Old?

My friend Bruce writes a blog for a poetry magazine in, I don't know, New Zealand? And he decided to write about getting old, although he has wanted to be old since he was 14.  He wears old man hats that are too small, and a heavy beard that combine to make him look Hassidic although he is less than religious.
He wears button down vests, heavy brogues and tweed whenever possible and never have I seen in in just a t-shirt as other men wear on a regular basis.
This was my reply to his story.
Last week on the phone, a customer, heavy and black and in her sixties, told me that I was an attractive elderly woman. I said that I did not consider myself to be elderly.

"Are you in your thirties?" "the woman i saw in the store?" I said no, I was in my sixties and I was the one who she saw, and did not disabuse her notion that 

Rollin had fixed her lamps when in fact it was largely my effort.

"Then you a very attractive elderly lady".

With her, the emphasis appeared to be on attractive, but what I heard, was her saying I was elderly.

I thanked her and w hung up, but despite my growing distaste for the state of my facial skin sagging and wrinkling,and the barrage of aches and pains, I feel I am barely An adult, and hardly elderly, but I could be mistaken.

Good Eats

When you are alone in the house, you can eat anything you want, and the only person you hurt is....oh yeah, you.

The thing is, that when you live with someone, and you normally eat balanced meals, the kind that have protein, carbs and vegetables, not the applestack from minute to win it, and the other person or people know or believe that you are always eating reasonably you generally follow those rules so as not to get caught stuffing your face while supposedly on a diet.  That is to say, until the entire pan of brownies disappears, they think you are in control of yourself.

A while back, half a blueberry cake disappeared and I had to ask 50 questions before I found out that the answer was "my brother and I ate it".  Fair enough, but why the subterfuge?

Now I'm in the house alone, and no one knows what is going on here.  I want to eat the vegetables, I BUY the vegetables and pretty fruits, and I visit them in the refrigerator when I stop by there to see if any ice cream with caramel has appeared there as if by magic.

I'm trying to get off the meat band wagon, and frankly, that one was easy.  Now I am stuck on fried shrimp!
That cannot be totally good for me.  The shrimp themselves are iffy, in that they are probably frozen and sold in bulk to the Greek Pizza shop.  (remind me some time to tell you about the Pakistani Pizza shop, it may be here someplace)  Anyway, those farmed shrimp (and I am guessing here, but it's prob'ly a good guess) that the shrimp are farmed, and as such, they are crowded, and because of that, they are filled full of antibiotics and heavy metals that are floating around in the water from people getting cured of things and flushing their drugs down the toilet.  Okay, I totally did not mean to go there...

So for dinner, I had maybe 6 or 7 jumbo fried shrimp with "cocktail sauce".  I don't know what they  call it, it's a little take out cup with ketchup and a dab of horseradish in it.  So I had that, some onion rings, (okay, that's the first time I had those in months), and some giant light green olives that you have to eat around the pit like hand fruit, they are so large, and a bunch of chocolate chips.  No cookies, just chips.  You save a TON of calories that way.

I am sure there are those of you who will be gasping at the unvarnished nerve of me to admit to such a revolting diet, (that was just dinner) and others who are saying " pish, tosh, I just ate a chicken fried baby whale, and chased it with a red velvet layer cake and a liter of mountain dew!"

  So maybe I am not so far out of control as I think I am.  I am hoping that by confessing to you, my friends and whatever you are to me, that I will try and behave somewhat before you come asking "How's that little eating problem going?"  Or before I bust out of another size of jeans, having already donated all the fat pants earlier this summer, in a burst of optimism.  (OH, NO SHE DIDN'T???  Yeah, I did.

So let this little tale of woe be a warning to you buckaroos.  (I sent something to Texas today, and I saw Rango last night, and I am taking a little license here .)

Stay on the straight and narrow and eat the fresh food before we all explode in a collective self inflicted massacre.  Well, that was weak, but I promise to work on it....

