This is a story about pasta and pride bear with me as I explain...

People  are like dogs in many ways. They desire what they are used to _ what seems familiar to them and they like to please the people they care about.
The other day I was at work outside sweating like a _ well a dog, when a cool breeze hit me full in the face. My first reaction was something like - hey that feels good.  Then I thought  what is this weirdness a cool breeze in August.
Having grown up in the warm subtropical climate of southeast Texas where  freezing temperatures are a once in a decade phenomena I suddenly found  myself freaked out by the idea of a cool breeze blowing across the countryside in August. Now to the point of my story.

I do most of the cooking in my house and am pretty good at it  for the most part. When times were tough I made a mean meatloaf and Rice a- Roni meatballs with gravy and cornbread cassarole and when they were better roast beef and stuffed pasta shells.

My daughter Alyssa, inspired at least partly I believe, by her father's skill with a stove .and aided by the cooking network or the food channel or some such nonsense has periodically tried her own hand at making a ‘recipe" usually with mixed results. I got used to the idea of smiling indulgently and patting her on the head and pretending it was great even if it was not.
Well one day _ bored out of her mind _ and up to her neck in the summertime blues- she decided to experiment with another recipe. I learned by phone that she was cooking supper  - breaded baked chicken on pasta with sauce.
Well I prepared myself to be indulgent and pat her on her 12-year-old head and smile as usual then fate threw a wrench in the works. I sat down at the table with my family and took a big bite of my daughter's concoction and was nearly knocked over with surprise. It was good - damn good and after several minutes I was forced to admit that I was a little jealous of her ability to make such a good meal from scratch on an impulse.  This time it was she who smiled indulgently and although she did  not pat me on the head it was obvious she was pleased by the turn of events.
I guess you should be proud when your children outdo you in things that you have for the most part taught them., perhaps this day she did, with a little help from TV chefs like Alton Brown.  So it is with pride that I present the recipe for Chicken Alyssiana created by "Chef" Alyssa Ann Hopper...my 12-year-old daughter.
Ingredients....
Sauce: ¾ jar of Prego garlic and herb spaghetti  sauce; a can of Rotel,a concoction of canned   diced tomato and green peppers;  two table heaping spoons of ranch dressing, dash of instant chicken broth, and broth from  several pieces of chicken, and some bread crumbs...

Breading: Regular bread crumbs, Italian bread crumbs, and five flavored crotons of your favorite flavor....

Basting : chicken broth, half teaspoon of butter, small dash of seasoned meat tenderizer,  and sprinkle of instant broth.

3 to 6 pieces of chicken

Put raw chicken in oven covered in two layers of foil and cook at 200 degrees. ..until done. Take broth out of pan. Melt basting ingredients in pan  with broth and baste chicken regularly .
Cook favorite pasta spaghetti noodles work well and combine sauce ingredients in separate pan and cook together.
When chicken is mostly done but not falling apart bread chicken and continue cook, breading periodically and moistening the breading a little as needed with the baste as needed.
Serve sauce over pasta and chicken on top, garlic bread makes a nice add on.

 

How hairy is too hairy...to go outside that is the question.

It is a question that occured to me at work a few days ago when I, out and about and about my lawn care duties. I pulled up to one lawn and began to lawn care away. When suddenly when I heard a friendly sound from the opposite side of the yard. It was the owner of the lawn, with queations no doubt,  I thought as I  put on my best smile, took a deep breath and looked to where the voice came from.

The site that greeted me nearly knocked me down. What I saw was not a man at al. It was a patch of hair with arms legs and eyes. It was the Incredible Hulk of hairy chia pets. The dude was shirtless and so hairy, I nearly called 911 to report  a sasquatch sighting. The site hit me like a ton of hairy bricks. and nearly left me speechless.

 I mean this guy was a forest of  black and gray hair two or three inches high. and for a minute I thought he was being attacked by thousands of huge  hairy spiders or was in the process of turning into a middle aged Jewish werewolf,. I was speechless for several moments but soon caught my breath and managed to politely continue on my duties and bid the customer a friendly good day.

