Wednesday, April 18th, 2018
It was just another average day cleaning at the Stormcellar. Nothing too exciting. I was vacuuming some rugs near the back of the store, when who should walk by but Karis. I waved, and she waved back, and that was that. I see people I know walk by all the time, and I almost always wave if I happen to notice them, so I thought nothing of it and went back to work. A couple minutes later she came back again, and, since she knew I was still there, she evidently thought it would be a great idea to wave excitedly at me over and over again whilst smiling and walking backwards along the sidewalk. This seemed perhaps a little strange, but I went along with it nonetheless and waved back with exaggerated arm movements until she was out of sight. I laughed about it and went back to work.
Several hours later a thought occurred to me, so I decided to message Karis... and I found out that she hadn't seen me at the Stormcellar at all today. Which means that... who was I was waving to!? I don't know. Some random person evidently. Awkward. It would appear that I have an affinity for strange interactions with random strangers, but oh well. Nothing to do about it but laugh and move on I guess!
Friday, April 20, 2018
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
The Land Of Oranges And Lemons
Summer of 2010 or 2011ish
We made it. My grandpa and my great uncle and I had just driven down to Phoenix from Kansas city, and it was quite the ride. All along the way they'd remind each other where it was safe to speed and where it wasn't. "Oh, don't speed through here! Remember that one time we got that $900 ticket? They mean business here." and sometime later one would say, "Alright, we're good for the next 40 miles. Let's get going!" And so it went the entire way down. They've probably spent a small or medium-sized fortune in speeding tickets over the years, but at least now they're pretty good about not getting caught. I sat in the middle of the pickup truck the whole way down since I was the smallest, and listened to many a story of way-back-when or, if it wasn't that, it was talking about whatever politics Rush Limbaugh was railing about at the time. Besides getting hit by a cherry-picker truck at a gas station, it was a pretty great trip. Not that getting hit by the truck was a bad thing. Little thirteen-year-old me thought it was pretty great, especially the rush of seeing the truck approaching our cab and head straight for us. That was the best. Uncle Don tried to dodge him, but he couldn't get it in reverse fast enough, and... crunch! Both trucks stopped. Grandpa and Uncle Don immediately found their insurance information and started going over all the details of what happened and rehearsed their story to be sure to get it right. After decades of experience, Grandpa knew exactly what to do to get the payout that was inevitable, and he even got the license plate number in case the driver drove off before we got his insurance information. (Actually that was the first thing they did. I read and continually repeated the license number while they scrambled for pen and paper and recorded it.) Well, the driver was very apologetic about messing up our front end, and we got his information and that was that. On the way down Grandpa called the insurance company to get everything arranged. And they payed up too. No insurance company could get past Grandpa when he was barking up their tree!
And so we made it to Phoenix. Uncle Don had several trees in his backyard, as well as three cows and a bull. We walked out to the trees. And oh! They were so pretty! It was my first time seeing real citrus trees in action. There were grapefruit trees, lemon trees, and orange trees! I didn't know which one to run up to first. Which utterly delightful fruit should I bite into first? I didn't know, and I still don't know. The grapefuits were twice the size of my fist, and the oranges and lemons only slightly smaller. And then I took up an orange. It was a good and decent weight, with a good healthy peel on it. I sunk my fingers into it, and was surprised at how thick the peel was. It came off easily, in big playful chunks. The wedges were so big, and the little capsules with the juice in them were so large, that you could almost eat them one at a time if you had the patience. I did not have the patience. My teeth plunged into the sweetness, and I couldn't help but smile at the orangyness of it. It was perfect.
I picked as much fruit as I could carry, and brought it inside to the kitchen table. Uncle Don introduced me to eating grapefruit with sugar, and it was pretty good. He even had special spoons for it! And then, the lemons. I'd never seen such humongous lemons in my life. When I took my first deep bite of lemon, my face puckered up tighter than fallen plum on a scalding August day. And it was so good. I ate the whole thing, much to the amusement of Grandpa and Uncle Don.
