This is me. I am an angry smiley.

Ugh, seriously, every time I catch my own image in a computer (constantly, maybe because I’m looking for it…maybe because I am always at a computer) or become suddenly aware of my own skin (medium-rare), I notice my forehead is all scrunched up like I’m REALLY CONCERNED about something. But I’m NOT.

TELL IT TO YOUR FACE, ANNIE.

Actually, that graphic was inaccurate. It ends up looking more like this:

What’s really sad is that just now, before I drew those on, I could feel the lines deepen as I searched desperately for the Photoshop tool that would allow me to draw at all.

I often end up pressing my thumb against the ripply area to “smooth it out,” which is useless and even more unattractive, not to mention disgusting because there was probably food on my finger like five seconds ago.

Ha, Dee is going to email me in two seconds like “Why do you look so angry in your latest photo?”

I DON’T KNOW!

My Aunt Elly apparently saves everything, and this Thanksgiving she festively decorated her bathroom wall with this fictional menu I wrote as a child. (Who does that? And who is Golda?) No date on it, but I’m guessing I was around 7? I’m hoping? God, what if I was 17?

Allow me to count down a few highlights — sort of a Take 5 without those annoying audio/visual elements, if you will…

5. Jinjre Ale as a featured “Bevrage” Was this like a ganja-fied version of ginger ale? Sidenote: I’m completely impressed with my affiliation with Pepsi products instead of Coke at such a tender age.

4. Get the full slab! It’s cheaper! I love how it was important enough to me that my fictional customers might want to take advantage of a great deal on BBQ, should one be offered. Six bucks for a full slab, wow. It certainly was the ’80s! And Golda’s Cafe certainly must have been adjacent to a truck stop on a central Indiana highway, even though we lived in Illinois.

3. Pizza Plate (5 squares) Continuing with the low-class theme, it’s clear that I was tailoring this dream menu to be as close to my childlike tastes as possible. The insistence on “squares” suggests that the greatest type of pizza I knew of at the time came frozen and developed into its most gourmet state via a magical microwave. Sadly (although I’m pretty fine with it), these are still my tastes. I’d eat lunch every day at Golda’s Cafe if I could. Is there one in midtown?

2. “Five Hidden Cherries!” OMG so fun!!! But who exactly was doing the hiding? I’m almost certain it would have been me. Or maybe this “Golda,” but something tells me she wouldn’t have had very clean hands. Plus she never wore her hairnet. You just know it.

1. Becks Thanks to Barnacle Bill Barrett, probably the only name-brand beer I knew of besides Heineken. And there’s no way I was spelling that.

This happened yesterday :(

The resemblance is uncanny. But my accidental guacamole-on-carpet map is way better than this crap graphic (which, I am aware, is not of the Galapagos Islands). My terrain’s got elevation. Texture. Layers. Flavaaaaaaa. I can’t believe no artist has thought of this yet. It is so much better than shit on a canvas.

Who wants to come with me to Stray Dime Island, the less lush, more industrial, pro-capitalism offshoot of the Guacapagos? (Can you spot it? The whole thing is very Magic Eye, which I’m usually anti-, but whatever.)

Ha! Just realized the dime is like the “scale” portion of my map. I think of everything!

Take a look at my new favorite meal of all time: the Sweet ‘n’ Savory French Toast at Southport Grocery in Chicago’s Lake View neighborhood. It’s french toast topped with gruyere cheese (whaaa?) and somewhat crispy ham with no fat on it, served with organic maple valley syrup on the side. The syrup came “from the grocery,” which in this place seems to be a very big deal. I was almost afraid to ask for a second little cup of it becuase I thought they might make me buy the whole $14 bottle.

You have no idea how good this breakfast is. It might not sound good to you just written out in words. It didn’t to me, on the menu. I would normally not order french toast in a restaurant, but my dining partner at SG a few weeks prior ordered it then. I sampled a bite so as not to be rude (and because I knew his generosity stemmed from his wanting a bite or more of my egg-laden bruschetta/crostini concoction, which was okay but not something to write in a shitty blog about. I don’t know why we didn’t just switch plates).

