J W Hensley's Open Salon Blog

The Unwritten Code of Bathroom Etiquette

Mon, 11 May 2009 11:05:36 -0400

I have a pet peeve bordering on phobic that I typically don’t discuss with people. It’s a subject that is disgusting and disturbing and left out of polite conversation and most good writing for a reason. The subject of my phobia is my work bathroom. Or, I should say, my work bathrooms, as this has been a recurrent problem at all of my jobs. “Aha,” you think, “typical germaphobe.” Not quite. I will admit to opening the bathroom door with my just used paper towel but, in general, my problem is not with my fellow bathroom patrons’ hygiene. Rather it’s the audacious way that some of my coworkers behave while they are doing their personal bathroom deeds that sticks with me long after the bacteria from the soap dispenser has been re-deposited on my keyboard.

Everybody poops and farts, passes gas, whatnot. I get it. There’s a book about it. It’s natural. However, I like to think that most people are more inhibited about their toilet activities in a public place. In fact, I know some people who are too embarrassed to even relieve certain needs in public toilets. Certainly there are circumstances that you simply can’t hold back in public restrooms, even if you want to. In such cases, I feel like there is an unspoken yet generally agreed upon decorum. Most people attempt a degree of modesty (and yes I checked with a few family members and friends to make sure that I wasn’t some sort of bathroom prude). If at all possible an empty bathroom is optimal but otherwise most people, if they can, wait for a flushing toilet or running sink to mask the telltale sounds of a number two. If immediate relief is necessary, most of us do our damndest to minimize the noises we make to a few prim plops or a whistle of wayward gas. But then there are those individuals who take no pains at all to hide the full-on sensory experience that is their poop.

I work with few such people who seem to have a complete disregard for the unwritten code of bathroom etiquette. I’m trapped at work for 8+ hours a day and my coworkers have become my daytime roommates. If you are my colleague, I’m familiar with you and your habits in a strangely personal way. I know your wardrobe rotations, or if you drank too much the night before, if you’re going through a divorce and, most intimately, your bathroom schedule. I can’t help it. I see your shoes peeking out from under the stall, those ones you wear with your every pair of black office-casual work pants. The anonymity that is associated with public bathrooms is lost in a workplace because even though they are “public,” the public is pretty limited. So now, not only do I know that you’ll be leaving early today because it’s Tuesday and you’ve got your chiropractor appointment, I also know that you’ve got a raging case of Irritable Bowel.

You can’t help it. I know. You didn’t ask for indigestion or lactose intolerance. I feel you. It’s rough that you can’t eat the cheesecake they’re serving for our monthly office birthday celebration. But that’s the problem. You can eat the cheesecake; that’s the beauty of free will. You shouldn’t eat it. I know it, you know it, your doctor knows it. But you do. I watch you take “just a tiny piece” and it pisses me off because we both know what the consequences are for that tiny gut bomb. I can already hear your stomach gurgling after only two bites and if I could, I would slap that plate right out of your hand. You take each bite with insufferably smug satisfaction over your tasty little treat. But in about 15 minutes here that bathroom, that we both have to use (me about every half hour because, as you know, I love to drink tea and have a nervous bladder), is going to be a hazmat swamp and it’s going to be all your fault. I’m going to have to hold my breath or not breathe through my nose so that I can even stand to go in there.

It further enrages me the next day when I see you noshing on a cheeseburger with a mound of greasy french-fries for lunch. Because then I have to listen to the moist spluttering as you basically pee out of your butt. Or the next day when all you eat is the leftover pizza from your dinner the night before and I have to endure a chorus of agonizing, constipated grunts because you haven’t eaten a vegetable in a month. You can’t eat an apple once in a while? Nope, it’s all cheese, cheese, cheese with you. Your forbidden temptress. That shit (literally) makes me hate you a little. I could understand if it were a once-in-a-while occurrence, we’ve all been there. But it happens multiple times a week. I can’t help but judge you and your eating habits. I watch as you mow down an excess of all the things that give your gut grief: the meat, the dairy, the caffeine and refined sugars. I know that it just turns into an angry mob of hot, pungent smells in your intestines. I resent that you refuse to be more respectful of your digestive limitations and my gag reflex.

