Getting an Education

I've been learning a few things in the past few weeks.

1. Sesame seeds are flammable.
So, I've been getting used to my new kitchen. The oven/stove is pretty old and it doesn't have a good timer on it. One evening I put some sesame seeds on a cookie sheet and placed them in the oven to be toasted. But, then I forgot about them. The recipe I was using was fairly complicated and it was only my second time making the dish. And I did have headphones in. So Dan comes home from work and says to me, "There's a fire in the oven." I knew I had been smelling something burning. I looked in the oven and there was a two-inch high flame. As soon as I took it out of the oven and dropped the cookie sheet on the back patio, the flame went out. So the pan was ruined and we didn't have toasted sesame seeds that night, but that's about the extent of the damage.

2. I'm not really farmers' market material.
Soon after we moved here, I was delighted to see that just a block away there's a Farmer's Market every weekend. Ever since I read two and a half chapters of that book Real Food, I've really wanted to start frequenting farmers' markets. Especially after that spinach scare, the farmers' market seemed like a good idea. But when I got there, I realized that everyone sells their produce in bulk, but I don't eat that much produce. Here I thought I was starting to eat healthily and then I was confronted with the truth. I'm just not good at eating tons of fruits and vegetables. So I bought a bag of Gala apples, which are supposed to last up to two months in my refrigerator. I keep telling myself, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away," but so far I have yet to eat an apple a day.

3. I haven't really been working out for the past six months.
So on most exercise machines, I've noticed that they'll calculate your ideal exercise heart rate range based on your age and weight. And they all say that the fat burn is at the lower end of that range and the cardio is at the higher end. That seemed perfect to me. I could exert less energy to burn more fat. I also noticed that when I really exercised, i.e., did anything more strenuous than walking, I quickly exceeded my heart rate zone. I started to think that when I was running, I was actually overexerting myself and doing damage to my body. This past week, I decided to take advantage of the preliminary evaluation offered at my gym and discovered that my preferred heart rate is actually twenty beats higher than what I normally work out at. Of course, it makes sense intuitively, but it also means that all this time when I thought I was exercising, I was really just stretching my legs.

4. I'm old.
Yup, if the gray hairs didn't confirm it, my recent shopping trip for my soon-to-be nine-year-old sister did. I'm not even thirty and I've been finding gray hairs in my head. When I told my grandma, who didn't get a single gray hair until she was in her sixties, she exclaimed "That's horrible." And suddenly it seemed even worse than I thought it was. Then last week I went to Target to buy my sister a present. As I walked around the store, I had a hard time finding anything that seemed suitable. Instead of toys, I saw boxes full of little pieces that she'd probably spend five minutes playing with and then eternity spreading around the house. I thought about getting her a T-shirt, but when I saw the one that said "I'm allergic to school," I worried that such a gift would teach her that girls aren't good at school. And my feminist sensibilities just couldn't handle that idea. But my feminist sensibilities weren't offended by the Barbies. I just wasn't sure how much she'd like one of those. It seems that I've turned into a stuffy, old, grump. Oh well.