Eating bad

Even fried can't help a gizzard.

            It’s been three days since Kay’s return from her cruise to Cozumel, and things are almost back to normal. I’m not even sure that’s a good thing. During her absence I slept late, went to bed late and ate meals containing greasy, fried, red meat with potatoes and rolls. Not proud of food intake.

   

            Doctors who hate people (DWHPs) say that we’re supposed to eat only four ounces of red meat a week. I tried that over a two year period once between my birth and 28 months-old. I could discern no change in my cholesterol. My feet did get four sizes larger, though. 

            The bad things I ate while Kay was gone were ham and eggs, bacon and eggs, chili, chili dogs, Frito pie, spaghetti, pizza and spaghetti on pizza. No sweets. Sweets are bad for you. And artificial sweeteners are worse. It would be better if you drank either full octane soda pop, or gravy. Anything but artificial sweetened stuff.

            There’s only one zero calorie sweetener that won’t kill you. It’s made from warthog bladders. I made that up. No, it’s derived from a plant that grows in a faraway land. Corsicana, maybe. I believe it’s called Steveno. Stevaria? I can’t be certain.

            At the present, it’s safe to ingest Steveno, at least until scientists find a way to kill lab rats with the stuff. Then you’re back to drinking gravy. Few people have ever died from gravy ingestion. A guy did gag once on a spatula that stirred gravy. It wasn’t pretty.

ay is back. As I was driving her home, I planned to take her to a nice place to eat. She said she had been eating “nice” for the last five days, so I took her to Hartz Chicken Buffet.

            Hartz has the best buffet in the Northern Hemisphere, which makes it the best in the universe. They’ve managed to perfectly fry every chicken body. After filling my plate, I watched as one guy loaded up on nothing but chicken gizzards. I asked Kay to go make fun of him, but she refused.

            Gizzards? When I was a kid, a plate of gizzards were the last thing taken from the plate of chicken. Mom always fried the gizzard, but we didn’t like it, didn’t understand it, and felt sorry for birds who had to carry one around. The texture is somewhat like two paddle balls attached by a rubber band. They were first used in the sport of badminton.

            Today’s chickens are a lot different than when I was a kid. It’s hybridization.. Today’s chickens only have eight pieces. Mom used to get chickens with 15 pieces. They each had four breast chunks, a pulley bone, a tail, a back, a neck, a heart, a liver, a gizzard, two legs and two thighs. If we had company, she’d throw in a couple unrecognizable pieces. I think she fashioned ‘em out of Spam. If you fry ‘em enough, you’ll think you’re eating a burnt thigh.

            Hartz made money off Kay. She didn’t fill her plate, ‘cause she’s all excited about eating the right stuff, and as soon as we got home, she decided to involve me in her dietetic scheme. The last two mornings I drank a concoction that is supposed to “cleanse” me. Some part of me. I think it’s my liver. Could be my gizzard.

            There are about eight ingredients in the elixir of life. I can only remember two of ‘em. Apple cider vinegar and Cayenne pepper. Together, they pretty much drown out the taste of the other six. After chug-a-lugging the liquid fire, one would need a bowl of ice cream to speak in anything other than a dry hack. We don’t have ice cream. All we’ve got are cold prunes. I’ve been grabbing a handful after each cleansing treatment. It takes four to five prunes to make the hurt go away. The good news is that something is gonna get cleansed. May not be my liver, but something somewhere is getting scoured. I’m just sorry I have to be around to witness it.

            Beside the bad eats, I am sleeping better since Kay’s been home. Usually I watch some action flick on TV until I find enough energy to haul myself to bed. Now, I get in bed when Kay does, and we watch a rerun of “The Antique Roadshow.” Few things make me sleepier than an antique dealer talking for 20 minutes about the glaze on the lip of an urn. Kay can follow the entire show to its end, without even a yawn.

            When I watch an action program before bedtime, I dream about getting shot or chased or jumping off a cliff while being chased. I hate dreams like that. When I fall asleep while listening to someone explain the history behind a South Carolinian syrup bucket, I end up dreaming about waffles.

            That’s what Kay’s cruise has done for me. I now begin my morning drinking a concoction made of dregs from the bowels of hell; I’ve given up red meat, pizza and potatoes. The last potato I tasted was a BBQ Flavored Pringle from a hidden can purchased in 2003. The Yoga program Kay has introduced me to has forced me to go to Sam’s to purchase a box of Depends that’s big enough to hold a Frigidaire.

            Oh, I almost forgot. I’m also acquiring a taste for prunes. Regularity is just around the corner. Can it get any better than this? No, I’m asking.

End

mark@rooftopwriter.com