BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

It took everything I had to keep from spitting spaghetti across the table and all over The Evil Redhead.  Judging from the bemused shock in her eyes and her hand over her own mouth, I am fairly certain the same was true for her. We both glanced quickly at our daughter as she continued to stuff her face, then I pushed away from the table and made a beeline for the telephone…

Of course, as with most of my stories, for this to truly make sense we have to step into the “wayback machine” for a moment to get a bit of background. So, have a seat next to Mister Peabody while Sherman fiddles with the dials and takes us back to a point in time just a scant couple of weeks prior to the “almost spaghetti spewage.”

Kerchunk… bleep… ring… ring… bloop… blorp… kerchunk… kerchunk…

Okay, here we are… Not only have we traveled back in time, but we have also shifted westward better than two-hundred miles to a suburb of Kansas City Missouri. The townhome (at the time) of my friend – and E Kay’s occasional doormat – Duane.

You see, the near spaghetti spewage is all Duane’s fault. And, the fact that it is his fault in this particular instance is 100% true. Just ask him. He will even admit to it without objection. He won’t even scream “Unicorn.” Well, not right away like he normally does.

Allow me to explain…

Her Supreme Evilness, the O-spring, Johnathan, The Chunk Man, and I took ourselves an extended weekend trip out to see Duane. This wasn’t unusual by any stretch. He comes to Saint Louis to see us, we go to KC to see him. However, during this particular visit, Duane – or as he was called by E K for a brief period, “Dammit Duane” – set certain events into motion that culminated in the almost spray of whole wheat fettuccine noodles, along with a lovely Bolognese, all over our dining room.

“How?” you ask.

Simple. Like all of us, Duane receives his share of bizarre email forwards from folks out there. On the particular weekend in question he had received an attachment in the form of a video file. Now, I have to admit that there is no truly delicate way to put this – the file in question involved “adult activities” between a Latex clad Dominatrix and her submissive.  However, the “porn” factor wasn’t the real reason the clip had been forwarded to him. As it turns out, not only was there a high level of “OMG bizarreness” to the  depicted activity itself – which I shall leave up to your individual imaginations – but the German language dialogue also punctuated it with an LOL factor somewhere around a 7 on the “LOL 1 to 10 Scale”. Anyway, to make a long story short, Duane found it so amusing that he insisted on showing it to Johnathan, The Chunk Man, and me. Due to the fact that I was in the middle of cooking, I was unable to watch the whole clip, however, I got the gist of it, as did Johnathan, The Chunk Man, and Duane. And, they got it in spades, for you see, the rest of the weekend the catch phrase between the three of them became this innocuous snippet of dialogue –

“Yah… Das is gud!”

Fast forward back to the summer evening around the dinner table. We had only been eating for a few minutes when the O-Spring, who was all of 5 years old at the time, stopped shoveling the spaghetti into her mouth and announced, “Das is gud!”

(Now, before you go calling Child Protective Services, the kid did NOT see the clip. She merely heard her Uncle Duane, Uncle Johnathan, and Uncle Chunkee running around the whole weekend chuckling and saying, “Das is gud!” about everything…)

Once I managed to swallow my mouthful of pasta without choking, I called Duane. After all, someone had to warn him that E K was already plotting his demise.

Of course, I certainly wasn’t opposed to it being him in trouble instead of me.  In my way of thinking, das is gud…

More to come…

Murv

I watched out my back window as the next door neighbor’s girlfriend hopped over the chain link fence as if it wasn’t there, then jogged up the back stairs – pretty much taking them three at a time. Since there are only three stairs to begin with she, for all intents and purposes, went from the ground up to the deck in one leap. She then zipped across my deck and began pounding on my back door.

Normally, in a case like this, one might imagine that there was a dire problem that needed addressing. Like perhaps a fire, or some other emergency. However, in this particular case I had a good idea there was little or nothing to worry about on the other side of the fence. What had attracted her to my door was going on right in front of my face.

I stood up then hooked around the center island and opened the door. Before I could even say hello my neighbor’s girlfriend pointed and said, “I want some of what she’s having.“

It was a cliche statement, yes, but then I’m not the one who made it. Besides, I couldn’t really blame her. After all, there was a highly animated cliche writhing all over my kitchen island even as she spoke.

And, it was not E K…

You see, as we have established on many an occasion, I like to cook. (That  subject change give you whiplash? No? Then try the next one…)

In the South, hospitality is something deeply ingrained into your being as you grow up. There are the standard manners like Please, Thank You, Yes Ma’am, Yes Sir, and the like. Adults are addressed as Mister or Miss followed by a first name. Unless of course they are so familiar as to become Aunt or Uncle, regardless of blood relation. But, as I said, those are just the manners… The thing here is the hospitality.