That was my first real experience in Arizona. Sure, I'd been there at least once when I was real little, but this was the first time that I really remembered well. I spent a solid summer month living with my Grandpa, and pretty much every day we'd swing by McDonald's and Grandpa would get a senior coffee and a sausage biscuit, and I'd usually get two breakfast burritos. I spent most business hours in his insurance office during the day doing school or playing minesweeper and spider solitaire and other such computer games. I also prowled the parking lots and put insurance advertisements on each car windshield I could find. Soon enough I learned not to put advertisements on the windshield when a person was sitting inside. Evidently people don't take to that too kindly... hahae. The afternoon would always find me swimming in the pool in his backyard. It was on the miniature divingboard that I completed my first ever backflip. I was so excited! In the evening we'd eat dinner, sometimes pizza that we ordered, or hamburgers and onions and baked beans that Grandpa cooked up, or something else. We'd eat it while watching the news, or, more often, and more exciting for me, NCIS. And so it went.
By and by it was time for me to leave, but, since we'd driven down and I was flying back, I hadn't brought any of my stuff in a bag that I could take on the plane. So we went to Big Lots and Grandpa bought me a nice little brown suitcase with roller wheels on the back and a pullout handle for $15. After all these years I still have it. I used it just three months ago in fact. It's slowly breaking and stands lopsided, and the plastic is brittle and breaking and the handle barely goes up and down anymore, but it's still hanging on a while longer. Before we drove to the airport, we stopped by Uncle Don's to stock up on citrus, and that was that. I made it back just in time for the potato harvest and setting up more fence, and life soon returned to normal again.
It'd be several years before I would again set foot in Arizona. By that time the lemon trees were dead, the grapefruit trees dying, and the orange trees not producing quite like they used to. But there would always remain a soft spot in my heart for Arizona citrus. Especially the oranges, and especially the lemons. Nowhere else has lemons so delicious nor oranges so sweet.
We made it. My grandpa and my great uncle and I had just driven down to Phoenix from Kansas city, and it was quite the ride. All along the way they'd remind each other where it was safe to speed and where it wasn't. "Oh, don't speed through here! Remember that one time we got that $900 ticket? They mean business here." and sometime later one would say, "Alright, we're good for the next 40 miles. Let's get going!" And so it went the entire way down. They've probably spent a small or medium-sized fortune in speeding tickets over the years, but at least now they're pretty good about not getting caught. I sat in the middle of the pickup truck the whole way down since I was the smallest, and listened to many a story of way-back-when or, if it wasn't that, it was talking about whatever politics Rush Limbaugh was railing about at the time. Besides getting hit by a cherry-picker truck at a gas station, it was a pretty great trip. Not that getting hit by the truck was a bad thing. Little thirteen-year-old me thought it was pretty great, especially the rush of seeing the truck approaching our cab and head straight for us. That was the best. Uncle Don tried to dodge him, but he couldn't get it in reverse fast enough, and... crunch! Both trucks stopped. Grandpa and Uncle Don immediately found their insurance information and started going over all the details of what happened and rehearsed their story to be sure to get it right. After decades of experience, Grandpa knew exactly what to do to get the payout that was inevitable, and he even got the license plate number in case the driver drove off before we got his insurance information. (Actually that was the first thing they did. I read and continually repeated the license number while they scrambled for pen and paper and recorded it.) Well, the driver was very apologetic about messing up our front end, and we got his information and that was that. On the way down Grandpa called the insurance company to get everything arranged. And they payed up too. No insurance company could get past Grandpa when he was barking up their tree!
And so we made it to Phoenix. Uncle Don had several trees in his backyard, as well as three cows and a bull. We walked out to the trees. And oh! They were so pretty! It was my first time seeing real citrus trees in action. There were grapefruit trees, lemon trees, and orange trees! I didn't know which one to run up to first. Which utterly delightful fruit should I bite into first? I didn't know, and I still don't know. The grapefuits were twice the size of my fist, and the oranges and lemons only slightly smaller. And then I took up an orange. It was a good and decent weight, with a good healthy peel on it. I sunk my fingers into it, and was surprised at how thick the peel was. It came off easily, in big playful chunks. The wedges were so big, and the little capsules with the juice in them were so large, that you could almost eat them one at a time if you had the patience. I did not have the patience. My teeth plunged into the sweetness, and I couldn't help but smile at the orangyness of it. It was perfect.
