Did you know that it is nearly November?! Which means that I am going to be (supposedly) posting every day, for NaBloPoMo. (Considering I wrote part of this post on Tuesday, tried to post it Wednesday and Friday and got interrupted, NaBloPoMo may be a big fat pipe dream.) But what, pray tell, shall I write about during the course of that long and dreary month? If you have any burning questions for me, or ideas for posts you want to see, now’s your chance! My old Ask Me Anything form stopped working, so I have set up a new one right here. Please check it out and ask away!

I hope you have questions for me, because I have some questions for you.

When you make leftovers, how long do you expect those leftovers to stretch?

I used to actively dislike leftovers, but I have come around. Now, as long as it’s something I really like – fire fry! chipotle chicken tortilla soup! chipotle chicken tacos! I like-ah the spice! – I am happy to eat it day after day. Maybe not indefinitely, but I’d be happy eating any of those things I just mentioned for a whole week.

However. I just learned that my husband is happy eating a thing, and then eating it as leftovers, and that’s it. I should not find this as surprising as I do, based on his “we eat tacos too often” stance.

This is good for me, of course, because I wind up getting most of the yummy yummy fire fry/soup/tacos to myself. But it’s not so good when I am counting on not cooking for the number of days a food lasts.

Listen, there are most definitely things I don’t want to eat even a second time. For most things, though, I feel like the ideal amount of leftovers is enough for two meals AFTER the initial meal. But maybe I’m wrong?

What is the correct your preferred way to pack a grocery bag?

The other day at the grocery store, for the first time ever in my history of patronizing grocery stores, the checker requested that I put all my produce together to make it easier on the bagger.

I am just now realizing that usually, my produce goes on the belt last. So it’s probably always together already. But this time, I think I may have put some of the heavier produce (onions, sweet potatoes) on the belt first, and then withheld lighter non-produce items (tortilla shells, a quarter pound of deli ham) along with my tomato, bananas, and precious bell peppers (I cannot stand a bruised bell pepper, and I want them to go ON TOP). Perhaps the “all produce together” rule has always been in place, and I’ve only just now run afoul of it.

The checker seemed to feel weird about her request. (Maybe I caused her to feel weird, by remarking – in what I thought was a cheery, non-argumentative way – that no one had ever asked me to do that before.) She kept thanking me for rearranging my items on the belt. And then she gave me a semi-long explanation for why she’d asked me to put the produce together in the first place, which boils down to: the checkers like to bag like items together.

Well. I found that FASCINATING. Since the pandemic, I have had quite a lot of experience bagging my groceries myself, and here is how I prefer to do it:

• Between 2 and 4 heavy-ish things on the bottom of each bag (milk cartons, large yogurt containers, flour, sugar, large cans of tomato puree, cartons of ice cream)
• A nice base of less heavy but sturdy/boxed items (boxed rice, mixed lettuce in a plastic clamshell, frozen pancakes, containers of salsa or guacamole, boxed pasta, crackers, butter, cream cheese)
• Or, a nice base of less heavy/smaller cans (beans or tomato sauce or coconut milk)
• Or, a nice base of heavy, sturdy produce (onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, citrus fruits, iceberg lettuce)
• The middle section is for meats, awkward and semi-sturdy vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, celery), and bagged items (shredded cheese, cookie mix, frozen peas or mango, chocolate chips, bagged rice/beans/lentils)
• The top section is for light and/or delicate things (cilantro, green beans, bell peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, bananas, berries, bagged pasta, bread, chips)
• Eggs and flowers go in a separate bag

I have most definitely run into grocery store baggers who, like, put all the canned goods in one bag. Or who put three items into each of ten separate bags. But I’ve dismissed those occasions as errors on the part of people who either don’t do the shopping and therefore don’t have to carry bags into their house, or are body builders, or, conversely, have no upper body strength whatsoever. I had no idea that, it seems, they have all been TAUGHT to do things this way.

