“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.” ― L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl
Memories are odd as I am finding out. Memories will turn a frown into a smile or, just as quickly, a smile into a frown.
I am fortunate. I am surrounded by memories. I am also cursed. I am surrounded by memories. I can’t turn around without bumping into something that reminds me of you. As painful as it is, I don’t think I want it to be any other way.
To paraphrase your favorite NCIS character, Mike Franks: When talking about ghosts. Franks said to Gibbs, “But the memories we make. We fill the spaces we live in with them. That’s why I’ve always tried to make sure that wherever I live, the longer I live there, the spaces become filled with memories.”
My space is filled with memories but Franks said nothing about the emptiness that shares the space. The space I live in is filled with both memories…and emptiness. When you left me, you left behind wonderful memories but there is a tradeoff. There is a huge hole of emptiness where my heart once was.
Franks didn’t mention the bad memories, either. The last eight months have been hell on earth for you…and for me. I watched you fight and struggle. How many times did you try and uplift me? “It’s alright baby.” Those memories try to elbow their way in and are too successful.
I found an old flash drive with a folder labeled Photos and decided to relive the memories from days past thinking that if I filled my head with those, there would be no room for the bad ones. There would be no room for the emptiness. I was wrong.
I found out that I am a lousy photographer and that you just didn’t smile enough. You smiled for the photo but it was your fake smile. Your “say cheese” smile. You had a wonderful smile when you let yourself go, when the camera caught you unawares, playing with the grand babies or the puppies, smelling a flower or showing me a butterfly.
As I ruminated, I went to the more recent photos and videos, the bad memories, and found that you smiled more when you were at your lowest, when you were trying to convince me, “It’s alright baby.” You lied; it is not alright. Not alright at all.
So many mornings I came in to your hospital room and you smiled. Your true smile. When a visitor or a nurse came in, you smiled and tried to convince us that “It’s alright baby.” Even those terrible shots in the stomach earned the nurse giving it a, “It’s alright baby.”
I don’t know what to do. I try to busy myself but you elbow in between the words that play in my head. I spent thirty-seven years trusting you. I’m going to trust you one more time. I’m going to allow the memories to sustain me until “It’s alright baby.”
***
Thanks to all who attended and participated in Linda’s Celebration of Life. It was a special celebration for a special woman.
I walk through the door hoping I will find you sitting up and smiling a hello. Once again, my hopes are dashed. I watch you as I wait. My heart is breaking. I listen to your breathing, my life hinging on your next breath.
You look so peaceful and youthful. It is as if you have lost thirty years. During the thirty-eight years I have loved you, peaceful is a word I would rarely use, beautiful, a word I always used.
You once described one of your players as your “bull in a China shop.” It is a description I could apply to you as well. Remember your little red VW Bug? When I questioned the safety of your brakes you shrugged and said, “Who needs brakes? I have a horn.”
There was only one speed with you and it was Warp Factor Nine, wide open. Somehow you managed to pull it off with grace and elegance…even dressed in your ten-year-old sweats and always wearing purple.
You always waltzed to the music only you heard. You did it in a genteel and lady like manner, even when coaching. Everyone knew who was in charge and knew when your mind was made up you would not be dissuaded. Right was right even if it was your right.
It was kismet meeting on the press box at Eastside High. Later there was the Halloween pumpkin on your head and a brutal trip to Charleston with your ex-boyfriend. I thing I knew then but it took nearly a year of dancing around each other before we decided to dance together.
Neither of us were looking to fall in love. I had been bitten twice and you thought you were looking for the perfect man. For some reason you asked me out after trying to fix me up with all your friends. It may have been pity; I like to think it was by karmic design.
I asked a question I swore I would never ask again. You decided perfect was not what it was cracked up to be and said yes without hesitation. For thirty-seven years I have been blessed with your love, support, and enthusiasm. For thirty-seven years you have been blessed with an imperfect mate. I’m sure my most redeeming quality was allowing you to have your head like the unbroken filly you were.
