It's what's on the inside (of the tortilla) that counts

A few years ago I found a small monthly tear-off calendar at work and put it on my desk. On it I taped this picture:

 

 

Each time I ate a burrito I would mark it on the calendar. I called it my Burrito Calendar. I love burritos.

In light of this I have decided to bring you my Top 5 Burritos in Portland list. There are many, many possible criteria for a list like this, but I have simplified the process. I have simply ranked these stuffed tortillas of goodness in the order of how much happiness they give me while I am eating them. So, without further ado, because prior to this statement there was so much ado, I give you...drum roll...the list.

Trivia: "Burrito" is Spanish for "little donkey". Also, "Boca Raton"...as in Boca Raton, Florida...is Spanish for "Rat Mouth".

Honorable Mention: King Burrito

Ingredients: Unknown

Listen, I have never been to King Burrito. I don’t even know where it is. But one time I attended a networking luncheon put on the Portland Business Alliance and everyone had to go around the room and tell their name and where they worked. I stood up and said “I’m Keith, I work at such and such and, sadly, I’m a huge Chicago Cubs fan which means I’m basically a loser all the time.” You probably think that has nothing to do with King Burrito. Well, it kind of doesn’t and you’re a know-it-all. Pipe down and let me explain. The next time I had to give my name, rank and serial number I was at a South Portland Business Alliance meeting and when it came to me I said “I’m Keith, I work at such and such and I LOVE to eat burritos. I’ve eaten 34 of them this year (this was in March).” After that people came up to me and told me all sorts of things about burritos. A recurring theme was a food cart called King Burrito. If that young, eager Farmers insurance agent is this worked up about a burrito served out of a wagon then I’m all in and you, King Burrito, have just narrowly missed my top 5.

 

Note: See, I told you I've never been there. I just checked the website and it turns out it's not a cart at all, it's a hole in the wall taqueria!

5. Chipotle Mexican Grill

Ingredients: Carnitas
White or Brown Rice
Black Beans, but the Pinto Beans w/ Bacon are equally good
Corn Salsa
A little Sour Cream
A TON of Cheese

I know, I know…I’m choosing a huge corporation with a major ownership stake by McDonald’s as my #5 burrito. So what, you hoity toity snobby food critic? It’s freaking delicious and it’s big enough to make me full. The employees are great because, as corporate (as opposed to franchised) employees they have to do pretty much anything you say. They are friendly and helpful and, hey, owner Jim isn’t breathing down their neck about food portions like Jen does over at every Subway shop in the Milwaukie/Clackamas area.

At Chipotle you are basically on an assembly line of delicious tortilla stuffings. The key here is you can never have too much cheese, so you order like this: “Put on a ton of cheese. Just when you think you’ve put on too much add one more handful.” It has taken years to perfect this request because they are trained to put on small sprinkles thereby making you ask for more countless times like the girl giving free haircuts at the beauty school who is too scared to cut anything off. BUT…they HAVE to give you as much as you want despite however many fingerfuls it takes. Tell them to keep going until you say “stop” and you’re golden…or white, since the cheese is an amazing blend that looks the color of a Wisconsin girl in winter.

4. Muchas Gracias

Ingredients: Refried Beans
A Chile Relleno
Cheese

I know I know…you’ve been to Muchas Gracias and you love the Oregon Burrito. Good for you. Go write your own blog. As for me, I too have had the Oregon Burrito and it’s decent. I happen to think the potatoes take away from the flavor instead of soaking up the flavor, but maybe I caught the OB on a bad day. Here’s my take on burritos: if you can put a relleno in the middle of it, it’s good. I first encountered this in a crappy hole in the wall down in LA with my dad, stepmom and sister. My dad took us to the most likely place to get shot in the entire city so we could have some authentic LA Mexican food. People don’t smile in that place…that is until I bit into my chile relleno burrito! Then I was smiling and I think my obvious lack of gold teeth targeted me as an outsider.

