After my dentist appointment today, I took the train downtown to Union Square to hit up the Greenmarket before dinner, and I picked up some garlic scapes and beets. I was so excited; I had been reading about garlic scapes in the last week in a food blog I follow, and I had no idea that the tops of garlic, garlic scapes, were edible and good for cooking. I purchased just shy of a pound of them and went on my way home.

On my ride uptown, I thought about all these vegetables and fruit that you never get exposed to shopping at regular grocery stores and super markets, things like garlic scapes, rhubarb, golden beets, jerusalem artichokes, kohlrabi, dandelion greens, the literally hundreds of varieties of apples, potatoes, squash, eggplant, and yams. If all we did was shop at grocery stores, we’d be ignorant to all the amazing variety of produce out there. It’s no wonder people get bored of grocery shopping and cooking. If you don’t have variety that keeps changing, then what’s fun about it, and what’s there to look forward to?

I went to dinner with my friend tonight, and we were discussing all the times he’s had to fire people on his team for being poor performers. I told him that the thought of firing someone in today’s gun climate made me feel somewhat paranoid… because you never have any idea how that person will react to you and if s/he will try to come after you. When devastating events happen in one’s life, like a job loss, people are kind of capable of anything.

He said he didn’t blame me, that it’s hard to not have the thought in my head, especially given the very recent Orlando mass shooting. “Just make sure you have ample security when it needs to get done,” he advised.

It’s been a grim last few days. In light of Christina Grimmie’s murder, the mass shooting at Pulse night club in Orlando that left 50 people dead and about 53 seriously wounded, all my social media feeds are flooded with debates regarding who is to blame: guns or ISIS? Democrats or Republicans? It’s been miserable to read the news and see the back and forth that has been happening.

When I was younger and I’d hear about people dying from shootings or murders, it was always terrible news, but I didn’t feel it as much as I do now. It felt sad, but it also felt distant. I feel it a lot now. Sometimes I read the news, and I catch myself getting choked up by all these deaths and the victims’ loved ones reacting to the tragedies. Maybe it’s because I lost my brother to suicide three years ago, and I’ll never fully get over his death. Maybe it’s because I realize that these scary events could very likely happen to people I know and love in the places that we actually frequent. These shootings aren’t all happening in far away places in far away lands to far away people; they are happening right here, under our noses. Maybe it’s because I think.. even though we are strangers across states, across the world, on the train, walking on the same sidewalks and streets, we’re all united in that we’re all just trying to live and do something with our lives. We may be strangers, but we don’t want bad things happening to each other. In our minds, we don’t think that the guy sitting next to us on the subway train will get shot and killed the next day. We think that he will go to work, eat out, have fun. He will go about his day as we will ours. Or, so we think. We never know what will happen next.

It is a sick and sad week in the world. I don’t want to read the news anymore.

I got a deal for five classes via ClassPass for only $19 in New York (this is really, really cheap here), so I am using it for the rest of the month, especially on Sundays when Chris will be traveling. Today, I did a barre core fusion class at a swanky spa/workout studio a few blocks from my apartment, and I remembered yet again why small classes are so important. Our class had about twelve students to one instructor, and our instructor was extremely attentive. She learned (and remembered) every woman’s name, and she came around very regularly to check and correct form. And when she corrected form, you could feel the correction.

The class focuses on building strength and working on form, so there isn’t a lot of cardio involved. But I know just from how I felt after the end of the hour that I will be extremely sore tomorrow morning.

The instructor did make me wonder why Crunch personal trainers, who are supposed to be very focused and do 1-on-1 time with you, don’t help with correcting form. They will tell you how to correct it, but they won’t show you or touch you to do it. Maybe they are just anti-touch and are scared of getting slapped with some harassment case

I’ve been really slacking off this week and haven’t gone to the gym even once. I’m aiming to go tomorrow so that I don’t feel like a complete bum, but I thought about how my Fitbit is essentially tracking all my lazy days. If my Fitbit doesn’t have at least 16,000 steps at the end of a work day, it means that I didn’t go to the gym and was being lazy that day.

