Comida Mexicana

Dinner

Mark has been feeling ill since early this past weekend. I hate it when Mark is ill because that means I'm on my own when it comes to meals. Breakfast I can handle. A bowl of cereal isn't that hard to prepare, unless I intend to slice up some strawberries to put on it. Then it enters the realm of cooking for me. I hate cooking as much as Mark loves it. Anyway, for the last four days, because of Mark's sickness, I have had to prepare dinner. Saturday it was hot dogs. Sunday it was cheeseburgers, which is a real stretch for me since that involves all kinds of preparation. Like forming ground beef into patties. Monday was Pizza, which is really easy since I have Times Square Pizza on speed dial. It didn't matter, Mark didn't really eat anything that I put in front of him. Finally, yesterday, Mark informed me that he was feeling better. Great! I thought. Mark's going to make dinner tonight. But no, he wasn't. He was feeling better, meaning he felt like eating but not cooking, and he had a craving for Mexican food. So I got in the car, and in rush hour traffic, in a driving rain storm, I drove to our new favorite Mexican Restaurant. Tortilleria Mexicana. It's not just a restaurant, it's a Mexican grocery, a Mexican novelty store, and a religious bric-a-brac shop with a large Our Lady of Guadalupe section, but surprisingly no Pope Francisco paraphernalia. They do have a photo of Pope Benedict though.

I am so glad I found this Mexican restaurant. It has the three elements that make for the best Mexican food. It is slightly scary to the average Anglo, with lots of sketchy people hanging around. Most of the help speak only the minimum of English, so I have to think very hard about what I'm ordering. And best of all, they make their refried beans with lard. Yes, lard. Most of the Mexican places that cater to gringos have given in to the vegan, hipster crowd and have cut out the lard. Because of that, refried beans in most Mexican restaurants taste like crap. Literally, they taste like crap... and kind of look like it too.

Still Just a Rat in a Maze

I went over to the storage facility to retrieve the "de-clutter" that we had left over there. Following the advice of all the real estate experts, Mark and I took a huge pile of household crap and stored it away. And when I say "Mark and I", I mean that I packed the shit in boxes, I loaded it all into the PT Cruiser, I un-loaded it from the car, and I schlepped it all up to the storage locker. Mark drove the car. When it came time to reverse that process, I again did all the heavy lifting and this time I drove the car. It was easier to cut Mark out of the equation.

I hadn't been over to that place since way back in April and not only had I forgotten the code to get in, when I did get in I forgot exactly where our locker was. I was like a rat in a maze. Every hallway looked exactly like the hallway before it. Every door looked just like the door next to it. After wandering through the place for about fifteen minutes I gave up and called them on my cell phone. "Please, could you come up to the second floor, find me, and then help me find my locker?"

Now that I have brought everything back home, I am awash in boxes. I am amazed that we actually had all this shit here in our home, and what's worse, we were planning on dragging it all up to Chicago. I am not unpacking these things, so I now have to find a place for all of it, and I've been very creative. Like a squirrel preparing for winter, I have found a lot of places to put these boxes. Some are under the table that the television sits on. I stashed a whole bunch of them behind some of Mark's book cases. I've filled all the closets with them, and I wrapped a bunch in plastic and put them out in the shed. Now the only thing I have to worry about is Mark. He still wants that goddamned five hundred dollar blender that I packed away.

Out of the Closet

I'm Your Biggest Fan

It's still hot here in Florida. Not as hot as the past six months, but still in the upper eighties every day. Anyway, summer is over and autumn is here. Soon the harvest moon will show its face and the temperatures will ease just a bit. The humidity has already decreased, from stifling to simply sticky. Walking the dogs at night is actually pleasant again. Anyway, this is Florida and it is still warm, and it will be warm all winter. So I need a new fan for the bedroom. I've burned out the second one this year because I let them run non-stop, all day long. I went up to the Home Depot to purchase my new fan because that was where I got my last fan. I walked in and right over to where the fan department is. There were almost no fans. There was a bunch of empty shelves and a couple of giant ass fans that I couldn't use, so I went and tracked down an employee.

"Do you have fans any place besides those shelves?"

"Uh, no. If it isn't on the shelf, we don't have it."

"So when are you getting a new shipment of fans?"

"Probably in the spring."

"Spring?"

"It's fall sir. We don't carry fans in the fall and winter."

And this is one of the things I hate about Florida. The stores adhere to the same sales seasons as a store in Bangor, Maine. Come autumn you have a difficult time tracking down certain things. All the lawn furniture and swimming pool toys have been removed from the local Target store, and replaced by Christmas and Halloween crap. And if I want to buy a pair of shorts, all I'll find are the closeouts in sizes mostly for men the size of Jerrod before he went on the Subway diet and started seducing little girls.

So if I want that fan I think I'll have to go over to Sears. Nobody shops at Sears so they might still have some left. Which reminds me of when I first moved to Florida and my car overheated. I went to Sears and asked the guy where the anti-freeze was. He told me that they didn't sell anti-freeze, but that they had radiator coolant over there on the shelf. And so they did. Coolant... which just happens to be the exact same thing as anti-freeze.