Oprah and the Huge Ass Beer man redux

Due to my extreme laziness busy-ness what with puppies hanging on my pants legs and chickens roosting in my hair and all, I have decided to start a New Tradition (until I get tired of it) of posting reruns Greatest Hits on Mondays. I believe I will call it, er, um, let me see . . . Greatest Hits Mondays! because that sounds better than “Monday reruns so I can have a 3-day weekend Mondays.”

What a day I had today! I did a few errands, including grocery shopping. Granted, that may not sound like much to you, but that’s only because you didn’t know that grocery shopping is like my second favorite thing in the world to do. Let me clarify that. If my first favorite thing in the world to do is, say, strip buck naked and sit on a hot wood stove, grocery shopping would definitely come in second to that.

I put off shopping for groceries as long as I possibly can, and I have developed many creative ways to do that. For example, I scrape the mold off a hunk of cheese for as long as I can, and when it’s nothing but mold left, I say, “How French” and eat it, mold and all. I found that you can Google a list of ingredients on hand, and you will be taken to recipe sites that tell you what wonderful things you can make with them. Sometimes that works pretty well, but let me spare you the trouble of searching for a recipe for “rock salt, ketchup, and moldy cheese.” The closest thing I could find required several baskets of fresh oysters. I don’t think I have any oysters.

The Oprah show yesterday featured “freegans,” who are people who, among other things, go dumpster diving for food that has been tossed out by restaurants and grocery stores. Aside from the fact that I’d rather eat my own moldy cheese, that tactic probably works better in the city. Out here at the end of Cascabel Road, there aren’t any dumpsters, and I think there is a strong possibility I might get shot at if I started digging through the neighbors’ trash cans. Well, Bjorn (Not His Real Name) and Maggie (Not Her Real Name Either) wouldn’t shoot me, because they kind of like me, and besides, they don’t waste things. If they throw something out, it is probably Genuine Garbage.

My last resort is to rely on my fat stores, with which I am rather generously endowed, if I do say so myself. I can easily go a day or two without food. I might get a little cranky, but that’s hardly a noticeable change from my usual nature. Oh! And I must point out here that ordinarily, I could solve all the grocery issues by a simple phone call to Rick with a plea to “pick up a few things” (two weeks worth of food) on his way home from the office. However, this week he has been the Other House while I’m at This House.

Eventually, though, the lack of supplies reaches Emergency Status. And by Emergency Status, I mean running low on Diet Coke. I haven’t yet found an acceptable substitute for Diet Coke. And if I were ever to run out of Diet Coke, I don’t think I could be held responsible for my actions. Of course, speculating about what might happen is just that, speculation, because up to now, I have not ever run out of Diet Coke. I have come close once or twice, but just like my friend John’s (That is His Real Name) late grandfather, I have a spare hidden here and there around the house, just in case. The only difference being that John’s late grandfather hid bourbon. We know that because when John inherited the house and started renovations, he found the bottles stashed under the house and in various nooks and crannies.

So I did the grocery shopping, and I’m comfortably set for the time being, and the dogs have fresh stores of hot dogs and buns. Is it being a bad dog mother to feed them hot dogs and buns? I cook for them a lot, but Bronco only likes most things for a day or two before he rejects them. So far the hot dogs and buns are a hit two or three days in a row. Bonnie, who doesn’t suffer from any form of anorexia, is beginning to resemble an ottoman.

So what does any of this have to do with Oprah and the Huge Ass Beer Man? Other than the freegan thing, nothing. I just wanted to show you these photos, which illustrate the two faces of, well, me.