The Omelet and other matters

Every day, after waking up and decimating the snail population in my backyard, I will do my minimal exercise routine while watching Perry Mason. First things first, though. Snails have to die. I walk around with a bucket of salt and collect the wandering seedling parasites from my garden and wherever else I may see them. Then, satisfied that my sunflowers might survive another day, I go back inside and do my pushups, situps and jumping jacks.

This goes relatively quickly, it's just maintenance, after all. I'm trying to not lose the ability to get up out of bed in the morning, although there's not really much I'm getting out of bed for. Necessity, I guess. The necessities of life such as food and, well, that's about it, are located in the kitchen and need to be prepared by me each and every day.

The omelet is the pinnacle of my achievements most days. It is a tasty creation containing the following ingredients:

1/3 chopped bell pepper (colors may vary--red, orange, green)
1/3 chopped white onion
1-2 mushrooms (depending on size)
3 eggs
spices include thyme, cumin, ground cloves, turmeric, fresh ground peppercorns, Worcestershire sauce

These will be stirred in a bowl and fried on both sides in a covered stainless steel frying pan. Adequate pan spray is used to avoid sticking.

After flipping, the omelet is garnished with a few chopped leaves of kale and topped with a slice of cheddar cheese then removed from heat and covered to allow the kale and the cheese to soften. 

As the omelet finishes in the pan, I heat some water for my peppermint tea. I also toast the bread for my avocado/cilantro/garlic toast, served with a tablespoon size pat of butter. I use 1/4 of an avocado, 1/4 cup chopped cilantro and 3 cloves of minced, raw garlic to top the whole grain, organic bread.

While the water is boiling and the omelet cools to the point which allows for easy sliding from the pan, I will play with the cats for a moment or two in the bedroom. Then, as time permits, I'll shoot a few tin cans from the front porch with my BB gun. It only takes a a few minutes to eliminate the targets, and then I go back inside and assemble the toast and omelet combination in my all purpose wooden food bowl.

If this were a cooking blog, I would probably go into much more detail about the length of time required for each side of the egg/veggie mixture to cook, the precise measurement of the spices and the best technique for mastering the all important flip of the omelet in the pan. I'd leave out the details of my snail extermination ritual and my exercise routine, as they are irrelevant. But it's not a cooking blog, so they stay. And you'll just have to guess at the specific details by which the most successful omelet result is achieved.

The breakfast is consumed, guess where, yep, you got it--in front of the TV. So after 45 minutes of cooking, I eat the food in about 15 minutes. Then I take another 20 minutes or so to finish my tea. By the time all this is done, my program will be over, and I'll be contemplating what to do with my day, which is already half over.

Brush my teeth. Wash the wooden bowl. Wander around the house. Settle back down in the chair. I'm pooped. I haven't done anything and I'm already scheming on taking a nap. 

But it is too soon. So, I pacify my conscience with the trivial project of transcribing my paper journal and writings to digital format. I get discouraged because I'm finding that they have less intelligent content than I had imagined when I originally composed them. 

I pick up a guitar and play the same wilting (yes, wilting, not lilting) chord progression that I've been working on for weeks. It sounds tired and out of tune. I give up. It's been a waste of an hour at most.

Now, it's time for my mid-afternoon snack of 1/2 granny smith apple, 1 oz slice of cheddar cheese, 1/4 cup of chopped celery, a handful of dried cranberry raisins, 1/4 cup of mixed almonds, walnuts and pumpkin seeds, which I will eat while watching the Rifleman on MeTv.

After a nap (it is exhausting, the less you do in a day) I will feed the dog and then go for my walk. It is going to be my only activity so I make it count. One hour, no exceptions. Except for rain, wind, extreme heat or cold, or wildfire smoke...you get the picture. But, in all other cases, unless I have plans to go somewhere, I will be walking sometime between 6:30 and 7:30pm Pacific Daylight Savings Time.

My salad is so boring, I really don't want to talk about it. How do you make a bowl full of prewashed spring mix greens, half a cucumber, a roma tomato, six olives, three cloves of minced garlic, a sprinkle of parmesan and a dash of olive oil, topped with a 4 oz. re-heated chicken breast sound exciting? Moving on.

I'll eat dinner watching the TV show of choice, from whatever I am able to download. I've watched quite a few over the years, so it's pointless to try to list them. Some I purposefully avoid, but I won't go into that, either. I will get to the part, however, where at 11:00 pm I will make sure that I am seated in my chair (not too hard to guarantee, statistically speaking) and eating my nighttime snack of 2/3 cup of plain whole milk yogurt, 1/2 cup applesauce and giant tablespoon of peanut butter. The yogurt would be too plain, so I sweeten it with Stevia mixed with cinnamon.

I also make a cup of tea, chamomile, with a teaspoon of honey, which I will sip after the yogurt concoction is long gone. What comes on at 11:00 that is so all-fired critical that I be seated for? Ha. Nothing much, just the Carol Burnett show. I like the opening monologue, where she talks to the audience. I marvel at the easy manner in which she addresses a crowd and takes what appear to be impromptu questions, though it could all be scripted, I can't say for sure. The rest of the show can be tedious, as they work through some tired old sketch, but I persevere. Perry Mason is on right after that, and it is the perfect kind of snooze TV to round out my boring day.

What is going on during the time I'm vegetating and struggling to just exist through the course of a 24 hour period is, of course, that life is passing me by. Grass is growing, insects are breeding, entropy is slowly turning my house back into the raw natural elements from which it was constructed. Paint peels, wood rots and water accumulates under my crawlspace during the rainy season. A younger, more vibrant man of action would be doing something to stem the tide of this decay, but all I can do is document it, poorly, and watch TV while I wait for death.

When will the big snail collector in the sky come for me with his salt bucket, I wonder?