Whoa. I spent the rest of that morning jealously salivating over — or shall I say savoring — the memory of that bite. I couldn’t even focus on conversation, much less my own meal, after getting a taste of this miracle. I think the jealousy overcame me to the point where I was downright nasty to the person who had had the good fortune of ordering it for himself. There’s no way of being sure, because I don’t really remember. I was out of my mind. That bite had been with me throughout the past three weeks, lifting me up during sour times, gently calling me back to the Midwest for another round. I made it, Sweet ‘n’ Savory French Toast! I came back to you. Are we in love? Is the feeling mutual? Call or write.
*

I often get a very tense feeling when a meal I know I’m going to enjoy more than anything else that day is about to be served to me. It’s almost like I don’t want to receive it. I want to have ordered it, to have waited for it, to have it be on its way, but I don’t actulally want it set down because at that point, it’s practically gone. The food’s there, but the suspense, thrill, and yearning have all vanished by that point. The plate in front of me is just a given. It, too, will go away, and all too quickly. There’s something profoundly sad in that.

I felt this great depression while eating for the second time at Southport Grocery. I wanted to take each bite of the Sweet ‘n’ Savory French Toast, but I also didn’t want to because then whatever little percentage of it that I managed to load onto the fork would be gone forever. I mean, I could come back, but not, like, for the next meal. They’d think I was weird. I’d have to wait at least a few days. Maybe one day. I don’t know. It’s too much to think about.

I always envision a huge, looming, color-coded pie chart when I’m eating one of my favorite things. Like I said above, the moment right before it’s placed in front of me is the happiest moment. At that point, the pie chart is not a chart at all but just a benign, bunny-yellow circle: a big, smiling, hungry face with one of those wagging tongues that looks like it’s about to slurp up something delicious. With each bite, not only do portions of the smiley face get taken over by a different, gloomier color (midnight blue… perhaps thundercloud gray), but the smile slowly but surely turns into a frown. At the meal’s pausing point, usually somewhere right in the middle (also called the “breather,” “timeout,” or “period of solemn reflection”), I imagine the face having a completely horizontal line for a smile. It’s not a grimace — not yet — but there is no joy left. It’s the “look what you’ve done to me” face a sullen teenager might shoot at the parent who never gave him any attention. I almost consider not eating any more so as not to produce the inevitable downwards-drooping smile line. All of this makes it significantly difficult for me to find joy in the eating process.

And then I do anyway!

You know, if I hadn’t taken Tylenol P.M. nearly three hours ago, I would be totally up for creating graphics of the meal-progression pie charts, thundercloud gray and all, but as it is I’m starting to drool and didn’t even notice, and would be surprised if I even stay awake long enough to run upstairs, wait 10 mintues for dial-up to work, and get this posted. Right now I sound like a raving lunatic, so maybe falling asleep for once would not be a bad thing.

I’m sitting outside on the deck at the lakehouse in the middle of a storm with no rain. The thunder is outrageous and I keep seeing lightning out on the lake. It’s awesome. But where’s the rain? I need to know. I’m freaking out that even one raindrop will get on my lovely tank of a computer. I’m very nervous right now. After each of these words I type, I glance up, as if I might have missed the first drop. It’s really annoying that I’m doing that.

(One hour passes.)

Okay, the downpour is over. I got inside fine, before any water hit the deck. I chickened out after envisioning the destroyed Mac floating in a pool of what just killed it. Why did I need to take it that far? I even started imagining different and more awful scenarios. One involved me running inside on a sunny day to do something, probably get a large snack, and leaving the Mac outside during a sudden downpour. In this vision, I didn’t even think “I have to run out there and save my computer.” I just went about the snack and let it sit there, forgetting. Hours later, when I remembered what I had been doing hours ago (because that’s what I do) I went outside, realized what had happened, and began to weep. In my mind I pressed the pause button and watched myself bawl in slow motion. I recall there being snot involved, which would make sense because right now I have a cold. Then I called Apple in tears and Apple laughed and called me a moron, which made me cry even harder and since I coulldn’t see, I ran smack into a table, hit my head, and never woke up. Keep in mind none of this actually happened. This was me sitting safely indoors with the Mac, willingly plunging into a nightmare.

I do this a lot — get a freakish pleasure out of imagining really sad scenarios. I remember trying to convince my dad of something once during Annie Barrett: The Teenage Years and him looking at me with this “you’re crazier than I thought” look. I told him I’d want to throw my childhood doll, Carwie, off a speeding boat. If anyone knew me back then, you know that despite my “teen” status, I was still obsessed with this doll to the point where we all considered her a member of the family. (Her birthday is October 2nd and she is always just turning two. I still believe this.) It actually became quite comical within the family. I don’t think anyone else would get it so don’t even go there. Anyway, I adored her. So there’s no reason I should have wanted to throw her off a moving boat.