You’ve completely violated my faith that people will be inhibited about their private bathroom activities in a not-so-private stall; that they will do everything in their power to spare others the unpleasantness. On the contrary, you don’t seem to be the least bit uncomfortable about the nauseatingly “natural” noises and smells you are creating with your unhealthy poos. You don’t hold it in until people clear out or find an unoccupied bathroom. You have a complete lack of regard for my auditory and olfactory senses. You seem to think that four foot stall walls somehow shield the rest of us from the assault of your daily explosive diarrhea. You’re like the smoker who sits a foot away from me and blows smoke out of the side of your mouth to ostensibly send it in another direction. This is an act of “consideration” for me, even as I obviously sit bathed in your cloud of cancer.

I’m offended that because you have a heightened comfort level at your work place, where you spend a third of your day, you think you can treat a communal area like it’s your own personal space to make as foul as your body deems necessary. My husband, who also works with a few chronic bathroom offenders, put it best when he said, “Just because it’s a bodily function doesn’t mean it can’t be polite.” If you really can’t hold it in and wait until you get home, I wish you would just use that bathroom in the basement, the one tucked back in a hallway that no one ever uses; the one that I have made numerous loud references to as the place where I go when I euphemistically “need a little extra privacy.” You don’t take the hint and instead I’m reduced to making the four-floor trek to the basement myself multiple times in the afternoon because I know the closer bathroom just isn’t safe after lunch.

This problem has escalated in my mind which is why I finally felt compelled to write about the subject, objectionable though it may be. It’s not even close to the most dire of my problems—I was unemployed for nearly four months, I have family members with real health problems, my car is about to break down and I have no money to fix it because of the aforementioned unemployment and Sallie Mae’s monthly plunder of my finances— the bathroom issue at work still somehow takes up a lot of real estate in my mind. Amid all my more serious concerns, it’s for the afternoons that I harbor a disproportionate dread. The afternoons that are fraught with my coworkers’ antagonizing bowel movements.

An Inch of Progress

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:04:11 -0400

While brushing my teeth this morning I heard a little blurb on the news that gave me a boost. Hobby Lobby has announced that they will be increasing all wages for employees who make less than $13/hour to a minimum of $10. It took me getting a college degree to make that much in the Midwest so I can appreciate the increase (even if $10/hr still isn't much).

I'm no livng wage expert and I'm a pitiful excuse for a class warrior but I try to pay attention. And I've had some experiece with working a 40 hour week and still not being able to make ends meet. I'm a big supporter of local businesses and I've witnessed many a small business deteriorate because of corporate neighbors. However, corporations aren't going anywhere, as we all know, so I like to at least see signs of corporate conscience. Hearing news such as Starbucks offering insurance to their part-timers and Chipotle serving organic meat puts a little pep in my step.

So I'm happy with the Hobby Lobby bigwigs, even if they do keep their stores inconveniently closed on Sundays (which happens to be the day I feel most crafty). It's a small step for Americankind but, hey, it's something.

My Student Loans Are Ruining My Life

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:04:19 -0400

The first time I got a student loan bill, I didn’t open it. Not because I had already sunk into the deep, depressive denial that so many in staggering debt experience; the kind where you just start putting unopened bills in a box without looking at them because you know you can’t even begin to pay the debt that will most likely consume the rest of your adult life. Denial was not my motivation for not opening the bill. I just didn’t recognize that it was a bill. I was so removed from the fact that I had actually spent thousands of dollars through my borrowing over the years that the many envelopes that starting showing up addressed to me were a mystery.

