Yucky Yogurt & Weary Warriors

I sent Mr V off to Brookside this morning. There’s a farmer’s market on Wednesdays, and a new “fresh” food store called Center 1. Do you remember Paul James “The Gardener Guy” from whichever DIY channel it was? Well, he now specializes in meat – of all things. Call me wacky, but when I think of “fresh locally sourced” veggies I don’t immediately have flashes of dead animals arranged enticingly on my plate. Nonetheless, you go Paul!

While perusing the internet for other things Mr V could do before he heads home, I ran across a place called the Crusty Croissant, or something, so I left a couple of messages for him to call me after he stopped somewhere, so I could tell him to pick up a handful of croissants.

He had already discovered the farmer’s market had no garden seedlings or fresh produce, but was overflowing with flowers. He said Center 1 has little of anything. Not surprising for a new place. I wouldn’t have put my “fresh food” store so close to Whole Foods without specializing in organic, but, hey, I’m pulling for that guy too.

Mr V, being about as interested as I am in keeping him out of the house and occupied, suggested he stop in at Whole Foods and pick up some squash and whatever. I reminded him that I need organic yogurt. Brown Cow has let me down, severely. Or it could be that Akins let me down. The chocolate yogurt was simply bizarre. Nasty, dried out, clumpy and slimey. Ewwwww.

Akins’ yogurt has never been very fresh so we bought from Reasor’s. However, Reasor’s no longer sells Stoneyfied, so we’ll see what happens at Whole Foods.

The critical thing is to keep Mr V out, active, and feeling like he doing things of great import to me. He was off work yesterday and again today. Mr V is one of those mondo retro guys who’d dearly love to go out killing large bears and mastodons so he could drag them home to stock the freezer (which we don’t have) and provide warm cuddly floor and bed coverings for me to use to jazz up the decor in the cave.

He’s home about two days a week on average now. I’m just glad he has any work at all. I’d expected it to end by March. He looks like he needs to be in a hospital getting treatment for major depression each day that he’s off work. He sits, like a deflated blowup doll, slumped over, staring into the middle distance every single minute he isn’t actively engaged in something that furthers the agenda of keeping the wolf from our door.

I know that we women tend to be too busy taking care of others to take care of ourselves. But men do that too, and they don’t have millenia of women’s magazines telling them to stop it.

Are there support groups on the internet for men who lean toward suicidal ideation when they can’t take care of their families the way they want to? Because there ought to be. We’re all so flippin’ PC and modern that we’re not supposed to care if we are ripped from our lifelong roles of being providers of necessities to those we love, men and women alike. But is there perhaps something deeper that tells us it’s just not okay to let down the ones we’ve committed to care for?

Isn’t that what’s behind those men who “snap” and kill their families and themselves when they lose their job – and house? Aren’t they laboring under the burden of, “If I can’t take care of them, they’d be better off dead.”? I know that women who kill their children and suicide themselves often have those kinds of thoughts.

Does this consumer society, which has brainwashed us from birth, contribute to the idea that if we aren’t “providing”, we’re just useless eaters, better off dead than burdening the tribe? I think it does. Doesn’t our president telling us that if we’re old and sick we just have to suck it up send the message that we exist for nothing more than working and paying taxes? Isn’t that the same thing we did when we collectively said, “Grandma can’t go with us to the summer hunting ground. Should we conk her over the head now, or just walk casually out of the cave and let her go ‘naturally’?”

You know, there have been and still are tribes, most not as large as the USA, which protect the wisdom gained by long life. It seems to me that it’s a highly evolved society which can utilize the skills and talents of all its members.

We’re living in a very backward, brutal country which rewards the chiefs, and punishes the tribal members for anything that doesn’t directly contribute to increased booty for the chiefs. And we think our technological achievements have elevated us beyond cave days. We are deluded. We are used. We are kicked out of the warmth and support of the cave when we can’t pile prizes at the chiefs’ feet. And, like any tribe of “uncivilized savages” in the modern world, we wait patiently for the cargo ship to return with more iPhones.

Now I must prepare myself to welcome home my tired, old warrior so that he knows he is far from being a useless eater. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it, because there’s a war on, you know.