Pick Your Poison - Egg Salad and Garlic Bread

Wednesday - My first full day on approved sick leave.  It is hard to gather my thoughts about this and other things. My head is not working well, which is why the decision was made, not by me, but for me, by compassionate supervisors.

There is more to the story (isn't there always?) but now is not the time.

Today I have a bunch of forms from my human resources department that need to be downloaded, printed, and attended to.  I tried reading some of them yesterday, and again today, but the words were shuffling in front of my eyes and I could not extract their meaning.  Let's try this again tomorrow, shall we?  I also have to make an appointment for a CAT scan of my brain, but can't do that right now, either.

"This is your brain on spaetzle"

Having said all of the things I can't do, let me think about what I can do.  I can make egg salad, and I can prepare some more garlic bread.  I can also complete the blog post on spaetzle and publish it.  I prepared the spaetzle on Monday evening, a final remnant of happier times, ha.  More like a moment of calm between storms.

Does anyone still eat egg salad?  Or is there anyone who doesn't know how to make it?  All I really need to say here is that I love it - that I now hard cook my eggs in the oven, 350 for 30 minutes - that I break up the cooled and peeled eggs with my favorite utensils, my hands - and that all they need to taste perfect is mayonnaise (yes, Hellmans, why do you even ask?), kosher salt, and white pepper.

Can I tell you how weird it is to be sitting in my favorite couch corner and watching everyone else going to court?

So the egg salad is done, and I am working on the garlic bread.  I bet there is a whole generation, maybe even two, of kids who think garlic bread comes from the freezer section of their local supermarket.  When I first learned to make this back in college, we used garlic powder, which still works just fine, but I now use 4 cloves of fresh, 1 stick of butter softened to room temperature, 1 heaping tablespoon mayonnaise, salt, pepper, and some variation on Italian seasoning.  Today I went with a touch of cayenne pepper, basil, oregano, a little sugar to balance the oregano, and a dusting of grated Romano.  Wrap it in aluminum foil, shiny side on the inside, and bake at just about any temperature until the butter is melted and the bread is as crusty as you like it.

I love this bread.

And now my head is starting to hurt.  I tried to watch television at around 5 pm, but even when I lowered the sound, it hurt my ears.  Then I got annoyed at everyone on The Five for picking on Hillary Clinton.  I don't know what I expected, since they always pick on Hillary.  Then I got annoyed at Hillary, who I have wholeheartedly supported for years, for getting herself into yet another situation. Then I got annoyed at William Devane and his damn Rosland Capital commercials.  Then I tried watching CNBC - that lasted all of 30 seconds - and switched over to the Weather Channel for something totally non-political.  That got me depressed for all the people up north, who are facing something called Winter Storm Thor.

Oh dear God in Heaven, now subpoenas have been issued for Hillary's private email communications while Secretary of State.  I am so damn tired of Clinton scandals.  I am also tired of Congressman Trey Gowdy's hair-do.  He reminds me of the Bob's Big Boy statue.  The man has had more hair-do changes than Cher.

I am not, however, tired of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.  It seems I have picked my poison, at least for this evening.  But wait!  The Magic are playing the Phoenix Suns.  And the dill pickle soup went down just fine.

Life is good.  Different, but good.