i spent most of today with kathryn. go me, i'm already accomplishing things on my "to do before i get to utah" list. i went to dinner with her family at a local chinese restaurant. her mother wasn't happy with the service and made lots of comments. i got vicariously embarrassed.
i do that a lot. when people i know do stupid or impolite things in front of me, i feel like a fool. this is especially a problem when i'm around my father who tends to giggle and mutter things under his breath up to five minutes after some joke is over. it's even worse because a third of the time it's something i said, and a third of the time it's something he said.
so i sat in the restaurant with my head bowed most of the time and had an utterly unpleasant experience. kat's mom treated me for dinner, so i felt i couldn't spend anything. this meant that everyone ordered soup and appetizers but me. i sat there watching everyone go through soup, then sushi, then other assorted appetizers. meanwhile i couldn't accept any offers of a bite of this or that since it was all meat laden.
why is that? real chinese food isn't like that. stupid americanization of other cultures. utter fakery.
anyhow, so i was starving and watching people eat for about a half hour. the waiter had tried to serve our meal in the middle of the sushi and kat's mom asked them not to since she wanted to finish with appetizers first. *sigh* during all this time i drank a remarkable amount of water and listened to kat's mom complaining and kat's senile grandmother complaining to one of her daughters who wasn't there. (side note: don't name all your kids after their aunts and uncles. as if senility isn't hard enough to begin with. kat's grandma has to contend with multiple kathryns and evelyns. even i got confused at one point.)
so finally dinner is served. at this point i truly understand my folly. i ordered tofu in black bean sauce. i used to get chicken in black bean sauce all the time. i loved that. i assumed this dish would be the same but with tofu. not that unreasonable an assumption, is that? i anticipated a plate with some tofu and a bunch of vegetables in a somewhat spicy sauce. i was horribly, dreadfully wrong.
what i actually got came in what could only be described as a tureen. it was an enormous container of nothing but tofu in a soupy looking sauce that turned out to be not spicy, but salty. it was the most disgusting thing i've ever received at a restaurant. incidentally, i'm not even all that fond of tofu, and this was the particularly nasty squishy soft kind. i ended up eating a little bit of it before becoming completely disheartened and just eating the stupid rice that came with it. i took the rest home so that kat's mom wouldn't think it was being wasted.
i stuck it in the fridge and told my mom about it and how bad it was. she says, "oh, i'd eat that." she proceeds to attempt to eat it.
she takes a bite. "this is awful!" she tells me. "i just told you that," i tell her. she continues for another couple of minutes. "i've never had chinese this terrible before," she comments. "i did warn you," i reply. "if i had gotten this at a restaurant i would have sent it back," she mentions. i shrug. she continues to eat it while commenting intermittently about how bad it is. *eye roll* mom is like that sometimes.
anyhow, in conclusion, that sucked more harshly than anything i've ever encountered before in any restaurant. the rest of the day didn't get any better and involved me watching kat's mom and this lady who's helping to watch kat's grandma try to give grandma her medicine. for about forty minutes. because she won't take any of it. do you know how hard it is to force someone to swallow something? do you know how uncomfortable it is to be there and to have to watch it? then kat and i got stranded for an hour while kat's mom and the care giver person went off to go shopping for grandma. this should have been this nice pleasant outing, but somehow it all just ended up being abysmal. i think i still find it all amusing in retrospect, and at least i am getting to spend time with kathryn.
do these things happen to other people? am i just not assertive enough? i'm beginning to wonder if i'm just letting these things happen to me and if other people would stand for it. i'm just passive as all heck, i suppose. my wonderful grandmother ought to be proud of me: i'm thriving on her motto of, "life is a complete piece of shit, just deal with it."
i really enjoy life, though. i complain a heck of a lot, but i love people and i love life. it's one of those really odd things about me. no matter how much crap i get piled on me, i tend to eventually ignore the awful things and focus on the good. in retrospect, every disaster is just amusing to me, and every beautiful moment is glorified. i think i'm a retrospective optimist, or somthing like that. heh, the glass was half full, but at the moment it's in flux.
the most obvious example of my odd view of the past is when i look back on fall semester of sophomore year. living with sarah was utter hell, and i was constantly under stress and anxiety. i look back on it and those things seem somewhat inconsequential to me. what do i remember? i remember the halloween party i went to. i spent most of the night with suz, adam and darrin. all very cool people. we listened to cheesy 80s music, danced a lot (i did, too, despite my absolute lack of skill and associated embarrassment) and talked. it was great. meanwhile, amusingly enough the four of us spent the whole party in the basement with the two kegs that were purchased for the party and we weren't drinking. well, darrin was, but not much, and suz, adam and i all don't drink.
i also remember some of the cheesy things from my ed class. "oh great guru of piaget knowledge, what is the relation between formal operations and metacognition?" *snerk* the other thing i look back on is all the stupid saturday night study sessions for all those memorization tests. they were almost fun, in a geeky way. i guess i just enjoyed them since i got to display my ample understanding of the topic and get some ego bloating praise and whatnot.
of course i remember virtually nothing from that course, proving once more that half of the education they try to give us on education is valueless. that's okay, though, because i'm getting out. no more of being taught why a certain teaching method will not work by a teacher who happens to be using that method. argh. stupid regelski.
yeah, hi, i'm tangent girl.
so, anyhow, i figure tomorrow i'll start actually packing. i get to go up to the scary attic and try to find some or other suitcase that i'm sure i'll be told wasn't the one which was intended. ooh, this is going to be fabulous. i think. ah, heck i'll have a ball. it's been so long since i've gotten to really spend time with debi. even if i end up working at mcdonald's for the summer, it'll be worth it. oh bliss!
*sigh* g'night.
posted by Unknown at 12:27 AM