That said, I brought that mentality back to Oregon with me. So, screw you Oregon Burrito, I’ll take the Mexican Burrito. Oh…you can’t find the above item on the menu at Muchas Gracias, you have to ask for it special. Just say “Give me the KeenKeith special”. They will look at you like either a) they don’t speak English well enough to know what you’re saying or b) you’re an idiot. After you get past that embarrassment you simply say “can you squirt some of your lardy lard lardy beans onto a tortilla, smother it in cheese then add a relleno?” They will say “yes, that will be $4” and you’ll be the fattest, happiest person on the block.

1c. Cha! Cha! Cha!

Ingredients: Seasoned Ground Beef
Rice
Cheese
Potatoes
Peas
Almonds
Raisins

Thought I was kidding, didn’t you? Well I’m not. They cook up the meat with all this crazy crap in it that doesn’t seem to go together at all, then they serve it to you in this yellow wax paper as if to say “no, we really are Latino”. I have yet to meet anyone who loves this burrito the way I do. It’s tied for number one for me and I struggled with this because it’s on an equal plane with my numbers 1b and 1a.

So you get this burrito, you unwrap it and wad up the yellow wax paper and set that aside. You then grab the green sauce and just drench the tortilla with it and dig in with a fork and knife. No regrets…no regrets.

1b. Super Torta

Ingedients: Chile Relleno
Rice
Refried Beans
Guacamole

The above is a description of the Super Burrito. Running a close second is the Chile Relleno Burrito which is just as wonderful as the dangerous Los Angeles burrito my dad risked all our lives for. Honestly, the only way you can do wrong with Super Torta is by not going there. They have tongue on the menu which in and of itself makes it an authentic experience. You can also buy rock candy out of their quarter machine. Rock candy? Yes, rock candy. I have always assumed that's because there's so much poverty in Mexico that people have to eat rocks there.

1a. Bajio Grill

Ingredients:
Interior: Shredded Beef
Sweet Rice
Refried Beans
Exterior: Cheese
Sour Cream
Sweet Vinaigrette Salad Dressing

“What?!?!!!??!! Salad Dressing? Grosssssssssss!” Shaaaaaaadup. It’s awesome. So this is another assembly line burrito. They have a location in Clackamas in the Home Depot parking lot on 82^nd. They are opening a new west side location, I think it will be in Beaverton.

So the shredded beef is amazing. It tastes like Yankee Pot Roast…which is weird because Yankees are Northeast and this place is definitely shooting for Southwest. I don’t care about that. What I care about is how mouth wateringly good the meat is. How sweet and soft the rice is…and most importantly how tangy delicious that salad dressing is. It’s literally the best salad dressing I’ve ever tasted and I don’t even bother with the salad anymore. I could drink that stuff straight from the container. Instead I have them soak the burrito with it.

The Latino workers look at me like I’m nuts when I ask for the salad dressing, but the white guy knows us and doesn’t even ask. He doesn’t eat his burrito that way, but he can identify with our American urge to smother everything with sweetness. The only think that would make this place better is if I could find a way to actually bathe in the sweet vinaigrette. I’m sure it would make my skin soft, smooth and scrumptious.

Well, I hope you're able to visit all of the above fine establishments. Also, visit this place just north of SE 92^nd and Foster.

 

 

I have never been there but the following is a list of reasons you should patronize this establishment, which also happen to be reasons I will soon be trying it out:

 

1. The interior walls are bright green which makes it light up like lime sherbet at night.

2. Check out the police car. Ever gone to a crappy restaurant with police officers eating there?

3. Note the nutty yellow bird on the sign...it's practically screaming "I'm delicious!"

4. Some dude apparently likes to mess with his bicycle in the alley.

5. Look at orange shirt guy. Any Mexican food place in a neighborhood where you have to constantly be looking over your shoulder MUST have great food. I'll bet they even serve tongue.

If you have yet to develop your burrito pallet I suggest you get on that right away. The burrito craze has grown so wildly that there is a section on Weidler over near Lloyd Center that has a Muchas Gracias, a Chipotle, a Taco Bell and a Q'Doba Mexican Grill within a half block of each other.

Oh, disclaimer: burritos will make you fart.

"Daddy has peanut butter running through his veins."

