After lounging and showering and getting ready I headed out for the afternoon on a covert mission in the suburbs. After grabbing lunch at one of my favorite places and accomplishing what I needed to accomplish, I caught up with my mom and headed back into the city.
Once I was back at the apartment I attempted to re-pack The Giant Purple People Eater and I figured I would watch some TV as I packed. Easier said than done. The TV was stuck on QVC home shopping for some reason and I couldn't figure out how to fix it. So I watched some hilarious woman attempt to sell the special holiday collection of cupcakes from DC Cupcakes and the new flavors of Kind bars until I just couldn't take it anymore. The next item was some prime rib deal where you pay 3 payments of $25 and you get one delicious piece of beef delivered this month, one delivered in April 2013 and one delivered in NOVEMBER 2013. Ummmm WHAT?!?! What kind of country do we live in when we can order disgusting pieces of meat and have them delivered A YEAR LATER. WHO DOES THIS?!?!
(We later found out that Comcast was running an emergency alert system thing because of an Amber Alert and that's why we couldn't change channels. So apparently it was a shopping emergency?!)
I then met Carrie at this tiny sushi bar a few blocks away from her place. The food was pretty good, but hilariously no sushi (even from big cities) can ever come close to Shinbashi in Ellsworth, Maine. So random. But so true.
On our walk home we must have been in one of our crazy punchy moods because we kept looking for a statue of Ben Franklin (FYI, he is not a female statue with a flowing dress in Rittenhouse Square. In case you thought that maybe it was him...). Then, in a moment of craziness and an apparently painful stomach cramp, Carrie decides that it's appropriate to scream out in pain like she's either being murdered OR is in fact a murderer. Needless to say a girl a half a block away from us, on the other side of the street, looked over her shoulder and quickened her pace. We are VERY intimidating.
Once we got back we watched an episode of The Amazing Race, where we died over some of the things that the teams said about other teams. Our inner bitches really come out when we watch AR and we can totally see where some of the teams are coming from when they make fun of/impersonate/make faces at other teams. If we were on AR we would probably yell at each other all the time. But we would also be really bitchy behind everyone's backs and would be really fun to watch I bet.
After AR we both had work to do, so we focused for a while until we needed some dessert. Lucky for us our aunt supplied us with carrot cake, brownies, and blueberry bars! Hollllaaaa! And we may have acted like twelve year olds and made some questionable choices with some gigantic Asian pears... but let's just say that these pears, in all their mutant glory, really added to Carrie's beauty.
Shifting gears, after a long talk about some current family drama, one thing really stuck in my mind: how sometimes you have to be selfish. So often we hear about selfishness and how it's such a negative trait, how the world would be better if people thought of others more, how we should all strive to be less selfish in our everyday lives. For the most part I would have to agree with this, but I think we are doing a real disservice to people by ignoring the grey area. The area where selfishness is not always so bad. The area where consciously choosing to be selfish isn't a sign of a selfish person per se.
I will fully admit to making selfish choices these last few months. However, I don't think that that makes me a selfish person. Sure, I have done some things and I've made some choices that some people would question and be critical of. But I'm human. And I've chosen to spend a bit of time respecting myself, listening to myself, and making decisions that I feel are best for myself. These won't always go over so well, and I might not always be able to explain them, but the gist of this is that selfishness doesn't always have to be bad. Selfishness is often a way to protect yourself and all that you've accomplished, which sometimes outweighs anything else. I think the real difference is people being selfish without recognizing it versus people fully admitting to doing selfish things.
At the end of the day I often have to treat myself better than I treat other people. I still strive to treat others well and be a great friend/daughter/sister/whatever to everyone, but if it comes down to doing something for me that might piss you off or doing something for you that will undoubtedly screw me up, I don't consider myself a selfish person for choosing the former from time to time. And that's one of the toughest things I've learned how to do.
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