Hermetically Sealed Plastic

So, when did the world become so insanely freshness-crazy or germophobic for someone to determine that what we NEED is WAYYY more wrapping on gum?

I mean, it's GUM. It's mostly plastic to begin with! When I was a kid you bought a pack, and inside, the gum was in a foil paper wrapper.

Then they made the sticks smaller, and that was still ok. But now, you can buy a pack of gum that comes in shrinkwrap plastic around a cardboard sleeve around a foil popout pack. OR a shrinkwrapped plastic around a cardboard suspiciously cigarette-pack looking fold out case that holds individually wrapped pieces. And if you buy these at a bulk wholesaler, you can get a box of individually shrinkwrapped packages, shrinkwrapped together in a box.

WHAT? We ship apples, fresh, wholesome apples all the way from chile and Argentina and South Africa open in big boxes, and we hermetically seal GUM?

WTF is wrong with the world?

"Localicious"

The EAC does a lot of work promoting locally grown, harvested and processed foods. One of the messages our work conveys is that local, organic food can and should be affordable... should be more affordable than subsidized, factory farmed, pesticide-infused imported and overprocessed foods. Smart.

WWF is hosting a fundraiser called "Localicious." The event description says, "Enjoy local and sustainable food dishes at participating restaurants and do your part to create global change for generations to come." Halifax is one of the six or eight participating cities... yay us! The participating restaurants, though ... are Da Maurizio and Fid, two of the highest cost (and best, certainly) restaurants in town (why not Chives? Interesting. They specialize in local and sustainable.). Now, it's a fundraiser, yes. But it doesn't do much to dispel the myth that sustainable foods will cost you the farm. Unfortunate.

Ayn Rand, ants and Athenians

After a full seven years of regaining my identity and learning to accept who I am, his harsh judgement can still send me reeling. Do people like me deserve anything? Are all my values wrong? Is it actually all about the stuff, does the stuff represent something intangible I've never appreciated?

He is the perfect Spartan, all holy self-righteous smug indignation and no mercy. And I... I am a decadent athenian, the mold on society according to Ayn Rand, a sickness that infects the world. I am laziness, indolence, lack of respect. I am the grasshoppers that die in the winter while the ants gather over wine at their block parties and tsk tsk.

Money = worth. And I have none... of either apparently. And lest that knife shaft not seem deep enough yet, pause for a moment to reflect on what a bad mother that makes me. Twist.

"How many times do you go out?"

Not even sure how to scale my life to someone else's values, to be the mother Maddie deserves. I was naive thinking he could take care of the financial stability and I could make sure she grows up with mercy and the ability to get along with a wide range of people. Both are ridiculous throwback values. No one cares.

There is no god, any reasonable person knows that.

Only worthless people wind up broke.

All my assumptions and premises were sand, and he is not even laughing at me from the rock he built on, he is just looking down like terrible justice, watching me crawl.

And I believe all this, as much as I am mocking, and hurting. It's true, I dug myself in here, and now there's no choice but to have it affect Maddie. And that makes me a bad mother and a bad person. If I had life insurance... but there's not even a point to that. There is just giving up everything I enjoy and 'hunkering down'. Preparing to slog through the ten or fifteen grey years to bring myself back to solvency, so that I can then begin preparing the slow slide toward death.

So my best option is give up time with the one thing that matters and get a second job, somehow. Doing something.