I’ve always been a picky eater. There’s a long list of foods that I don’t like, and won’t eat. Most of them are basic, some are pretty broad.

For exam­ple: milk, carbonation, cof­fee, let­tuce, onions, peppers, zucchini, spinach, lemons, mangoes, papaya, just to start, and then I can’t eat any­thing that is spicy, or peppery.

With so many things lit­er­ally off the menu, it makes come up with food choices hard. I like sweet things, fruit included, and some savory things. I’m okay with herbs like basil, or thyme in small doses, and gar­lic is okay but again in a small amount. I don’t like over­pow­er­ing food, I guess.

A coworker saw my lunch once and said I eat like a third grader. He’s prob­a­bly right. Today for lunch I packed myself a peanut but­ter and banana sand­wich and pud­ding cup (I also had a jello cup with peaches mixed in, and a gra­nola bar but I didn’t eat them). I had a yogurt with gra­nola to mix in and piece of cheese for morn­ing break.

Now, I’m sit­ting here try­ing to think of what to make for sup­per. Even if I were to go out to buy all the ingre­di­ents to make what­ever I wanted … I still have no idea what I want. This would be fine if it was a once in a while thing. Except it’s not, it’s every night. It’s also one of the very few things that my hus­band and I argue over. He’ll eat any­thing, and will try every­thing at least once.

I have got­ten bet­ter at try­ing new things, after some prodding.

I really don’t know what it is about food, it always seems like such a chore when I have to eat. Maybe it’s because I don’t like cook­ing? But, even when I’m not the one cook­ing, I can’t make up my mind. I have a lim­ited num­ber of options that I leave myself, and it’s like they’re always unappealing.

Inevitably lately I’ve been munch­ing on candy that I got in my stock­ing for Christmas. It’s really bad for me, and I think it’s been what’s been mak­ing me feel off lately. Not sick really, just meh. I love fruit, and I want to be able to munch on fruit instead of choco­lates or nerds or some­thing like that. I’m always afraid of it going bad, and throw­ing it out. Produce is expen­sive, and quickly perishable.

I like some veg­eta­bles, and mostly I like them raw. A few I’ll eat cooked, with but­ter on them. I’m okay with meat, I pre­fer chicken or pork over beef. I’m not really into seafood. Occasionally I’ll eat a white fish (like had­dock or tilapia), scal­lops and shrimp. I can’t eat fried foods with­out feel­ing sick.

I eat too many starches. I love fries, potato, pasta, and bread. I like cheese and yogurt, but milk makes me feel sick. I love ice cream (vanilla or choco­late on occa­sion. As much as I love straw­ber­ries, they’re my favorite fruit, I can­not stom­ach straw­berry ice cream. Mainly I like vanilla with top­pings on it.) and sug­ary sweets, but not cake. I like eggs, but not the yolk unless it’s mixed in when scrambled.

I don’t like bacon, and my hus­band just doesn’t under­stand that at all. Not lik­ing bacon just doesn’t reg­is­ter in his world

I’m try­ing to come up with a list of foods that I like, that are easy to make, and that are healthy. It’s a short list. My snacks list is longer, but it’s mainly vari­a­tions of fruits, veg­gies and dips. My lunches list has two things on it, a tuna fish sand­wich with cheese, or left­overs. There’s a flaw in that list. I don’t have any­thing on my din­ners list to have as left­overs.

This is what stops me from meal plan­ning like I want to. I can’t decide what to eat when I’m hun­gry, how am I pos­si­bly going to come up with a week’s worth of meals when I’m not? I can’t come up with one! How seven?

Question to the read­ers: What’s your rela­tion­ship with food?

The other night I was really down. It’s been months since I’ve heard much from a small group of friends I thought I was really close to. I don’t have very many friends. I do have other friends, but this group felt like sis­ters when we were together. We planned hav­ing out­ings with our kids, that sort of thing. We would get together once a month to hang out and play games.

Now, I’m not sure.

I talk to one a lit­tle here and there, and I recently went to see her for a scentsy party. I had a nice time, but I feel like we only get together for these types of par­ties. I did go to her house­warm­ing, but was late and only stayed a lit­tle while because of work­ing. Work sched­ules are a big fac­tor in plan­ning any sort of get together.

