Really just a GIP, along with "A Day in the Life"

[zana16]

Why? Because I feel like telling you. And because you're perfectly capable of deciding not to read it.
So I woke up this morning and wanted fudge. And since I'd managed to wipe out the last remains of my Spanish Sugar Splurge just the day before, there was *gasp* nothing sugared in the house.
But I am a lazy bum, and it took me several hours to get up, take a shower, go through FUSAC and realize that nobody's gonna hire me (although I could get a degree in teaching english as a foreign language this summer), and finish the rest of the cherries in the house.
So I decided to have a picnic. But I decided to have a healthy picnic. So I walk downstairs with 22 euros and 34 centimes in my pocket. First I go to the grocery store that we live five floors above. I manage to be nice to them today even though they are racists and we usually boycott them, but I have gone three weeks without tissues and am going nuts. So I buy tissues and *finally* blow my nose properly for the first time in forever.
Fascinating, 'innit? Read on, cher comrade.
Then I go down to the corner cheese store and buy some monkshead cheese, which is possibly quite the best cheese on the face of this earth. I cross two streets to the bus station, see that the bus will be eight minutes in coming, and walk to the next stop. I take this bus several stops until lo and behold I spy a Saturday open market. So I get off the bus, walk back to the market, and brave the noble hawkers of vegetables trying to one-up each other in terms of volume. I get some strawberries and some raspberries, as I had just been thinking that I didn't know if I'd be able to live through the day without raspberries. And I find a pocketwatch that is almost perfect (as in almost exactly what I've been looking all over Europe for) so I buy it cause it's 8 euros even if it isn't perfect. I also buy two pieces of what turns out to be the only disappointing baklava that I've ever had, and now I am mad that I put up with the vendor openly ogling my chest and smirking at me. Walk back to the bus stop, take a bus up to Place d'Italie, where I get off again, cross the Place with only a couple of near death experiences, and go to the bakery where they sell the best baguettes in Paris. There is a line out the door but I know it's worth it. They have run out of baguettes, they tell me, but I take one that is slightly burned on one end, along with a goat cheese and walnut pastry. I go to the next bus stop down the road, and take another bus for a grand total of one stop before I have to change.
Only there's a problem: I have spotted another market. I have a weakness for markets. And I feel a sense of Doom with a capital D coming on when I realize it's an antiques market. You couldn't keep me away from it if you tried. Hundreds of stalls of china, cigar boxes, old books, lamps, jewelry, etc... I am Doomed. Especially when I realize that this isn't any old antique market, this is the once-a-year shut-down-the-streets antique fair.
My saving grace is that I only have five euros and my back-up twenty on me. So I play the "if I actually had money but not alot" game. I determine to find one or two treasures in the muck that I can feel really bitter about not being able to afford, and forget the rest. I didn't even ask the price on the beautiful Chinese dragon tea set; there's no way I could ever have gotten it home to the States.
So I walk by all the stalls and with a great effort of self-will I manage not to buy anything. Anything. I tell myself I don't need those beautiful lamps, that I have no use for the antique bootblacking kit. I lecture myself on the follies of spending large amounts of money on small ornamental boxes, and ask myself what on earth I would do with a hardbound ten-volume set of the complete history of the forties in French. I don't need that beautiful china plate that looks like pietra dura. I don't need those nifty glass bottles to add to my bottle collection. And I don't need *sob* the six-volume first edition of Dumas's Le Comte de Monte Cristo.
I managed to make it to the next bus stop without breaking down and buying anything.
It's strange; I'm not a shopper. At all. Going to the mall once a year for Christmas shopping is absolute hell. I go wild for garage sales and flee markets, though. There's all this stuff. And I don't really consider myself materialistic. But I do hold on to everything and I do have a tendency to nest. I surround myself with "comfy stuff". Screw a sound system and a wide-screen TV; I'm fine with my 13inch as long as I have fuzzy pillows and warm socks. And knick-knacks and antiques spell "home" to me. It's been so long since I've had a "home" that I know I've developped several neuroses--I mean coping techniques--to deal with the uncertainty, and one of them is the urge to collect *stuff*.
And then I started thinking, maybe one of the (many) reasons I'm a compulsive eater and overweight is that I'm so used to not being able to hold on to things, and the pounds are the only thing I can hold on to, in a horrible and fucked-up way.
So. My therapist would be proud. I've identified another reason why I have a psychological block against losing weight. Therapy has trained me to psychoanalyze myself and figure out where things come from. Unfortunately, therapy is really not helpful about teaching me how to *act* on these things.


I have lurked in LJ for long enough that I know what a "GIP" is, but not what the letters stand for. But I found the dancing Calvin and my life is complete for the time being. Now if my professor would just email me the exam she was supposed to send on Thursday, I could be less stressed, too.