5 Guilty Pleasures

I was digging Ms. Andrea's post over at hulaseventy today. She did a meme listing her top five guilty pleasures. And I wanted to do this today too because sometimes I let myself sink into my guilty pleasures a little too much. Recently being one of those times. Currently, even.

Here's my list because who doesn't want to hear about other people's obsessions?

1. Chocolate Chip Vegan Cookies. I KNOW, I KNOW, again with the goddamn cookies. But if I didn't list the VC's then I'd be cutting out a big portion of what I think about daily. Last weekend in a PMS cloud that grappled me to the floor, I ate so many VC's that I was in an evaporated cane juice funk very similar to its more evil sister, the Refined Sugar Funk, but not as bad and I got over it more quickly. Still, it was bad. So bad that I have two post-it's pasted up -- one at home, one at work -- that read: "Do Not Buy Vegan Cookies -- Will advise when ok to do so again." When you're asking yourself, Hmm, why has Husband lost 10lbs during our Raw Until Dinner quest and me only 2, then maybe I should revise my program because right now it's apparently Raw 'til Dinner, Cookies 'til Dawn.

2. Peacocks. I love everything Peacock. It is a blind and subconscious love, and I automatically want to buy every peacock thing I see. Every time I spot a peacock design I believe it was made especially for me. Every single time I see one live or fake, without fail I gasp a little and think, OH, How pretty! I have a peacock locket, peacock cards, peacock bags including my prized vintage feathered clutch bought off eBay for $20, a gorgeous peacock vase and now a big-ass peacock tattoo on my back which I got at the tattoo convention a couple weekends ago. There is a picture in my flickr box of me getting the tattoo. It was taken in the last 15 minutes of the 5-HOUR ordeal. My guy had broken my will to live after the 4th hour. I seriously said to him, "If you don't finish soon, I'm going to punch you in your face." He had the nerve to laugh. But, still! I got my peacock and I don't even remember the pain now. Like childbirth!

3. Daydreaming. I still daydream like nobody's beeswax. I play the lottery only so I can daydream hard about it for the next few days. I daydream in the car which is the REAL reason my sense of direction is for shit. I daydream during the 7 minutes between putting my book down and falling asleep. I daydream about what a perfect day would be. I daydream that I can sew or cook better or that I own a cafe; that I'm giving a speech or telling someone off or accepting stuff, awards and such. I daydream about how I could live my life better. Some call all this "visualization", but it still feels the same as when I was staring out the window in 4th grade.

4. Bookstores. I fell in love with bookstores at age 8 when my mother used to frequent a feminist one called Sisterhood Bookstore in LA. Crossing the threshold of Sisterhood, she would go her way and I would go mine. I was comfortably surrounded by fertility goddesses and crystals and vagina flowers (I later learned) and I found books in the kid's section to which I could relate. I got my first Judy Bloom book there. The love affair had begun. I was just expressing to Green Whale that I was oddly and ironically intimidated by the library because in the library, people didn't seem to be daydreaming. They seemed seriously studious and hard core, and way above my head. While in bookstores, I could see other people wrestle with their desire to greedily buy as many books as possible. In bookstores now, I carry around an armful of books I call "nominees" until I narrow it down to just one. My impulse is to buy the entire armful and stack them in my house and smell the crispness and stare at them because they are so beautiful, but I realized that I actually read more when I only buy one book at a time. But I gladly take hours to find the one.

5. The Grocery Store. I spend most of my money and a lot of my time at the grocery store. I don't really feel guilty about this. I love to wander every aisle of Mother's or Whole Foods and read every label and test new products because frankly, I can now. Growing up, I ate the same foods over and over again; plain-wrap hot dogs and block cheese. In my senior year in high school, I rented a room from some people I worked with. I remember budgeting $25 a paycheck to spend on groceries and that meant a lot of canned beans, which I liked just fine, but $25.00 even in '85 went fast. After high school, I moved to Berkeley and I worked at a bakery. I made less money than I did in high school, and my diet mainly consisted of free cookies that weren't sellable because they were broken or they were day-olds. Knowing my love for cookies, I was not too sad about this, but honestly after this period in my life I'm shocked that I still do love cookies. Oh, this was also when I was at my heaviest weight ever. DUH! My point is: Once you earn enough money, there are certain things you don't want to restrict any more. I knew a bunch of guys that bought sneakers every pay check because they could; because they once had to wear one pair for the duration of an entire grade. And for me, it's how I feel about groceries. I even love the word: gro-cer-ies. I feel a surge of decadence and luxury because I can fill my cart with not just any food I damn well please, but because I can thoughtfully pick out organic, healthy food for the girls, for all of us. Automatically, however, my heart still skips a beat as I wait for my ATM card to be approved. Ha! I still can't seem to shake this reaction. I go the store about 3 times a week. And always, I can't wait to get there and browse around and get whatever I want. It's better than the mall. It's even better than the bookstore.