An Unnatural Love

Possible Quote of the Day: “I try to fill the emptiness deep inside me with Cheetos, but I am still depressed. Only now my fingers are stained orange. I am blue. And I am orange.”

~Karen Salmansohn

Let me confess: I LOVE Cheetos Brand Cheese Puffs. LOOOOOOVE them. And Let It Be Known That “Love,” in this particular context, like many contexts in which this word is used in America, means “a lusty hankering to an unhealthy degree.” It Should Also Be At Least Noted that the specific “Cheetos Brand Cheese Puffs” so craved are the freakish, glowing, puffy goodness of the Ordained Original, not the wimpy, shriveled, pathetic excuses for a Cheetos labeled “crunchy,” or any of the odd shaped versions. If they don’t look like overstuffed maggots, I don’t want ‘em.

My love for the construction-orange poofy nuggets originated during childhood: my mother, being a member of the Good Housekeeping Generation, was too offended by their in-your-face affront to nature and their exorbitant cost (which was significantly more than the 55 cents a bag of regular chips) to allow them in our house except on special occasions like birthdays and Thanksgiving. During those events I shamelessly stood over the Cheetos bowl like a drunken office worker, preventing others from nearing, nursing every stolen crumb until I my colon could process no more.

For me, nirvana during Seventh grade could best be achieved with a new “Mad” magazine, a sunny spot on the carpet, Elton John on the record player, and a bowl of Cheetos.

Alas, I am a Responsible Adult now. Ergo, these snacks are forbidden in our cupboard but for different reasons than my mother's. It is because they are addicting.

However, the other day I came home to find a bag of day-glo fluffy fingerlings glowing on the counter—the result of excess snackage from a Boys’ Day Out on the lake. In a Blink, I had found a pleasant read, (although in this century it was Dave Barry on the web), had a nice Adult Beverage and a large bowl of vibrant extruded corniness on a TV-tray by the couch. Life was SOOOOOO good! But I was soon to find it even better!

While at Wal-mart something caught my eye—What’s this? “All natural Cheetos puffs” served up as a neutral cream-colored puffette in the flavor of “Light Cheddar.” My mind reeled to make sense of what I saw, but to no avail: How can you have a Cheetos without the aberrant coloring that rubs off onto your fingers, clothes, and small furry pets? How can the words “Cheetos” and “Natural” be in the same sentence without causing a smirk or guffaw? Strangely…these snacks were fully Cheetos and fully serious. Even the bag looked healthy with its subdued palette of wholesome earth tones and a splash of respectable Navy. Chester, the racy, cool (and dare I say, “sexy”) icon of all Cheeto-ness since 1986 was present on the bag, only smaller looking somehow thinner—wimpy-er—in his typical wild-tongue stance; like a cross-country runner posing in a GQ pose for a “unposed” yearbook picture.

The Apocalypse just might be up on us.

The following is offered in order to appear knowledgeable and pedantic. According to Wikipedia, “Cheetos are often referred to in pop culture as the snack choice of lazy, overweight nerds and unemployed people.”

Don't tell my husband he could be lustfully replaced by a $3 bag of snacks at: marcyjoybryan@gmail.com

It's My Birthday and I'll....if I Want to...

"There is still no cure for the common birthday." ~John Glenn

Today is my birthday.

My husband is on the beach in California.

My daughter is spending the night at a friend's house.

I had planned to sit on my lazy patoosh with a nice glass of wine, some expensive chocolate, and a bag of Fritos, watching Nacho Libre or the behind the scenes of the original King Kong.

But instead I force fed my cat. Surprisingly, this activity was not born out of a sadistic desire but of necessity...she has stopped eating. Apparently cats will do that and then they can't start up again. So, to save her life we take something that smells and looks disturbingly like liver pate and a syringe and squirt several plunger's full down her unhappy throat. The whole process has gotten easier, which I'm not sure is a good thing. She doesn't fight much, nor does she throw up any more...but she just sits there and takes it. Not even when I retrieve her from under the bed...she just sits, resigned to her fate, as though even thinking about the struggle is too much effort. I wish she'd struggle just a little for that is one of the hallmarks of a cat--they are loners, walking to their own beat, or at least purposefully not walking to yours. They do what they need to do ONLY when they're good and ready to do it. And they pity the fool who tries to force them...their little razor claws and lightning fast reflexes can shred skin faster than, well, lightning. Our little Peanut was once the best and the quickest and possibly one of the largest of her breed. While prowling out of doors, she would bring home little ex-chipmunks, voles, birds, and mice just to show she could... In the house, however, she became simply The Stalker. I have caught her staring intensely at the oven as though she was trying to will it to turn on. Perhaps she was trying to conjure up her x-ray vision so as to see through the appliance, or attempting to focus all of the ESP energy from her self and all of her cat sisters to lift the giant scrap of metal out of the way of her quarry. Over the past 3 years, she has caught only two mice in the house: one was proudly placed under the coffee table in time for my surprise birthday party last year (And let me tell you, nothing says "Happy Birthday" like a dead mouse in the middle of a house full of people!) and the other we eventually found under the pedestal of our dining room table in "full-ripe" condition, if you get my, sniff, drift.

But trying to make my cat live isn't the only thing I did to celebrate the beginning of my 46th year on Planet Earth.

I also tried to download software from the internet to my computer. I know what you're thinking; you're thinking, "You idiot! Not on your birthday! It's emotional suicide!" Well, I just have one thing to say to you doubters of my technical prowess: Sebastian The Tech-Type Help Guy from Bombay (now called Mumbai) and I are now BFFs--we've even exchanged passwords and interesting data (Did you know that the population of city Bombay (now called Mumbai) and the entire population of Australia are roughly the same? OK Bombay/Mumbai is larger, but only just.) 3 hours, 20 minutes of my birthday were spent trying to protect my computer from viruses and infections. Halfway through I wanted to buy it a condom and say, "Just say 'no' to everyone."

But God brought to my house a lovely 50ish-degree day, blustery and spring-like after several weeks of biting cold while Kevin is in L.A. in the cold rain, proof that, even with everything (big or little) else, I must be his favorite

, I'm going for a walk in my polar bear pj bottoms because no one is here to tell me I can't; I'm having a diet coke and a handful of M&M's with peanuts and a handful of Cheetos too, in order to properly celebrate the me-ness that is.