What I’m trying to say is this – if someone visits your home, at the very least offer them a drink. If they show up and help you do something, I don’t know, like say build a barn, or roof your house, you FEED them. No ifs, ands or buts… No butts either, unless of course it is a pork butt you have slowly BBQ’d on the smoker for about 6 hours, then pulled apart and served with a nice vinegar based hot sauce for those who want an added kick. Of course, ‘tater salad, slaw, and a slice or two of bread are a necessity as well… But, I digress even further…

Back to regional manners and the like…

And so, myself being from a more civilized section of our country, i.e. The South, whenever someone helps me out I repay them by not only helping them out when need be, but by feeding them…

It’s just the way things are done…

So, anyway, we have now made a couple of turns around the chicken coop and are back to the animated cliche.

A few weeks back I was needing to rip the old roof off my shed in the back yard. After all, the roof was better than 15 years old and had seen its share of hail and highly acidic walnut shell droppings from the squirrels. The tree rats had also endeavored to build nests here and there throughout, widening their ingress and egress with a good bit of gnawing. Therefore, in a word, the shed roof was shot.

Enter Rhonda and Dave. You may remember Rhonda from the Bail Money blog. She and Dave worship at the altar of The Evil Redhead… And, Rhonda texts me a whole bunch. So, anyway, Dave, Rhonda, The Chunkinator, and Johnathan came over to lend a hand. Truth is, while I was taking care of other crap, they pretty much did the job themselves.

So, what did I do? Well, I fed them of course…

The problem is, I had not been to the grocery and we were woefully short on supplies. However, the rule of thumb around our house is that if it isn’t nailed down and it stays still long enough, I can probably cook it. So, I set about rooting through the freezer and pantry. Within a few moments I had a pile of ingredients and a few kitchen utensils in front of me. While continuing to converse with the gang I ground, grated, crunched, cracked, seasoned, and mixed until I had myself a meatloaf formed up and wrapped in aluminum foil, ready to toss out on the grill to join the slab of ribs Rhonda and Dave had brought with them.

That’s it. Meatloaf. Just plain old, average everyday meatloaf made with whatever I had on hand. Nothing special. But hey, food is food and when it is time to feed hungry folks a good old fashioned kitchen sink meatloaf will fill stomachs, guaranteed.

It was after we sat down to dinner that things became a little When Harry Met Sally-ish…

I was gnawing on a piece of rib when I heard the first moan. I wasn’t quite sure what it was at first, but it didn’t really sound like anyone was in major distress, so I continued eating. Seconds later, it sounded again, but this time louder and even more guttural. It was followed by a nasally whine, a squeak, another moan, and then a loud clap as Rhonda leaned forward, slapped the surface of the island, then arched her back and began tossing her head around like she was in some kind of shampoo / conditioner commercial, all while whimpering and moaning.

I stopped eating, rib leavin’s all over my face, then looked over at Dave and said, “Dude… At the dinner table? I mean, come on… Can’t you two wait until you get home or at least out to your car?”

“I’m not even touching her!” he countered.

Sure enough, both of his hands were occupied with a hunk of ribs, and in point of fact, he was sitting several feet away from her near the end of the island.

Before I could say anything else, Rhonda began rocking back on the barstool and moaning at the ceiling as her eyes rolled back in her head. In a total Meg Ryan moment she repeatedly slapped her hand on the surface of the island, sending utensils skittering off onto the floor as she screamed, “Yes, Yes, Yes, YES! Meeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaattttt Loooooaaaaaaaaaaafffff!”

Seconds later she was writhing all over the kitchen and whimpering loudly.

I cast a glance around the room, thinking perhaps we were about to hear a live rendition of Paradise By The Dashboard Lights, but Michael Lee Aday was nowhere to be seen.

“She always have this reaction to meat loaf?” I asked Dave.

“Dunno,” he shrugged. “Never seen her eat it before.”

“Don’t… like…” Rhonda started, then screamed one of those screams like you hear in a bad porno movie, not that I’ve ever seen one, mind you. She whimpered for a moment, then breathlessly started again, “Don’t… Like… Meat… Loaf…”

“The singer or the food,” I asked. “Because I hate to tell you this but…”

I didn’t get to finish. She was already screaming and panting again. And besides, it was at just about this particular moment I saw my neighbor’s girlfriend vaulting over the chain link fence.

Unfortunately, relations in our neighborhood have been a bit strained ever since. You see, our impromptu visitor left in a fairly bad mood that evening, leaping back over the fence then shaking her fist at us before going inside, pretty much because Rhonda wouldn’t let anyone else have any of the meatloaf. In fact, she took the leftovers home with her. I think maybe she had it for dinner the following night too, because there were some very odd posts on her Facebook wall. I couldn’t make much sense out of them, other than the fact that they were some seriously pleasure oriented onomatopoeia.

Too bad it was an off the cuff, kitchen sink meatloaf. If I’d saved the recipe I’m pretty sure we would have been able to throw together another one then videotape Rhonda and sell copies on the Internet for a whole lotta money.

And there you have hospitality in its finest hour… Help me rip off a shed roof and not only do you get dinner, but a floor show as well. And, who knows what other bonus Dave found in his “pay envelope”…

Damn… Now that I think about it, maybe I need to figure out what I can whip up that will have the same effect on E K…

More to come…

Murv