Our life was a life easy to laugh about. Stories of biddies falling out of trees, a baby goat being raised in our only bathroom. A fully grown goat falling into our well or a naked woman being chased from the bathroom by an equally naked rat snake.
Epic road trips on a whim, many using your “shortcuts” to make sure the enjoyment would raise questions such as “Are you sure you know where you are going.” One that ended at a warm Georgetown bar on a windy, bitter night. A warm bar that included shrimp and grits, Jack Daniels, and a bluesy singer behind a grand piano.
I could go on but instead I will promise that our grand babies will hear about their grandmother. I promise they will remember their Grandmommy Linda.
Everything was not laughter and giggles. We had our share of what I called “clearing off showers.” Thunderclaps and torrents of rain would give way to freshly cleansed air. Life would settle down and it was good.
I’m not ready for you to leave me. This wasn’t the way it should be. Still, I am thankful for the time we had together.
You have fought hard. It is time for you to rest and lay your burden down. It is time for you to step into the light. Time to start your next great adventure. Time to prepare for when I join you.
You are loved more than you could ever know. Rest now, my darling, rest now.
“The cakes and pies and casseroles beckoned like gastronomic sirens, and there was no one to lash me to the mast.” ― Chris Fabry, The Promise of Jesse Woods
Drug of Choice-an excerpt from the book Food for Thought by Don Miller
While food is my drug of choice, “Food for Thought” is not a cookbook. There are some recipes, recipes from angels now gone, who with their hands, cast iron pans, dollops of bacon grease or lard, and a lot of love, created so much from so little. There are other recipes from those that still exist and come to you over the cable ways on such channels as the Food Channel or from the internet.
Primarily it is a book of memories and history, a Southern history if you will, chock full of pig parts, home grown ingredients, and possibly roadkill. No not roadkill but there might be a possum or a raccoon story to tell. It is stories of an elusive quest for the perfect biscuit, peanuts poured into an eight-ounce Coca Colas, dope wagons in the cotton mill, and why when we order a Coke we are asked, “What kind of Coke?”
There is diversity, lessons taken from Scot Irish Appalachia fused with Native American and African American food and combined into dishes that have culturally diffused throughout the United States.
There are also too many essays involving pig parts, pulled pork, liver mush, sausage, slow cooked ribs, I need to quit before I go crank up the smoker.
None of the recipes shared are mine. Some are old family recipes, others from Methodist and Baptist cookbooks handed down by previous generations in my family. Lastly, some came from the Food Channel and such and are noted and linked as such.
Really lastly, any beautiful photographs of certain dishes are not mine. My dishes rarely come out looking photograph worthy. To quote an old college chemistry professor I had, “Find your wife’s disasters and you will eat like a king.” Thank you Dr. Setzler. The proof is in the eating not in the looking.
“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.” ― Tom Bodett
Just a few days ago I was mired in depression. I was exhausted from lack of sleep, felt I was being assailed from all sides while trying to minister to my bride, Linda. There was a leak in the upstairs bathroom, home therapies and doctor’s appointments galore. And, AND…she wanted me to apply fingernail polish to her nails. Oh, the pressure. I was having a real pity party.
My wife had some issues, setbacks in her recovery from a stroke and chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. I was just a step away from despondency when “BAM!”, said by the John Madden voice in my head, hope reared its beautiful head. We are still on the defensive end of our field, but we are moving the ball forward.
Her stroke has caused changes in personality along with vision and balance issues. There is a slight weakness in her right side, but her balance issues are as much a vision issue as it is a weakness issue. I mean, with my steadying influence, she gets around okay…maybe too okay.
One personality trait, aside for her needing purple fingernail polish applied, that has not changed is her bull headedness. She is and always has been a type A personality. Linda is going to do what Linda wants to do when she wants to do it. She has always been the poster child for self-reliance.
She is not to get up and move around without assistance. Right? Wrong. How many times must I ask you not to get up without help? Bull-headed self-reliance.