I picked as much fruit as I could carry, and brought it inside to the kitchen table. Uncle Don introduced me to eating grapefruit with sugar, and it was pretty good. He even had special spoons for it! And then, the lemons. I'd never seen such humongous lemons in my life. When I took my first deep bite of lemon, my face puckered up tighter than fallen plum on a scalding August day. And it was so good. I ate the whole thing, much to the amusement of Grandpa and Uncle Don.
That was my first real experience in Arizona. Sure, I'd been there at least once when I was real little, but this was the first time that I really remembered well. I spent a solid summer month living with my Grandpa, and pretty much every day we'd swing by McDonald's and Grandpa would get a senior coffee and a sausage biscuit, and I'd usually get two breakfast burritos. I spent most business hours in his insurance office during the day doing school or playing minesweeper and spider solitaire and other such computer games. I also prowled the parking lots and put insurance advertisements on each car windshield I could find. Soon enough I learned not to put advertisements on the windshield when a person was sitting inside. Evidently people don't take to that too kindly... hahae. The afternoon would always find me swimming in the pool in his backyard. It was on the miniature divingboard that I completed my first ever backflip. I was so excited! In the evening we'd eat dinner, sometimes pizza that we ordered, or hamburgers and onions and baked beans that Grandpa cooked up, or something else. We'd eat it while watching the news, or, more often, and more exciting for me, NCIS. And so it went.
By and by it was time for me to leave, but, since we'd driven down and I was flying back, I hadn't brought any of my stuff in a bag that I could take on the plane. So we went to Big Lots and Grandpa bought me a nice little brown suitcase with roller wheels on the back and a pullout handle for $15. After all these years I still have it. I used it just three months ago in fact. It's slowly breaking and stands lopsided, and the plastic is brittle and breaking and the handle barely goes up and down anymore, but it's still hanging on a while longer. Before we drove to the airport, we stopped by Uncle Don's to stock up on citrus, and that was that. I made it back just in time for the potato harvest and setting up more fence, and life soon returned to normal again.
It'd be several years before I would again set foot in Arizona. By that time the lemon trees were dead, the grapefruit trees dying, and the orange trees not producing quite like they used to. But there would always remain a soft spot in my heart for Arizona citrus. Especially the oranges, and especially the lemons. Nowhere else has lemons so delicious nor oranges so sweet.
Friday, April 13, 2018
A Walk Down The Block
Friday, April 13th, 2018
The clouds were high in the sky, like they are wont to be, and it seemed like they droplets might issue forth at any time; indeed, a few of the more intrepid fellows ventured out from time to time, but to no avail, their brethren would not be persuaded to join them. Apparently morale was low. Jex and I ambled along down the street in a part of town away from our usual haunts, and by chance we ended up down a street with a cul-de-sac at the end. It'd've been slightly boring, not to mention lame, to turn around and go back the way we 'd come, so Jex and I decided to walk across this grassy patch and into the parking lot on the other side. We soon realized, however, that our way was barred by a rivulet turned stream by the recent rains. It was sufficiently wide that I doubted whether I could make it across or not, especially since there was precious little good footing on either side, being mostly mud and washed-over grass. I looked about me. On the other side of the stream sat a concrete block wall a little taller than myself that stretched for a good while down the way, but, and this is the good part, I spotted a crossing just a dozen or so meters from me. I harkened to the spot. It was an old, dilapidated, decrepit, slightly decomposed, short little tree that hung its last weight-bearing limb halfway across the stream in a last-ditch effort to be of some use to somebody, and maybe perhaps bring a little more joy into the world. Despite this tree being far from its platonic form, it succeeded in doing just that; I smiled.
