Bungle Through The Jungle

Mr. Moon is back to work. One day at home and then he's up, dressed, lookin' and smellin' good and off to the salt mines again, smoothie in hand and head up high.

That's my man.

"Thanks for taking such good care of me," he says as he strides toward the car with his long legs. "Thanks for healing me."

And he also wanted to know if I was going to get the ingredients to make Allegra's Moroccan Oranges for him. I told him I would, I will, I am. I have to go to town anyway to pick up my prescription for my fucking antidepressant. Man, I wish I had the balls to taper off that drug, see if I can live without it. I started reading an article in the New Yorker last night about how depression is actually just an appropriate reaction to the crazy world we live in. I was too tired to read the whole article but I will read it. I don't disagree with the theory- that depression is not so much a mental illness as it is just a normal response to the way things are today- but how do you manage to LIVE in that world if you're afraid to go out in it, if you can't talk above a whisper, if all you can think about is...sleeping a really, really long time.
I mean, I just can't live like that.
Well.

And it is a crazy world. Do you watch TV? I shouldn't. I know it. And it's not even the actual shows that are so crazy-making. It's the advertisements for me. Have you seen where you can order ANY pizza from Domenho's for ten bucks? Any size, any crust, any ingredients. So there you are at home thinking, "Man, I sure would like some pizza," and so you speed dial the local chapter of the Do-Ho chain and you have the option of whether to get a sane, small, thin-crust pizza with oh, say two healthy toppings on it OR the hugest, mega-ist pizza they have with every damn topping available- sure, pile it on, the hamburger, the ham the bacon, the sausage, the pepperoni, oh, but hold the onions and peppers because they upset your stomach- and which one do you order?
Mama didn't raise no fool, right?
Get your damn money's worth.
And so there you are, in one half hour or less with a box big enough to hold a mini-fridge filled with cheesy, meaty, goodness. And enough fat and calories to feed Bangladesh for a week and in forty-five minutes you have one small slice left in the giant box and oh my goodness! I don't feel so good!

This is all theoretical to me, of course. There IS no pizza delivery in Lloyd. Thank God.
And of course you can go to Subway and get a foot-long sub (ANY SUB!) for five bucks.
And again- why would you choose a six-inch turkey sub with no cheese and no mayo but with all the vegetables which is slightly healthy when you can get the twelve-inch meatball, four cheese, salami/ham trio for about a buck more? Again, I am not sure of the details. I burned out on Subway a million years ago.

But what I'm saying is- food (or a reasonable facsimile at least) is artificially low-priced. I say "reasonable facsimile" because that shit they serve you at fast-food places is not what I consider real food. It can't be. Not even vaguely possible. Because if it was, they could not make any money at all selling it at those prices. It's just so wrong on every level. I can't make a pizza at home for ten bucks and I don't even put meat on it. Sometimes I don't even put cheese on it! And it sure as hell takes longer than half an hour to make. The crust has to rise for an hour.

Well. We all know this. And Michelle Obama (bless her heart) can do everything in her power to stem the tide of childhood obesity but while we live in a country where you can have a fat and sodium bomb delivered to your door for ten bucks it's not going to do one bit of good. Not until parents realize that that ten bucks may look like a big savings on the dinner bill but that that they're going to need all those savings later to pay the doctor bills.

Where the hell is common sense?

It all comes back to the wooly mammoth (thanks, Michelle) because if you were the men of the tribe who had been told to go out and get meat, you didn't pick out the smaller, leaner animal to kill. You killed the fattest, meatiest animal you could get your spear through because that animal had to feed a lot of people and they had to gorge on it and eat it fast before it got nasty, turn that animal fat into personal body fat, a wonderful way to ensure survival when there were no more mammoths to be found that year and there was only grass to live on.

We never have periods of starvation around here. So our cave-man brains keep on telling us to eat all the fat and calories we can without actual puking and then- the next day- there's a whole other wooly mammoth at our door, skinned and deep-fried in transfats and covered with corn syrup for us to eat.

Ah yah.

Well, I guess I better jump nimbly off that soap box and get out and collect the eggs and feed my little hens and their generous rooster. I need to get into town and pick up my pills which allow me to live in this world without losing my mind completely. I may or may not be getting sick myself. I'm somewhat congested, have no energy and I feel a bit achy. Sometimes this is the way I get sick- just the tiniest touch of whatever is going on and then I feel guilty for laying around and being lazy because I'm not REALLY sick. But if I do get sick, there is soup leftover in the refrigerator made of ninety-nine percent vegetables and a bit of venison and there is yogurt and there are oat bran muffins I made last night with apples and raisins. And there will be Moroccan Oranges too.

In my house, food is not only love, it is medicine and it is as real as I can make it. It's also delicious. It is not shit. And it is not cheap. But we can't afford the sort of health insurance that pays for anything but the most dire catastrophe so we do what we can to stay healthy. And eating right is part of that. So is gardening which provides us not only with fresh vegetables but also with physical labor, which is also what our bodies require for proper functioning and also pleasure and enjoyment. As do the chickens. Growing food as entertainment! It's a whole new concept! I should be on HGTV talking about it! They could film Mr. Moon and me, walking around our yard with our martinis, discussing our chickens and how lovely and lively they are, what nice eggs they give us and then moving on to the garden to discuss the tomatoes and peppers we have growing there, how healthy they are due to the chicken shit we put into the garden dirt.

Oh wait. I think Martha Stewart may already do that.
Oh well. I'd probably have to put on a bra anyway and we all know that's not one of my favorite things to do. I'd rather muck out the chicken coop. I'd rather weed the garden.

I'd rather hunt mammoths.

Stay healthy, y'all.