For most of my life I basically believed I was invincible. The most severe injury I’ve ever suffered is a dislocated shoulder. The most serious illness I’ve ever had is probably the strep throat. Well, now that I’m pretty much in my mid-thirties, it turns out I’ve outlived my invincibility. In fact, I’m highly vincible. I’m now just hoping I can delay vince as long as possible. Damn you, vince…which leads me to my next point:

I haven’t been feeling well lately. It’s part of the reason I haven’t been writing as often. I just haven’t had much energy. I have been getting headaches many afternoons. I feel lethargic. Everything has felt heavy and burdensome.

Cut to seemingly unrelated scene: I am on my wife’s insurance plan through her job at Providence. Embarrassingly, I paid for my own insurance at my current job for a year before realizing that I was free to add to Taela’s plan. Even more embarrassing? I work for an insurance agency. So anyway, Providence said they would give us each $400 in “walking around money”…or maybe it’s to pay for medical bills…if we each take a blood screen at Quest Diagnostics. Taela and I went in one morning only to be told that we are supposed to fast before the test. I said “I’m as fast as I’m ever gonna be” but it turned out they meant we weren’t supposed to eat or drink before they drew blood. I said “Edward didn’t care what Bella ate before he sucked her blood” but they didn’t think that we very clever so we left.

Taela went back and had the screening done. I went in by myself about a month later. I walked into the tiny little waiting room and there was an old couple there. The seats were set up with three in a row, then a small table then two more seats. The old people were whispering something to one another as I walked in. Apparently they didn’t want me to hear it because they shut the fudge up immediately when they saw my imposing figure step in. I was dressed for work which meant slightly worn-out business casual pants that are a little too snug in the waist for my comfort and saggy in the butt along with a recently ironed, but still somehow aggravatingly wrinkled  dress shirt.

So, anyway, I walked in and the old woman was startled by me and she scurried all 4 feet to the front desk to sign in. I signed in behind her and turned to sit down when I noticed something that immediately teed me off. The old man was sitting in one of the three seats to the left and he had his jacket and some sort of reading material laid out on the chair next to him. The old lady was sitting in one of the two seats on the other side of the small table. So, somehow, these two people have found a way to take up damn near all of the 5 seats in the waiting room and I have to choose between sitting next to the man’s crap or his old lady. After making a crude silent joke to myself about how these two things are probably synonymous (hardee har har!) I chose the latter. I figured if two people are going to take up an entire waiting area I was going to make it uncomfortable for them too, so I snuggled in next to somebody’s great grandma, laid my computer bag down next to her and proceeded to play Words with Friends on my phone. I mean, come on old people…you’ve been married for 75 years. Go ahead and pretend like you can put up with sitting next to one another.

When it was my turn I gladly followed someone in scrubs back to a little drab room and answered some questions...probably because I trust anyone in scrubs. Yes, I fasted as quickly as I could. No, I don’t smoke (and neither should you). The punk-rock-by-night medical-assistant-by-day who was helping me seemed disinterested but cordial enough. She put my arm in an automated blood pressure cuff and pushed the button. Literally as the thing is inflating to take my blood pressure she starts rolling up my sleeve and talking about the my veins and how she’s going to stick a sharp metal object in there in order to suck out my blood. I’m not a pansy about needles (don’t verify this one with my wife as she may or may not have the same opinion), but when you’re in the middle of taking a blood pressure test it’s probably best for accuracy’s sake to keep the thoughts of dermal penetration to a minimum. Well, it was all over in a minute or two (“That’s what she said! That’s what she said!” Michael Scott) and I was on my way after having nailed yet another test in my illustrious life.

Then the results came. Now I’m no scientist, but if I were I would tell you that when a test says your triglyceride level should be below 150 and yours is 585 you’re probably doing something wrong. Fortunately my cholesterol was right in the sweet spot of ‘expected’. It is supposed to be between 125 and 200…mine came in right between those at 199. My body mass index was above normal as well at a not-so-svelte 27.2.

This was all very shocking to Taela which is weird because she’s seen me naked. Then I realized something: I’ve been feeling like crap lately because I’ve been eating like crap and not exercising at all. Again, I’m no scientist, but I put this all together on my own. I thought back to all the Carl’s Jr. meals and bags of potato chips and midnight milkshakes and realized something…there are consequences to my dietary choices. Who knew…and why didn’t they tell me?