Turning, I looked at Jex, then back at the limb. Finally, I spoke into the cellular phone which I'd been talking on this whole time, "Oh, dad, I'm gonna have to put you on hold, I've gotta jump a creek real quick." I didn't hang up but put my phone back in its accustomed spot on my belt. Stepping up on the limb was the matter of a moment, and Jex, just as delighted to be doing something fun as I was, hopped up too. She wagged her tail and smiled, but didn't quite understand what we were up to. And she was more or less standing in the middle of the limb that I needed top get across. Ergo, I called to her to move, and she did, and I took point position while she watched our six. I centimetered my way out along the limb. It was a little wider than it would normally be, thanks to all the grasses and twigs that had gotten caught there before the water level had subsided, but the extra material didn't make the limb any sturdier. It shook and bounced a bit as I reached the furthest point of it, or at least, as far as I could go with at least a certain degree of surety that it could hold me. I looked to the other side of the stream to consider which clump of soggy grass would be my landing point, and finally decided on the one I thought was a little bigger than the others.
Looking back at Jex, I saw her look at me as if to ask, "Are we really going to do this?" I replied by turning around and jumping to the clump. Water immediately started to seep into my shoes as I depressed the mud with my weight, so I jumped up, grabbed the top of the concrete wall, and clambered up out of the mire. I then turned around to look at Jex. She had advanced to the same part of the limb I had been on moments before, and was scanning the other bank just as I had. Then she looked up at me to see if I really wanted her to come to the other side with me. I called her to come. Without further thought, she made the jump, gracefully landing upon a good clump of grass. She then looked up at me and had a slight worried look in her eyes as she wondered how in the world she was supposed to climb the wall. I started walking along the edge of the wall toward the point at which the wall terminated and you could simply go up an incline and reach the top. For a few seconds Jex was worried that she couldn't reach me and scampered along to try and at least stay close, but then she realized what we were doing and ran ahead to make the loop and rejoin me. I then put her leash back on and we carried on our merry way. By the time it was all said and done, it was about a three kilometer walk, and the sun had been below the horizon for a good chunk of time by the time we got back. It was a good walk.
The clouds were high in the sky, like they are wont to be, and it seemed like they droplets might issue forth at any time; indeed, a few of the more intrepid fellows ventured out from time to time, but to no avail, their brethren would not be persuaded to join them. Apparently morale was low. Jex and I ambled along down the street in a part of town away from our usual haunts, and by chance we ended up down a street with a cul-de-sac at the end. It'd've been slightly boring, not to mention lame, to turn around and go back the way we 'd come, so Jex and I decided to walk across this grassy patch and into the parking lot on the other side. We soon realized, however, that our way was barred by a rivulet turned stream by the recent rains. It was sufficiently wide that I doubted whether I could make it across or not, especially since there was precious little good footing on either side, being mostly mud and washed-over grass. I looked about me. On the other side of the stream sat a concrete block wall a little taller than myself that stretched for a good while down the way, but, and this is the good part, I spotted a crossing just a dozen or so meters from me. I harkened to the spot. It was an old, dilapidated, decrepit, slightly decomposed, short little tree that hung its last weight-bearing limb halfway across the stream in a last-ditch effort to be of some use to somebody, and maybe perhaps bring a little more joy into the world. Despite this tree being far from its platonic form, it succeeded in doing just that; I smiled.
Turning, I looked at Jex, then back at the limb. Finally, I spoke into the cellular phone which I'd been talking on this whole time, "Oh, dad, I'm gonna have to put you on hold, I've gotta jump a creek real quick." I didn't hang up but put my phone back in its accustomed spot on my belt. Stepping up on the limb was the matter of a moment, and Jex, just as delighted to be doing something fun as I was, hopped up too. She wagged her tail and smiled, but didn't quite understand what we were up to. And she was more or less standing in the middle of the limb that I needed top get across. Ergo, I called to her to move, and she did, and I took point position while she watched our six. I centimetered my way out along the limb. It was a little wider than it would normally be, thanks to all the grasses and twigs that had gotten caught there before the water level had subsided, but the extra material didn't make the limb any sturdier. It shook and bounced a bit as I reached the furthest point of it, or at least, as far as I could go with at least a certain degree of surety that it could hold me. I looked to the other side of the stream to consider which clump of soggy grass would be my landing point, and finally decided on the one I thought was a little bigger than the others.
