Mari Ness - February 10th, 2008

Today's demonstration of the failure of education and the triumph of marketing:

Child: I don't see an alligator.

Parent: It's there in the water, see?

Child: That's not an alligator.

Parent: Yes, it is. See? It's swimming.

Child: It's not an alligator. It's black. Alligators are green.

Thanks, UF. Really.

I had a plan for the day – take advantage of the slightly cooler weather and head out to the Florida Trail, and then force myself to start car shopping. (I hate car shopping. I really, really hate car shopping. Expect this to be a theme for awhile. Did I mention hating car shopping? Because I'm not sure if you guys are feeling the hate. )

As plans go, this one can be best described as unaccomplished – I ended up chickening out on the car shopping, and ended up at Loxahatchee's National Wildlife Reserve instead of the Florida Trail, feeling the odd combination of fascination and vague dissatisfaction I always feel there, combined with mild hope that the regular bathrooms will soon be restored to use.

Fascination, because the National Wildlife Reserve is a visual scientific experiment: scientists in the area are carefully monitoring the effects of differing water levels on biodiversity, water quality, and fish and bird populations. Wandering in the middle of that – in a vast ecological experiment – is amazing.

Dissatisfaction, because the Wildlife Refuge, birds and all, is so clearly not wild: the wetlands are set out in precise squares, with controlled water flows, and while the birds and grasses and alligators and sole turtle are gorgeous, and some angles provide the illusion of wildness, it's a very thin illusion, easily ripped. And on a purely aesthetic level, this means that the Refuge, whatever its fascinations, fails for me, which is probably one reason I didn't stay too long.

Nonetheless, in the Very Good News department, I counted three wood storks today; I was so startled to see even one that I had to recheck my little bird guide several times to make sure I wasn't making a mistake. And the squares were filled with my favorite little blue herons. Alas, I did not see one roseate spoonbill.

1. The etiquette of grapes: So while at Publix, the local grocery store, a fellow shopper reached out to sample a grape, chewed it, nodded, said, "Hmm," and grabbed a bag of grapes.

A Publix worker objected. "You can't do that!"

"Buy grapes?"

"Eat grapes before you purchase them."

"Hey, dude, I just want to make sure they're ok, you know. Not sour."

The grapes are sold by weight. I'm thinking Publix is right here, mostly because I don't really want other people fingering grapes in bags that I might buy. But other shoppers were on the side of the grape eater.

2. I'm amused by the various ways I justify food to myself, and by food, I mean "indulgent things." Take yesterday, where I suddenly decided I wanted a hot dog instead of making a salad from the perfectly adequate bag of spinach I had in the fridge, perhaps adding some fruit to it. Luckily, I also had grapes and a few strawberries in the fridge, so I could, I decided, eat the hot dog as long as I chased it down with grapes, since that cancelled out the badness of the hot dog. (It works in my logic.)

I'm surprised by how often I do this – I can have the chocolate if I'd had the spinach (that was today's lunch); it's perfectly fine to have ice cream or cake or cookies or trifles if I've exercised or eaten something "good." I suspect that if we investigated this closely, we'd find something wrong with my math. But in the meantime, I'm getting chocolate. And this is good.

Off-topic: Nope, not watching the Grammys. I usually skip them anyway, and I figured, why not make a tradition of it?