Here is a pie chart of my recent eating habits:

So now I’m basically going to get back to healthy by going on a diet I have titled “Not Eating Like a Jackass”. Every now and then I say “no I don’t need thirds” and I’m trying out something called “white meat” for a change (I know this sounds like overt racism, but in my research I have learned that this is an actual term for certain meats that did not come from a cow). It’s interesting…not quite like burger, but still very edible.

To tie it all back together, since the day my wife convinced my kids that I have “peanut butter running through” my veins, I have begun to eat more like a responsible adult and I haven’t had any headaches. I’m still slow and fat, but I choose to play the Wii games that make me stand up so I’m making some progress on the exercise front too. My sister told me to watch “Forks over Knives” on Netflix, but I said “hell no, I ain’t gonna be no Vegan!”

In closing, I will now blog more often because I have more energy. I haven’t had any headaches in two weeks. Soon the chins around my throat will shrink and my fat-induced sleep apnea will subside and I’ll be as energetic as that horrible little should-be-smashed to bits by a Louisville Slugger pink bunny from those battery commercials.

Censorship

There’s been a lot of talk about censorship the past couple days. I don’t really understand the legislative issue, but I think you’ll understand what I’m getting at despite what’s being censored:

Last night when I got home from work I had the urge to head straight upstairs and take a nice, hot, steaming ****.  I placed my **** directly above the water. Just before I lowered my **** down into the pool of water below I thought to myself “I don’t want to take a normal ****, I want this to be the best **** I’ve ever taken.” The thought crossed my mind: “I really need to light a candle!” So I rushed off quickly to find a scented candle to create the ambiance to take the perfect ****.

I threw my robe on so I wasn’t running around exposing my**** to everyone and I started digging around for a nicely scented candle. So I finally found a nice apple-spice candle and a matchbook. I lit a match and accidentally dropped it on my ****! “AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!” Holy **** did that hurt! I started running around and my **** fell off! Now I was running around with no ****, my **** was getting cold and I still really needed to get in there and take a nice, long ****.

I made my way back into the bathroom and I looked in the mirror. “Man I wish my **** hadn’t fallen off.” Things aren’t looking as good as they used to. I figured that was probably something that eventually happens when you get old anyway.

It was then I realized that to take the ultimate **** I was going to need some peaceful music to coax the stress from my body. I went and found my iPod and turned on the perfect **** soundtrack. Piano music…listening to a master tickle the ivories while I’m taking a **** is so theraputic. You should try it some time.

 So finally I was ready. I took my ****, dropped it down into the water and instantly felt TOTAL relaxation. It was like an envelope of steaming **** washing over me. I breathed in deeply and let the vapors fill my lungs. “Now THIS is the life!” I thought to myself.

When I was nearly asleep from a wonderful **** coma, I dunked my head into the water covering my hair and face. Amazing!

Don’t you love taking a nice relaxing bath?