Looking back at Jex, I saw her look at me as if to ask, "Are we really going to do this?" I replied by turning around and jumping to the clump. Water immediately started to seep into my shoes as I depressed the mud with my weight, so I jumped up, grabbed the top of the concrete wall, and clambered up out of the mire. I then turned around to look at Jex. She had advanced to the same part of the limb I had been on moments before, and was scanning the other bank just as I had. Then she looked up at me to see if I really wanted her to come to the other side with me. I called her to come. Without further thought, she made the jump, gracefully landing upon a good clump of grass. She then looked up at me and had a slight worried look in her eyes as she wondered how in the world she was supposed to climb the wall. I started walking along the edge of the wall toward the point at which the wall terminated and you could simply go up an incline and reach the top. For a few seconds Jex was worried that she couldn't reach me and scampered along to try and at least stay close, but then she realized what we were doing and ran ahead to make the loop and rejoin me. I then put her leash back on and we carried on our merry way. By the time it was all said and done, it was about a three kilometer walk, and the sun had been below the horizon for a good chunk of time by the time we got back. It was a good walk.
Monday, April 9, 2018
Photosynthesis + Polenta
Monday, April 9th, 2018
The sweet sing-song notes of Froh's decadent morning alarm reached my as-of-yet unsuspecting ears; it was one of those moments where you're awake enough where, if you really wanted to, you could wake up, yet asleep enough you could roll over and go back to sleep. Since it was a Monday morning, I opted for the latter. (There is a peculiar phenomena where, whenever people use 'the former' and 'the latter' they always choose to use or refer to the latter. Poor former. One of these days I will choose you! But not today. I guess that's just how the cookie crumbles.) An hour or so later, I finally awoke a tad after 9am I believe. Right away I jumped out of bed, ran downstairs, threw a pot of water with some raisins on the range, turned on some music, and cleaned the kitchen. By the time I was done with that my oatmeal was ready, and I surfed facebook and checked my email whilst consuming it. I glanced outside: it was beautifully gorgeous, the sun was shining, all was right with the world. I smiled for joy, washed out my breakfast bowl, and grabbed a book and hopped outside. We just so happen to have a deck chair sitting out on our back patio, so I sat on it and propped my feet up on a 5-gallon bucket. I read. And I read some more. I felt like a bearded-dragon or perhaps a black snake coming out to soak up the wonderful warmth of the sun. No, better yet, I was a petunia, nay, a black eyed susan! gleefully soaking up the sun's life-giving rays. I was photosynthesizing. After many moons of snow, rain, and clouds, the sun was back and we plants could finally get a bite to eat. Boy was I hungry for some sun.
I read out there all the way until an hour after noon, at which time I went inside to craft a sandwich. (With authentic sourdough bread from Winco, mayonnaise, rice, pepperjack cheese, mushrooms, zucchini, sliced turkey, and onion.) Twas a glorious sandwich, towering a whopping... I forgot to measure it, but it was tall. Only problem was, it was so tall that when I opened my mouth to try and fit it in, I had to open my jaws soooo wide. Much wider than I usually do on your average day. So wide, in fact, that my jaw got a charlie horse and was stuck and didn't want to move. It was kind of sad, there was literally sandwich in my mouth my I couldn't close it to take a bite! A dozen excruciating seconds later I summoned the unction to clamp my jaws shut, and after that I was good again.
