Blue Fur

8AM yesterday morning and I am sitting down to a breakfast of chicken Parmesan, and spaghetti. I have already fed the cats, fed the dogs, and walked those same dogs. My reward for doing my morning chores is this meager breakfast of leftovers from last night. Later in the day, after volunteering at Abandoned Pet Rescue, I return home for lunch. I open the refrigerator and stare blankly at a wall of food, yet there is nothing in there for me to eat. I dig, and dig, and all I can find are two hot dogs. Over on the counter, in the bread box, I find some hot dog buns. They are three weeks old. They have a blue fur coating over most of them, but I am able to find two that can be salvaged. After picking away a bit of mold from the buns and boiling the hot dogs, I have my lunch.

Something is wrong. Mark and I have a system that has worked for the last eighteen years. I pay the mortgage, the electric, the car insurance, and all other miscellaneous bills, and Mark feeds me. That means Mark drives to the store and  purchases all the food for the house, and then he returns home and prepares the food for me to consume. I, in return, get fat. Usually when Mark goes shopping he makes sure that he buys some things that I am capable of preparing without his help. That would include breakfast foods so that I am not slurping down spaghetti at eight in the morning. It also includes the proper supplies that I would need to prepare my lunch, such as bread without penicillin growing on it. I am not saying that Mark did not buy any food this week, he did. The cabinets and refrigerator are overflowing with food. The problem is that it is all ingredients for Mark to make spectacular dinners for me. It is all crap that I have no idea what to do with. There is a box of something called Arborio rice in the cabinet. There are cans of artichoke hearts, coconut milk, and beans that I've never heard of before. He has five different types of flour, every type of sugar invented, and some kind of weeds in the vegetable bin. Not just one package of strange weed like vegetables, but many different bunches of them. I couldn't identify any of them much less figure out how to prepare them. What I do know is that at some time or another all of that stuff will end up on a plate in front of me, and it will taste damn good. But I need Mark to prepare it. So all day yesterday I had to scratch around to find something to eat. Mark had not bought any cereal, no bacon, no lunch meats or cheeses so that I could make a sandwich. I felt the pangs of hunger and realized what those poor people must be going through in famine ravaged areas of Africa.