Censorship Key:               bath, body, body, bath, bath, bath

                                                self, foot, moly, robe, robe, body, bath

                                                robe

                                                bath, bath, bath

                                                body, heat

                                                bath

Santa Claus is real

Santa Claus is real because I say he’s real. Santa Claus is real because on Friday, December 23^rd he was driving from Happy Valley to downtown Vancouver, WA to buy the only toy coffee maker in the greater Portland area. He had looked at Fred Meyer. He had searched Target. He had been to Toys ‘R Us, The Learning Palace, Walgreens. He had even shopped at the gates of Hell (Walmart at 1:00 in the morning). Santa finally wised up and called the greatest little toy store he knows, Kazoodles. They didn’t have a toy toaster, but the coffee maker was right there on the shelf. So Santa got in his 2001 Subaru Legacy sleighdan and headed north for the 25 minute drive. When he showed up at Kazoodles Santa found an empty building where Kazoodles used to be. “Is this Christmas?!?!?!?!!” Santa yelled. Santa then used his iPhone 4s to find out where Kazoodles is now located. It was 10 miles away on the east end of Vancouver. So, Santa got back in his car and started driving to the other side of Portland’s wonderful sister city to the north. He drove the length from I-5 to I-205 and then headed north yet again (because if there’s one thing Santa’s good at, it’s north) and he exited at Mill Plain. What Santa didn’t know was that Mill Plain is a very busy road at midday on the Friday before Christmas…turns out Santa doesn’t know EVERYTHING. After waiting through a number of green light/red light sequences Santa got to the front and realized that he could have used the left lane and been through in one signal. Seeing this, Santa went ahead and blew through the yellowish/orange/okay-RED light and headed down Mill Plain trying to follow the pseudo-GPS built into his iPhone. He was doing this because a thief smashed out his car window and stole Santa’s 2 GPS units a couple weeks ago while Santa was playing poker in NW Portland. In any case, Santa drove to the spot on the GPS and found a bunch of businesses but NO KAZOODLES! Santa jerked his sleigh into the empty parking lot of a church and stopped to let it leak oil all over the place while he again called Kazoodles. “Yes, Kazoodles? This is Santa. Where are you? I’m at the church. I’ve gone too far? Oh good, will you be on the left or right? The left? Great. I’ll see you in a Christmas jiffy!” Then Santa found he couldn’t turn left on Mill Plain so he did the only thing he could…he turned right. Soon Santa realized he was in Washington so he could make a U-turn. So Santa found a left hand turn signal…which, shockingly, had a “No U-turn” sign. So Santa took a left, then a left into a parking lot, then made a back and forth maneuver that would have made Austin Powers blush, bayyybeeeee, then came bac k out of the parking lot to make a right followed by another right and Santa was on his way. On his way to the strip mall where he eventually located Kazoodles. He entered the store, bent over and grabbed the ankles of his furry red suit and, as only a defeated magical giant elf can do, handed over his credit card to charge $22.95 for a couple pieces of moulded plastic that will inevitably lead his 5 year old daughter into a life of paying $4 each for cup upon cup of addictive hot liquids. Santa then hopped back into his dented green sleigh and got back on Mill Plain. Where in the name of St. Nick did all these cars come from? Santa used the left lane only to realize that the right lane was a ½ mile long line for the freeway that Santa needed to get home. Santa was stuck. He couldn’t squeeze into this line at this point, and quite frankly it was longer than Santa was willing to wait anyway. Santa said the F-word. Santa didn’t know Vancouver well enough to find an alternate route, but he was sure gonna try.

That’s when it happened. Santa’s sleigh found itself as the first car in the left lane at the red light before the freeway entrance. All Santa had to do was beat the thuggish looking gentleman to his right off the line and he would be free as a Christmas dove flying home on the interstate! The light turned green, Santa reved up all 4 cylinders of his sleighdan and found himself falling behind the car to his right. But like the peaceful bliss of a new fallen snow there beside him was a Christmas miracle. The second car in line was busy illegally talking on his cell phone which made him too stupid to realize that the light had turned green. Santa slid in behind Mr. Thug and found himself on that charmed and magical Christmas pathway, I-205.

So for those of you who don’t believe in magic…those of you who don’t believe in Santa Claus. Santa IS real. I saw his reflection in the eyes of a 5 year old girl on Christmas and he was shaped very much like a toy coffee maker.

NORAD Santa tracker: December 23rd from 11:30am - 2:00pm

Mobilt Bredbånd

Setting Sail on Home OwnerShip

When Taela and I bought our first house we didn’t really know what to expect…at all. I’m pretty sure everyone feels this way. I very clearly remember pulling into the driveway for the first time as home owners and seeing a guy who looked a lot like Ned Flanders at the fence (note: his name was Mike and he was a remarkably nice guy and good neighbor). He said “you must be the Joneses”…hmm…Lesson #1: a neighborly expression I need to acquire. I remember the first night we spent there as well. We set up our guest room first(something you have room for prior to having three kids…you’ll eventually have to go to Costco to buy its replacement which happens to be inflatable and comes with a pump). We decided to sleep in our guest bed the first night because we hadn’t moved anything into our master bedroom. Why? you ask. Because our master bedroom was lavender. Now if you’re a guy like me you’re thinking to yourself “what is this ‘lavender’?” and I’m here to tell you: good question. Lesson #2: lavender is a cross between pink and purple and it gives off the feel of death to those who haven’t acclimated to it. Oh, so you had to paint a couple of walls, Keith? Yes, a couple of walls plus a couple more and…look up!...the ceiling. The ceiling was lavender? Yes. Why did you buy this house? We didn’t know what we were doing, that’s why. Are you leaving out any other details about the room? Well, yes, it also had a 4 foot diameter black ring-of-fire sun emblazoned on one wall.