2:30 found me sitting in class, and an hour later Christy and Sarah and I discussed all the photosynthesis we did earlier in the day, and an hour after that Keziah and I were talking about concrete stuff and how his dad just got a fancy new contraption that'll make it loads easier. I'd have to see it to believe it, but it sounded pretty legit. After that I sat down to read in the commons, and Mandy and Rachel were there. An hour or so went by, and Rachel left to go somewhere. Then I came across some really good parts from a book I'm reading called 'Propaganda', by Jacques Ellul. I started cracking up and chuckling pretty good to myself, enough so that Mandy looked up from what she was doing to see what was so funny. Here are two of the quotes I satisfied her curiosity with: "Almost every man feels a desire to kill his neighbor, but this is forbidden, and in most cases the individual will refrain from it for fear of the consequences. But propaganda opens the door and allows him to kill the Jews, the bourgeois, the Communists, and so on, and such murder even becomes an achievement." [pg 152] And the second: "When a man obeys necessity, he wants to prove that such is not the case and that he really obeys his conscience. On the day when the draft is introduced, everybody discoers he has a fervent love for his country." [pg 157]
By and by Rachel came back, and then a chance comment from her sparked an animated conversation: she said, "So I made some hominy today." And then it all came crashing out, and I told them the story that hominy had reminded me of: How I"d been tricked into buying a gallon of polenta. See, it happened like this. I was walking through Winco the other day, and I stumbled across some polenta in the bulk food section. It looked kinda like grits, so I bought some in the wild hope that it might taste like grits if I cooked it up. I went back home, tucked it away in my pantry, and promptly forgot about it. Five or six weeks later it happened again: I rediscovered it, forgot I'd already bought some to try, and then bought some more to try and see if it was like grits. This happened one more time several weeks later. Then, probably two weeks ago, I found all my polenta. It was indeed a copious amount, enough to fill a gallon-sized icecream container to the top. And then I cooked some up like it was grits, and then happily dug into a bowl of it when it came out... but it was wrong. All wrong. It was goopy, like a useless bowl of cream of wheat. And... it tasted awful.. horribly awful.. I almost gagged. Now, anybody that knows me knows I'm not big on wasting food, but this... it almost wasn't food. I threw it in the trashcan. Yes, the entire pot of polenta went by-by, down the drain, kicked the bucket, down to sheol, maybe purgatory at best. It was so sad, and so disappointing. I was mentally prepared for grits, and what did I get? A cheap knock-off of the singularly disappointing food that is called cream of wheat. I ended up eating oatmeal that day.
Anyways, I now have a gallon of almost worthless polenta, so I asked Mandy and Rachel if they had any good polenta recipes. And so it was we spent the next 10 minutes scrolling through various polenta recipes. Some were hilariously bad, others just plain bad, and a handful were perhaps worthy enough to be tried. One of these was a recipe for polenta and mushroom pizza, so one day here soon I'll give that a try and see how it comes out. So now I am on a quest to find the best way to edibly eat polenta. If any of yall have any wonderful polenta recipes you're just dying to share with the world, feel free to comment below or send them to me: I've got enough polenta to try out any recipe you can send my way.
So that's about it for today.Once I got back from school I took Jex for a walk and then made a big fat burrito for dinner, then did some more reading a tad of writing. Pretty good day if you ask me!
The sweet sing-song notes of Froh's decadent morning alarm reached my as-of-yet unsuspecting ears; it was one of those moments where you're awake enough where, if you really wanted to, you could wake up, yet asleep enough you could roll over and go back to sleep. Since it was a Monday morning, I opted for the latter. (There is a peculiar phenomena where, whenever people use 'the former' and 'the latter' they always choose to use or refer to the latter. Poor former. One of these days I will choose you! But not today. I guess that's just how the cookie crumbles.) An hour or so later, I finally awoke a tad after 9am I believe. Right away I jumped out of bed, ran downstairs, threw a pot of water with some raisins on the range, turned on some music, and cleaned the kitchen. By the time I was done with that my oatmeal was ready, and I surfed facebook and checked my email whilst consuming it. I glanced outside: it was beautifully gorgeous, the sun was shining, all was right with the world. I smiled for joy, washed out my breakfast bowl, and grabbed a book and hopped outside. We just so happen to have a deck chair sitting out on our back patio, so I sat on it and propped my feet up on a 5-gallon bucket. I read. And I read some more. I felt like a bearded-dragon or perhaps a black snake coming out to soak up the wonderful warmth of the sun. No, better yet, I was a petunia, nay, a black eyed susan! gleefully soaking up the sun's life-giving rays. I was photosynthesizing. After many moons of snow, rain, and clouds, the sun was back and we plants could finally get a bite to eat. Boy was I hungry for some sun.
