taking the concept behind the fruit basket too far

i. recreational television that makes your brain dribble out your ears
because i don't have enough to watch (deadwood, two japanese miniseries and a bottomless supply of arashi reality tv, three boxes sherlock holmes, two seasons star trek:tos + the q box set), i downloaded the complete second to last season of america's next top model. it seems unlikely that anyone but the few i was chatting with regularly at the time would remember, but last year in, oh, march and april, around the time project runway stopped running, i buried myself in piles of next top model sludge until my brain practically dribbled out my ears. i think i watched, in total, five seasons of it in the space of less than a month. maybe if i'm lucky the urge to watch will pass before i actually succumb and start watching. there's something about short and bite-sized pieces of completely mindless television that is handy when you're either stressed or depressed. also, i always want to occupy my brain a bit with fashion at the beginning of a semester. watching it, though usually not wearing it (at least not if it's in the slightest way uncomfortable), has long been a hobby of mine.

ii. more like the fruit-entire-refrigerator
taking the basic concept behind the fruit basket too far, yesterday V gave us like five pounds of fruit. seriously, about eight grapefruits, the same number of apples, two entire pineapples and a bag of kiwi that fills half the top shelf of the refrigerator. were we caterers, we could make a fruit salad for twice the number of friends we actually have all put together. i think if wax and i both ate nothing but fruit until they were gone we still couldn't eat it all before it went bad. the sad part is that this concept is actually kind of hilarious, but V is so cute and earnest that you kind of can't laugh about it while he's still there. luckily i'm seeing anglepoiselamp in a couple of days. i really hope she wants some fruit.

iii. parental birthdays and family togetherness
my father recently turned fifty and my mother's birthday is in four days, so they had a giant joint party this month. my mother's four siblings and her parents came from kansas city, 11+ hours, to spend a week or more. i'd love to have seen them too, but even more to have spent the time with my parents, who are probably still, and have been my entire life, practically my closest friends. wax's mother is having a smaller and not particularly significant birthday in a couple of weeks and we're going to drive down to spend the weekend with her. i'm trying to regard this as a small symbolic substitute for togetherness with my own family and maybe a chance to get closer to wax's mom, which i really do want to do, but i can't help in my state of slight depression regarding it somewhat in the light of the universe rubbing it in. one thing that i do quite like is making cakes, but nobody in wax's family prefers the superior much sweeter american sort of cakes that i prefer. (sadly, i think by then it would be too late for our oversupply of fruit.)