Fruit Sad-lad.

Cinematic Moment:  New year's realizations

After what should have been a 20 hour drive back to NY from Florida turned into a 38 hour drive, I am a bit mentally exhausted and should be laying in a ditch someplace.  Instead,  I've spent this morning thinking of ways to organize all the new goodies Santa brought our way.  Streamlined, matching, clean ways that would land my skills in Real Simple magazine.

One quick trip to Walmart birthed these raw canvas looking little storage boxes with a slot so you can write in what they're storing.  It was like discovering the Holy Grail.  And 2 for $10?  2009 was shaping up to be the year of organization.  I thought of all the things I could put in such boxes.  Laundry sheets, bottles of vitamins, rogue chargers from old cell phones I'd kept just in case, dog treats and tea bags and photos, oh my!  It was an OCD wet dream.

 I spurted off my mental list to my man (who clearly wasn't sharing in my enthusiasm for compartmentalization) going on about how perfect this bin would be for his crumpled up receipts.  He was quickly sidetracked by a marked down Millennium Falcon and went over to check for any missing pieces responsible for the sale price.  I began to meander over to the other decorative bin aisles, hoping for more fashionable container finds, beaming with pride over my ability to stick with my resolution to stop procrastinating.  It was then I saw them.

At the corner of an aisle were about a dozen bins made to look like produce boxes.  Inside sat loads of beautifully fashioned plastic fruits.  There were bananas with small brown specks, shiny grapes in cognac and green varieties, loud yellow lemons.  It was enough to bring tears to my eyes.  Even the bright red tomatoes, which I despise in real life, seemed edible in plastic.

 My affinity for plastic foods began when I was a little girl visiting my grandma's house.  She had a sterling silver bowl filled with these plastic grapes that I loved to pluck off and chew on.  Clearly my parents were too loaded on champagne to stop their 5 year old from gnawing on rubber, but at least now I had discriminating enough tastes to seek out the plastic foods, as opposed to the year before when I plucked all the noses off a garland of plastic Santa's, eating half a dozen before my mom caught on.  More importantly, at the time, the idea of someone having plastic foods seemed foreign to me.  I thought for sure this must be what refined adults did-purchase rubbery, realistic food items in the way I collected Barbies.  I was determined to someday have my very own bowl of inedible produce.

Standing here in Walmart, burdened with 16 canvas boxes, I knew it was now or never. I didn't trust myself with the grapes, so instead opting for 6 green apples from a crate, dumping them into the top box to carry them to the register.  I knew they'd be perfect in that useless bowl in the dining room.  One more useless thing I can't live without. I suppose I was right about the gathering of pointless crap being the marker of adulthood.  As I saw my fiance quickly approaching with a box the size of a small child, filled with a Star Wars ship he'd been eyeing for at least a year, my suspicions were confirmed.  

I guess at least we're organized...