When I started getting calls from my various lenders after several months of throwing away their statements, I was slightly wiser. My boyfriend, now husband, made mention to me that his parents had proactively jumped in to help him figure out his loans and get them consolidated. Oh yeah, I remember thinking, loans. Huh. I’ve got those. And boy did I. I tried to play dumb with my angry lenders when they called, telling them that I simply hadn’t recognized that my grace period was over. Well, actually, I wasn’t playing, which made it all the more embarrassing when they didn’t buy my excuse. Nevertheless, I made arrangements to try to catch up on my payments that were now bloated with late fees.

I was barely out of school, making a slim salary at my first job and I was already deep in the hole. I didn’t know how this had happened. Even after I caught up on the late bills there were still so many minimum payments to keep up with that I quickly felt overwhelmed. I was living paycheck to paycheck, just like I had all throughout college, even though I was making twice the hourly rate I used to. I got extremely pissed off as I signed away checks for $80 here, $50 there, $120 later in the month. I felt cheated. Why all this ridiculous campaigning about the importance of education by all adults throughout my life? Why did every one seem to think that the only way to get ahead was to get a degree? I had a degree and I was way behind.

Shadowing this anger was my own shame. I felt so stupid about all the money that I and I alone had willingly borrowed. I wanted to plead temporary insanity. I wanted my Get Out of Jail Free card. But all I got were more bills. I do think education is important but I also know that when I started my college education, I wasn’t ready to be a serious student. Rather I wasn’t ready to be a serious student of my own accord. When someone else was footing the bill and I had minimal freedom, I could manage school just fine. My dad paid for my first year of university and I lived at home with my mom. I worked hard, I got good grades and I saved money from my job at a sub shop. I felt like college and I were pretty compatible. Then I got some news that lead to a few decisions that, I can see now, completely ruined the sensible path I was on.

My parents informed me that I wouldn’t be getting any more financial aid from them at the same time that my boyfriend told me that he would be going to school in another town. So I applied for loans and a transfer. I dimly remember my parents offering me two pieces of advice. “Stay here, live at home and save money,” my mom said. “Only take out as much as you need to pay tuition and work for the rest,” my dad said. Yeah right, I thought. If they weren’t paying, then they didn’t get any say in my decisions. Ah, the wisdom of adolescence. I was allergic to good advice. I had a supreme sense of entitlement. It never occurred to me to take what my parents said to heart. Nor did I think to wait, work a couple of years, learn some self-sufficiency and then try my hand at academia.

Not only did I take out the maximum amount of loans allowable but I also worked as few hours as possible. I ate out every meal instead of using my prepaid cafeteria plan and I used the rest of my paltry wages to buy intoxicating substances that helped me stay up late, sleep in late, take naps and routinely skip classes. My boyfriend, who I had transferred to be with, broke up with me the first month of school. I used the ensuing depression and aforementioned intoxicating substances as excuses to withdrawal from some classes, with no refund, and switch to an easier major. I wasn’t wasting anybody else’s money and nobody was checking my grade cards anymore. I was accountable to no one.

College continued like this for me for a few years and then I hit a wall. My step-mother of nearly two decades was dying, I was getting terrible grades and I was constantly stressed about money. I still didn’t like to work and the loan checks were always blown within the first month of the semester. I dropped out to give full reign to my grief and early twenties angst and started a series of part-time jobs as a nanny, a bagel baker and a server.

A few years later, after struggling to survive on minimum wage, I had managed to grow a little character, a shred of responsibility and a modicum of motivation. I got back in school and worked hard at my classes and my job. I was still taking out the maximum allowance of loans because I still wasn’t making a living wage. I needed tuition and a cushion for my living expenses. My advisor told me I needed to do an internship to get experience so that my only skills weren’t wiping baby asses, making bagel sandwiches and slinging Italian food. I couldn’t work during my unpaid internship. I took out more loans.

