It looks simple, doesn’t it?
Get a cruet, pour in olive oil, toss in a few peppers or basil leaves. Maybe some rosemary.
Let it sit, and the flavor gets all infused and stuff.
So, I gave it a try, buying gallons of olive oil and a dozen cruets.
I filled them all up and put different herbs in each.
The taste was subtle, but enjoyable.
That’s when I started to feel the stomach pains, and I ran to the bathroom, shitting blood.
Yeah, you’re supposed to dry the herbs and heat the oil.
Otherwise, it gets infused with botulism.
Tag: personal
The World Is My Gym
The world is my gym.
The sidewalk is my treadmill.
And the membership is free.
Sometimes, it’s raining.
Sometimes, it’s hot.
Sometimes, it’s cold.
Sometimes, it’s windy.
But, usually, it’s nice out.
The birds are singing.
I can’t hear them.
I have my headphones on.
A bird swoops past my head, flapping.
Defending its nest.
This happens every day.
I think about bringing a club.
Or a weighted sock.
To stun the aggressive avian.
What if I kill it?
Who would feed the baby birds?
I imagine myself, perched over featherless chicks.
Then vomiting into the nest
Where’s my ladder?
That Pumpkin
Back in college, we had pumpkin carving contests.
All of the pumpkins were sent to the children’s ward of a nearby hospital.
Well, almost all.
Everybody else made your typical not-very-scary faces and outlines of flying witches.
I made a screaming face and stuck a saw through the top.
Then I mixed ketchup and quickdrying paint to add the effect of dripping blood.
“Don’t you know this is for kids in the hospital?” they asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Wait… it’s not a mental hospital?”
Oops. My mistake.
Really, I figured the saw could be handy for cutting through the bars.
Bananas will protect you
Every morning, I grab a banana from the kitchen and head to work.
The banana is there to protect me.
From what?
I have no willpower. I cannot resist the breakfast shops along the way to work.
But the moment I catch the smell: donuts… kolaches… breakfast tacos…
I peel the banana and take a bite.
Instead of being tempted by the unhealthy fare, I eat my banana and make it into work.
As I toss the peel into the trash, I look up and see…
Someone brought in a box of donuts.
(That’s when I pull out my sledgehammer.)
The Lost Ring
I’ve lost so much weight, my ring slipped off the other day.
I searched along the path I took, but couldn’t find it.
When I first got the ring, I felt its presence, but quickly got used to it.
Now that it’s gone, I constantly notice that it’s not there.
It’s an uncomfortable feeling, and I want to put it back on, but it’s gone.
So I will get a new one soon.
My wife was deathly ill last year.
Would I have had to remove the ring if she hadn’t have recovered?
I’d have kept it.
For remembrance.
(Right?)
Carded
For my birthday, my wife drove us to San Antonio and we spent three days at the Hotel Valencia on the Riverwalk.
I’ve been on a diet for a while, so eating at all these fancy restaurants along the river kinda wore me out.
Still, it’s a nice atmosphere, and we had a good time.
Especially at Michelino’s, an Italian place. The salads were excellent, the dinner was superb, and the Chianti went well with the dinner.
Plus, I got carded.
Me. Who just turned forty-one. Carded.
I was flattered, until later on the waiter said “Oh, we card everybody.”
Smart?
Okay, so I bought myself a smartphone. It’s got a screen you can touch. You can load programs into it, they call them apps these days.
It has more power in it than they had in all the computers back in the Sixties. Which, yeah, it sounds impressive, but people had a hell of a lot more fun back in the Sixties with rock and roll, free love, and all the weed you could smoke.
Here I am, alone with this thing I my hand, tapping at it like a raccoon compulsively washing it’s food.
Smartphone? Kinda dumb to me.
When The Ghost
See this chair?
Yeah, it’s a pretty nice chair.
I still think of this chair as being her chair.
Even though she’s no longer here, it’s still her chair.
And, I suppose, it’s a whole new chair.
The old chair broke a while back. But it’s still hers.
And, I guess, the new chair didn’t look so good where the old chair used to be.
But it looked good somewhere else.
So I moved it there.
But despite her being gone…
The chair getting replaced…
And the new one moved somewhere else…
I still think of this as her chair.
Waiting
Bruwyn didn’t come home last night.
Usually, he’s the first to come home, but Myst came home first.
Finding a black cat at night is impossible, of course, but you can’t just sit down and wait.
Walking around, I hear what I think is his collar, but it’s just crickets and frogs.
So, I come back home, Myst and Nardo wait up with me.
If he can’t come home for whatever reason, I hope he knows he’s loved and missed.
And if he doesn’t want to come home, well, cats are cats, and I hope he’s happy wherever he is.
The Fool
598110
I trapped the fool in the mirror and threw a sheet over it.
He’s screaming to be let out, but I won’t let him.
Instead, I threw the mirror into the basement and then locked the door.
I thought that I had finally beaten the fool, but he showed up in the bathroom mirror.
Damn him! And I can’t take that mirror off of the wall and throw it into the basement!
I keep finding him in every room, so I ran into a linen closet and slammed the door.
Now, I’m safe. The fool won’t find me in here.