I read out there all the way until an hour after noon, at which time I went inside to craft a sandwich. (With authentic sourdough bread from Winco, mayonnaise, rice, pepperjack cheese, mushrooms, zucchini, sliced turkey, and onion.) Twas a glorious sandwich, towering a whopping... I forgot to measure it, but it was tall. Only problem was, it was so tall that when I opened my mouth to try and fit it in, I had to open my jaws soooo wide. Much wider than I usually do on your average day. So wide, in fact, that my jaw got a charlie horse and was stuck and didn't want to move. It was kind of sad, there was literally sandwich in my mouth my I couldn't close it to take a bite! A dozen excruciating seconds later I summoned the unction to clamp my jaws shut, and after that I was good again.
2:30 found me sitting in class, and an hour later Christy and Sarah and I discussed all the photosynthesis we did earlier in the day, and an hour after that Keziah and I were talking about concrete stuff and how his dad just got a fancy new contraption that'll make it loads easier. I'd have to see it to believe it, but it sounded pretty legit. After that I sat down to read in the commons, and Mandy and Rachel were there. An hour or so went by, and Rachel left to go somewhere. Then I came across some really good parts from a book I'm reading called 'Propaganda', by Jacques Ellul. I started cracking up and chuckling pretty good to myself, enough so that Mandy looked up from what she was doing to see what was so funny. Here are two of the quotes I satisfied her curiosity with: "Almost every man feels a desire to kill his neighbor, but this is forbidden, and in most cases the individual will refrain from it for fear of the consequences. But propaganda opens the door and allows him to kill the Jews, the bourgeois, the Communists, and so on, and such murder even becomes an achievement." [pg 152] And the second: "When a man obeys necessity, he wants to prove that such is not the case and that he really obeys his conscience. On the day when the draft is introduced, everybody discoers he has a fervent love for his country." [pg 157]
By and by Rachel came back, and then a chance comment from her sparked an animated conversation: she said, "So I made some hominy today." And then it all came crashing out, and I told them the story that hominy had reminded me of: How I"d been tricked into buying a gallon of polenta. See, it happened like this. I was walking through Winco the other day, and I stumbled across some polenta in the bulk food section. It looked kinda like grits, so I bought some in the wild hope that it might taste like grits if I cooked it up. I went back home, tucked it away in my pantry, and promptly forgot about it. Five or six weeks later it happened again: I rediscovered it, forgot I'd already bought some to try, and then bought some more to try and see if it was like grits. This happened one more time several weeks later. Then, probably two weeks ago, I found all my polenta. It was indeed a copious amount, enough to fill a gallon-sized icecream container to the top. And then I cooked some up like it was grits, and then happily dug into a bowl of it when it came out... but it was wrong. All wrong. It was goopy, like a useless bowl of cream of wheat. And... it tasted awful.. horribly awful.. I almost gagged. Now, anybody that knows me knows I'm not big on wasting food, but this... it almost wasn't food. I threw it in the trashcan. Yes, the entire pot of polenta went by-by, down the drain, kicked the bucket, down to sheol, maybe purgatory at best. It was so sad, and so disappointing. I was mentally prepared for grits, and what did I get? A cheap knock-off of the singularly disappointing food that is called cream of wheat. I ended up eating oatmeal that day.
Anyways, I now have a gallon of almost worthless polenta, so I asked Mandy and Rachel if they had any good polenta recipes. And so it was we spent the next 10 minutes scrolling through various polenta recipes. Some were hilariously bad, others just plain bad, and a handful were perhaps worthy enough to be tried. One of these was a recipe for polenta and mushroom pizza, so one day here soon I'll give that a try and see how it comes out. So now I am on a quest to find the best way to edibly eat polenta. If any of yall have any wonderful polenta recipes you're just dying to share with the world, feel free to comment below or send them to me: I've got enough polenta to try out any recipe you can send my way.
So that's about it for today.Once I got back from school I took Jex for a walk and then made a big fat burrito for dinner, then did some more reading a tad of writing. Pretty good day if you ask me!
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