The white dribbled from the cracked shell right down the tiny space between the kitchen counter and the side of the range. That the oven was preheating was a bonus/curse. I could not move the darn major home appliance to clean up the mess. Still, with enough baking and broiling the egg white might petrify and prock off.*
It was not a good beginning, and I was already rattled about the alligator recipe dream. I mean really, how many limes does it take to marinate alligator steaks? Why doesn't my cell phone ever work in dreams?
Did I start the day over, as we used to advise the preschoolers? No. I went forth into the world and got a ticket in a school zone. Truly, I shoulda stood in bed.
Standing on the bed to dust the ceiling fan, I remembered how Grandma Halma broke her hip falling off a stepstool when balancing herself with a broomstick to replace the bulb in the hanging light over the chenille bedspread in the pink room. Grandma did not have a smart phone or a life alert button. She dragged herself through the house to the telephone in the living room to call 0 for operator. Halma coulda cooked a mean alligator, though.
"Prock off" was a weird expression used by Halma. Scabs prock off. Crusty stuff procks off surfaces. I can't find an origin for the idiom when things dry up, crumble, and fall away.
Reading Rick Moody's Hotels of North America consisting of fictional online motel ratings posts brings me to consideration of crusty stuff procking or not off. I nod, gasp, and chuckle behind my hand. My own essay collection of childhood vacations, "Memories of the Blue Fox Motel," still hasn't got past the title page.
We coulda, shoulda, woulda played or ploud.
Halma played pinochle, cribbage, bridge, and any game that was going. [I am a card game failure. After Crazy 8s it just didn't connect.] In the blink of an eye between rounds, Halma would whomp up a midnight supper of pressed chicken sandwiches, or steamed tamales.
Just finished Empire of Deception, the account of frauds and swindles perpetrated by Leo Koretz in 1920's Chicago. Koretz out-ponzied Ponzi, and set a shining example for Bernie Madoff. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder
No comments:
Post a Comment