Sushi on a Sunday

It had been over a year since I could take my daughter to a nice sushi restaurant. We were in Carytown in Richmond, VA and I was so excited to treat her to good sushi. Well this blog post will have the story but not the name of the restaurant. I don't want to be rude and name a restaurant with the persons way of living with my negative opinion. If it was great, yeah I'll name it all day long, bad food, nope just the tale not the name. I actually wanted to take my daughter to the fancy french restaurant in Carytown but she freaked at the prices. My daughter is amazing with money and the biggest cheapskate I have ever met. I mean that in a good way. So we walked around in the swampy Virginia heat searching for sushi. Our favorite place in that neighborhood, Moshi Moshi had closed its doors permanently while I was financially strapped. So cue the music, we were looking for a new love baby. This place was not it. We walked in and I tend to enjoy a lot of air conditioning when I eat raw fish. This place wasn't much cooler than the outside. The decor was plain and dark and pretty empty. We were seated promptly and we stuck with just ice water. This was not the sushi orgy of greed from the late nineties. When my daughter was seven she could eat over fifty dollars of sushi by herself. It's been a while since we ordered like that. I only ordered tuna and octopus and a spider roll, she ordered a shrimp roll and some other low priced roll. We picked a moderately priced roll to share. The waitress brought my seaweed salad and it was so tiny, the bowl could have been part of a doll's tea party set. The flavor was normal, just like the seaweed salad at the old Ukrop's. Then the sushi came and the small portions were aggravating me. First time in over a year I could afford sushi, I was hoping to have a memorable meal. The spider roll had a sweet sauce on it that took away from the crab flavor. Oh, wait a minute I really couldn't taste the crab flavor. Back in the late nineties Hana Zushi had the biggest spider rolls, they were amazing. The claws were coming out the edge of the roll and the pieces of the backfin were so huge in the roll, that you knew exactly what you were eating. My octopus was tiny and just okay. Please don't kill the baby octopus just for me, kill a grownup octopus so I can have a grownup size order. The tuna was medium size, but not the pretty shade of pink. It was kinda dark. The roll that we shared had no rice, and instead of seaweed was rolled in cucumber. The cucumber was too much, you tasted the cucumber instead of the tuna. When we were done, I was still starving. Literally starving. I ordered a bowl of rice just to tide me over until we got home. When we got the check, it was twenty over what I had thought we had ordered. And about twenty five more than what I would have spent at the French place. Next time in Carytown it will be ooh la la at the French restaurant and the next sushi trip, we will play it safe in Shockoe Slip.

Saying Grace

Every meal is started with saying grace. A solid tradition. Gratitude for the meal, gratitude for your spiritual beliefs. At this house, the gratitude is genuine, you can feel the compassion rolling off in waves. A kind house. The meal was simple. Fried croaker on a white oval plate. The father caught the croaker and fried it for his wife. Lima's and corn in a casserole dish, french fries on another white oval plate. You could see how much this man loved his wife with every part of his life. From the way his fishing boat was named after her to the way he cooked dinner for her. The way he smiled when he looked at her, the kindness when he he greeted her with a kiss. They have been married for around fifty years give or take. The parents of a high school friend. Seeing this couple made me think about my short marriage. Fifty years ago marriages weren't so disposable. A man would have been shamed for abandoning his wife during a health crisis. No social media to congratulate him, shame her. In another value system a man never called his wife ugly, evil, or a psycho. No lies of soap opera worthy crimes leveled against the wives of yesteryear. Maybe I'm looking at that generation with rose colored glasses. Two weeks ago I met a man in his nineties, he talked of his wife, and their sixty-two year marriage. He said she was his true asset. This man, his walls are covered with his accomplishments in business, agriculture and county politics, does he boast or brag? No, his asset was his wife. I wonder how RG thinks of me. Does he remember the way I drove him to work everyday for three and a half years. Every meal I cooked for him. The pork butt I dry rubbed and roasted for hours a month before he left me. The flour tortillas I made by hand that same last month. With the gossip I heard about me, I imagine not. I still remember every kind thing he did, every meal he cooked for me. I wonder if our meals had started with grace from the beginning  would last September had steam rolled over us? If we had a home filled with grace from the beginning, a kind house, a compassionate home. What if? Perhaps if our meals had started with grace, it could have been a tradition to last fifty years, give or take.

My mother's shoes

They were brown hard leather with intricate holes, dirty and turned up at the toes with the wrinkled crease broken in across the top of the shoe. Black footprints melted into the inside where my moms feet were always dirty and she didn't were socks, she ran around barefoot a majority of the time a throw back to her days of poverty growing up in West Virginia. Those aren't the shoes I'm walking in now. It's my depression to her bipolar. I spent four days in the same hospital unit as her. She was always able to come home with her life intact, my father took care of her. Took her to the hospital, brought her clothes to wear, allowed me to visit. I had no visitors, no clothes not even a pair of underwear to change into. I remember being heavily sedated, bare butt in a hospital gown, eating breakfast and lunch at the table in the middle of the unit. The food was cold and bland and I was a zombie, oblivious to my lack of clothes in public. I have never gone without underwear in public a day in my life. That's not the worst, I wish my lack of underwear was my rock bottom. Not even the top ten. Instead of going through the laundry list of what happened to me, I wonder how my mother dealt with it. I never once wondered that before. Before I made rude jokes about how bad could it be to in a psych unit, I joked that's where all the good drugs are. No, that's where lives can end if your not careful. Being over sedated, my head felt like it was wrapped in bubble wrap. Under water, where every thing is muffled and you can't speak. All the words are gone. Is that why she hated going, getting lost inside your mind, no words, no map, no trail of crumbs to your old life. When she came home what was it really like? I remember the house had to be cleaned, dinner had to be made, she got to come home to a comfortable home. What was life like outside of our house? Did rumors fall like rain about the details of her hospital stay? Tall tales and exaggerated stories of oh my lawd did you know what that woman did? Was she publicly shamed, water cooler gossip, lied about or was anyone kind to her?

