Bread

Refined wheat flour, not that awesome band. So much bread. Too much. Please no wheat flour when I get home. I think bread is, like, the default for vegetarians who don’t know any better. Luckily I do - but my host family doesn’t. The two Satan items that are now a huge part of my life that were rare just a mere five weeks ago: refined wheat and dairy. Have I crossed the threshold of too-late-to-tell? Just a few more days until I’m drowning in the sweet bliss that is raw veggies from my Moms garden.

I canceled class today. I could have gone. I didn’t feel like dealing with the handful of kids that would show up and sleeping in was too tempting. At least I have an extra lesson plan now. It’s raining today and awfully gloomy, and last time the weather was like this nobody showed up to class anyway. Except now I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s only a matter of time before I go and take a nap.

I lied to my host family and told them I was writing applications for grad school and doing grant research to justify how much time I spend on my laptop. Makes me feel better. Whenever I feel guilty for avoiding conversations or being a loner I just tell myself that I’ll never see these fools again in my life and I shouldn’t worry about how they feel. I’m the guest, right? Does this make me an awful person?

In other news, I look damn good today. Wish I had someone to show off to other than the 14 year old cow boy. Not cowboy, which could be sexy, but cow-boy. Part of it is the effortlessness that constituted getting dressed. Sometimes the simplest outfits are the most flattering. I swear I didn’t do anything more than tousle my newly long hair and it’s fucking perfect. I tried to avoid using the work fucking just now but the sentence didn’t have the same feel. I think I’m going to try to give up swearing when I get home. I am also deeply in love with this solid perfume my Mom gave me and I can’t wait to get home and leave it all over some boy. Sorry mom.

The bad part is that I think I ate some lotion. The soap this family uses makes my hands dry, so I slather lotion on quite frequently and then later on lick food from my fingers. Now my mouth feels like it’s coated and tastes bad.

Wow, this is narcissism at its finest. This is the kind of thing that makes me ashamed and feel like removing this whole Leafy Greens creation from its silly cyber existence. Good thing you guys don’t judge me, right? Lovers?

I know, I’ll make a list.

Things I miss:

1. Mom
2. Katie
3. Peanut butter
4. Raw things (not skin though)
5. Tilda, Lola, Oliver and Iko (but mostly Oliver my secret lover)
6. Food autonomy
7. Regular autonomy
8. Texting
9. James Madison Park
10. The Terrace
11. Driving north on John Nolen at night
12. Sushi
13. The porch
14. The Office
15. The square
16. Friends, I guess
17. Clothes in my closet right now
18. The rest of my underwear
19. Garden
20. New bras
21. Pink hair
22. Wax on my lip and brow
23. Bangs
24. Tanning
25. Black eyeliner
26. Fall
27. Boys
28. Girls
29. Live music
30. Hopalicious

I recently experienced a purge in my music library. Please suggest some new music to me! They don’t even have to be new bands – they could be old bands too. Say something that you love be it a genre or group or a solo artist. Go forth, inspire!

Virtual hugs for the next few days but then real hugz!

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P.S. A note on materialism. I’m struggling with fighting destructive capitalism and slipping into full-blown domination by it. Why does buying new things and spending a few hundred zloty make me happy? Why does my brain swim in happy chemicals when I find and purchase a cute outfit? And when I’m feeling unattractive, how is it that my whole day is sluggish and slow and dreary?

I think I just don’t know who I am yet. Dammit, Poland, you were supposed to help me find myself, not make me dig deeper into the big giant hole that is my existence. I’m not a real grown-up person. I’m a mixture of like 30 different things and one day if I’m lucky, i.e. if I grow up, I’ll learn to be the same person in every situation in which I find myself. I feel like I am supposed to fit into one category like Smiling Girl on the cover of Fill In the Blank. But it’s not like that for me. Sometimes I want to be sporty, or a princess, or know everything about which colors work best for you, sometimes I want to be a boy, sometimes I want to punch you in the face but then sit in a circle and hold hands, sometimes I want to wear all black, be vintage, be mod, sometimes I want to be organic, raw, ripe, dew-covered, sometimes I want to be a hermit and shrivel up in my room, sometimes I want to be a socialite that the media tells me girls my age should be, and sometimes I want to be that weird girl that wears lace-up boots in every season.

I hate that material things make me happy. Is this just because I’ve been a little out of touch and out of town lately? Is it because I entered the world of blogging and clicked the next blog link too many times? I found a well of rosy happiness that came from waking up early and looking out over a misty garden and the fields beyond. Not to say that doesn’t exist for me any longer, but I haven’t experienced it over the last few weeks. The idea of feeling empowered and pure from spending time at a mall makes me sick, but it is reality. Is this part of a new wave of feminism or some other ism that says its okay to spend your hard-earned money on a $6,000 yoga retreat in the name of health and wellness? I feel like this same logic says it doesn’t matter whether you get happiness from buying organic food or a hunk of yellow diamond as long as you’re exercising some femme mentality of kicking ass while wearing heels.

These thoughts are inspired by Bitch magazine. In a recent article one author used the term Oprahspeak to describe this new trend of working women who are supposed to demonstrate their empowerment and fuck you attitude by spoiling themselves rotten with jewelry from Tiffany and a day trip to Saks, topped with a black earth mud wrap and cucumber slices over your eyes. I think I feel sick -- I mean cynical -- I mean cyclical. I know I’ve felt this before and it happens like a wave. Or like you’re in a canoe paddling on one side and the other person is just sitting there. Your view changes a little with each stroke but after a few moments you're in the same place again. Any other ladies, or gents I guess, feeling this pressure? Let’s have a tea party where we wear structured dresses and sip dandelion tea with our pinkies out and our legs crossed at the ankles like gentlepeople. We can deconstruct these and other social issues.