Citizen Beta

Have you noticed how every 4 or so months I get super cranky and complain about how busy I am and how much work I have to do?  Sorry about that!  I won’t kvetch today about how I have a mile-high stack of term papers to grade, study guides and final exams to write for my regular old job not to mention a review due of a truly horrible book (a real stinker) and several articles…no kvetching here!  Instead I am going to tell you about what is wonderful here in beta-land lately.

I must start my list with the fantastic heavy rain that just began to fall. Awesome! Next up would be some really good books including Wild Swans by Jung Chang (excellent, but so depressing.  I actually had to take a break from it and read four other books before managing to return to it).  Number three has to be the great package I got in the mail yesterday from  Carrie at Try Harder.  A box of books!  And cool postcards! And tiny comic books!  And Hungarian money! And all sorts of bits that my kids claimed like a deck of cards and tickets and a bit of string.  Also I lovely guide book to a Japanese shrine written in Japanese and translated into lyrical and incorrect English.  L and I spent a long time reading it and looking at the all pictures.  This is totally my kind of prize and is the envy of all my friends…Last but not least on my list is our recent urban farming successes.  We have made jars and jars of homemade tomato sauce not to mention a few batches of pesto.  We are harvesting butternut squash that will become soup and sauce for the winter.  Yummy!

So, what is getting you through the daily grind?

My whole lunch just fell on the floor. A whole bowl of oily, cheesy pasta that I had been waiting for all morning. It was warmed up, with a fork stuck in it. I had a cold glass of tea and was heading in the other room…I guess I put it down for one moment and SPLAT! Hungry as I was I didn’t want to have to cook anything and as anxious as I was for my gooey, high caloric feast I didn’t even consider the salad right there ready to go in the fridge. I opened a can of tuna and threw a croissant next to it. Lunch.

As I was reaching for the can of tuna I was thinking about Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I had finally managed to get the horrors of that book out of my mind when D when ahead and read it. Now I am back to grocery shopping post-apocalypse style. The canned goods seem like a better and better idea. I figure, if the bomb was dropped today, we’d have a month, maybe two of good eating and after that, well…unfortunately we don’t live in a region where fruits and berries grow wild. In fact, most of the wild-things here are a bit too prickly for easy consumption.

Is it morbid to think about this? Morbidly fun! We always have some fruit and veggies in the fruit bowl (as of now three apples, three avocados, a small eggplant, some garlic, a cucumber) and also right now the garden is in full swing (a cauliflower, tons of squash, a pumpkin or two, some bird-pecked broccoli, lots of tomatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers, an eggplant in flower but with no eggplant yet and lots of herbs that are more or less tasty). Hmm…fresh food would go quick. And, that is only assuming the garden survived the catastrophe and wasn’t all radioactive and shit. I am not sure how I want to imagine electricity and fresh water…say we have some of each. Stuff in the fridge and freezer need to go next I guess: yogurt, milk, cheese, half an onion, baby carrots, tortillas, frozen corn, some frozen fruit, spaghetti sauce… We happened to have a ton of spaghetti now, bought in bulk and also soy milk in those wax-cardboard cartons. We also have some cake mix—Party! The pantry yields carbs and a tiny bit of protein in the form of nuts and seeds. Otherwise we have cereal, pirate booty, ritz crackers, boxed mac and cheese, dry beans and pasta, rice…but my stash of end-times cans are in there, too: two cans of soup, four of so cans of a variety of beans, two tiny cans of mushrooms (gag) and maybe a can of condensed milk.

My ace in the whole are the chickens…eggs for a while and then this vegetarian starts cooking birds!

Overall, chances of survival: slim to none.

Bummer.

How would you fare?

What books do you imagine applied to your own life? Sometimes I read books set in glorious houses and I imagine wandering the halls and living in the rooms. I am a geek that way.

(Thanks to Kara who challenged me to get bloggy again obviously not realizing that I have very little to say these days….to the corner!!)

A couple times in recent years I have entered writing contests.  A few were for one of our weekly alternative papers and a few were hosted by blogs I like.  Earlier this month was a contest at Try Harder and guess what?  I won, that’s what!  The challenge was to take a certain line and write a story, or take a picture, or write a comic or whatever, with that line as the starting point.  As you’ll see I took a literalist approach.

Anyhoo, I am stoked to have won and so thanks to Carrie, a friendly commentor around these parts, for letting me play.

Police End Funereal Striptease Act