I finished my degree with a decent GPA that I had somehow managed to resurrect from the depths of mediocrity. I got a job as an editor. Things were looking good. I started thinking about graduate school. And then the bills started coming in. Then the phone calls. Then the old familiar feeling of being broke and tense and desperate.

I wish I had listened to any of the people who warned me about student loans. I wish that it hadn’t been so easy for my idiot young adult self to take out thousands upon thousands of dollars. I wish someone in the financial aid office would have counseled me a little about the consequences of loans, of interest, of being financially irresponsible, instead of helping find more money I could borrow. I wish they would have at least imposed a minimum GPA so that when I started sliding, I wouldn’t be able to make things worse by taking out more money and then dropping out of more classes. I wish I could go back in time.

I can’t, so I decide to take the advice that all the adults are giving me now: consolidate. Looking back, I’m not sure I agree with the whole consolidation thing. I think I probably consolidated some loans that were accruing a lower rate of interest than my consolidation rate. Unfortunately, I didn’t think of that until after I’d already consolidated. Kind of like how I didn’t think about how much money I was borrowing until it was already borrowed.

My first consolidated bill came two years ago. Along with the bill was a handy little statement summarizing the extent of my debt. When I read those five digits, a sum greater than I had ever imagined, I felt defeated, wholly and completely. There was no way I could claw my way out of this pit of debt. With an English degree, I didn’t even know if I would ever make a yearly salary equal to my debt. When I told my step-dad the amount, after much prodding on his part, I was embarrassed. I couldn’t make eye contact. I heard him give a low whistle and tell me that was more than he’d paid for his first house. My heart sunk even lower.

Even after a couple of years, I still suffer sticker shock when I pay my student loan bill every month. If I look at it while I’m menstruating, I cry. So I try not to do that. I try not to get bitter about the fact that I can’t go back to school and get a Masters like I’d always planned because I can’t take out more loans and I can’t save money for tuition with my massive monthly bill. I try to console myself. I’m doing ok, keeping my head above water. Most people I know have some school debt. I just have a little more. They have the Hondas of debt and I have the luxury car. I tell myself that, in part, it couldn’t be helped. My parents couldn’t fund me because they had so many kids. I was grieving and depressed during my first run in school; I had a rough time. And, expensive as it was, I got my degree in a subject I love. I use my degree everyday as an editor.

I can’t ever totally shake the anxiety over my mountain of debt though; the mountain that I hope to clear sometime in my fifties. It always keeps me a little out of breath. An anxiety settled over me the day my loan repayments started. I wear it like a bulky sweater that’s too hot for the weather. Sometimes I don’t think about it and I can forget briefly; I push up the sleeves or I flap the front to let in a little breeze. I grow slightly accustomed, a little more comfortable. But then I remember. The sweat starts to bead and my armpits moisten and my forearms itch because the sweater is heavy and prickly and stifling. I see every one else walking around in short sleeves and tank tops and I realize that I can’t ever take the damn thing off.

Canned for Christmas

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 17:12:58 -0500

Looking back now, I’m not really sure why I was so comfortable. I was in about the most precarious position possible without actually being unemployed. I was a contractor, my contract was up and in the process of being renewed and I worked for a financial company. Not exactly a recipe for security in these thin economic times. But for some inexplicable reason I was comfortable. I chose to believe my smarmy recruiter when he said I was “golden” and had nothing to worry about. I chose to believe that, despite the fact that people were losing their jobs to the right and left, above and below me that I would be spared. I don’t even think I’m necessarily an optimist. Maybe more of a denialist. Either way, I was comfortable.

So when the day came of our office Christmas party, my job security was about the farthest thing from my little, secret Santa focused mind. Even as all the “real” employees left for an “all hands HR” meeting, a first in my nearly eight months with the company, there were no red flags in my field of vision. In fact, the only thing in my field of vision was celebrity gossip because I figured that if they all got to sit in a meeting and get paid, then there was no way I was going to actually work.

