My wife made a very tasty chili yesterday, a conglomeration of hamburger meat and bacon, a spectrum of spices, pinto beans, and who know what else. We had it for dinner last night. While it wasn’t especially hot-spicy, it alerted me in the wee hours of the morning that it was spicy-spicy. I felt a slight case of heartburn during the night; it wasn’t sufficient to cause me to get up and take curative drugs, but it was enough to awaken me and express my body’s displeasure with my eating habits. I think it was about 2:30 that it awoke me (after a very, very early bedtime, thanks to I don’t know what). It kept me awake for most of the next three hours until, finally, I gave up and got up.
Coffee isn’t necessarily the most soothing liquid for heartburn, I’ve discovered. In fact, this morning it seems to be having the opposite effect, causing my stomach to growl, bark, and occasionally snap at me for my choice of beverage. I didn’t have many options, as it happens. It was bottled water or coffee made from bottled water; we’re still under a precautionary boil water order, thanks to yesterday’s nearby water main break. We have little else to drink in the house; neither bottled diet tonic nor wine make from a blend of cabernet sauvignon and syrah grapes seems especially well-suited for a breakfast drink.
I am not in the least hungry this morning. In fact, the thought of food is off-putting. But the idea of cool spring water flowing directly out of the ground is appealing. If I were closer to a reliable cool-water spring and could remain comfortably warm without getting dressed, I might go out for a sip or a swallow or a gulp. But the nearest cool-water springs, to my knowledge, are in Hot Springs; I would have to get dressed or risk freezing and/or being arrested were I to seek out the cooling effects of spring-fed dioxygen monoxide. (Is that the correct chemical formula for water?)
My wife will drive my sister-in-law to Little Rock this morning for a medical test procedure and I will stay home to keep the house cleaner company and pay her for her efforts. Having a house cleaner help with maintaining this too-big house is a welcome but rather rare event and it’s even rarer still for me to be the one to stay home while the house is being cleaned. Usually, I skip out during the vacuuming and mopping and such; my wife doesn’t mind the horrendously loud vacuum noises and the intrusion by a stranger into our living space, but for some reason I do. But today, thanks to medical stuff, I will stay here and suffer through the decibels. It’s probably best that I’m staying home, too, because the heat in my belly seems still to be alive with embers. I have to admit the fire was arson and I am the arsonist. I must make the transition this morning into firefighter.
Obviously, I’m not much in the mood to write anything of consequence. So I will stop writing for a while in the hope my creative juices start flowing again. Or until I can write about something that will make me think and be a bit more satisfied with the state of the world.
