The Maine Mall

I left my cell phone charger in New York, so had to find a new one today. In New York, there's a cell phone store of some sort on every corner. Here, I didn't know where to start. So I started at the Staples in South Portland. They didn't have one, so on I went to a (relatively) cute little T-Mobile kiosk--by that I mean a freestanding store that wasn't shimmied into the middle of a strip mall. The store was out of my brand of charger, so I was forced to ENTER THE MALL. Like giant supermarkets, giant malls scare me. First, they involve lots of walking under fluorescent lights. Second, I don't know where to find things, and that frustrates me. I'm terrible with directions in general, can't really read those maps they put up in malls, and I like to get in and out of places as quickly as possible. So I did not really want to go to the mall, but I had to, or my cell phone was going to keep bleating all day about how its battery was low.

The mall was just like any other mall, and as it turns out, I was in and out of there rather quickly, (mostly because the guy at the T-Mobile store tipped me off that I should enter through the Best Buy in order to find the Global Cellular, where they sold all manner of cell phone accoutrements (neon plastic cell phone holders and the like, along with a charger that works for my phone, thank God!)). But since I was in my car, I couldn't help but stop at some other stores at other, smaller malls. (The Maine Mall seems to have spawned a brood of mini-malls lining the routes and frontage roads around South Portland.) I stopped at the Christmas Tree Shops, a discount close-out type of place that sells a lot of household stuff you don't really need, until you see that some tchotchke costs only $1.29 and suddenly it seems like a great deal. (Didn't buy anything.) I also stopped at some unfinished pine furniture shop. Then I made an accidental detour onto 95 south, which was totally not where I wanted to be going. But I couldn't get off of it, and I was even forced to pay the toll I'd paid last night while driving up from New York, drive a mile or two, then turn off at the first exit and drive up a frontage road. Argh. I need to get a GPS chip implanted in my brain.

It's a gray, rainy day here, and driving around the strip malls of South Portland, listening to Lite FM because I still can't figure out where the good radio stations are, and hearing Muzak in big box stores, was depressing. I thought of N and missed him so much, wishing we were in Red Hook scoping out used furniture stores or getting coffee at Baked. Or wishing he was here, and that we lived in a nicely furnished apartment somewhere close to downtown and our lives were in full swing, that we ate out 3 nights a week at Fore St. and Duckfat and Local 188, and cooked delicious healthy meals from ingredients purchased at Whole Foods the rest of the time.

Ah, food. Today I am "fasting," sort of. Well, actually, for breakfast I had tea and aloe juice. And a small glass of soy milk. And for lunch I ate an apple. For dinner tonight, I'll have nothing but brown rice, broccoli and avocado. Ok, it's not a fast, technically, but more of a cleanse. It's still a lot less than I usually eat. If you know me, you know that I used to be the sort of skinny person who could eat bagels and burritos every day without gaining a pound. I was skinny, like Olive Oyl skinny. At one point, I was even trying out those protein powders that bodybuilders use to put on weight. And then, at some point in the last few years, I started to like food. Really started to like food. I even started to eat everything on my plate. This would be a coup for my parents if I were still 7 years old, but unfortunately, as an adult eating out 2-3 times a week, this means I'm about 10 pounds heavier than I ever used to be. I think about food almost all day--about what I'll have for lunch all morning, and what I'll have for dinner all afternoon. I never used to be like this, and have never had to limit calories or pass on dessert, and in fact used to disdain people who did so, and now, as karma would have it, I am one of those people. Thus, today's "cleanse." I'll let you know if I wake up tomorrow with clearer skin and sense of "lightness," and more energy. (That's what they promise you when you do these things.)