Now as a fairly enlightened man from a gene pool full of hairy guys I think this episode brings to mind a question that must be answered. 

How hairy is too hairy to go outside shirtless???? At what point does freedom of expression give way to aesthetic concerns. Is ordinary middle aged hairiness sufficient to prevent going without shirt. or does one have to look like a salt and pepper  abomidable snowman to be forbidden to go shirtless.

 The importance of this question is oobvious and as all real men are hairy to a certain extent it is a question that must be answered. Normally I would always favor freedom of choice over any such concerns but people shouldn't  look like lint balls when others are trying to work.

i am not without sympathy for the hairy. Hey a guy wants to relaxe when he is home and sometimes going without a shirt. Many of the men in my family are hairy. They are so hairy that the Air Force had considered using some of them as antiaircraft weapons. They said all they had to do was build a big crane to roll one of them across a giant ballon and the static electricity would bring down ballistic missles. for miles. This guy made my relatives look like a hairless surfer male model and we need to do something about.  It takes a lot for a guy to be so ugly that he repels other guys by taking his shirt off but this guy found a way. Call the state legislature. Do something ....

 

I'm only 46 and today I wore my first official fashion deprived old man outfit
aarrrgghhhh.....
Let me explain...I had errands to run with my 73 year-old father and had already spent the morning moving the odd piece of furniture. I therefore put forth exhaustion and sleep deprivation which I battle constantly as an explanation of what followed.
My "tenishoes" (notice nobody actually says tennis shoes or athletic shoes) were nowhere to be found. so I grabbed a convenient pair of "other" shoes and convenient pair of pants and walked out the door. As I was getting in the car I noticed the shoes I had put on were an old pair of leather work/dress lace up loafers. They went well with the blue sweat pants and the black Adidas T-shirt I was wearing.
And then it hit me. Arrrrggggghhhh I am wearing an old man outfit I thought as I got in the black Kia we use for trips that do not involve carrying or ferrying cargo. You the outfit I speak of_ all those clothes your grandparents use to wear at the age  they stopped caring that knee high cowboy boots do not go with pastel day glow long johns and a denim NASCAR jacket with no shirt. That's an image from a long forgotten family reunion picnic on an east Texas lake, one I will not soon get out of my head.
 I looked at my father, who was born when there were no Interstates you could still take a train to LA, to comment on the fact I had worn my first old man outfit. When I saw that he was a wearing a faded blue polo and a pair of dark blue pants that hadn't fit since about 1974 I realized he was long past caring and already into the old man outfit.
I'm sure back in the day he drove his 55 Chevy hotrod around town drag racing fuel injected Cadillacs he never thought about wearing such things, or if he did they fit and were in style.
( Not that I care about such things you understand.)  I remember a similar experience a few years ago when people who knew me talked me into trimming my hair, which had grown to a second childhood, mid crisis shoulder length mop. The hairstylist giggled a bit as I told her how I wanted it cut and then a little more as she turned me around in the stylist chair to get a look at my hair.
"Nice mullet," someone just out of eyeshot said as I gazed at my new hair. "It's not a mullet," I started to say before realizing in horror that it actually was and sat back down in the chair with a sigh. Arrrgggh I said Charlie Brown style arrrggghhhh....

 

Somehow our dog knew he was going to be fixed and somehow "guilted" us out if it...

I think animals are psychic after a fashion. I know my black lab Spazz is. You guy s know Spazz, the dog who consumes strange weeds on his walk and in the past often had "Spazz" outs" where he ran back and forth in a room so quickly that he met himself coming.

About a month or so ago we got another dog, a female puppy named Red so we decided it might be prudent to get them both fixed to avoid multitudes of puppies that would ultimately accompany the little ones maturity. Red seemed blissfully oblivious to the whole idea but Spazz knew something was up. He became mopey, (is that even a real word. Spell check says it isn‘t but I have my doubts) and paranoid almost depressed and we became worried. He sat around, seldom begged for food and didn't eat his weed for weeks. Did he know something was up ? Surely not...

