Feeeeeed meeeee!

A good way to know yourself better is to magically go outside yourself. Secretly you are you, but somehow you're a stranger. The stranger sees you as if for the first time. He brings all his experiences to bear on his impression. These experiences come from a different lifestyle, which comes with a different set of "how it's done"s.

But we are not amoebae. (Bloop bloop. That's what amoebae do.) No self-replication for us!

The next best thing is to take yourself out of a familiar circumstances. To temporarily change how you live. Then your old habits become slightly incongruous. You notice them better because they feel weird. Back home, they had worn away a groove in the fabric of your life. A place where they fit comfortably and inconspicuously. In the new world, the grooves are all strangely shaped. Your old habits are uncomfortable in them. And so they draw your attention.

I've discovered some sort of basic need to feed people. I suppose it's an instinct that's been amplified over the couple of years I've been with C-. Seeing people who aren't feeding themselves properly triggers some sort of gut reaction. My roommate was going to skip dinner yesterday! How terrible! I fed her.

(Hmmm . . . I'm not claiming this is a life-changing revelation. Just that it's something that comes into relief here.)

There's a sort of food fetish I've acquired while living in California. It revolves around fresh, cheap and plentiful fruits and vegetables that come from small grocery stores. In Utah, fruits and vegetables can be delicious, amazingly so, but you have to pay for the privilege at the farmer's market.

I've also grown used to having a big pantry that brings with it lots of options. A catalog of spices crammed into small shelves; pastas, noodles, rice and other grains hiding in their little spots. Here, I've been living from these two little bags of lentils and rice. It's surprising how little food you use in three weeks. (Especially, I suppose, when your boyfriend is absent, as he accounts for well over half of things eaten in the household.) I've managed to fill my fridge here. Then I'll fill my pack. The extra food will come home with me. It will be a drop in the bucket of all the things we have to eat at home.

There are other things, I suppose. I've rediscovered hand laundry. Laundry isn't free here, and I'm too lazy to hunt for quarters. Turns out washing small things by hand is rather quick. Laundry won't be free for me next year, either. I wonder if this is something I can turn in to a new habit. But perhaps this is a habit that's naturally formed for this new environment. When I take it home, it too won't find a nice groove to fit into. And pretty soon, it might fade away.