'O Thanksgiving Tree ...

Saturdays are always the highlight of my week. I get to sleep in a little without guilt, and after a little cleaning and laundry, Jan and I go out to buy groceries for the week. It's fun for me, because after such a long time of doing it by myself, I get to have company while I hunt around for food. I'm sure Jan would rather not go, but she humors me.

After we get the grocery shopping done, we'll usually bum around for a while, looking for this and that ... sometimes buying something, sometimes not.

Several weeks ago, we had sort of decided that we would get a new Christmas tree this year, seeing that our present tree is over 20 years old and is getting a little thread bare. So today we decided to look for one, before they'd been picked over and we were left with a poor selection. Even artificial trees can get in short supply as Christmas draws near. And we found one that we both liked and brought it home.

I was just going to put it down in the basement until the time when we usually put the tree up, which is the day after Thanksgiving. But as we were bringing things in from the truck, I dropped the box off in the back room, where we spend most of our evenings, and where we had decided to set up the tree this year. After we put things away, I looked at the box and decided to open it to see if everything was there.

One thing led to another, and we ended up putting the tree up and stringing lights around it. On November 7 ... three weeks before Thanksgiving ... seven weeks before Christmas.

A Work In Progress

We'll get the decorations put on it eventually. Maybe we'll do one a day, kind of like an Advent Calendar, only with no chocolate.

Since it's in our back room, no one can see it from the outside, which is good because I wouldn't want anyone to think we were weird or something.

Eau de Toilette

A few years ago, I worked with a woman who tried hard to be funny. She was a very nice person, but she felt the need to slip into a contrived "wacky" mode in order to make others laugh. This didn't work out for her at all, and the only thing she elicited from her co-workers, including me, was a polite laugh and a deep wish for her to go elsewhere.

Actually, she could be very funny, but this was only when she had no intention of being so. We worked in a small office, with about 15 to 20 people and her particular nook was right across a narrow hall from the men's restroom. One day, I was working on something, and she came and rapped on my door frame and said in all seriousness "My God, what did Frank have for lunch?" It took me a second, but I realized what she was talking about and started laughing. But I stopped as soon as the stench rolled up the hallway and hit me. At that point, we both started gagging and ran outside to revive ourselves and to wait until the office ventilation system cleared most of the odor out of the air.

I was reminded of this episode earlier this week when I went into the mens room at my new work. The second I opened the door, I was assaulted with one of the top ten worst smells I've ever experienced. I half expected every stall to be occupied, but when I looked down, there was only one pair of feet in the line of toilets. I'd had no time to take a breath before I had come through the door, and I was tempted to breathe only through my mouth, but then the thought of actually tasting the stench started to make me sick, so I turned tail and ran out the door. I walked into a meeting 5 minutes later and noticed a man sporting the same pair of light tan shoes and argyle socks that I had glimpsed in the stall, and fearing that the odor had clung to him out of sheer evil, I sat as far away from him as possible.

Events such as this make semi-lasting impressions on me, so this morning, I started wondering "What did Frank have for lunch?" So I looked it up, and what I found was highly educational as well as disturbing.

Yes, I read up on farting and shitting. And came up with some interesting facts. For instance, the average person farts 10 to 25 times per day because of all of the air that he/she ingests while eating and drinking. That air has to go someplace, so it propels itself right out the old blow hole. However, farts are not supposed to stink. And they won't if you avoid foods that ferment easily inside of you, like onions, beans, cabbage, radish, prunes, bananas, dark beer and wine. Light beer is not on the list, so thank God for that.

And since farting is so often a precursor of taking a dump, there were also some handy tips on keeping the odor level of your shit from moving into the red zone. It wasn't mentioned, but I would imagine that consuming the foods above would carry over from the gaseous stage to the solid state. Plus, fatty foods can cause your poop to smell putrefied. How do you know if your poo is fatty? Well, if it floats, it's more than likely fatty. The article I read was careful to mention that your turds would float in water, not in mid-air, which I think would be cause for some concern. Perhaps the most surprising fact that I learned was that the main reason your shit is smelly is because it backs up in your colon and rots. Did you know that you are supposed to have a bowel movement three to five times per day? Holy shit! I wouldn't call that normal. I'd call it diarrhea!