The baggers at Trader Joe’s have been taught a different and far superior way. Without exception, they seem to possess clear understanding about which items should accompany one another, what should go on top vs on the bottom and – crucially important – how to pack a shit ton of groceries into the one solitary reusable bag you brought in from the car, so sure were you that you were only going to buy the three things on your list.

Tell me all your grocery bagging ways.

What Halloween candy have you bought this year?

Carla has persuaded me to buy two bags each of Brach’s candy corn and candy pumpkins. That is, so far, the ONLY Halloween candy I’ve purchased. I have no idea if my husband and I will even give out candy tomorrow. We haven’t decorated our yard, so it’s kind of unclear whether we even celebrate Halloween. But, more pertinent, I have not purchased any Halloween candy to hand out!

I’ve tried. I’ve been in Target a couple of times recently and looked at the Halloween selection with the express purpose of getting some to hand out. IT’S SO EXPENSIVE. A bag of, I think, 75 pieces of candy is TWENTY AMERICAN DOLLARS. That is ridiculous!

We get a good number of trick-or-treaters, so it’s not like we could buy one bag and call it a day. We usually buy two or three of the giant bags from Costco (I haven’t been to Costco recently, so I have no idea how much they cost). But the bags from Target are NOT BIG ENOUGH. They seem very eeny compared to years past. So it feels like we are getting much less candy for much more money. UGH.

(Edit: After I wrote, tried to, and failed to publish this post, I went to Costco. The bags there had 92 pieces of candy and cost about $21.99. More reasonable but still. My husband voted for turning off the porch lights and watching a scary movie instead of welcoming trick-or-treaters. This feels a little mean and a lot sad, but I left without buying anything.)

I didn’t think to order candy from Amazon, but it looks like that would have been the better option. Oh well, too late now. What are you doing?

Is this anxiety, or Something Real?

Necessary context: with the complete support of my doctor, I stopped taking anxiety medication a couple of months ago. So far, I have noticed that a) I am sleeping much better and feeling much less sleepy during the day and b) my anxiety has ticked up a bit.

I am currently in a spiral about a friendship, and I can’t tell if it’s justified or if it’s just anxiety. Probably I should just TALK TO MY FRIEND, right? But… what if there’s absolutely nothing wrong on my friend’s end, and I am being an overanalytic psycho? I don’t want to come off as clingy or desperate or obsessed or or or. But also… what if I don’t ask and our friendship just dissolves? I can FEEL that this is anxiety; my whole body is tense. My brain keeps coming up with all these very defensible ways that it Knows Something, and I’ve done Something Horribly Wrong, even though the plausible Wrongs are very vague and amorphous. (But plausible!) Also, this is the type of friend who – I think – would come to me if there were Something Horribly Wrong. I don’t see this friend feeling hurt or wronged or whatever and just… pretending things are okay. But then again: THINGS FEEL OFF. Anyway. Ugh. Perhaps the clearest path to take is to restart my anxiety medication.

In the meantime: based on your assessment of my very non-specific and brief explanation of this worry, is this anxiety, or is it Something Real? And whether it is or isn’t, what should I DO about it? If your advice is to reach out to my friend, I am going to need a script please.

Would you like to see a picture of my cat?

This is, of course, a rhetorical question because I am pretty sure the answer is yes. But I have locked myself into this Question Format and I can’t think of anything else (see previous bullet).

If, however, you are on the fence about whether you want to see the cat or not – I mean, there’s ALREADY a picture of him in the post – let me tell you this: Carla and I took him into our yard for an impromptu fall photo shoot yesterday.

He LOVED IT. He loves Outdoors, plus, he finds leaves fascinating. Once in awhile, a stiff breeze will send leaves showering from the trees in our yard, and he has to leap up to whatever window-adjacent surface he can reach so he can watch them fall and try to bap-bap them through the glass. Are they toys? Are they prey? Nobody knows.

That’s all I have for you today, Internet. Hope you have a pleasantly spooky Halloween, full of treats.