So we decided to sleep in the guest bedroom on our first night and all I can remember thinking was “we have this entire, enormous (1700 square feet poorly laid out by an architect who somehow thought the split-level floor plan could utilize space) home and I feel comfortable occupying just this one little bedroom with my lovely wife. What are we going to do with all this space?”

Well, the first thing we did was head over to the Home Depot for the first time. This answers the age old question “do homeowners actually go to the Home Depot for the first time or were they there all along?” There was a first time and during it we bought a gallon or two of yellow paint. Yellow is bright and sunny and exactly the opposite of the blackberry yogurt cave we had purchased.

So I went off to work the next morning and when I came home Taela had put on a coat of primer she found in the garage. Lesson #3: when buying a house is you also are buying 30 cans of mishmashed paints, thinners, primers and lacquers. The previous owner wasn’t allowed to put them in the garbage because they are toxic, he was too lazy to take them to Metro, so he decided to do you a favor and hand over the remnants of the colors that once were…although you’ll never figure out which can goes with which room. So I walked into the bedroom to see the work that my diligent wife had done and she kind of sheepishly said to me “I’m not sure it’s quite right.” I took a close look. Is primer supposed to be thick, rubbery, gray and textured in the shape of every brush stroke? No…”I also don’t think it’s quite right…where’s the can?” Hello can, what say you? “Well Keith, I say ‘concrete primer and sealant’”. Well, Mr. Can, thank you for your honesty. Lesson #4: Only paint with paint and only prime with primer.

So we called our parents to find out what we were supposed to have done in the first place and made trip number 2 to Home Depot. In retrospect we should have first bought stock in Home Depot THEN driven over but no matter how hard you try you can’t change the past. We bought ourselves a bucket of Kilz primer. You know the one. Then we spent a long time slapping it on the walls. I should digress here for a moment to let you know that Taela’s sisters, my mom and possibly other people helped on this project, but this was close to a decade ago so I’m not remembering who deserves credit and who doesn’t. My apologies to those who have been omitted by my struggling memory.

Great! White room! This must be what it’s like to be insane…clinically clean looking white walls with just a touch of soft, rubbery padding underneath. Oh…and a faded blackish-gray ring of fire peering through the layer of primer. So we slapped on another coat of primer over that sun, then another and were finally satisfied that it had been given its long overdue burial.

Next step: paint. I’m pretty sure Taela and crew painted the walls when I was at work again. I came home and opened the front door (which is down the stairs, around the corner, down the hall and through a door away from the bedroom) and went instantly blind. I cried out “Jesus! Jesus! Looking upon your glory has blinded me. Please have mercy!” then I realized it wasn’t Jesus. It was the glow coming from the bedroom. I climbed the stairs and pushed my way down the hall toward the blazing radiance. I walked into the room and if Taela didn’t come running down the hall yelling “No! No! Not without sunglasses!” I would certainly have sustained permanent injury to my retinas. In any case I walked into a room that had recently lost its sun on the wall and BECOME the sun all in one day. Lesson #5: the sample color swatch does not look the same as the entire room painted that color.

Hello Home Depot, can you please give us a cream color? “Oh, we thought you wanted yellow.” Don’t you worry about that, Home Depot, cream color when spread on a wall will certainly be yellow based on what we just learned. So we painted the wall for the fourth time. This time a cream color that almost looked as though it had a hint of yellow. It was basically off-white but at this point we just needed to get ourselves into our room and start living. Lesson #6: THE SAMPLE COLOR SWATCH DOES NOT LOOK THE SAME AS THE ENTIRE ROOM PAINTED THAT COLOR.

Remember when I said I didn’t know what to do with all that space? Well, now I didn’t have quite as much space to wonder about since each coat of paint shrunk the room ever so slightly. All I can do is hope that someone will read this before purchasing their first house and it will save them, literally, minutes of time.