“Now baby, I’m going to the bathroom. Stay where you are until I get back.”
She nods her head and smiles sweetly while saying, “I won’t move” but has rearranged the furniture before I can get back from a thirty second piss. The rearrangement is due to her falling onto the couch sending the puppies in two different directions. Thankfully, it was on the couch.
I sleep on the same couch next to the recliner she sleeps in. “Don’t you have a bed?” Why yes, we do and a bedroom that houses it. We have found it is too far from the bathroom. The bedroom with a close by bathroom is up fifteen steps which are not navigable currently. I sleep on the couch so I can assist should she need to get up…if she takes the time to wake me up.
Two nights ago, I awoke to find she had taken herself to the bathroom, cleaned up, changed her clothes and was standing in the kitchen making toast and jelly. Bad news, it was three in the morning, the witching hour. Good news, there were no new bruises because she hadn’t fallen. Remember, I said I was exhausted from lack of sleep and as good a reason as I can produce for not waking up on my own. The puppies were no help either. I must believe her guardian witch was looking out for her.
Part of me, the logical side, was mortified. The hopeful side was celebrating.
I reminded myself, there was a time when I mentioned how bad the brakes were on her ’73 VW Bug. She commented, casually, “I don’t need them, I have a horn.” That is not a lie. “Damn the torpedoes, Linda is on her way.”
On a safer note, this morning as we returned from the bathroom, Linda stopped, bent from the waist, and without bending her knees, picked up a dime I had missed when sweeping the floor. I’d say her vision and balance have improved. My cleaning skills have not.
Life is full of mysteries and mine is full of little hopes to hang my hat on. Her vision has holes in it that will never improve, but she is learning to navigate around them. Her balance is better, and she is physically strong. The best is that she is hopeful, and her hope sustains me.
“Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.” ― Ruth Reichl
As I placed the fork full of what I thought was goodness in my mouth, my thought became “this ain’t chow chow” …or chowchow, chow-chow or any other spelling. Nope, nope, nope.
I was given some Amish chow chow. It was touted as “Best Gourmet Chow Chow is the South’s Most Famous Relish that goes great with your favorite comfort foods!” Nope.
Not that it was bad, it wasn’t. It just wasn’t Aunt Alta’s chow chow. I would like to point out that Amish Pennsylvania is not the South, and that should have been a dead give-a-way like salsa made by a company in New York City.
Looks good but “This ain’t chow chow!”
My bride and I had also been gifted a plate full of salmon patties and I thought anything advertised as the “Best Gourmet Chow Chow” would make a great accoutrement. I even used the French pronunciation, A.ku.tʁǝ.mɑ̃ , in my head. French is so sexy…even when discussing a condiment.
The chow chow wasn’t bad, and it did spur some research, but it wasn’t what I remembered from the best chow chow made by my Aunt Alta Rodgers. First the research.
In my part of the world, chow chow was a way to turn excess green tomatoes into something eatable other than “fried green tomatoes” or “green tomato chocolate cake.” Yes, that is a thing. It is quite good.
Just before the first killing frost, green tomatoes were collected, ground, or chopped, combined with ground or chopped cabbage, onion, peppers, and pickling spices. The relish produced would garnish about anything and is a big deal in the South…or it used to be important in the South, and I have no understanding of how it found its way to Pennsylvania.
Chow chow posssibly came to the southern United States by way of French Acadians fleeing Nova Scotia after The French and Indian War in 1763. Forced to leave their homes by the victorious British, they settled primarily in Louisiana bringing with them the word “chou” which means cabbage.
French words of endearment include “mon petit chou” which translates to “my little cabbage.” See, everything sounds better in French even a vegetable.
The dish’s origins are widely debated, however. According to the magazine Southern Living, Southern food historian John Egerton believed its origins weren’t Acadian, but could be traced to piquant sauces brought over by Chinese railroad workers in the 19th century. I don’t like this story. Piquant doesn’t sound as sexy as the French “chou.”
