Aisles, Stalls, Rows

Yesterday I went grocery shopping with the express purpose of buying delicious food that cost more money than food I would usually buy myself. I don't think I've ever been a fussy eater--maybe for a couple weeks in Japan when I had incredibly-salty-fish-for-dinner-every-night fatigue, but I soon got over myself and ate all sorts of frightening things like straight-up chunks of beef fat, crickets and whole small octopi. Alex Chung would be proud of me.

But lately my stomach has turned into the fussy two-year old who is hungry but refuses to eat anything. I chalk this up to a couple things: eating the same boring dependable meals for two years now takes ninety percent of the fun out of eating and never getting around to eating a proper lunch or dinner for two weeks running teaches my stomach to just close itself off to the idea of food. So I bought a lot of yummy treats for myself in order to coax my hermit crab of a stomach to unfurl itself. Spoonful of sugar, etc.

At the grocery store I saw a guy that had been in the class that I TAed in the spring. It feels strange to run into people I know in LA, because shouldn't LA be like New York, which seems just too big to run into anyone? And yet I do run into people: at the grocery store, at the carwash, in coffee shops, at the movies. Incidentally, the movies and the grocery (well, and The Grove) is where all of my celebrity sightings have taken place. Will Smith is very tall and his wife is very small, Charlie Sheen has no ass and looks like someone's deranged uncle, Joey Slotnik favours the salad-and-sushi part of Trader Joe's and can't believe you recognise him, Reese Witherspoon wears a toque when it's not even that cold out but we all know why.

But better than running into a celebrity is running into someone I actually know. It feels small and homey to run into an aquaintance in the aisle or the parking garage and chat and think about them as fully formed people who have to do things like buy eggs.