End Petlessmess

Before diving into today's edition of KeenKeith I should mention that those of you who didn't read the previous post in its entirety missed out on my attempt at writing like The Onion. Take a read, you may enjoy it. And now...without further ado...drumroll.....

At work we have a small kitchen/lunchroom where I eat most days. It’s nice because there’s a refrigerator and two microwaves so I can bring whatever leftovers my kids think they're too good for and roll the dice by choking them down over the hour I take for my lunch. In case you don’t know I’m a human garbage disposal. I have only three rules about leftovers:

1) If meat has turned green I will not eat it. Gray is acceptable.
2) If it’s growing, it’s going…to the trash. This is why I always throw away bleu cheese.
3) If it stinks, me thinks…it’s going to the trash. This is why I always throw away bleu cheese.

Outside of those simple rules I will eat pretty much anything. I don’t have a time limit (yes, week old gray meat is fine by me). The people I eat with often get confused about my rules. Sue, who is likely to say just about anything, often says I eat moldy food. I don’t. I will, however, argue til I’m blue in the face that you can eat refrigerated eggs months and MONTHS after their printed expiration date.

Well, there are a few rules in the lunch room that are loose and sometimes broken. One rule is that you are not to microwave fish. I get it. Fish stinks. But sometimes it’s Thursday and your wife made a tuna casserole on Sunday so you’re running out of opportunties to eat this stuff before it starts violating rules 1-3 above. Sorry but my rules supercede your community rules, lunch room.

One of the ladies I work and eat with, we’ll call her “Jan O.” because that’s her name, has some idiosyncrasies. One of her quirks is that she literally gags at the thought of peanut butter and jelly together. She claims she has been like this since she was a little girl. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. She doesn’t like the smell of peanut butter mixed with jelly, she hates the idea that someone markets the peanut butter and jelly swirl in a single jar. It’s weird, but we like “Jan O.” so we have fun with it and we don’t make her puke by swirling the two together right in front of her.

Speaking of jelly…and “Kristina Solberg” this is where you might not want to read any further…my wife’s cat started looking weird a few weeks ago. She is an outdoor cat named Scout who has access to the laundry room and garage so it’s not like we’re petting her every day and hearing her stories about the dramas in the backyard. Well I looked at her a few weeks ago and there in the middle of her forehead right above her eyes was this swirled, flattened mass of fur. I touched it and it was hard. I didn’t know what the heck was going on. Taela looked at her and we were just stumped. It was very hard and all the fur in that area was kind of glued into this flat mat.

Well, we didn’t do anything about it. I hypothesized that, because she is friendly and because the Russians that share part of a fence with us have really weird, sometimes cruel, kids, maybe someone had intentionally glued her fur…for coming into their yard? I don’t know. Well, about a week ago I noticed the flap of fur had peeled up a bit so I pulled it off. Under it was short fur that I figured was regrowing to fill in the spot that had been affected. Great. All better. I did examine the fur I had extricated and found that it looked like cowhide and smelled funky.

Well, two nights ago I went to the garage to get something (beer) and looked down. There was a pinkish spot where the hard mass had been. Huh? Yeah, pinkish. Kind of like the filling in a cherry pie. I picked up the cat and called Taela over. The kids came running too. I said something like “it looks like jelly, do you think someone is really messing with her and put jelly on her fur?” Caleb, my 7 year old, said “yeah, that does look like jelly.” I was about to bury my nose in and smell it when Taela (being the nurse that she is) pushed on the forehead right next to the “jelly”. More jelly started squishing out of the jelly hole! Imagine taking a jelly donut and squeezing it in your hand. I’m talking gooey, pinkish jelly glopping out of this cat’s face. Scout! Why do you have so much jelly in your face?

Well, it turned out the veterinarian didn’t think the jelly was jelly at all. It wasn’t jam either. No, it wasn’t preserves of any kind. It was blood mixed with pus. How glad am I that I didn’t dive in to smell it? Very. $260 later the cat has a drain in her face and a cone on her neck. Poor Scout. Poor us! Feline facial drains ain’t free!

The moral of the story is when your cat comes to you and looks like its face has been hit with a hammer, it’s likely that a raccoon has buried its claw in there and it’s going to get infected. Don’t wait for the jelly filling to tell you something’s wrong.