You are out there

Who among us can lay claim to a truly purposeful existence? I know "purpose" is subjective and some may argue that the pauper who sleeps on the concrete in tattered clothes, stewing in his own excrement has great purpose: depending on our reaction, he can cause us to identify with our fear of poverty, confirm our ignorance of Reis' other half or pay him to assuage our guilt.

I question my own purpose and place on this earth. A lot. I have a great job, wonderful co-workers, a good boss who tries very hard to make my position a meaningful one. Sometimes it's just not enough. Is my purpose in life to guide volumes of paperwork into a filing cabinet and await a stipend with gleeful anticipation? Ask yourself this question, because I do all the time:

Are you out there?

Flea market circus

This weekend went by super quick.  I'm spoiled by working in an industry which allows its employees to take off every other Monday or Friday in the summer.  Paid in full.  Of course, the surefire torment provided by a weekend commute to Long Island makes the whole "summer Fridays" thing a little less rewarding.

Haley and her mom had a garage sale this weekend and garnered some well-earned coin.  $2,270 to be exact.  Apparently, this annual garage sale has taken on mythic dimensions since so many of the buyers remarked that they came because of last year's great sale.  I still can't get over that figure.  $2,270!  I never made anything close to that at my own sales, (stoop sales in Brooklyn, since garages are a rarity where I grew up) perhaps because I never had quality merchandise to pawn off on deep pocketed individuals.  Still, some of the stuff at Haley's sale was SHIT and yet, it sold.  

I was somewhat raised in the sad circus that is the flea market business.  When I was around 8 years old, my mother became to general manager of the P.S. 321 flea market.  I think she only held that title for 1 year, but for 365 days, my mother showed up at my elementary school every weekend, ready to shuffle vendors around, listening to them complain and always making sure they weren't selling porn.  I think she got paid $100 a weekend to do that.  

I'm not really resentful that my mother kind of raised my brother and I at the flea market.  I abhorred the walk from our apartment to the market, which was always prolonged by my mother ogling stoop sale advertisements posted to lampposts.  Some of the regular vendors at the flea market were nice people, but most were creepy flea market lifers.  Like Terry, the strange woman who always wore straw hats and insisted on kissing me and my brother.  Gross.  I wonder if my mother let her do that because she assumed those slimy, old lady kisses would result in a bargained down price on an antique clock.  

There was also Minet, the 70+ year old drag queen who wore women's clothes and a fake orange wig underneath a cabby hat.  For no prejudicial reasons whatsoever, Minet creeped me out much like clowns with shaved heads, little hats and macabre makeup give some people the willies.  Minet called everyone "darling" and "honey" and walked with the urgency of a dehydrated turtle.  I remember when Minet died (long after my Mom gave up her GM duties) and the flea market created a pictorial tribute to him in the schoolyard.   Worst schoolyard poster ever.

Freed from her responsibilities as flea market GM, my mother began dragging me and my brother to stoop sales.  Given the fact that my mother had a bad leg, we were sent ahead to stoop sales as advance scouts.  "Go!  Grab anything you think I would like.  You know my style."  With our directives clear, me and brother would dart up the block and grab items that looked as old as my mother.  Uh huh.  Who wouldn't forfeit an entire morning of watching Saturday cartoons for THAT kind of fun?

When I hit 12 years of age, my mother made a last ditch attempt to keep us going to the sales with her.  She proclaimed my brother and I unfit to be alone with one another in the apartment.  She seemed to believe we were violent towards one another and that we could not be trusted to conduct ourselves in a mature manner in absence of her superior guidance.  Since she occasionally tape recorded us with a mico-cassette recorder hidden in a shoe, our efforts to portray ourselves as saintly practitioners of virtue were generally disregarded as lies.  Because my brother was older, I got stuck going to the sales with my mother for one more year.

The flea market circus taught me a lot.  With few job prospects in my early teens, I started selling my own personal items at illegal stoop sales (can't have an actual stoop sale with no stoop) in front of my apartment.  Never made more than $200, but that's striking oil at age 15.  The sales were a necessity since my parents rarely forked over cash to me.  The experience of my dad being on strike from the airlines for 3 years made my folks fiercely protective of cash.  They always tried to instill a sense of responsibility in me.  It worked all the way until college when I signed up for a gasoline card in exchange for a "free" bag of M&Ms and ended up $20,000 in debt 10 years later.  

I miss the circus sometimes.  It was the one thing my mother, with no reservations, looked forward to each and every week.  I'm sure to some degree, she appreciated my companionship at those sales.  It's awfully strange when you get nostalgic about things you used to hate.  I'll try and imagine Minet so I can make the feeling go away.  

Melt

I've eaten way too much over the last 2 years. Not too long ago (approx. 1 month) I began a high protein, lower carbohydrate diet. It's nothing suspiciously restrictive like Mr. Atkins. Instead, this diet I'm on encourages one to eat 6 times a day so the body does not go into starvation mode and begin storing calories. I love eating, so 6 meals a day is very appealing.

At least 2 of the meals are these high protein Myoplex shakes. My other meals are "raw" protein (low fat chicken, turkey, etc.) and veggies. In one month, I've lost about 23 lbs. Getting a reaction out of co-workers, who remember me just a couple of months ago when I was using my rotund frame to gain leverage against the evil vending machine that was trapping my Pop Tarts, is nice. Fitting into clothes I haven't been able to wear for years is a huge plus.

I'll let my true intentions for writing this entry be known: I need healthy recipes.

Anyone gots?