I HATE OATMEAL

I hate oatmeal so much. It is so disgusting, I don’t understand why so many people eat it. I didn’t have many groceries this morning, so like any regular person, I decided I would give oatmeal a try. I have massive regrets. Now, I have this bowl of mushy oats sitting in front of me waiting to be eaten.

What do people like about oatmeal? It’s not the flavor, because they have no flavor. Don’t get me wrong - I added toppings, but you could put those toppings on anything else and have it be better. If I’m eating it for the toppings, why even bother making the oats?

I would hope it’s not the texture because then I don’t think I could ever understand.

It’s not even to be able to tell other people you like oatmeal, because oatmeal doesn’t have that ‘cool’ factor.

I actually think this is my least favorite breakfast food to exist on the planet.

How many tubs of yogurt could you eat in one sitting

Recently, one of my dear friends and fellow bloggers Siobhan brought a debate to my attention. Really, it’s not a debate, but more of a question. How many tubs of yogurt could you eat in one sitting? Tubs, for reference, are generally around 750g.

I am someone who can barely get through a small carton of yogurt - I enjoy it at first, but five or so bites in, my brain flips a switch and I suddenly cannot bear to eat another bite. Because of this, I expected to be bested, but nothing could have prepared me for her answer.

Gun to her head, Siobhan said ten. Thankfully, I was sitting down or else I might have fallen over in shock. Ten? Ten? I never even considered that a number that big was an option for anyone, much less someone I knew.

The rest of my night went by in a haze - writing another blog post about meaningless stuff - too wound up to make sense of what I had heard.

I’ve learned many times throughout my life that the best way to process emotions and your feelings is to talk through them. Because of this, I took it upon myself to ask those around me their thoughts on this question, as if to double check that I wasn’t the one going crazy.

My first test subject I saw early in the morning. Hillary walked beside me as I prepared myself to ask the question that had been burning a hole in the back of my mind all throughout the lab we had just had together.

I knew from many discussions with both Hillary and Siobhan that Hillary is nothing short of a fan of yogurt, so to me, she was the perfect candidate. Was I right to be frightened by Siobhan’s response, or is this what the yogurt community is like? It reminds me of Atlantis, something that legend says exists, but it’s both unavailable and incomprehensible to the average person.

The conversation between Hillary and I lulled, and I snapped quicker than one of the piranhas from dumb ways to die. “How many tubs of yogurt do you think you could eat in one sitting?”

I could barely hold myself together as I watched her think about her answer. Time slowed down as she began to speak, it felt as if the universe was giving me a moment to prepare for what she had to say.

Before I could think about the implications of my study, she had answered. Less than one. I wasn’t surprised by this, because I had said the same thing, but I still needed to know more.

I spent the rest of my day asking those around me their thoughts on this question, and all went well until I texted my roommates. Scientists make mistakes, we all make mistakes, so keep that in mind. Believe me, I know for a fair experiment you need to avoid leading questions and remove bias from the research question. However, it was a weak moment and this thought flew out of my mind.

I told them about these ten tubs of yogurt and asked them - isn’t that crazy? Too my surprise, my roommate Jaimie said no. More than that, she said she thought she could do the same.

Someone powerful once said “in all debates, let truth be thy aim, not victory.” This, I think, is a good thing to remind myself of as I close off this post. Just because someone’s reply is shocking and sends you into a yogurt-inspired spiral, doesn’t mean that the debate is lost. As one of my  other roommates, Charlie, reminded me, (as told to her by a dear friend who “plays chess”), there’s no such thing as losing when you’re gaining knowledge.

PSA - I wrote this while half asleep. Reflecting back, I would like to dedicate this post to Siobhan. More than the idea and creator of the question, the clear air of the morning reminds me of the great sense of respect I have for anyone who can eat that much yogurt. I think, objectively, if our lives were ever on the line for something like this she would have a way better chance than me of making it through.

Hats off to hats!!

Officially click baited. Read more to find out how.

Recently I’ve been thinking about the future. My cousin was talking to me about her life in LA, and I was thinking about life in Brooklyn and then in New England.

One of my goals after college is to move to a small town in the northeast and work at the town bar for a bit. I’m not set on the town bar; in fact, I only decided that while writing the last sentence, but I think it would be a good way to showcase my shining personality to as many people as possible.

Last year in my English class, we read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, a book spanning multiple generations of a single family. Basically, it’s about the ties that linger throughout families, generational trauma, and the effects of life events decades or centuries later. Gyasi talked a lot about how even though some of the family members written about hadn’t so much as existed on earth at the same time, they had undeniable similarities and connections. A few books I’ve read recently have had this theme, actually - and I can’t help but wonder in what ways it’s true for me.

Part of me thinks that when I make the move to this New Englandish town, the connection between me and past generations will intensify. Who knows what could happen? Maybe I’ll suddenly grow fond of tennis, make an impulse purchase at LL Bean, or decide to start churning my own butter. (Did my family ever do that? They must have).

Either way, I’ve been thinking a lot about family in general. Maybe this is because I recently learned I’m the product of incest thanks to my aunt’s genealogy knowledge (my parents are tenth cousins). I’m still waiting to learn how close I am to the one and only Joe Biden. Just you guys wait - I’m gonna find a way to bring it up in almost any conversation.

If you’re still reeling from the shock of this information bomb I just dropped, I understand. It took me a little bit to adjust too. If a lot of things about my sister and I started making sense for you, you’re not alone.

Please feel free to take a step back from this post and think.

But back to my original topic. For years now, every few months, I become crushingly depressed thinking about a trade or something similar that is disappearing. In senior year, there were a few weeks when I decided my future held one thing: taking the dying field of cobbling on my shoulders and dragging it across the sea to sweet salvation. This dream faded quickly as I looked up the average annual salary, and it was around 20,000. Also, once the novelty wore off, I realized I had little to no interest in repairing shoes and whatever else a cobbler does.

Last year, during a more troubling time in my life, I wanted to learn how to taxidermy. I’ve, for the most part, moved on, even though I secretly still harbor a desire to learn. Plus, my future house will ideally have a taxidermied animal inside it, if not mainly to freak out my guests.

Anyways, what I mean to say with all this is with all the contemplation on the generations that brought me here, I was thinking about who these people might have been and, more interestingly - what they might have worn.

Hats have always mystified me. They never seem to look right, but I am drawn to them. Because of this, a time when most men didn’t leave the house without a hat on seems outlandish.

Everybody had a hat that they loved enough to wear every day? Did these men feel naked when they, for some reason, had to leave their houses without them, self-conscious of their hatless heads? On a windy day, were lonely hats flying in the wind, free from the shackles of the balding heads they were used to? When did people stop wearing hats, and why?

For women too, what happened to the intricate hats with plastic or glass grapes on top, weird mesh layers, and flowers in every color you could dream of?

It could also be true that they only really wore so many hats in movies; I didn’t put much research into this.

There are so many hats in the world that get cast aside. I wonder how the bowler hats feel, sitting in some vintage store, gathering dust. Those poor hats, having done nothing wrong. Plus, the hipsters who dare to defy the times and wear them out get hated on, bullied even!! The nerve.

I would love to see more hats: pillbox hats, straw hats, boat hats, fedoras. I would also like to offer my official professional condolences to any of my followers who have been made to feel small while wearing a hat, either recently or in the past. I know one or two of you wore a fedora in elementary school, and I can only imagine what you went through.

Hats off to you, my readers

Violet

(Get it??? Because I was talking about hats, and hats off is a common phrase. It’s funny because I used a phrase that doesn’t always involve people taking their hats off in a conversation about hats. And that’s funny because, basically