Moments in the Woods

I traveled to the West Side Market with my mom today. Basically it's a year-round outdoor produce market in downtown Cleveland. I hadn't been there since I was a kid. I remembered getting stepped on amongst aisles of shouting vendors and mountains of strange fruits. I remembered the piles of pink meat under glass, the vacant eyes of the speckled silvery fish on ice. I remembered getting lost and feeling scared.

Not much has changed. In fact, nothing has changed. I'm aware of more now I guess. Today when I passed the bloody piles of meat I didn't think to myself that I didn't want to eat meat ever again. I thought that I would try to dismiss the image so I could keep enjoying ribs and burgers without remorse. Of course, later at Half Price Books my cashier proudly sported a hat that said "VEGAN" across it so I immediately flashed back to those awful slaughterhouse images of my afternoon at the market.

Anyway, I had a moment with one of the vendors. He was relatively young I guess--maybe twenty-some years old. He was Puerto Rican and he had a really suprising smile. It kind of caught me off guard as I passed. So I smiled back and caught myself lingering there in that moment. So a few seconds later when I broke my gaze I turned back to see that he was still watching me. For some reason I winked. I don't ever wink. It felt good to do it. I knew I'd never see him again. I wasn't that attracted to him. I wasn't going to buy fruit at his stand so it's not like I would have gotten a discount for flirting. I told my mom about what happened and she made fun of me.

So my mom bought some cabbage, I suppose for St. Patrick's Day. I got some mangos and encouraged my mom to get some garlic because it was decently priced and looked delicious. And really, garlic is one of those things that you just need to have around the kitchen at all times.

I wanted some pomegranates but they were really expensive. I hate that! People keep saying how good they are for you and how awesome the juice is but who wants to spend three dollars on a piece of fruit? Not me! But the seeds are so good! Garr! A lady heard me get excited about the delicious-looking starfruit and she asked me what it was like. So I described it to her. I felt cool. Ask me about fruit! Ha.

So back to Half Price Books. I'd never been there before but we passed it so we went in. This place is my toy store. I seriously had so much fun. It's all used books and a few new ones and they're so amazingly priced. I bought a novel called "The Last Cigarette" for 89 cents. It's pretty good so far. I'm only about40 pages in. I'll report back later. I looked at the store for a few items for my sweetie but nothing was good enough. And no Jackson Caine! I was angry.

They also had vinyl at this place and used CDs and tapes. I was thisclose to buying a Color Me Badd CD but for some reason I didn't think it was worth two dollars. Color me crazy...

My mom said that some kid was macking on me in the bookstore and following me around. I usually don't notice if men are showing interest in me. I wish I would have seen what he looked like because I always think it's funny when guys notice me. I guess I looked available today? Who knows.

Strike on the tinder, ho!