Nilla Folders

It wasn’t until very recently that I realized that manila folders probably weren’t named based on someone’s mispronunciation of the word vanilla. A quick search on wikipedia confirmed my new suspicions, and I realized I’m an idiot. Oddly, the connection between ‘Nilla Wafers and vanilla was also a relatively recent one on my part. Murphy’s law of word association is not one that I care to break often. Most of the time when think two words are related, they aren’t. When I assume they have nothing to do with one another, they share a common root.

Another common root that I enjoy is the potato. I think I was in the fifth grade, and we were having some sort of spelling test, and I was one of the only kids who spelled it right. I’m sure that my faux-Irish American upbringing is to blame, and it isn’t my obviously superior intelligence. Which reminds me, to my eternal shame, in my rush to finish a paper for my English class last quarter, I used the word imbibe instead of eat. As in, they had to imbibe the flesh of the dead lemming. Every single time I think of this, I burn with shame. Literally. The shame feels much the way Mrs. White described her anger in the movie Clue; “I can feel-- flames. Flames, on the side of my face. Heaving, deep, heaving--” which is a fantastic movie, anyway. I wasn’t sure that you could feel a deep burning shame until recently, and this either says something very good about me, or very bad. That is, I could either never have done anything shameful or embarrassing in the past, or perhaps I just never noticed the shame that I should have felt. Or perhaps I’m deluding myself, and I merely do not hold on to the memory of all of the many shames of the past.

I’m sure it’s the latter. Not the ladder, as I may have written once or twice in younger, more innocent times. (Now that I have gotten away from it, I do remember the time that I said “shat” in front of my mother without knowing what it meant. Shame-- I felt it then. So clearly I’m a liar).

I have two new loves, as of late. One is the word lush. The way it forces the mouth to wrap around the gentle swishy sigh of the u, and the drawn out ending of the word, as though the word doesn’t care if you have places to go, people to see, or booze to drink. I have yet to be able to clip the end of the word off neatly, and I‘ve never heard anyone else do it either. I want to be lush. Not in the drunkard sense of the word, but in the lavish, opulent, savory way. In the delicately beautiful, the densely luxurious way. Additionally, lush’s lovechild lushly might just be the most juicy-fun word I have ever had the pleasure of speaking. It may be awkward in a sentence, it may not play well with others, but as far as the sound of it as an individual goes, I can’t beat it.

I also am completely, totally madly in love with the song “Bubble Toes” by Jack Johnson.

When you move like a jellyfish
Rhythm don't mean nothing
You go with the flow
You don't stop

Truer words were probably never spoken.

Cancer and Margarine

This afternoon I made myself a bag of microwave popcorn, and, yes, I stood in front of the microwave with my face pressed against the glass waiting for it to be done. I’m not sure if I do this because I want to use my mind powers to make the popcorn cook faster, or I’m afraid that I’ll let it burn because I hear with my eyes (and see with my fingers, as all children do). At any rate, this may seem odd for someone who had a mild (and slightly silly) flip-out about her toothpaste causing cancer. Free-radicals, you see, are in the air, and they cause cancer in people’s lungs--something about knocking electrons out of place, or something, who cares, the point is, peroxide (or, maybe just hydrogen peroxide, I’m not sure) is a free-radical.

What does this have to do with my toothpaste? Well, you see my toothpaste is this new super-whitening kind with baking soda and PEROXIDE. So, by using this toothpaste, I have inadvertently killed myself. My dear boyfriend assures me that this is ridiculous, but I have a sinking feeling when I brush my teeth nevertheless (Haha, get it? Sink?). Actually, I’m not really that worried anymore about mouth cancer, not since I sat down and thought about it for a while. I do, however, think it is ironic that my toothpaste gave me pause, but then I still press my nose up against the glass of the microwave and wait for the ding.

Anyway, once I got my popcorn out of the waxy bag and into a bowl, I poured about four thousand tablespoons of melted margarine on top and took the whole thing upstairs. Of course, I had water instead of soda, because the water will cancel out the “bad stuff” in the popcorn and margarine. After eating about half the popcorn, I realized I was starting to get a stomach ache. Did I immediately stop consuming the salty treat? No, of course not. Two more handfuls later, I felt nauseous. This, I thought at the time, might be countered by… more popcorn.

It wasn’t. So, I set aside the offending snack, and drank the rest of my water, hoping that this would fix the problem. And although it didn’t, it was at that moment that I realized I was drinking out of a Dead Guy Ale tumbler.