It is reasonable to make the short leap that the word “chou” became “chow”. Not so reasonable is why it became known as chow chow. Nor is it reasonable to think there is a set recipe…there isn’t.
So, what is it? As in what is chow chow? Chow chow is a pickled relish dish that was used to preserve summer vegetables for later in the year. Recipes for the relish are regional, and tend to be generational recipes, passed down through families. Check any old Methodist or Babtist cookbook and you will be likely to find a recipe. While no one batch is the same, most Southern chow chows use green tomatoes, cabbage, bell peppers, and onions.
Aunt Alta Rodgers Howie, my grandmother’s sister, made use of green tomatoes, cabbage, bell peppers, and onions. The Amish version was good, but I don’t remember green beans, lima beans, carrots, cauliflower, and corn. This Amish version was more of a pickled vegetable medley like Giardiniera…without the pearl onions.
Aunt Alta was typical of the Rodgers’ girls. Short and a bit squat in her later years, she had been blessed with a green thumb as her backyard flowers and shrubs attested, and an outstanding “cook’s” gene that might have skipped my grandmother. Like the rest of the Rodgers’ girls, she liked to “put up” her own vegetables. Put up means can, and chow chow was one of her specialties.
Aunt Alta Rodgers Howie, Pretty in Pink
According to her daughter, Cousin Cindy, this is close to her mother’s recipe. Enjoy but it is a time and labor-intensive endeavor as are most things worth their salt.
Aunt Alta’s Chow Chow
Ingrediants
½ gallon green tomatoes, Chopped
1 small cabbage, Chopped
½ pint onion, Chopped
1 Red Bell Pepper, chopped (Add Cayenne or Jalapeno if you want heat)
1 Green Bell Pepper, Chopped
All the above can be ground together using a food processor
⅙ cup salt
5 cups vinegar
½ cup water
3 ½ cups sugar
2 tsp mustard seeds
1 ½ tsp celery seed
1 ½ tsp turmeric
1 tsp pickling spices
Directions
Grind the green tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and peppers together using a food processor. Aunt Alta used a hand grinder I am sure.
Place the veggies into a stainless steel, glass, or porcelain container and sprinkle with salt. Cover and let them stand overnight.
Using a colander, drain and rinse well.
Using a saucepan, bring the vinegar, water, and spices to a boil in a stainless-steel pan. It needs to be a constant boil and the sugar needs to dissolve. Stir frequently so that the spices are well mixed.
Add green tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and peppers and bring back to a boil.
Simmer at a low roll for 3-4 minutes
Prep sterile pint jars using Ball lids. Boil lids for at least 10 minutes, jars at least 25 minutes and keep them simmering until you are ready to use them.
Fill pint jars up to the mouth, cover with lid, tighten with band, and process jars using a boiling water bath for at least ten minutes.
“He was a very valiant man who first adventured on eating of oysters.” – James I
I do wonder what the first person to crack open an oyster thought. “Look, Look, Look! A slick, gray loogie! Let’s eat some.” Why in the world would he or she decide to put it in their mouth much less chew and swallow…must have been very hungry.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they did. I love oysters…raw, roasted, smoked, fried, with spinach in Oysters Roc, and the oyster dressing I wrote about earlier. I especially like oyster stew which is what I am craving at this moment. It is a cold New Years Eve, a fine night for oyster stew.
Oyster stew has been a New Year’s tradition in our house since we began celebrating it by sleeping through the midnight ball drop. That tradition is on hold as Linda recovers.
A history lesson. “Gather ’round chilin’s!”
Had it not been for the oyster the Jamestown colony might not have held on during the “Starving Times” of 1609. Jamestown prevailed only because sixty or eighty of the First Families of Virginia dragged themselves downriver from their original swampy landing site where they subsisted on little but Crassostrea virginica, the native American oyster.
The English weren’t fans of the oyster…Europeans in general weren’t fans. The generation that founded Jamestown regarded oysters as poor fare. Shakespeare described oysters as “foul” and linked them with the poorhouse. King James I is the earliest candidate for the authorship of the assessment that “he was a valiant man who first adventured on eating of oysters.”
