Issues: Avocados

I've decided to air my grievances and do a blog series of all the things I have big issues with lately. Also I use that term not to necessarily mean things I believe hold injustice but things that cause me GRIEF.  < -- this is what happens when I start questioning the definitions of words and look up everything. "Do i even know what that means?"  A recent example of this is when someone asked the group what it meant to be complacent.  I had thought it meant sort of idle or lazy.  WRONG.  I looked it up and was like, what the fudge?!  For your own information you may not need, here's the definition, according to Internet:

com·pla·cen·cy

/kəmˈplāsənsē/

noun: complacence

a feeling of smug or uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one's achievements. 
"the figures are better, but there are no grounds for complacency." 
synonyms: smugness, self-satisfaction, self-congratulation, self-regard

Anyway. It's moments like these when I feel like I know nothing at all.  But moving on, here's an issue I have, and it's not really with avocados themselves but the way people so flippantly misuse them. 

1. Often, when I go to a restaurant (and I use that term loosely), it's likely to be a cafeteria-style restaurant, which is in and of itself a grand issue for another day.  But the issue occurs when I get to choose my toppings for whatever food I'm ordering.  One of the toppings is avocados, but really it should be "avocados,"  as what happens is the nice, non-Mexican leafy green salad I ordered is set before me with avocado mush, aka GUACAMOLE without any seasoning. THIS IS DIFFERENT.  I can't tell you how incredibly irked I am when this happens and it's happened so many times that I now ask before I order and reject it when I'm given the disappointing news.  I feel so deceived, so beguiled.  Because what I'm picturing each and every time I say "with avocado" is slices. SLICES.  That's what I want.  Like a human being. Sigh.

But as long as I'm grieving about the avocado, and it's painful because of my intense love for the fruit, here's another: 

2. In addition to bananas, I feel like I've mentioned the deceptive and brief nature of its ripeness window.   But the avocado frustrates me even more for some reason. Probably because avocados are not cheap and once they're passed, they're really unpalatable, and there's really just no use for them. But it's true that one day they are so green and hard, you are sure you have weeks until they'll be ready. Weeks.  But you do not.   Yesterday I was at Trader Joe's giving the avocados another round (this time the larger, loose ones, not the smaller bunch in a net bag).  As I was rooting around the very firm avocados, a staff member who was male who looked to be in his 20's and a woman, maybe in her late 50's, were discussing their ripeness.  The woman said, 

"hard as rocks, aren't they," to which the man agreed.

Whereupon I interjected with, "for now! But turn your back for one second and they'll turn on you!"  Like a crazy person, coming out of nowhere, ranting about a premonition of a doomed near future. The staff member woefully said he'd forgotten to put his in the fridge, something I've never thought to do, and had paid the price.  So we discussed the proper care of avocados and I aired these grievances with them:

"I feel like the ripeness window for an avocado is like, between one and three AM."  This got some laughs, and I continued:

"I wake up and I'm like, "awww..."  shoulders slumped, downtrodden. I walked away with the woman still laughing and I smiled.

I'm telling you this story to give you an example of one of my current issues but also because it's a good opportunity to repeat a joke that got a good reaction.  I was telling this to Sean yesterday and he laughed and said, "haha, you said that to me a while go..."  just to remind me.  I laughed and said, "I did?? Lame! Well, now i've used it on strangers and got a good result. The experiment is complete."   And because of that, i had to share it with the blogosphere because it's a new audience and because I am morally opposed to wasting good jokes.  Reuse, reduce, recycle.  (ok, reduce doesn't make any sense. If anything it should be, Reuse, INCREASE SUBSTANTIALLY, recycle.)  Churn out the jokes and use them to their last dying breath. 

So, these are the issues I have involving avocados.  I got two of them yesterday and am watching them like a crazed hawk.  Like one caring for a newborn baby who requires constant care and attention, I'm this close to just taking them with me everywhere I go. With a salt packet. Like you would with babies. At least, definitely whenever I eat out somewhere.