Coming to conclusions

Last night (i.e. 45 minutes ago) was my friend's birthday; her birthday dinner/party was going on as we speak but I had to leave, I got a splitting headache from the combination of noise, sugar, alcohol, even though I only had once glass of wine, which was very good... and one piece of cake, which was even better. Heavenly, actually. Chocolate cake is my vice. I'm not addicted to anything-- I stop taking prescription drugs, even vycodin, as soon as I can-- except chocolate. And no it's not the sugar or the fat, it's the chocolate. Which comes with sugar (and fat). And everything I read, everywhere, tells me sugar is bad-- it makes you dumb (see NYT article: Lobes of Steel); it gives you cancer (if you care, e-mail me, I'll send you the reference for the book); etc. So I've tried to cut back but as long as chocolate comes with sugar, purging sugar from my diet will be an uphill battle.

But I digress. My friend-- a very close friend-- understood. I left, and paced the floor of the metro stop to try to walk off the sugar rush, and as I did, my heel occasionally fell through and pierced the caulk. I looked down and there were other heel marks. I don't have Carrie Bradshaw feet, and I don't look fabulous in strappy sandals, but I look even less fabulous in anything clunkier.

I digress again. I wanted to get my friend flowers, because she likes flowers, but I thought this place was more club and less restaurant, so I didn't pick up any flowers earlier in the day. I got there unfashionably early, saw that it was a restaurant (and club), and went to a nearby supermarket and got some flowers. This is in Columbia Heights, which like much of DC is both very high income and very low income.

In front of me in line was a woman buying exactly $20-worth of groceries. She had $20 in cash, and when her total came to $21.50, she had to return something. Also in her shopping cart was a 24-pack of bottled water. Which (not the water, but her choice to sacrifice something else for bottled water) made me think of something.

I remember one of my grad school colleagues telling me, not long after I first moved to DC, that he babysat, maybe tutored, for a well-off family, and that family drank DC tap water so it must be fine.

A year later, one of my roommates, a teacher [of low-income kids] said that her kids' families, no matter how poor they are, all drink bottled water, won't touch DC tap water.