What is white?

Can I just say that I hate food? Ok, I don't really hate food, I just hate having to stuff myself with it until I'm miserable. HATE.IT. I've now upped my consumption of "nutritional drinks" to two a day, earning me 700 liquid calories. I'm used to the taste now and can almost chug them, which is weird considering I never chug anything. I am not a chugger. Chug not I do.

I decided I should eat more pasta since it's, well, yummy and also high in calories. I had a weird craving hit me at the store one day and bought a container of Easy Mac. Yes, folks, I bought Easy Mac. Can you believe that? I don't eat stuff like that, ever. I usually only eat one of three kinds of pasta... whole wheat penne or couscous, plain medium egg noodles, or Annie's whole wheat organic mac & cheese (which is rare). So what possessed me to buy Easy Mac, you ask? Well, the blue box mac & cheese just sounded good, and I've been home alone for about three weeks now and there's no way I can eat a box of mac & cheese all by my lonesome... stuffing myself or not. And let's face it, left over blue box mac & cheese just isn't good. "It's the Cheesiest!" turns into "It's the Clumpiest and Nastiest!" So I see the little container of lone serving Easy Mac and think to myself, "Self, don't do it!" but I did not listen. I brought it home and it sat on my kitchen table for a couple of weeks. Two days ago I decided that it sounded like it might be a decent lunch so I cooked it.

If you've ever made Easy Mac, you know that the directions say 1.) to ignore the white powder because it's necessary for the pasta to cook correctly, and 2.) don't drain the water after cooking; it's needed for the "cheese" sauce. Now, I'm not usually in the habit of ignoring random unknown white powders in things, but I figured that Kraft wants my repeat business so they're not going to poison me. At least not too badly anyway. So I ignored the white powder. As for the water issue... I was obedient and fully intended on leaving it in the container. However, the directions made no mention of the fact that the pasta drains itself. I'm not kidding. Apparently the pasta got nasty with the water, and the water jumped ship and decided to decorate my microwave. My pasta was dry. I poured in the "cheese" stuff packet, and it did not make sauce. It made "cheese" stuff clumps. I sighed and micro-boiled a mug of water and poured some in. It made a somewhat saucy somewhat clumpy "cheese" stuff mess.

It sort of tasted like mac & cheese, but Annie's is so much better. Now tell me, how is this process any more convenient than opening a box and cooking on the stove? I had to micro-boil a mug of water anyway since my needed water obviously did not read the directions on the container. I feel like I had reached the epitome of laziness. "Oh hey, look at me, I'm too lazy to cook from A BOX!" (I realize that these things are pretty much marketed to kids to cook, safely, after school or something... so please don't shoot me! I'm not insinuating your Easy Mac eating children are lazy. I, however, am... Easy Mac or no.) ;o) I still can't believe I ate micro-cooked bleached white noodles covered in "cheese" stuff. With some kind of freaky white powder mixed in. I'm telling you... this eating a lot of calories thing? It's highly over-rated.

I'm a horrible painter. So horrible that when I painted my house, I got "oopses" all over the ceilings. My lines are not clean. Sue me! I figured I would get a can of paint and touch it up. The whole ceilings don't need to be painted, just my mess ups. No big deal, right? You can't mess up white paint, right? HAH! I went to Lowe's this week and bought a can of plain white paint. I decided before I start painting all over the ceiling, I better test it to make sure it's the right color. So I tested it in a small part of a wall in my office. Now, my office is supposed to be painted buttery-yellow and rich red, but I have not done it yet even though I bought the paint a year ago. It's still plain old white with one very big blood splatter paint test spot. My dog used to growl at it. It looks that dangerous. Anyway, a few hours later I realize that apparently white is not white. My test area does NOT match. Huh? Now tell me how I'm supposed to match the "white" on my ceiling. It's not like I can just cut a huge chunk out, lug it down to Lowe's and say, "Hey! Match this, will ya?" I'm NOT painting the whole ceilings. So I see two options. One, leave the "oopses" and declare it "modern art" and two, hire a painter to paint all the ceilings in the entire house (plus my office... because if I'm hiring a painter, I aint playin').

Anyone need a mostly unused can of paint that could quite possibly be the beginning of the next unsolvable, universe altering question... "What, really, is white?"