I tried, and failed, to explain the thrill I sought. I wanted to fling her in wildly into the air, and then sort of stop time (pause button!) so that she’d never hit the water. I just wanted the momentary feeling of doing something that treacherous and reckless, but I didn’t want to have to deal with the trauma of the aftermath. (Friends tell me this is also a common attitude towards sex.) I tried to explain that it could be like a still frame in a movie, when something in motion stops suddenly right before the credits roll. I’d be standing at the edge of the boat, post-fling, mouth wide open and screaming, the doll on the upwards portion of her arc, still smiling. That’s it. It would have to stop there.

This sort of reminds me of the scene in Love Actually in which Colin Firth loses his manuscript. The Portuguese indentured servant accidentally picked up the coffee mug that was holding the typed pages down, and they all blew away into a pond. I want to do that! For some reason I’d find it thrilling to have a stack of my own meaningful, irreplacable typed pages fly away and be gone forever. Or if not, I’d at least like feeling like I had the power to make it happen. I’d sit there, nudging the paperweight, toying with the idea until it completely freaked me out and I couldn’t take it anymore; then I’d probably chicken out and run inside… just like I did with the computer. This post is getting so meta.

Come to think of it, the losing-the-writing thing is pretty common. It happened in Anne of Green Gables with the handsome father figure Morgan’s work, and I’m pretty sure it happened in a Parker Posey movie. I forget the movie. It’s a male writer on the top level of some sort of fancy boat (meta!) and he throws away the novel he’s just completed on a whim, because he knows it’s a piece of shit. How writerly of him. No wonder I can relate. What damn movie is this? Why am I thinking Celebrity? Was Parker Posey even in that? That has to be wrong. I’d google all of this, but no wireless out here and it’s more fun to torture myself like this. Even though going inside would be a terrific idea now that a Shania Twain song just came on, about 40 notches higher in volume than all of the other songs. Two good reasons to visit the stereo. WTF? The neighbors hate me.

Anyway, now I’m back outside, and I’m even charging my computer. That was an effort. I knew there was an outlet somewhere along the side of the house but couldn’t find it for the longest time because Bill managed to cover it with something the exact same color as the faded gray wood. Bill the Builder never fails to impress.

Everything’s still wet, so I laid towels from the outlet to here so that the cord wouldn’t be resting on water. Was that necessary? I don’t really understand how electrocution works. I’m aware that using a hairdryer in the rain would kill me, but what if water just started pouring while I was using a plugged-in computer? I highly doubt I’d die from that.

And yes, if you were wondering, I am sitting here envisioning myself just on the precipice of turning on a hairdryer in the middle of a storm. I’d just have my finger on the button! I wouldn’t actually do it! Nothing would happen!

Okay, this is becoming scary. Suddenly I’m recalling a moment during my drive here that I found a tad worrisome but nothing major. During the Cars song “Hello Again,” there’s the line “You just want to fly!” at the end of a verse. It’s the kind of line that gets you really revved up for the next few seconds, a line you’d sing even if you didn’t know the rest of them, because it sounds more passionate than the rest of the lines.

But instead of “fly,” I sang “You just want to die!” I was certain that was correct. Strangely, I’d made the same mistake many other times in the past. I guess I just never fixed the glitch. Or maybe this is my way of telling myself that I want to die. But probably not. Pretty sure there would be  warning signs other than mistaken Cars lyrics.

Maybe being all alone in a big house (family’s coming up tomorrow) is making me crazy. I live alone in New York, but it’s different being alone here, in a place where a step in any given direction doesn’t require the artful dodging of mountains of crap. This place has (gasp) multiple rooms. I feel like I should spend an hour in each one, just to appreciate the space. Yeah, let’s try it.

I confessed to Meghan my psychological problems involving Magnolia cupcakes, and instead of empathizing with me like I thought she would, she laughed in my face. Here’s the problem: When there’s a food product I really value - and this is not limited to junk food like 99% of this site - I need to have a backup if I’m going to indulge.

This means that if I decide I want my last orange, I need to go out and buy another orange (or six) before I eat the first. The supply must be replenished before it depletes, or “diminishes,” if I want to be cute about it.

This isn’t funny. I have a serious problem. Late at night, I’ll decide I want to cook penne pasta, and unless there’s another box somewhere in apartment, I can’t bring myself to do it because then I wouldn’t have any more penne.

What?! I am insane! I know this. Just let me get it out, because you’re already here and probably not about to leave (although now would be a great time).