The real employees filed back in, perhaps they were somber, but that might just be my revisionist memory. No one said anything about the meeting. Perhaps that too should have raised the alarms but, again, I remained unaware. Then the phone calls started. The first was to a woman next to my cube who is prone to histrionics. So when she started sobbing at her desk, callous though it may sound, I really didn’t think much of it. I dimly registered when she rushed from her cubicle and started making hushed, desperate sounding conversation with the people around me. This is a woman whose generally dramatic behavior I had grown accustomed to ignoring though so I didn’t even try to eavesdrop.

It wasn’t until I passed another coworker, a tall, quiet woman with waist length hair who I was friendly with, and noticed her red-rimmed eyes that I paused to evaluate the mood in the office. Something was definitely going on. There were huddles of people all around speaking in rapid whispers. The break room was clogged with people on their cell phones huddled to the wall, hissing their conversations. I found out quickly that both the drama queen and my tall friend had been given their notice. Panic started to set in as I heard snippets from the HR meeting such as, “all contractors will be eliminated by January.”

I sat back down at my desk to get my own phone call. It was my boss and she didn’t know anything specific yet but she knew it wasn’t looking good for me. She promised that she would fight for me if she could and then we pushed on to the real purpose of the call which was my assignments for the week. I calmed, went into autopilot work mode and tried to concentrate on what she was saying.

Towards the end of the day, I still maintained a ridiculous comfort level. I hadn’t allowed any of the negativity to sink in yet. I was gearing up for the holiday party, checking in with people to see what time they would be there, when I realized I was going to be the only contractor going. I was confused by the mass contractor decision to snub our coworkers. They all said the same thing: it would just be too awkward. They didn’t want to attend a Pity Party.

I went to the party, the lone contractor, and understood what my contracting coworkers had meant. It was awkward in a way. The lay offs were all that anyone spoke to me about. The fact that I would soon be unemployed did not seem like party conversation, however, it would have been more awkward if no one had mentioned it at all. Instead of feeling self-conscious as I assume my contractor cohorts thought they would be, I immersed myself in my soon to be ex-coworkers words of encouragement. Everyone had their own brand of Hard Times Wisdom to impart. And, amazingly, it made me feel better. Not resentful, not shameful, not pitiful but optimistic, heartened, and most of all reassured. Everything would be okay.

I came home from the party with a little buzz and broke the news to my husband. I parroted the same reassuring words of my coworkers, assured him we would be fine and I tried to believe what I said. I went to bed feeling alright, almost sanguine. I repeated the assurances to myself thinking I would soon drift off. Except that I didn’t. My eyes didn’t close all night. I just kept running through the same cliché assurances over and over.

It wasn’t until my alarm went off just before dawn after my night of restlessness that I truly saw my situation. I was exhausted and dehydrated from the wine and there were no more buffers between me and the reality. No encouraging coworkers, no wine to take the edge off and no job. The anxiety ground in my head without any smiling, optimistic words to cushion it.

I rolled over to my husband and crushed myself into his back. He continued to snore softly and I tried with all my might to absorb some of his peace. It worked. I felt his even breath and his steady heart beat. I quit fighting all of the battling emotions and decided just to feel them instead. I stopped comparing myself to people who were much worse off and narrowed my scope to include just me, just my world, my circumstances and my bad luck.

The future was uncertain. I was unemployed. I didn’t have much money saved. We could not survive on my husband’s wages alone. Christmas was a week away and I didn’t have my shopping done and now I wouldn’t be able to afford presents. I might have to go back to restaurant serving or nannying if something didn’t come up soon. I was sad to leave my coworkers who I also couldn’t help resenting a little for keeping their jobs. I dreaded looking for new jobs and having to start all over some place else. My pride hurt at the thought that I would be unemployed. I couldn’t keep suppressing these feelings with well-meaning words. Not right then. Not at five in the morning with my mind raw from lack of sleep and my sense of goodwill all tapped out.

