “For every 10 pounds they lose, overweight guys can gain an inch……”.  I didn’t let him finish, I put my hand on the phone and told him to kindly converse elsewhere.  Honestly, people have no shame.  The last thing I want to hear about is this fool’s struggle with an innie.

Look, I’m no prude but people need to check themselves.  I don’t stand next to them and unwedge myself while I talk about my gyn appointment and I sure don’t walk into their homes, pull my panties to the side and urinate on their children.  You gotta check yourself before you open your big mouth.  We don’t know each other like that.

Now if Terrence Howard wanted to start up a little convo about a little somethin’, then I might listen.  A little.  You know.

I came home bone-tired from a day of lectures and 5 hours on my feet at my part time job.  I had loaded the pantry at home with my favourite whole grain bread and the fridge with diced vegetables & fruits.  I was going to eat healthy food, dammit, no matter what.

Guess who I found as I settled in: my 30-something year old cousin who was on his 3rd week of a weekend trip watching TV in the basement.  He had nearly half of my weekly eat-well food on a table.  What happened next is a mystery to me.  The state of fugue lasted for about a week but my mother gave me a dirty look every time she passed the bowl-shaped hole in her basement wall.

I don’t care who you are and how much money you have, eating well is a deliberate and conscious effort.  There is a reason why the portions at restaurants are huge.  The food may look and even taste like food but it is more poison than nourishment.

Here are two things that work for me in shopping for food:

Measure the distance between the earth and the food.  Check out how far the food you’re about to put in your mouth has veered since it was made in God’s good earth. A carrot grown in an organic farm would be on one (good) end of that spectrum and a grocery store donut on the other (terrible) end.  Get as close as you can to the good end of that spectrum in most meals.

1. Switch all your bread products to whole grains for the fiber and proteins.  Not whole wheat but whole grains.  It will taste a little weird at first and have these lumpy grains in them but you will love the taste after a while.
2. Make sure that you have at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetable.  This is the advice you’ll see everywhere but I say easily double that.
3. If you’re like me and milk makes you gag, mix it with fruit and/or have yogurt.  Go for low fat or no fat.  Only babies should have that horrid full fat one.
4. If you’re a girl who bleeds like a vampire’s mistress, put spinach and beans in your diet.
5. Stay away from red meat as much as possible, even the halal stuff.  It is just hormone-injected, heart-clogging nastiness.  Once or twice a week is more than enough. Replace it with beans or fish.

Be judicious in how long you cook your food.  Some food like tomatoes have wonderful stuff come out when cooked.  Most lose their nutrients.  Your mom’s bariis and hilib followed by halwo is great for a nomad who doesn’t know when he or she will eat next but will make you a candidate for bypass in the future.

Read up on Asian and Mediterranean diets.  Before McDonald’s, Pizza hut, hormones and steroids made their way into the diets of these people, they enjoyed fresh food and were spared the dreadful Western diseases.

1. Eat mostly food that you have prepared or packaged.  I eat out at least twice a week, mostly lunch with a client but even then, I choose something like grilled chicken with either a salad or long grain rice.
2. Eat fish at least twice a week.  Canned tuna is good and cheap, I put it in my salad.
3. Pack your lunch to school and/or work at least 4 out of the 5 business days.
4. Eat/drink at least 1 thing that you absolutely love per day. Can’t give up that latte or swiss cheese sandwich?  Don’t. The goal is to avoid eating yourself to death but not making food the only thing you think about.

Money is always an issue when shopping for food.  However, you’d be surprised how much you save if you shop once or twice a week for these essentials:

1. Whole grain bread.
2. Fruits and vegetables.  Frozen vegetables are great if you’re so busy that cutting up and storing away veggies for the week are out of the question.
3. Fish like tuna, beans, and organic meat/chicken (1 or 2 times/week).

Any tips you would like to share?

There are a few reasons that make it difficult to eat well:

1. Healthier food (organic or unprocessed) can be expensive.
2. Living with family means that you eat communally and may have little input in food choice.
3. You have such a busy work/school life that preparing much of your meals is too difficult.

I hate being trampled at a farmer’s market and can’t stand to cook a major meal 2 days in a row.  I’ve struggled quite a bit with staying within a food regimen mainly because I am lazy.  What I’ve discovered, though, is that having a regimen may not suit me at all.

I prefer a simple philosophy to eating: low and small.

By low, I mean be as close to the earth as possible by eating mostly unprocessed, organic fruit, vegetables, and meat products.  I hardly cook the veggies to keep what is left of the nutrients.

By small, I mean to reduce my portions, even electing to eat little or nothing (when broke as a student or scarcely employed).  I don’t mean to starve or do any of that eating disorders silliness but to eat cheaper things like yogurt, beans, oatmeal, and so on.

Living in the more affluent parts of the world, we have a reverse relationship with our nature.  We eat too much and move too little.  It took me some time to abandon all those tables with calorie charts and food pyramids and come close to what is healthy for humans in most cultures.

I plan to blog in detail about:

1. Shopping for and cooking healthier food depending on budget and season.
2. Replacing your current favourites with healthier ones.
3. Ways we can exchange info. on recipes and farmers’ markets.

So, I was on the phone today with a student loan officer at my bank.  I’m on track to have the largest portion of my debt cleared off before the end of the year.  The last deadline was before the end of the summer but things got complicated. Sigh.

Me: I’d like to make 2 payments this month.  (My brother, who hates buying b-day gifts, offered to take care of 1 payment).

Bank lady: Um.  Sure.  Wait.  Let me check.

Me: (What the hell is there to check?).

Bank lady: You’re not set-up for automatic withdrawal for that amount.  You’ll have to adjust your monthly payments.

Me: I don’t want to change anything, just make an additional payment, an extra one.

Bank lady: Oh, okay.  Let me check.

Comes back after leaving me hanging for 4 minutes.  Honestly!

Bank lady: The system won’t let me put it in.  I can’t guarantee that the extra amount will go to your loan.

Me: Huh?  Where else would it go?

Bank lady: I’m not sure.  Let me check.

Sigh.

In other financial news, I think my boss’s boss is doing some creative book keeping.  I was assaulted with an urgent request to prepare and submit all my client interaction sheets and verify the hours I’ve billed.

I’m still calm from the lake air and just smiled through the meeting while my boss sweat anxiety from every pore and moved to unload it on the rest of us.

We’ll see how things unfold as we’re audited at the end of the month.  Welcome to the world of corporate mathemagicians.

Shit tends to roll downwards. Everyone knows that the first casualty of a war between cadaan office battalions is a black girl who wants to pay down her student debts.  This, while genius bank officers threaten to send her money to another dimension.

Am I stressed?  Nope.  This mofo nomad has her shit on lock down.