In order to curb my growing nausea, I stopped researching the subject, but not before I learned that there are actual support groups for people with smelly farts and shit.

I shit you not.

Next time I'm near an Office Max, I'm going to have some sticky notes made up with the names of these various support groups printed on them. So the next time I encounter a situation like I walked into this week I can slap a note on the mirror so that when the afflicted party comes out of his stall, he'll be able to see it as he washes his hands (hopefully) and seeks the help he so desperately needs.

That's me ... helping to improve society one step at a time.

Other People's Food

Other people's food

noun

Any nutritious substance not made for sale and not prepared by relatives or close friends.

Phrases

Other people's food usually tastes like ass.

Origin

Completely made up like just a few minutes ago.

Other people's food can originate from several different sources. Probably the most popular, would be a pot luck supper held by your church or social club. You could also find it at dinner parties held by people that you barely know who are trying to be upwardly mobile, but don't know exactly where to start the process. Or, you could have it delivered to you by a sympathetic neighbor in a glass or plastic receptacle covered with plastic wrap or aluminum foil immediately following the death of any close family member.

As a rule, I generally dislike other peoples food. And this includes the first meal that Jan cooked for me, which I believe was beef stroganoff. I smiled as I ooohed and aaahed, but just under the surface .. well it tasted funny. Of course, as I got use to it, it became the gold standard and then my mother's cooking tasted funny.

Food delivered to you after a funeral is not as funny tasting, but I think it's more of "not wanting to cook, so anything is better than that" kind of deal. Or maybe you have drank too much after the funeral, so that you don't really care what it tastes like, such as the case when my sister died, and I was drinking a whole lot so I could forget the image of my other sister propping her up in her casket so she could brush her hair because she didn't like the way the mortician did it.

But that's another story.

The first time I ate other people's food was in college. My girlfriend decided she was going to play grown-ups and have a dinner party for me, her room mate, and a crazed Vietnam veteran.

The evening was stressful, partly because the Vet showed up in a camouflage jacket with matching spit-shined combat boots and immediately started telling stories about how many VC he had iced and his hobby of collecting ears. So when my girlfriend brought dinner to the table, which I think was chicken, I was too busy hoping to God that this guy wouldn't find out that I had a low draft number, but a college deferment to save me from jungle life.

I ate without even tasting the food, and afterwards, I made some lame excuse about having to feed my dog or something and beat feet before this guy could collect my ears.

The next morning, I woke up with a horrible burning sensation in my chest. And it scared me, so I called my Mom and told her the symptoms and asked her what the hell was wrong with me. She just laughed and said "Well Robert, looks like you have your first case of serious heart burn." So, I ran to the encyclopedia, to see if I could find anything to combat it, but of course that didn't tell me shit except that Hartford is a city in Connecticut. And seeing as the internet wouldn't be discovered for another 20 years, I just went to the drug store and bought everything I could find that said "heart burn" on it.

After swallowing half a bottle of Pepto Bismo, a couple of Tums, and washing it all down with a big frosty glass of Alka Seltzer water, I promptly threw up ... and felt better.

Since that time, I think I've had heart burn only once, during Jan's creative cooking phase, when she made chocolate covered chicken thighs, or something similar to that.

I threw all of her cook books away the next day.

Reanimator

Life is full of mysteries. Does the Bermuda Triangle possess supernatural forces? Is Sasquatch real? How were the Great Pyramids of Egypt built?

Sometimes mysteries are smaller in scale, and maybe the reason for the mystery is because the person who set it in motion was too dumb to figure it out. That may be the case here, but I'll be damned if I can explain it.

You may recall a post that I wrote several weeks ago, eulogizing Sucky, my plucky 22 year old canister vacuum cleaner, who died of old age. At the time, I was going to give Sucky a proper burial, but something kept me from discarding him.