I pushed my face between his shoulder blades and cried on his back. He woke up then and I can only imagine that it's not very pleasant to wake up to someone’s runny nose and leaking eyes sticking to your back. He didn’t say anything though. Not “it’s going to be okay” or “we’ll get through it.” I’m glad he didn’t say those things because I know they’re true but sometimes they aren’t comforting.

It didn’t last long because, for better or worse, I still had to get to work for at least that day. Maybe the next if I was lucky. Maybe even another week. I drudged up the dogged optimism that I had allowed myself to let go of for a few blissful minutes of self-pity. My eyes were a little puffy and my nose a little red but I latched back on to my composure while I sipped my coffee and put on make up. Nobody would appreciate it if I showed up to work depressed; whereas, people would applaud me for being upbeat. People would appreciate it if I was chatty like always, if I was brave during my troubled time. I knew that and I was determined to deliver.

Honestly, though, I’d rather have been a coward with a job.

My Meat Manifesto

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:12:26 -0500

I try really hard not to eat meat. Most of the time I manage to steer clear of the stuff. This is in part due to the fact that most of the time I eat at my house and I have banished meat from my own cooking regime. It’s difficult not to eat meat though. Not just because of the eye-rolls I get from various carnivorous friends and family but also because meat is everywhere: at dinner parties, at office potlucks and particularly at restaurants. I like to eat out but I get sick of having the choice of a veggie burger (which is fine if the place makes it from scratch, but a Boca burger dressed up is not the same), a black bean burger (same stipulations as the veggie) or some meat dish minus the meat (which removes all the protein from the meal and typically leaves me bloated with carbs and unsatisfied).

Primarily, it’s hard for me to not eat meat because my decision is an ethical one and has nothing to do with food preference. I still think meat is delicious. There’s no reward for not eating it other than the sense of personal achievement at having gone yet another day without succumbing. Clean living is its own reward I suppose. But it’s not the same as committing to a jogging regime wherein you see the muscles on your legs get bigger and the number on the scale get smaller. The reward is fairly intangible and seems non-existent when you watch everyone else chow on juicy bratwursts while you’re stuck with a tofu dog that you’ve slathered with too much mustard just so you can choke it down.

I won’t waste time here on a rant about meat production because I figure, at this point, most people know there’s quite a bit of unpleasantness attached to mass produced meat. It’s like smoking. People know it’s bad for them and if they don’t choose to quit, well, that’s their business. It doesn’t take much digging to unearth all of the unsavory details about that sickly, antibiotic-laden mad cow meat or the steroidal, bland chicken breasts from the beakless bird. Even that lovely, sashimi style tuna from the fancy-pants restaurant comes with its own over-fished, non-sustainable baggage.

Despite the disturbing details I know about meat, I still crave it almost daily because it’s my perception that’s changed and not the meat. It’s still prevalent and enticing. However, each bite I take fills me with guilt. I know it shouldn’t be worth compromising my principles for a tasty slice of salty pepperoni pizza. But then I smell the heavy aroma of crackling bacon, see the succulent spiraled ham or the chicken wings sing to me with their siren buffalo sauce and my resolve melts into the sausage gravy that I ladle on my biscuits.

So, like most addicts, I set up a framework of exceptions that allows me to still enjoy meat guilt-free. Or at least that was the idea.

Exception one: always eat whatever a host is serving. It’s rude to turn down food that someone else invested time and care preparing. What I soon learned is that no one is typically offended when you turn down meat, quite the contrary, people usually feel bad for not offering meat-free alternative entrees. So I end up feeling guilty whenever I partake in this exception.