I do this with mini Twix, mac ‘n’ cheese, lime Tostitos, and eggs, to name a few. I will even let rotting flowers sit on my coffee table while I procrastinate buying new ones, instead of just throwing them out as soon as they start to flake out.

I’ve thought about it for a few hours now (I have a really fulfilling life) and have concluded that it’s only store-bought items that I need immediately replenished. If I cook eggplant parm or make tuna salad, it’s not like I’m going to whip up another tray of it just because I’m almost done with the leftovers. That would be crazy! And when I have restaruant leftovers, I don’t feel a strong urge to run back and order the same thing right away. Unless it was, you know, really good. No, the OCD seems to be limited to single items that are sold as small wholes unto themselves.

Case in point: Magnolia cupcakes. Meghan and I decided to split a box of four. I assumed this would provide a pretty good buffer zone for me, because she would only eat one (to my one) and leave me with two extra when she left. Then, I could safely eat the third while planning another trip to the bakery for more.

This is just wrong. I would apparently rather let the fourth innocent cupcake become stale and possibly never eaten than just eat all my purchased servings at once and live without the presence of cupcakes in my apartment for one whole day. I need some help.

When it was clear that Meghan was going to eat her second, I became despondent and confided this particular food-related OCD to her, to no avail. She thought I was nuts when I suggested that before we eat the second pair, we should walk over and get two more because the bakery wasn’t closed yet!

When I type it out, it doesn’t seem logical to me either. But at the time, the feeling was so intense, so certain. Look at those colors. Would you want to part with all of them without backup? Think about it. :(

I thoroughly enjoyed a large slice of Whole Foods cornbread at my desk this afternoon, 5-ish. (It was like I was intentionally sabatoging my chances of going running at 6:30. Except it wasn’t “like” that, it was that.)

I almost freaked out because as a result of what I thought was an ingenious plan to be tidy and let extranneous crumbs fall into the garbage can, I unwrapped the cornbread above the can only to watch a third of it crumble instantly and fall in. I took a moment and actually considered retrieving it, but realized it wouldn’t be “it,” it would be one million little pieces of “it” that I’d have to scrape up (against a banana peel) and re-mold as a dense little crumbly nugget of greasy cornmeal. “Oh no she di-iiiint!” the coworkers would say.

Well, they probably wouldnt’ say that because nobody ever speaks out loud in the office. But they totally would’ve e-mailed me about it.

When I was wee, we had cornbread for dinner a lot, the kind you can buy at Dominick’s in a big sheetcake for like $2.69 I was obsessed with it. Eating the cornbread today triggered an intense memory about my previous cornbread experiences. I realized that I used to swish room-temperature water in my mouth with every small bite of cornbread. Why the F would I do this? What a horrible idea, especially when there are so many other beverages I could have sampled? I think I was just really into ULTIMATE MOISTURE with the cornbread. Maybe it demanded it! It definitely asked very nicely.

The beverage-swishing process itself doesn’t strike me as that strange, considering I still have a vast repertroire of food-drink combos that MUST go together. For example, you must not know me that well if you didn’t know that I relish the mouth-swishing combination of 1) turkey sub and 2) regular cola. I like the cola to be ice-cold, but not on ice. Fresh out of the vending machine, sipped through a straw in a pitter-patter fashion is perfect. (I just said “pitter-patter.” I happen to know this is called onomatopoeia.) The sub should include crusty, somewhat challenging bread and a sizable, but not overwhelming, amount of mayo.

The Mouth Swish (MS) is key to our appreciation of food. Why shovel in more and more of one thing all at once when you can sit back, take little bites and little sips together, and really relish both what you are ingesting and the fact that — hey, you’re ingesting… and that’s awesome.

My own swishing process is not so much active swishing as an intense, euphoric period of comingling. First comes the bite, then the sip, and then you should just let the elements come together on their own. Don’t force it. Each bite/sip will be unique, according to the materials’ whimsies. It’s out of your hands. Just let them sit there and settle, and then 7-15 seconds later, let the tongue slowly compress the mixture…

This is getting weird. Rather than go into this more, I’ll just list a few more of my favorite MS combos:

–Fritos/Diet Pepsi
–Taco Bell Mexican Pizza/Mountain Dew
–anything cake-based/milk
–Nilla wafers/Minute Maid fruit punch
–Brownberry croutons/Five Alive citrus drink
–blueberry muffins/Tropicana OJ
–Pepperidge Farm gingerbread men/Haagen Dazs raspberry sorbet
–chicken pesto sandwiches/orange-banana smoothies

OMG BOOK IDEA.