Close Enough

Up close and personal with butterflies. I'd read that some of them (maybe all, I don't know) taste with their feet, when I went out this morning to sling-blade a better path to the outhouse, I saw a great number fluttering on the blackberry, I stopped to watch them. I sat so still that several of them landed on me, but I wasn't to their taste. They do seem to like my salt, but they're after sugar. I pretty much spent the entire day watching butterflies. I had other things I was supposed to do, Kim is stopping by for a day and two nights, and I wanted to do some cleaning, and I have to go to town tomorrow, to buy food for his visit, so I need a list. I had picked up a four-pack of light bulbs because I'd robbed the one in the guest room, and a can of Wasabi Almonds which I seem to have already eaten. I already got two bacon wrapped filets of beef, because I figure Kim doesn't that very often, with a baked potato and a salad of mozzarella with cherry tomatoes. I'm going to cook the luxurious stir-fried, brined, cubed pork loin, with caramelized peppers and onions; a fairly simple meal that used to take me twenty minutes and now requires over two hours. I really have the mouth-feel thing down now, with this dish; people actually swoon. There's a pecan rice from Louisiana that goes well with this. If there are any leftovers, I mold them, fry, and top with a fried egg. Offers of marriage, but I ignore that shit, no one could possibly live with me. Just because I can cook breakfast? Actually, I have to say, I can almost always, any time of the day or night, cook a great breakfast. It's a gift. And I can see how it could lead to someone thinking I could do something, change the limited order of things. I can't, of course, useless as the teats on a boar hog. Just because you can fix breakfast doesn't mean you can do anything else. Not that fixing breakfast isn't to be caught somewhere in the mix. It's my favorite meal. The phone has been out for a couple of days and I had checked my end, so I knew it was knocked down, probably on Mackletree. Went out to get food for Kim's visit and there were several trucks and a great many people (15) looking at the downed poles and a large tree, and the phone line was hanging everywhere. It'll take them a week to get it fixed. I stopped to survey the damage, and one of the county guys asked me about log trucks, and I told him that they were logging on Lamp Black Road and coming out this way. He said he had thought so, because the tire tracks indicated a logging truck swerving to avoid a collision. Also, some signs on Upper Twin that the road would be closed for a couple of days, probably for this year's resurface of chip-and-seal. They lay out a bed of hat tar, then embed limestone gravel and roll it flat. It's brutal for about a week, bouncing rocks and the smell of tar, then it holds up pretty well for a year. I hope Kim can drive in tomorrow, because I don't feel good about leaving his truck at the bottom of the hill. Saw my old creek-bank mechanic, Dave, at Kroger, and we chatted in the meat section. He's out of work and digging yellow-root for food money. I think it's Cohosh, and he gets a decent price for it. I promise to stop down at his place one afternoon. He watches old western movies and has DVD sets of all of the TV westerns from the 50's and 60's, and it's actually kind of fun the watch an old Gunsmoke, the set is truly horrible, the plots are ridiculous, and the acting is terrible. On my way back in I stopped down at B's. He looks gaunt, but feeling better, and we caught up to speed. A good friend, who had published both of us, had died. Ken Warren, and I hadn't heard; his magazine, House Organ, was important, it kept a lot of writers in touch with each other. And his own writing, about Olson, was so insightful, that it makes you feel you might eventually be able to read. Started raining, and I waited for a lull, then dashed home from B's. Lamb chops and braised Brussels Sprouts. Kim's here. Great conversation (construction stories) and good food. He had his yearly drink. Phone restored. The guys in the field jumped at the weekend overtime.