I talk to another about once a month when I visit her at her work. The third I haven’t talked to in months, and don’t even know where she’s liv­ing at the moment. I know she and her hus­band bought a house, but not where. I have asked, more than once, and just never receive a reply. I don’t know why this both­ers me so much. I guess I thought you told friends where you were living?

My hus­band came up to com­fort me dur­ing my break down. He reminded me that not only do I have other friends, that we were also not the type of peo­ple to call any­one, and that everyone’s been busy lately with us all three buy­ing houses this past September and October.

During the con­ver­sa­tion I brought up the fact that I have more friends around the world, that I only talk with online, than I do offline. Even those friends, I really only talk to online. That’s part of what’s so hard about social­iz­ing with this group of friends, they’re not nearly as big into online things as I am. So, if they’re not online, I hear noth­ing from them. I don’t talk to any­one on the phone but my mom. Everything else is pretty much through face­book, twit­ter or email. I don’t even text that much. I try to plan times to hang out, but either I get no reply, or sched­ules just don’t seem to match up.

I miss hav­ing friends I could hang out with and play games. It’s not the same when it’s only two peo­ple play­ing a game, and mostly we don’t play games just us, we watch TV together (right now we’re on fire­fly) in the rare times we’re both home at night.

Then my hus­band said some­thing else that caused me to have one of those light bulb moments. You can have friends who your only thing in com­mon with them is loca­tion: you live in the same city, went to the same schools, etc. Or, you can have friends who your only thing not in com­mon with them is loca­tion. It’s okay to have friends who you’ve never met face to face.

He said that if this group of friends is really my friend, than when things set­tle down, they’ll call or we’ll work out a day that works to hang out. In the interim, I do have other friends, and not to dis­count them because we haven’t been super close in recent years. I could con­tact some of them to hang out some time, if that’s what I really wanted to do.

But really, when do we ever go out any­where? We both work 45–50 hours a week. Then we get home and have to put the house together, and keep it run­ning. Mostly, he builds and fixes things around the house, while I do the day-to-day func­tion­ing type things to keep it going: like dishes, laun­dry and gro­ceries, etc.

Our house is 161 years old, it’s like hav­ing another fam­ily mem­ber to take care of. I love my house. It’s just a lot of work.

Question to the read­ers: What are your thoughts on friend­ships either offline or online?

I’ve been doing a lot of think­ing lately. Mostly about what it is that makes us who we are. As much as I know that who we are is made up by the inside parts of our­selves, our expe­ri­ences and so forth. I can’t help but think that my things start to rep­re­sent me, too. For instance, I’ve said before that I would feel like part­ing with a piece of myself if I were to give away any of my books. I felt devis­tated about the loss of my files. My writ­ing, mainly, is what set this off. I poured my heart into those works, they felt like a sig­nif­i­cant part of me.

But, like I told my hus­band. They’re files. They’re not even real things.

I still feel lost with­out them. Very much like a piece of me is missing.

I’d still be me with­out my books. I’d still be me with­out my old (and hon­estly not very good, although not bad for a 14 year old) writ­ing. Or, my kit­ten pic­tures of Max. My files are not me. My things are not me.

So then why do they feel so much like they are? Why do we have a need to per­son­al­ize every­thing? Things come in col­ors, can be embroi­dered, can have dif­fer­ent designs and styles. If our things don’t make us, why do we have to impose so much of our­selves, onto our things?

When I describe myself, the first two things I think of with­out fail is that I am a writer, and a reader. Secondly I list myself as a wife, and a cat-mom. I’m more than what I do, who I’m mar­ried to, and who I take care of.

But, what?

I think, at least in my case, our things become a shield. Our hob­bies become an easy way to con­nect with peo­ple with­out hav­ing to really con­nect or con­verse. If I say I love to read, and some­one I meet does too, that’s one thing we can talk about. That’s some­thing to start a friend­ship on.

If I said I was an extreme intro­vert who found talk­ing to peo­ple incred­i­bly intim­i­dat­ing and non-desirable, well, then that con­ver­sa­tion wouldn’t go quite as well.

Question to the read­ers: So, how do you define yourself?