It was a week ago today that I decided to try again at quitting smoking. It was the day before when I had hilariously posted on facebook "everything happens for 7 reason", playing on cliches and grammrrz. I thought back immediately to that post when, while walking to work and after mentally deciding I would only have one cigarette that day, I found my previous self had left me 7 Turkish Royals in the pack in my pocket of the jacket on my body. And it's not that I then saved, or planned on saving, these to 'help' me get through the next week, but the symbol of such has stuck in my memory at least thus far.
For the past couple weeks, I've saved the bacon grease at work to take home and cook with instead of composting it there. So My roommates and I have been replacing butter with the white stuff in applications from saute and deep fry lube to popcorn and english muffin topping. You should've seen how much melted fat I browned garlic and onion in before adding it to heaping mashed potatoes yesterday. I then fried a cold M.P. patty (after fridgin' it for awhile during our Suffering Fuckheads expedition at the copper gate (if you haven't seen them, do. . . they play every Tues.)) in a shallow bubbling pan of it. One serving each of red wine, white russian, and Rainier and I passed out at a decent hour.
My crazy dreams concluded with me smothering myself in seasoning, preparing to be cooked, and the phrase "things are going to get opulent" circling my brain lump. I got up to pee and lay back down cuz it was like 5 in the morning and dark out, but then I remembered I knew exactly where a dictionary was, on the floor, and I looked up "opulent". I had to think for a moment the order of O and P in the dictionary and was completely thrown by R and S. I liked what it meant contextually and drew a turkey sittin' in my mom's baking dish, basting himself with a little baster, with the phrase close beside. Anyway, I blame the bacon grease for my unusual morning so far, when I might have otherwise just been waking up.
I packed my acoustic guitar to go play at the Ballard/Leary triangle for a minute and see if I could get a street folk conversation maybe, but I didn't leave the house and now it's almost nine. There are cigarettes to be had, but I opted for the banana, peanut butter english muffin and Earl Grey. The sun is not touching my front yard yet, and I'm the almost the only one up. Aeron and Jack had fallen asleep on the couches to No Reservations, and who's to say when their day would need to begin. No one here to stop me from smoking but myself.
So I sat down and pulled up Eamon's laptop, to share a little of my world with you readers and thinkers, the ones that appreciate good non-fiction, the kind that only happens in the author's transitional phase. I had a poster on my wall when I was younger than I am which featured a collie on a tricycle with a cat on his head with a balanced stick with an acrobatic mouse at either end of the stick. The phrase below was "The Trick About Life is to Make it Look Easy." Upon recollection, I'm not entirely sure of this order but it makes enough sense at least for this anecdote.
My mom got me that poster. I think about both the fact that she got it for me and the poster itself every day-ish. I wish I still had it, but I can't have it all. I'm doing my best, this is what it looks like.
She told me once she wishes I didn't have to smoke. I know I don't have to, but I'm almost as good at forgetting as I am at justifying my bad habits. For example, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger. How do their known carcinogens rank against the others, the unknown ones and the absent ones? I could argue with myself and at you all day. Anyway, I'm not just trying to quit for her, but I know she doesn't get much out of my immediate indulgence.
Have fun today, it's good out there.