Movies I might See

I found a list of movies I might be interested in ordering from Netflix.  I'm not sure of all of them and I am not recommending any of them.  I just thought they looked like a poem, and I have not been so happy with what they pass off as poetry lately in the New Yorker.

so:

Movies I might see

one day
the change up
immortals
what's your number
our idiot brother
thundersoul
the high cost of living
submarine.


Let them read some subtext into that.
Really, is that how it's done?

CSI Home: The Case of the Missing Redhead

Waiting for an important call, I realized I had ignored the state of the house for about 6 weeks.  I decided to get with it.

While swabbing the kitchen floor, I decided to break at the oven and spray it with cleaner.  That should take about 2-3 hours to eat through to enamel. (for more on this see: Accidents in the home).

Climbing the stairs, I noticed: they were disgusting.  All manner of dirt dust and hair remained on the treads.  Wearing my trusty Platex Living Gloves, (I think they actually might call them that although outside of the bubble boy I don't know who would call that living..) I climb one stair at a time rubbing furiously at the back edge and then sides and middle.

The resulting debris resembled a hairy bowling ball.  There was soooo much hair!  Obviously I had been there at least once.

This put me in mind of all those detective shows.  Come on, they find one hair on the victim, and it's crime solved?  I had enough evidence to convict myself a billion times over.  I had hair there from when I was a redhead.

Wait a second.... I've never BEEN a redhead! 

Case open pending further investigation.

Soup's On!

Let me just run this one by you:
Rotisserie chicken soup.thrifty or pathetic?
Discuss amongst yourselves.

Recipe:
One mostly denuded chicken carcass
4-6 cups of water
large carrot cut up
stalk of celery with leaves on
half an onin large hunks
salt, pepper
parsley whole
include that dark jelly stuff on th bottom of the plastic chicken garage thing, that's the flavor package

Boil till it smells like grandma's house,( 2-3 hours) taste.  If it's too weak cook it down some more.  Eventually it should taste good.  Then you can add:
leftover chicken
more smaller carrot and celery and onion pieces, sweated,
lentils (handful)
rice (some)
whatever...
maybe kale or spinach
maybe little pale meatballs
red bell pepper, if your stomach can take it
cumin, curry or Chinese 5 spice powder
you can take it from here,
I'm just waiting for the broth to cool.
And that's che sera cooking for today. enjoy!

Dog days

I don't know why they call it the dog days. As far as I know, dogs don't like it any better than we do but since their "sanitary facilitiy" is outdoors they gotta go and drag their humans with them.

I suppose that picking up your dog's  stuff is better than leaving it in the park for others to step in, and having at least once stepped in it, I gotta say the whole world is better off not having to wipe anything off their shoes.

It's a good thing dogs don't chew gum, but if they did, they'd probably swallow it.  Humans think it's okay to stick under furniture or spit out on the ground where... yes, it gets on your shoes.  Particularly when it's hot like this.

One time when I lived in the city I had to change a headlight.  I took the car ( white honda civic) to a parking lot where I could sit on the curb to perform this operation.  I was wearing my red Italian jumper and white faux ostrich cowboy boots.  (Shut up! it was adorable!)

When I went to pull my legs out from under the car, they did not come???  How does that work?  My legs were stuck, yes, stuck in gum.  For no known reason I did not at that point take off the boots.  That would have been sensible, but I thought I would just put a napkin from the glove compartment on the gas pedal and it would be okay.

It was not as okay as I would have liked. I drive a stick, so as I drove the thin crappy napkin form a fast food chain stuck to all three pedals, tearing to bits.
The more I drove, the messier it became, and when I opened the window the pieces of napkin swirled around my head like I was a post modern snow globe. I flailed my arms wildly, trying to see the city traffic around me.

Sometimes my life is a situation comedy.  I tell these stories to people and they think I it's hyperbole.  My nephew said about one story: Aunt Meg, that is not a story, that's a movie.

And so although my dreams of stardom went unfulfilled, at least my life is cinematic.

I don't know what became of the dog story.  It was an interesting premise, but not having a dog shortened it up a good deal.

Have a good day, won't you?  And please, pick up after yourself, and the dog.

Thank you.