Today, I was cleaning out some items from the basement. Sucky was in the way, and I figured that my mourning period had went on long enough, and it was time to commit it to the county dump.

But before I took it upstairs, I thought "What if?" So I plugged it in and turned it on. And Sucky came to life ...

"It's alive I tell you ... ALIVE!!"

I turned it off and on about 20 times, and it started every time. No sparks, no flashes, no whines. Nothing but engine.

It was a goddamned miracle. But probably not. If I were an electrical engineer, I'm sure I would think of a rational explanation, like resets, or gremlins, or other such shit. But I'm not, so I'll just go with miracle.

I'm used to my new canister now, so I'm not going to put Sucky back into regular service. Like a racehorse, I'll put him out to stud and use him to pick up fireplace ashes or something. However "stud" is probably not the right word. I don't think picking up fireplace ashes equals sex, but then it's a machine, so who knows?

In any event, welcome back from the dead old friend.

Growing Molder

This morning, I was wandering around the kitchen, making coffee and putting away the pots and pans that had been sitting in the drainer overnight. When I went to put the coffee can back in the pantry, it struck me how messy it had become. Normally, I'd just close the door and forget about it, but I was feeling my extra OCD oats this morning, so I started pulling everything off the shelves and the floor so I could rearrange items and throw some stuff away.

This is better done when Jan is not around. Because if she sees me doing this, she will rush over and start contesting every item I intend to toss in the trash. This inevitably leads to a heated battle of the wills and is of no positive benefit to anyone involved. And since she was still asleep upstairs, this was the perfect time to do it.

When everything was out, I was faced with a pile of assorted crap on the pantry floor that had fallen there over the past several months. Crumbs, toothpicks, cat food, pills, crackers ... and candy! I'm always tempted to save the candy because the individual pieces are wrapped, but my better judgement kicks in and I sweep them up with the rest of the mess and throw them away.

So after I vacuumed the floor and the shelves, and swept down whatever cob webs were present, I was left with a pile of food and whatnot on the counter. You're familiar with "whatnot" ... half-burnt candles, emergency radio, empty cans and half used packages of napkins, straws and plastic utensils.

I threw away most of this stuff, because it all goes on the top shelf and Jan's only 5' 2" and can't see up that high. So I'm pretty sure she won't notice stuff is gone and climb all over my ass.

The food is a pretty easy call on what to save and what to throw away. You just look at the expiration dates, or in this politically correct age, it's now printed on the package "Best by: whatever". Spices are another matter. The snoots on the Food Network tell you that any spice over 1 year old is no good, but that shit is expensive, so I save it and just use extra in recipes to make up for the lack of potency.

Anyway, I'm looking at the expiration dates and throwing stuff away, and I started wondering if this stuff is really bad, or it's just a ploy to get me to buy more of the same stuff. I hadn't had breakfast yet, so I decided to try an experiment. I'd open up some boxes and cans and see if this crap was really "off". So, I started opening expired packages of jello, Ricearoni, and potatoes Au gratin to see what they tasted like.

The Ricearoni was kind of crunchy and hurt my teeth, so I gave up on that after a partial hand full, but the potatoes weren't bad, particularly if you sprinkled them with the Au gratin powder mixed with the Ricearoni flavor packets. Sort of like potato chips. The jello was too tart on my tongue, kind of like those Pixie sticks you bought when you were a kid, but the banana flavor was best.

Next I opened some cans. The pork 'n beans still tasted okay, just cold. As were the peas and creamed corn. The tomato paste was still tomatoey, but strong, and I passed on the beets.

I tried the tin of smoked oysters, but I sprinkled in a few instant potato flakes to sop up the oil and added some wasabi to taste. Kind of gross looking, but it tasted okay.

By this time, I was getting kind of full, so I just pitched everything into the trash can and hauled it out to the main trash receptacle, so Jan wouldn't be wise to me when she came downstairs. I was successful and she didn't notice a thing.

It's been about five hours now since "breakfast", and I'm waiting for the first stomach cramp to hit.