I agree with James I but am so glad all of that changed…it took a while for me to jump onto the bandwagon. I know some of you are not fans, but the lowly oyster has gone from “poor folk” food to being coveted by the rich and everyone in between.
I get triggered by memories, but I am unsure where this one came from…well, it is a cold evening, perfect for oyster stew.
When I was a kid, my mother would sometimes make oyster stew. It was very basic. Butter, milk, oysters, salt, and pepper. My father might add a bit of hot sauce or catsup to his. I didn’t find it particularly filling unless I added half a sleeve of crushed soda crackers to it and to be honest, I wasn’t a fan of oysters at that age.
My grandmother would never make oyster stew, she would make salmon stew. It was much cheaper than oysters, came in a can, and fit in with her Depression Era frugality. I was probably a bigger fan of the salmon stew but used a half sleeve of crackers with it too.
Thinking about oyster stew, I looked at my bride who was snoozing. She is recovering from her sixth chemo treatment and a week later stroke and needs to be snoozing. As a blustery wind blew, I thought about a raw and blustery night some thirty years ago on the coast of Carolina. It seems some of my most perfect memories occurred on raw and blustery coastal nights.
We have a love affair with the coast of South Carolina. I thought we would end up living there…we had our chances, but they never quite panned out. The timing was always wrong. Now we have found our little piece of heaven to be as far from the coast as we can be and still be in South Carolina. Not so far that we don’t have access to oysters…mountain oysters.
This day began with a football game at Myrtle Beach. The North-South Allstar Football Game is played there, and I was lucky to have an athlete honored. It was gray and misty and by the time the game was over, dark, and cold.
We had decided not to spend the night and would make the four-hour trip back home afterwards, but one does not come to the coast without sampling the coastal faire and it was a perfect night for oyster stew.
We went to the Sea Captain’s House because we knew of its oyster stew was great or we went because it was close by. The key was that we went. The stew was oyster and artichoke. The company was great and that probably made the stew great.
This was the mid-Eighties and the Sea Captain’s House hadn’t been crowded by tall hotels yet and gone through modern renovations and enlargement. During those days it was truly an old house.
We sat in what once was the old residence’s Florida room and watched as the sea birds rode the waves in the light cast by the spotlights on the side of the house. It was quite romantic. Holding hands listening to the wind rattle the storm windows and sitting hip to hip watching a fire roaring in the fireplace…life’s little and simple pleasures. Oh, and there was oyster stew too.
We stayed too long…or not long enough and didn’t drag ourselves home until four in the morning. I miss the years when we were young and foolish. I am making a promise. I will be old and foolish just as soon as my bride recovers her strength.
Reality check: I made the mistake of pulling up the Sea Captain’s House’s website. They no longer offer oyster and artichoke stew and judging from the prices, we couldn’t afford it anyway.
Basic Oyster Stew for Two
Ingredients
One pint of oysters
Four cups of whole milk (For creamier stew substitute half of the milk with half and half)
¼ cup of butter
Salt and pepper to taste
Crackers (Oyster or Saltines)
Parsley
Directions
Put a colander over a bowl; drain oyster juice and reserve juice.
Rinse oysters gently in a colander to rinse away any shells…be sure to check for pearls.
Melt the butter in a soup pot or large saucepan over low heat.
Add rinsed raw oysters and gently warm for a few minutes never taking heat off low. Let the oyster edges curl.
To the oysters and butter, add whole milk, oyster juice and stir.
Gently warm soup (low simmer), stirring occasionally until heated through. THIS IS KEY: Do not boil and do not scald milk.
Add salt and black pepper to taste.
Garnish with parsley and serve with oyster crackers or saltines.
“Reflect upon your present blessings — of which every man has many — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” ― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, and Other Christmas Writings
It is a drizzly Christmas morning…perfect. The puppies hate me.
