I hope loving you doesn’t mean I have to clean raw gizzards again

Guess what? I’m sick again. Ugh! I woke up this morning with this kind of itchy feeling on my throat, and I thought it was just an allergy or something and expected it to go away after a couple of hours. But then I started sneezing sporadically throughout the day, and now I can’t breathe through my nose anymore. I have caught the cold for the third time now, and I find it so weird because I don’t get sick very often. Someone told me that it’s probably stress that’s causing it, and I guess I must agree because I’m not very used to being busy at school.

Even though I’m becoming really involved at school, I don’t want to give up my activities except for the Glee Club maybe. I know that it’s a lot of fun hanging out with the other Glee Club members, but I’m thinking of quitting mainly because I don’t like rehearsing during class hours. I want to improve my grades this quarter and how can I do that if I’m singing all day till my voice becomes hoarse? Another reason is because the competition we entered isn’t a prestigious one at all, therefore rehearsing for it is quite a waste of time. Also, I don’t want to take any more crap from the conductor. He makes it obvious that he favors Tracy, Alys and Kaye, and considers the rest of us as their back-up singers. Fine then. The problem is, I don’t know how I can tell the conductor this without him blowing up at me and retaliating by lowering my grade in Music Class or something (he’s also my music teacher). Maybe I can just tell him that my SATs are on Sunday afternoon and that I can’t join the competition, or some other white lie like that.

You know how they say that the key to a man’s heart is through his stomach? Well, I’m kind of hoping it’s not true. I’m not a bad cook (well at least, I don’t think I am), but I swear, if my dishes involve meat then I *must* have ready-made ingredients or something. Throw them all in the pot and just cook, no need to slice and dice or actually touch the raw meat. My friends and I had to make chicken pastel for Home Ecs. today and for some reason, I got stuck with cleaning the gizzards. Whatever the hell a gizzard is. After today, I learned that I am so not ready to become a wife to anyone. I want to be the kind of wife who cooks for her husband; I think that food is one of the best ways I can show my love. But the moment I saw the raw gizzards I had to clean, my knees kind of trembled. Maybe I’m just being really maarte, but I have this revulsion when it comes to things like blood and internal organs. I can’t even look at raw chicken flesh without feeling disgusted all over. And the way it feels–yuck! So cold and soft and slimy. Gross.

My Home Ecs. teacher had to show us how to clean the gizzards since none of us have obviously tried it.

“You have to remove these yellow particles–it’s what makes it taste slimy–but you’ll need to put salt to get it out. Like this.” She got a gizzard and started picking on these cobweb-like yellow things stuck to it. “When you’re done cleaning the all gizzards, rinse them three times before you cook them so that they won’t be salty. Here.”

Umm…eww?

I picked my first gizzard and held it gingerly on the tips of two fingers at an arm’s length away from my body. I knew that holding it wouldn’t make my hand melt or anything, but that didn’t stop me from feeling disgusted anyway. I couldn’t believe I was supposed to eat this stuff. The yellow particles that were stuck to it looked really icky. And then out of nowhere, I began to imagine that those were human organs that I had to clean…shuddering, I tossed the gizzard back in the bowl. But we couldn’t make the chicken pastel without the gizzard (actually we can, it’s just that our teacher doesn’t want us to), and staring at it with horror and revulsion wouldn’t help me accomplish my task any faster. After telling myself to stop being such a wuss, I picked up a gizzard and began cleaning. It took me forty minutes to finish cleaning each and every one of the gizzards thoroughly and when I was finally done, my back and neck hurt from stooping down for that long. For the record, our chicken pastel tasted okay, but we all just picked on the chicken and the crust. Nobody ate the gizzard or the liver. So much for all my effort. I like chicken, I like beef, but I don’t like handling raw meat. I think, in the future, I should marry a vegetarian.