And if you remember the days of the smoking section, you’re probably not in the smoking-hot section.
Naked restaurants would be a disaster for middle-aged men too, but men are never ashamed of their bodies, even when they should be.
Just saying, gentlemen.
It’s a scientific fact that mirrors don’t work for men.
Or on the contrary, maybe they do.
Because a man will look at a mirror and think he looks great, no matter what he looks like, and a woman will look in a mirror and think she looks terrible, no matter what she looks like.
So clearly, the problem is mirrors.
What are they up to?
Anyway, to stay on point, I wouldn’t go to a naked restaurant because I don’t want to see anyone eating naked.
Nobody looks good when they’re eating, whether their bunyadi is showing or not.
The proof is on CNN. Political candidates look dumb when they eat, and even though Hillary Clinton declined to eat in front of the cameras in New York, she couldn’t stop eyeing the cheesecake.
That would be me.
It’s not nudity that turns me on, it’s food.
In other words, my cheesecake is cheesecake.
Scrambled Eggs
Lisa
The hits just keep on coming at the Scottoline farm, where the animals outnumber the people.
They like it that way.
I don’t, especially when I wonder who’s running the joint. The only thing I’m sure of is who’s paying the bills.
Right now the chickens are in charge.
Because bottom line, they’re not producing any eggs.
Neither am I, but that’s another subject. No one’s counting on me for breakfast.
The chickens have no excuse. They still have estrogen.
By the way, my chickens might not be laying eggs, but my snakes are.
Ssssssensational.
In fact, just today I found a molted snakeskin in the garden.
Don’t you hate it when your snakes leave their clothes around?
To return to the story, one day my chickens stopped laying eggs, which bugged me.
Ingrates.
They have it great, in that they’re a small flock of fifteen and they live in a big wooden coop.
For free.
They also have a large outdoor run, so they can exercise.
Like a gym that you actually use.
Also, it takes work to keep chickens, in that their coop has to be cleaned, and they have to be fed and given fresh water, so the least they could do is squeeze out an egg or two every day, like they used to before they started slacking.
By the way, don’t get the idea that I do all the work for the chickens, because I hire someone to do that, as I am too busy and/or lazy, and if you think it’s easy to pay people to do all the work you are too busy/lazy to do, you need to think again.
Slackers!
But then one day, I went to the coop, noticed some broken eggshells, and realized that the chickens were laying eggs—but eating them themselves.
They were the Hannibal Lecters of chickens.
Hennibal Lechters!
This had never happened before, and I had no idea what to do about it. I started checking the coop twice a day, trying to beat the chickens to the eggs, but they won every time.
I can’t outsmart a chicken.
Still wanna read my books?
I did some research online, and it said that chickens could develop a habit of eating their own eggs and the only way to break them of it was by mixing some eggs with Tabasco sauce, pouring the eggs back into an eggshell, and returning it to the henhouse.
So I did that.
Yes, I made eggs for chickens.
I made food for what other people think is food.
Plus I delivered it to them like room service.
Remind me again who’s ruling the roost.
Anyway, it didn’t work. The chickens ate even more eggs, and I got the distinct impression that they would’ve also enjoyed a side of home fries, buttered wheat toast, and a cup of hot coffee.
I went back to the Internet, where it said you could also try training them not to eat their eggs by replacing their eggs with golf balls.
Fore!
So I dug up some of my golf balls from last year’s lessons and put them in the coop, but the next thing that happened was that the hens began fighting over which one got to sit on the golf balls.
News flash, chickens like club sports.
The hens sat on the golf balls all day long, and I couldn’t get the balls from them without being pecked, and when I succeeded, the balls were so hot they were practically hard-boiled.
Yum. Cooked Titleist.
Yet again, I went back to the Internet and found out that you could buy a fake wooden egg that was guaranteed to train chickens out of eating their own eggs, so I ordered a few.
And it worked!
Today my fake egg yielded a real egg.
Evidently, I tricked my chickens.
That makes me the trickiest chick of all.
Anniversary
Francesca
Exactly one year ago, I was assaulted in my neighborhood.
It’s not the sort of anniversary you want to celebrate, but one you can’t help but remember.
During the attack, I believed the stranger could kill me. Thankfully, I escaped only badly beaten and robbed. My assailant was never caught.
In the months following, I dealt with some of the typical posttraumatic psychological issues. But my most lingering fear wasn’t that I would be attacked again.
I was afraid of becoming a different person.
I liked myself before the assault, and I was afraid of becoming a fearful person, damaged, weak.
Now a year has passed, and I am a different person.
I’m a better person.
I have a greater love and compassion for myself. I was confronted with my human frailty—the parts that bruise and the wounds that can’t be seen. But what I feared would break me didn’t, and it gave me a greater belief in my own strength and resilience.
I have greater empathy. I am kinder to strangers. I know bad things happen, and I don’t assume the person next to me is immune.
I even have empathy for the person who was so desperate and misguided that he resorted to violent crime for extra cash. I’ve forgiven my attacker. His world is undoubtedly uglier and more frightful than I could ever imagine.
And I have a greater love for my neighborhood. I still live on the street where my blood stained the sidewalk, but I’d never consider moving. One could call that cognitive dissonance, but I disagree. Yes, this is the place where I was hurt, but more important, this is the place where I was healed.
My neighbors aren’t just the people who live next door, they’re the people who called the police, or who walked their dogs with me at the same time of evening. They’re the doormen of other people’s buildings who wave to me every night. They’re the ones who made me feel happy and safe again.
And yes, I do live with more fear. I was humbled by it, and as a result, I’m less trusting of strangers and more vigilant of my surroundings.
But that doesn’t take away the rest. My fear does not eclipse my strength, or my empathy, or my love of my neighbors. Despite the darkness I know exists, I find daily joy and light in the world. That the two coexist makes the goodness even sweeter.