I’m struggling. I want to be happy and merry. Afterall, it is “tis the season….” I can’t be happy and will not make merry in the traditional sense. I will be blessed…I am truly blessed despite our misfortunes.
This is my “hard candy Christmas” if you are familiar with the song from the movie “The Best Little Whore House in Texas.” No, I’m not closing my house of ill-repute but there is something sad yet hopeful about the song and there is much sadness in my heart…but I am blessed that there is joy there too. I could have been much sadder had the roller coaster left the tracks.
Three weeks ago, we were celebrating our last chemo treatment as our oncologist used the words “full remission” pending a CT scan. Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” rang in my head before Dolly’s “Hard Candy Christmas” played. Linda was in full remission. Doesn’t get any better than that.
The elation lasted a week. I found my bride alive but unresponsive that following Thursday. One week after her last chemo. One week of smiles and making plans for the future. One week until an infarction landed in her brain. A week in the hospital and another week and counting in rehab. Christmas and the New Years will be spent in a hospital room unless I kidnap her.
There is happiness along with sorrow. We’re blessed, I still have her to kidnap and she is making headway, not a pun, in her recovery. She has a long row to hoe yet, but she is hoeing like crazy.
We’re blessed that family and friends have rushed in to help even if it is just a visit or send their love by other means. I can’t be merry, but I can be blessed. I can tell funny stories but the laughter is on the outside not the inside…unless Linda laughs with me.
Daughter Ashley has been a life saver as have Linda’s friends, Lynn, and Louise. Yes, a great blessing. Thanks to Ashley’s friend Jill who “might” have pulled a few strings. Blessed she had strings to pull.
My own family and friends have given me the support to remain upright. Steve and Rebecca, Hawk, Zack, thanks for being my blessing. Lynn thanks for checking in and keeping me upbeat.
Beth, Barbara, and Robbie, thanks for taking the pressure off with my 98-year-old mother-in-law. Maybe after this you can audition as a singing group. “And now…Beth, Barbara, and Robbie….”
The doctors, nurses, and therapists have been wonderful…many who were former students of Miss PE. Glad she didn’t fail them because they didn’t fail her.
I just can’t be happy and merry. Happy and merry were seasons ago but I can hope for happiness and merriment to return. I don’t want to be the old man feeding pigeons alone. I want to be the old man with the old woman feeding pigeons…I want to do more than feed pigeons.
Young people…never, ever put things off. Live your life a little bit of retirement at a time. Never turn down dessert and eat it first if you want to. Avoid if you can, the “Hard Candy Christmas.”
Blessings to you on whatever holiday you celebrate.
“I’ll be fine and dandy Lord, it’s like a hard candy Christmas I’m barely getting through tomorrow But still, I won’t let sorrow bring me way down”
“Rest is not a luxury; it is a necessity. Take the time off to replenish your energy and recharge your soul. In the midst of life’s chaos, find solace in the stillness of rest that is where true rejuvenation resides.” ― Dr. Lucas D. Shallua
I am at the point where I must recharge and to do that I’m stepping away from my blog until the beginning of the new year…maybe.
To quote my grandfather after an eight-hour shift in the cotton mill followed by four or more hours behind a plow, “I’m plumb tuckered out.” To quote Jimmy Buffett, (I’m) “down to rock bottom again” although I don’t think he meant it the way I do in his song “A Pirate Looks at Forty.”
The tank that contained what little creative appeal or energy I might have had is making sucking sounds. Overall, my energy tank is making sucking sounds, too.
Thanksgiving is behind me, and Christmas is ahead. My holiday spirit is as elusive as one of our coastal “haints.” My “git up and go has got up and went.”
I am normally affected by SAD, seasonal affective disorder, but this year it is as oppressive as I have ever felt it…but then this year I actually have reasons to be depressed.
I’m tired but I don’t want to whine too much. I don’t get enough sleep or rest, but my bride has been fighting a deadly disease and my frustrations seem to be quite selfish at best. Also, she has, to this point, fought the cancer to a standstill. There is reason for Thanksgiving, but I can’t seem to smile.