I can easily get to 10,000 as long as I take a walk during lunch that lasts about 20-30 minutes once I add in my walk to the subway in the morning, then my walk from work to Grand Central, and then from the subway stop to home. But I have to walk even if I didn’t want to since I take public transit. That made me think about how hard it must be for people who live in areas that are not walkable where people primarily rely on cars. How would they get to the recommended 10,000 steps a day without doing some intense exercise?

No wonder the obesity rates are increasing steadily in this country.

Chris and I got separated on our connecting flight to Salt Lake City this evening, as he got the last seat in First Class. So I sat next to a woman who is the president of the American Paint Horse Association, born and raised in a suburb outside of Tennessee. She and her husband live on a farm, breed horses, and are obsessed with corgi dogs. She showed me her endless photos of her friend breeding corgi dogs and told me a thing or two about American paint horses, which I knew nada about. She asked me if Chris and I were a couple, and I said we just got married this past March.

“Can I ask you something since you’re a Northerner?” she asked me in her strong Southern accent. I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be a great question, but I answered affirmatively. “Down here in the South, we have strong family values. So when we say ‘I do,’ we mean it forever, until the end. Up in the North, is that what you believe, or do you just think, ‘I do until something bad happens and I can’t take it anymore?'”

I explained to her that everyone was different, that we couldn’t categorize people in the North thinking “until the next bad thing happens” vs. “until death do us part,” but for the two of us, we were in it for the long haul (at least, I think we are).

“Well, that is lovely!” she exclaimed, smiling warmly. I really don’t think she meant any offense by it. She probably hasn’t spent much time interacting with us folk “in the North.” She proceeded to ask me how old I was. I told her I was 30, and she responded, “Wow, so you would have been working for eight years until getting married!”

I paused for a second. “Well, I’m actually still going to continue working. I haven’t quit my job… and I don’t plan to just because I’m married,” I said to her, looking her firmly in the eye.

“You will still continue working?” she said in amazement. “Wow, times have really changed since I got married!”

Yes, they certainly have… at least, for some of us.

I hate visiting the dentist. There’s really no health appointment I dread more. I might have even said this on this blog before, but I would truly rather have ten pap smears back to back than have two dental cleanings a year. There’s nothing worse than having sharp instruments prodded in your mouth with air and water pointy things going everywhere. It’s the worst when you have sensitive teeth and just want the torture to end.

The dentist is not happy with me because I still haven’t had my loose baby tooth extracted. His wife, who is also a dentist but now runs the front desk and does all the paperwork, said to me, “Are you planning to have children soon? You know you cannot have an implant done when you are pregnant, right? You don’t want to be a toothless pregnant woman, do you?”

I’m so good and anal with dental hygiene, but genes tend to trump hygiene in these cases. I can’t help that I was born without two adult teeth and needed to keep these two baby teeth for as long as possible.

Ever since I started working, regardless of what bonus or raise I got, I never really thought much of the additional dollars I was getting directly deposited into my bank account. Our society kind of brainwashes you into thinking that whenever you get a bonus or a raise or pay bump of any kind that you should reward yourself! Treat yo’self! Indulge more! You deserve it! Up until around 2012 to 2013, I barely bought clothes because I enjoyed the process of trying on new clothes or buying new things. Clothes were just for utility. Getting my nails done? Eh, what a waste of money! “Treating” myself hasn’t really been something I’ve thought that much about…. well, outside of traveling and eating.

So at dinner tonight, my friend who was in town from San Francisco for a wedding told me that she got some monetary prize at work, and everyone was asking her what she would spend the extra money on. “I don’t know,” she responded. “Whatever I need to purchase next.” No one really got her, and they were flabbergasted that she was being so practical about it all, that she wasn’t planning to buy herself a special new designer purse or some extravagant piece of jewelry or coat with the extra dollars.

Well, I get her. That’s exactly the way I operate. I got a raise or a bonus? Great. What’s next to buy or do that’s on my list?

Credit card companies hate people like the two of us. We pay our credit cards in full and never over spend, which means we never rack up interest payments. Take that, credit card companies.