Rainy morning, gray September skies, cat comes in all indignant with wet fur along her back. She takes the weather even more personally than I do, uttering little kitty curses (silently, but I can see them in her eyes) when the rain or wind come up and find her in her outdoor hideouts.
She has her schedules, and god forbid external circumstances force her to alter them. She’s a bit like me in that. It’s one of the reasons that when we travel I try to avoid staying in other people’s homes. I appreciate the offers, and I am certainly aware of the economies involved, but I’d rather stay with strangers than friends. That way I can be the oddball slob that is my destiny without exciting comment, at least comment that reaches me.
If I want to hang out in a bathrobe until noon I have no one that I need to answer to but Robin, and she has given up on changing that aspect of my behavior (we all choose which battles to fight, and which to let slide, don’t we?)
Anyway, today we are traveling to Grand Junction for a doctor’s appointment, and tonight I will sleep in my own bed, having followed my idiosyncratic list of things to do. Life is good.
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These days we have a three-member Supreme Court and a six-member panel of Disgraced Sycophants. One can hope for change. Congress gave them lifetime appointments, Congress can take them away.
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One of my favorite hot beverages these days is the Mexican mocha. That bit of cayenne in the mix is just the right thing on chilly mornings. Most of our local coffee shops offer it … some have a heavier hand with the pepper than others, but none I’ve sampled so far have exceeded the bounds of propriety. It is almost tasty enough to be sinful, and falls just short of too good for ordinary mortals.
But if one did overdo this good thing, I can perfectly understand why the gods might step in with some colorful punishment as they used to do in the good old Greek mythology days. Perhaps something like being strapped to a huge thistle along a busy road for eternity, where passersby were encouraged to pat your face with a small cayenne-saturated pillow.
Maybe this is too much … dunno … not being Greek and all.
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We went to an Indivisible potluck social gathering on Friday. It was pretty well attended, and the participants went to varying amounts of effort in bringing something to eat and to share. Some showed up with a few muffins from the grocery store, one lady brought a handful of black grapes.
The piéce de resistance was a Tater Tot Casserole, from a recipe published by Senator Amy Klobuchar, presently a candidate for governor of the state of Minnesota.
It was superb. For a native of the Midwest, especially a youthful frequenter of Lutheran Church basement suppers, it was a plateful of blissfully crunchy comfort food.
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A bite transports the chewer to another time and place, much as a psychedelic agent might, often one that is populated by friends and relatives who have since traveled to other dimensions. Definitely mood-altering. Dangerously habit-forming.
In Minnesota, consuming too much of this casserole is felt to impair driving abilities, and should one be stopped on the way home from the church supper, they should be prepared to be asked where those stains on the front of their shirt came from and then asked to walk a straight line.
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After typing the entry above, I realized that much of the civilized world might not know what a tater tot is. They are small barrel-shaped chunks of potato scraps that are mixed with flour or cornstarch, then seasoned with salt, onion powder, and other spices. They are then baked or french-fried to make them crispy.
They were invented in 1953 by F. Nephi Grigg and Golden Grigg, the founders of the Ore-Ida potato company, as a clever way to use up leftover potato scraps from french-fry production, instead of throwing them away.
Stuff to be thrown away + ingenuity = greasy delightfulness
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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.
H. L. Mencken
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