Chemo treatment number six comes this next week followed by a PET scan at some juncture afterwards. The PET scan will tell the tale. I will withhold my smile until after the final diagnosis. I am hopeful it will show full remission.
So…to everyone who takes the time to read my ramblings, I hope your Thanksgiving was truly thankful and that all your holiday wishes come true. I’ll touch base again in the New Year. Hopefully I will have good news to share and a revitalized spirit to go with them.
An early Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all.
“Knowing too much of your future is never a good thing.” ― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
I don’t know if it is spelled Swamee or Swami. The Hindu spelling is Swami but I’m more into the hillbilly, Junior Samples spelling, Swamee and don’t want to make fun of a religion I don’t understand. I reserve the right to make fun of religions I understand.
Before the grammar police hit me up, don’t. Instead, visualize Johnny Carson as Carnac the Magnificent. Ed McMann baritone echoes in my mind, “And now, the great seer, soothsayer, and sage, Carnac the Magnificent.”
Carnac’s last appearance on the Johnny Carson show.
My mind is crowded this morning, Doris Day is crooning “Que será, será, whatever will be, will be, the future’s not ours to see, que será, será,” and it is playing on an endless loop. You would think that one of the voices in my head would hit “End” or at least turn down the volume.
The simplest things send me down pig trails and activate the voices that argue in my head. It can get crowded. This time it was my close friend, Lynn, who was advertising her business with an offer to end all offers. You see, Lynn is also a great seer, soothsayer, and sage but looks nothing like Johnny Carson…a little like Doris Day?
What is her business? She provides on-line psychic readings and is offering to predict what 2024 will have to offer. I made a joke about the Great Swamee and here I am. Voices argue while my pig trail falls into a rabbit hole the size of the Grand Canyon.
After 2023, why would I really want to know what 2024 has to offer? I would only want to know if certain physical maladies are going to correct themselves and if a certain Orange Marmalade Monster will go down like burned toast in a blazing defeat.
As Riordan‘s beginning quote told us, “Knowing too much of your future is never a good thing” unless IT IS a good thing and includes knowing when to buy that billion dollar winning lottery ticket.
If you could know the future, would you want to? Would you really wish to know the date of your day of reckoning? I lean toward not knowing when the “The Flying Spaghetti Monster” is going to drop his cosmic meatball on my head. I like surprises.
A rendering of Noodles: The Flying Spaghetti Monster
Too sacrilegious for my religious friends? It’s okay, I haven’t gone over to the dark side but I’m spiritual and believe that cosmically when my time is done on Earth my matter and energy will be converted to something else ala Conservation of Mass and Energy. That being said, I guess I could find my mass and energy damned to the fiery hell of the Sun’s surface. That is something to ponder.
I don’t believe I’m being blasphemous. My God has a sense of humor, and I am on a first name basis with him. He calls me Don and I call him Herb. I thought Herb sounded good along with Jesus. It sounded like a singing group. One of the voices in my head now sounds like Ed Sullivan introducing them, “And now, singing their number one hit, ‘You Nailed Me’…America’s Duo…Jesus and Herb.” How hot is the Sun’s surface?
In all honesty, Herb doesn’t call me anything. I speak to Herb often, but I never hear from him. He has ghosted me for seventy-three years. A soft, breathy, and sultry voice joins the others, “You big dummy. You are trying to pray to the wrong person. You can call me Sage…not the herb Sage, the wise Sage.”
I told you my rabbit hole was the size of the Grand Canyon…and somewhat blasphemous. Forgive me for my sins Herb…or rather Sage.
Is my friend really a psychic? I don’t know. I do know she is an empath who knows what to say at just the right time. At any rate, if you are interested, for a mere $11.11 you can have your 2024 psychic reading at www.etsy.com/shop/megspsychicreadings. Give it a whirl and find out when the Flying Spaghetti Monster might strike.
Ravings of a Mad Southerner 