Lip gloss and poverty

How many times have you bought an expensive lip gloss that never even got used. Forgotten and unopened at the bottom of a drawer or left in the original bag. I never thought about it before. I didn't care before. One of the biggest mistakes was my choice to take a break from nursing to work in the food industry. I under employed my own self and thought it was a brilliant and brave choice. I had no comprehension how huge the pay cut really was. I took a huge pay cut, and didn't even budget my money. RG was worried about the power bill and I was clueless about how bad my pay cut was and I was still buying make up. And fake eyelashes. And you name it. Six months after the break up I am trying to learn how to budget. I write every purchase down in a budget book. I have a bottom of the tube make up rule. Finish a lip gloss before you buy another one, which means all the tubes in the drawer have to be used. If I want a new foundation, than I need to use up the cakey bottle, period. I have wasted money my whole life, but now that I am dancing on the edge of being homeless, one financial crisis away from losing my place to live, it's a lot easier to see that greedy amounts of sushi and twenty two dollar lip gloss was a waste of money. There is bitter sadness that permeates poverty, it's the regret. Regretting ever bad choice you made to get there and the person you can't apologize to.

Compassion with a side of hash browns

Compassion with a side of hash browns

Working the last six months in a busy breakfast diner has taught me a million things. Of course it taught me the food industry is not my talent. Twenty years ago I was a great waitress, today not so much. In this economy, people will say anything to get free food. I understand that hot food when your hungry is like a hit of cocaine when your sober. Complaints of how horrible the food is to get a full refund after you ate the whole plate have driven the food costs up to the astronomical  point even I can understand how bad this industry is financially. I'm glad I learned that money lesson as a waitress and not a food truck owner.    
The lessons that are kinder are based more in humanity. I have not been my best these last six months. I have been my worst. Fragile and crying and sad. My co workers never knew me before my hospital stay and break up, and not a single one has a college degree. Every single one has had more compassion then every degree nurse working with my husband. When I am crying too much they set up my tables and get their drinks. When they hear my voice shake, the ten second warning to tears they try to help me redirect. One waitress knows if she lightly pinches the side of my neck it makes me laugh. The cook knows I get too scared to walk to the bus stop in the dark, so she has her husband take me to work even on her days off. These women are strong and caring, and they gently try to push me to be stronger everyday. They have shown so much compassion to me just saying thank you doesn't feel like it's enough, but it's a start.

All about food!

How easy would be to change one part of your life. If it was easy everyone would be Barbie Playboy perfect with a PhD and the greatest job ever. Insert sarcastic tone with the last sentence. Changing habits is hard so I am going to try to change one small habit. Instead of the same old same old food choices every day I want to eat all vegetarian one day a week down here in the south. Here in Richmond Virginia gravy is on every menu at every restaurant or at least it seems to me. This blog was originally intended to have everything and a whole lot food. I love food, it's fun but after working in the restaurant industry for the last six months it is the owning side is not for me. So much food waste make really high food costs, long hours of prep time, all the reality of food service isn't really me after all. Dreaming of opening a food truck would not have been my cup of tea it after all. I'm lucky to learn that lesson working at a food job instead of buying a food truck! So instead of cooking food I just want to eat food. So looking towards the next six months I will be planning a series of how to eat vegan in Richmond Virginia. Can it be done walking into any old restaurant. Can you do vegan through a drive-through? Can you go to a diner, a mom-and-pop restaurant, a chain restaurant what food choices can you make when you want to make a statement with your diet. Here in Richmond it's easy to eat pizza, tacos, hamburgers and especially barbecue but what about raw vegan and doing it without spending three hours cutting vegetables to eat one for meal. Can this choice be a quickie food option on the run and eating out? From what I have seen, it looks like vegan get judged a lot and I wonder is some of the judgement that the diet is just too hard to even try. But I think one day a week with no bacon and cheeseburgers would be great, how hard can it be? We will see! 

Messy bits of life

Sam is throwing up today. The first thing I did was want to call you.  You were always better at dealing with the messy bits of life. I miss you. All the bad all the good. We adopted a dog that is the size of a moose and he loves you. He doesn't understand divorce and running away when the messy bits of life get too ugly. Yesterday is the first time I went to the grocery store and bought a normal amount of normal groceries. It felt weird not picking up your favorites. Every baby step I take to get back to normal life without you feels weird. Guilty and strange. I wonder what is going on in your head when your alone, do you miss anything? When I would cook for you? Buying you pigs feet and salted pork that you would eat like candy. The roast chicken you loved, I know I miss your chicken wings. I even miss the way you screw up cooking steaks half the time. You loved our kitchen so much. I loved our marriage so much. Well enough wallowing for now, Sam left another messy bits of life and I can't call you.