Exception two: if I didn’t buy it, then I’m not ethically responsible for aiding and abetting the evil meat machine. I can eat meat in social situations in which I have not contributed financially. I can just slip my bottle of wine in next to the spread and enjoy the bacon wrapped scallops and finger-licking ribs to my heart’s content. Except that I can’t, not quite. I feel the same guilt as I do when I justify meat eating as a social grace. I can’t seem to turn off my brain as I munch on meat that I suspect is the product of industrial torture, greed and general degradation.

Exception three: holidays are a free-for-all. Holidays are not only food-centric but very specifically meat-centric. You’ve got your Thanksgiving turkey, the Christmas and Easter hams, the Fourth of July bar-be-ques. The only safe holiday seems to be Valentine’s Day in which the whole concept revolves around sweets instead of meats. The most recent Thanksgiving was the first in which this exception lost its guilt-easing effectiveness. I could not help berating myself for indulging in the deep fried turkey. I only had a few bites and it was juicy and delicious and totally unnecessary. There were so many other tantalizing sides that I could (and did) fill myself to capacity without ever eating a bit of meat.

Exception four: organic meats are ok anytime. Except for that they’re not, not really. After yet more research I realized that organic meat companies employ a good many marketing ploys and buzz words to trick consumers into a state of pliant delusion. About the only term you can trust is “antibiotic free” but my qualms go far beyond the chemical mistreatment of the food source. “Free range” doesn’t mean the chickens skipped around in fields of green nor does “natural beef” mean the cows meandered open pastures eating a diet of grass.

Even the beef I bought off some guy at a farmer’s market turned out to be “grass finished.” After some googling I figured out this meant the cows ate grass for the last few weeks of their lives. The rest of the time they were fed an unnatural diet of grain. That probably gave the poor animals some uncomfortable digestive issues that would put most irritable bowel sufferers to shame. And, in the end, I can’t really afford to buy organic meat that often so—even when it’s legitimate pasture frolicking meat— the “anytime” still ends up being “not very often.”

Exception five: hangovers. Since my first hangover in college I have always craved greasy, calorific foods, typically of the fast food variety. Fast food restaurants are not great for vegetarian options or their vegetarian options are salads which are completely unsatisfying, even nauseating, when I’m rocking a bad, bottle-and-a-half-of-wine-myself hangover. As if the hangover depression isn’t enough, indulging in fast food fare just makes me feel bad about myself and hungover. Besides some places are catching up. There is a barbeque spot just around the corner from me that now serves bbq tofu. Just make the tofu as unhealthy as possible, deep fried and covered in sauce, and I might just be in meat-free hangover heaven.

Exception six: Chick-fil-a. Either you get this one or you don’t. I know some people hate it and I know some people are not tempted by fast food. I do not fall into either of those categories and so can be found periodically stuffing my face with grow-in-the-dark chicken meat covered in that mysteriously addictive, slightly sweet crumbly crust. Luckily I don’t live near a Chick-fil-a, so most of the time I’m safe. Most of the time.

Despite the fact that my many exceptions were designed to keep me with one foot firmly planted in the carnivore camp, their associated problems have pushed me into being more of a meat abstainer than I planned. Sometimes it bugs me. I don’t like that I have to limit myself to a once or twice a month consumption rate because so many others demand dirt cheap meat three times a day. The meat industry has degraded its standards and disposed of its humanity for the express purpose of cutting costs so that a lot of people can eat a lot of cheap meat.

Then, in my more forgiving moments, I think that, even if the animals were properly revered for their sacrifice and meat cost what it should, I would probably eat about the same amount. I would like to treat it as a feast like my hunter-gatherer ancestors who enjoyed meat on a catch-as-catch-can basis. Recently I went to a restaurant with a menu of organic, natural meats from a farm nearby. I paid almost nine bucks for a hamburger and it was the most delicious thing I’ve eaten in a month. It was worth every penny and I savored every bite because I knew I wouldn’t get another one for probably another month. I shouldn’t have too much of a good thing. Which is easier said than done with the holidays just around the corner and a Chick-fil-a a block from my work.