This is the portion of the afternoon in which I stare thoughtfully at my monitor and pretend to scroll through files, while I am actually contemplating the contents of my kitchen cupboard.

Shopping, as a concept, is a strength of mine. The art of combing through a store's wares is one I greatly appreciate, as is the concept of the well-made Impulse Purchase: something unnecessary and wholly unanticipated, yet commendable enough that when one gets it home, one isn't gripped with the urge to return it promptly and then cut up all the credit cards to prevent such atrocities from ever again crossing the threshold of the apartment.

When you start labeling the shopping spree, however, my skills dwindle. I am unable to purchase a bathing suit that I will ever wear in public. I've failed numerous times with jeans and Capri pants, being as on my body many pairs are alternately too short or too long to serve their proper fashionable purpose. But my worst skill, the thing at which I am absolutely the pits, is grocery shopping.

Meal planning is a real problem. I am completely unable to sit down on a Saturday or Sunday, contemplate my schedule for the week, and purchase ingredients and/or ready-made foodstuffs that will satisfy my dietary needs. Occasionally I pull off making up a lasagna or something of that ilk on a Sunday night, but for the most part, my best efforts end in mold. I am built on whims and fancies; you could put a plate of the best filet mignon in front of me one night, but if I've got a taste for a peanut-butter sandwich, I'll shove aside the meat and reach for my Jif jar. The most appetizing fois gras in the world won't pique my fancy if I've got a hankering for Chicken Tikka Masala. I have similar difficulty in choosing restaurants -- if I am not hungry for one thing in particular, I cannot fathom where on Earth we should go eat, and it's almost impossible to make me choose. I'm a walking craving, and I'm flighty.

Meal planning, then, isn't the only problem; the actual act of grocery shopping itself is where I begin to unravel. This is an art with a degree of difficulty no one ever tells you about, because it sounds like the simplest thing: Buy shit you will eat, and everybody wins. But the variables, they are myriad, and often breed rot.

Take, for example, my well-intentioned idea of buying salad stuffs to keep me eating vegetables all week. I'll buy carrots and hummus, which I love, to take to work. I'll buy lettuce and veggies to make a salad, because I'm a princess and I refuse to eat the dried-up old bagged stuff, and I put it in the Crisper so I can chop it up and seal it in some Tupperware and generally make it easy for me to make a salad during the week. Then life gets in the way, and I forget or simply don't feel like chopping a red pepper, and all my lovely vitamins-in-veggie-form sit in the Crisper and rot until the smell reminds me that I ever bought it in the first place.

Currently in my fridge, there is a spoiled heap of ground beef that I need to throw out, which I bought to cook on the George Foreman grill and then eat as leftovers at night during the week. Brilliant in its simplicity � yet I haven't been home to cook it in at least fifteen days. It's gone brown in its plastic packaging. This is the second time I've perpetrated this particular offense, at least in recent memory. Cross off that option for dinner tonight. Those mushroom soups from Trader Joe's? Couldn't be simpler -- except that they require 45 minutes in the oven, and unless I think to call Lauren ahead of time, who wants to wait that long for sweet hunger relief?

Some people say that the best approach is to shop while hungry; others claim you must always shop on a full stomach, so you don't buy according to your tastes at the time and can be more rational and productive. I fail on both counts. I buy yogurts and soup cans and frozen food, and at the end of the day, all I want is peanut butter. It's not uncommon for Lauren or I to return from the grocery store, unload everything into its proper storage place, then sit back and sigh and go, "Now, what's for dinner� fuck, I have NO food."

Indeed, as I sit here musing about what to have when I get home, I can't think of a single thing. "I have NO food" is the refrain most common to my apartment, perhaps an occasional second to "I need to do laundry," or, "Oh my God, what is Joan Collins wearing?" Constantly, I study the contents of my fridge, freezer, and larder, and just as frequently I dismiss them all. Even now, I have a perfectly good can of Chicken Noodle Soup in the pantry, a couple old boxes of cous-cous, a frozen stromboli, apples, and breakfast cereal, and I'm sitting here frowning about having no food at all. It's easy to attach the caveat, "Well, but I just haven't been to the grocery store in a while," but I know better than to think that will help.

It's really quite amazing to think that I got to be twenty-seven without an ounce of practicality in this area, and none developing on the horizon. I had hoped that aging another year would vault me into some kind of elevated consciousness, wherein I understand the art of throwing together something tasty based on what's in the fridge, or knowing how to shop and not let my food mold before I eat it. Alas, that hasn't been true. There has been no epiphany. There is no shopping list in the world, no spate of easy recipes, that will make me get home from work tonight and think, "It only takes a few minutes to whip up eggs and some sausage patties -- just do that." Because it takes even fewer minutes and certainly fewer dirty dishes to make peanut-butter crackers and Ruffles.

I plan to take a trip to the store this weekend, in the hope that just putting my ridiculous lack of talent to paper will push me to excel. Sure, I strongly suspect I'll end up at home with Wheat Thins, some Skinny Cow ice-cream sandwiches, deli meat, a jar of Jif, three Yoplaits, some cottage cheese, and carrots, and I'll sit on the couch and think, "There is NOTHING TO EAT" before ordering Indian food.

Come to think of it, I think that's why I joined a gym. It's not because I'm a health nut -- it's because being good at that helps counterbalance my abject failure to buy and eat the kind of smart food that would make my mother proud.

This is ridiculous. With age must come common sense, right? I can't let the grocery store outwit me. Come on, twenty-eight �- you're still 356 days away, but man, do I ever need your wisdom.

Oh, and also, when you get here, would you bring some Kettle Chips and saltines? Thanks.

Someone got here by searching for: pig roast funny pics Watching: Not nearly as much of the Olympics as I thought I would Contemplating: Trying to whip my ass into shape again for a half-marathon in December in Malibu. Understanding: That I am probably way too lazy to actually achieve that � witness my inability to get out of bed this morning, or make hamburgers on my George Foreman, the world's quickest and easiest grill. Sigh.