Thursday, July 24, 2008

Vignettes

Yesterday, I bought a mattress set. The one that it is replacing, I think I got when I was 14 or something. Yes, I still have a twin bed. It is true that I have spent large swathes of time since acquiring said bed, not using it (having lived in many other places). However, this does not take away from the fact that it is over 20 years old, and I have been sleeping on it regularly for the last five years. It also does not take away from the fact that I have been unable to sleep comfortably on it for some time.

I do not like spending money on myself, particularly in amounts over three digits. This purchase would have been over four digits if it hadn't been for the kindness of the salesman and the powers that be in the bedding universe. As it was, I can now say I have officially spent my allotment of the money the government sent us this spring. The bed is now twice as tall as it used to be. It comes just below my waist, and looks something like a loaf of bread, or a muffin. I think I will no longer be able to loll over the side and pick books up off the floor without some danger of falling on my head. But it's sooo nice and soft . . .

*****

My parents have returned to Ireland. Actually, they're probably boarding their plane right now. Some time after they get back, they are going to attend a birthday party for a friend of theirs. It is a Medieval party, and requires "fancy dress" (which means "costumes," for our American readers). My mother tells me that some of the children who will be attending this party intend to dress as rats . . . because of the bubonic plague. I think it's wonderful. Not the plague, of course, but the inventiveness.

*****

In the next town stands a gas station called "Global Village Fuel." It sounds simultaneously ominous, obvious and light-heartedly realistic, and I chuckle every time I drive past it. I don't believe I have ever fueled up there, however.

*****

Yesterday, I tried silkworm pupae. Eating them, I mean. They had been marinated in soy sauce, which is, therefore, pretty much what they tasted like. The texture was brittle and slightly internally fuzzy, in a preserved-with-soy-sauce kind of way. I don't know that I'd go out of my way to buy the things, but if I'm ever in similar positions to the ones I was in the three times I had to eat chicken livers, I know I can at least get them down.

3 comments:

christianne said...

okay, i was totally enjoying your stories until i gagged on the silkworm pupae. i helped raise silkworms in elementary school, so i can viscerally imagine what you ate. i can't stomach it.

on the other hand, your new bed sounds tres lovely! congratulations to you on this big purchase! mmmm, i can imagine its heavenliness right now. would love to see pictures so i can work out the image of a loaf of bread slash muffin in my mind as it relates to the shape of a bed.

Jennwith2ns said...

Sorry for grossing you out. Kind of. ;) I really do have this thing for trying bizarre foodstuffs, just to see what they're like . . . and, er, to gross people out. Heh.

Oddly enough, my computer wouldn't download the bed photos I took. I have no idea. I'll probably try again tomorrow.

Anonymous said...

Mmmm, I love new beds (not that I see them often)--the promise of sleeping on clouds and dreaming fairy dreams and waking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Okay, so I've never awoken bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but I said the promise, not the realization.