He even turned down a cookie...which as a rule Spazz will never do. Years after he passes on to the grace of the Goddess or a cloud covered with chocolate chips that dogs can eat, cookies will turn up missing from people plates and I know it will be the ghost of a certain dog having a midnight snack.

I mean this is a dog that once chose a cookie over a piece of roast beef sandwich.

As we continued to have our weekly "state of the mutt talks" Spazz lay on the living room couch arching his eyebrows and looking up at us in sadness we became even more concerned.

As the talks progressed and we talked about our, our doubts the doubts grew.

In my mind I could almost hear him working his dog Jedi mind powers saying "dude you can't be serious planning on having me fixed ...dude come on...dude...these aren't droids your looking for." In my mind Spazz has a voice that sounds like a mellow metal head.

With every pet we have owned I always tried to imagine what their voice would sound like. Shaggy, a big fluffy 10 pound ball of kaki colored hair always sounded like a California surfer guy to me. BB a mutt that was part midget lab and part hair stylist sounded like Eddie Murphy playing an effeminate gangster in my mind. He was a sensitive dog that somehow managed to dominate all the other dogs around him. There was boots who I pictured as a big dumb country boy like the mentality challenged character in "The Stand."

Then there was Curly, a stray probably from a local meth lab, who barked piles of leaves. He would stare at them first. Then bark intently. "The leaves are evil, the leaves are evil," he seemed to say in Dustin Hoffman's best Rain Man voice. Any way back to Spazz.

At first we were steadfast, convinced it was the right thing to get him fixed...then our will began to fade as the now mellow five year old lab began to working us over with his sad, pathetic stare and Jedi dog mind powers..

"Well it is surgery," we reasoned , and something could go wrong. Spazz perked up a little when we thought and talked about these things and seemed to concentrate, perhaps bringing his canine Jedi powers even further to bear.

"It is expensive," we thought and the dog became almost normal for a few brief minutes a day, wagging his tail and seeming to smile. In my mind I could hear him say ...Luke ...I mean dude...just think about it...." Did I mention I did have a cat once I named Mrs. Warhol after my reed headed fifth grade teacher who I had a big crush on. I was living in south Texas and that Minnesota accent seemed so exotic.

One day at he end of a long conversation about it we decided not to have Spazz fixed. I could almost hear him say.. "The force was with me..."  he immediately became his old self, Spazzing out in the living room and eating his weed onn the daily walks. It was our decision right...wasn't it. 

 

Everything is relative in the end I have discovered.  Robins are really cute birds and aesthetically pleasing to look at as they hop across the lawn in their full summer glory, a sure sign that the season is well underway. I watched a Robin recently while I was at work.

 He was hopping across a lawn almost smiling at me, secure in the knowledge he could fly away at any time, well before I could reach him He seemed to be showing his cuteness off to the world like a preening orange and black Smurf  fashionista. "Look at me I'm cute and harmless'" he seemed to say.

As I stood there admiring the cuteness of the little orange and black bird he suddenly stopped paying attention to me stared intently at the yard full of grass in front of him and then turn his head and flew off with some thing in his mouth. I never got a clear look at the object he had grabbed and stuffed in his mouth, although it was clearly alive and squirming for its freedom. As I was writing this a Robin, perhaps the same one I had observed days earlier,  landed on the grass outside my sliding glass back door with an earthworm in his mouth. He landed briefly and flew off to eat his lunch.

Imagine you're the worm crawling thru  your own dirt home quietly enjoying your afternoon snack of rich black earth and some great feathered beast 40 times your size grabs you by the torso chomps down on it and flies away with you in his mouth fully intent on making you his afternoon meal.  Imagine you are the baby bunnies my black lab Spazz tried to eat on his daily walks. The moral of the story is that Robins and puppy dogs aren't cute if you are an earthworm or bunny rabbit.