Belt Sanderson: Aromatherapist

 

Well, I have been sick.  There's been a crud going around. You're always tired, you get a deep, croupy cough, sinus issues, the works. It's not terribly debilitating, but it just drags and drags and drags on.  First the upstairsies had it. You could hear them hacking theior way through it, first her, then him, and then The Biker got it a month ago, and now I have it. GAAAAH.

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I discovered that you cannot kill fungus gnats with a nicotine drench, or by shaking the plant and vacuuming up the gnats that fly out.  I mean, that latter works, but you're only getting repeated hatches, not solving the problem.  It's fun, though.

  For any of you interested, no, you don't hold up the whole fucking vacuum up there; geeze. You use the hose attachment and the crevice tool. Get it together.

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When I am brought low by germs, I like to  hop on different chatrooms, or Reddit, and binge on other peoples' problems and weirdnesses.  A day goes by like an afternoon.

I used to binge on ghost stories, but most of the people submitting their experiences are in the first stages of schizophrenia, or are having night terrors, or are sixteen and under.  I like the stories that have been passed down through families, though. They're always offbeat. Most, though, consist of 'At night I'd be lying in my bed and hear footsteps/here's a description of the way our rooms are laid out (lengthy description which always contains bathroom.) YAWN.  

Honestly, don't submit your ghost story to a site unless you're dealing with bleeding walls, finding human remains in the basement, flamboyant possession episodes, unexplainable fires and full-body materializations.  Nobody wants to hear about footsteps or how your bathroom is laid out. Seriously.

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We are having ho'made lasagna for Christmas dinner, and I'm the ho making it 100% from scratch!  What  are you guys planning?

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Blub blub blub blub

This is a rant. 

Sumas is underwater again. Five feet underwater. You can go online and search 'Fraser Valley flood 2025*' 'Whatcom County flood 2025' or 'Everson-Nooksack flood 2025' and see everything sunk in five feet of flowing water (search 'Deming flood house') and all the usual stuff you see when shit floods.

OK screech back up beep beep beep Ok so the Biker and I lived in Sumas for over twenty years. We owned a house there, free and clear.  Then, in 2021, came what the city fathers told us was 'a hundred year flood'.  Meaning that an extreme flood in Sumas only happened once every hundred years.  And the city governments in the area of the worst flooding- Sumas, Everson-Nooksack, Lynden, Deming - hammered that phrase 'hundred year flood'. As if to say 'Hey, this sucks, but have a little patience, c'mon where's that smile, stick around and don't be a pussy,  because you'll never see this again in your lifetime! It was just one of those wacky things!'

What pisses me off now is that all the warning signs were there back in 2021.  Everyone in the area had lived through the worsening rains, the longer and longer winters, the repeated and worsening floods.  Shit, even the Feds were saying that a major flood was likely to happen again! That it would come sooner than previously expected! Climatologists from all the major universities in the state were issuing similar warnings!  NOAA was saying this!  FIMA updated the floodplain maps and let everyone know that Things Were Changing!  

The Biker and I have been following the news as it breaks, and seeing it all happen again...you just have to take a break and have a beer.  Discernable in several videos is our former house, once again sitting in 5 feet of flowing dairy waste, ruptured fuel tank effluvia, spoiled sileage tea, and the brown concoction that brews in the septic tank in the back yard. 

I feel a little schadenfreude, though.  Sumas was not a friendly little town.  It was full of rabid Trumpers and people who proudly felt that they didn't have to be smart because they 'believed on the Lord'.  We had no friends in Sumas (everywhere else, just not Sumas), and I still burn with rage when I think of the greedy, house-flipping bastard who bought our place lowball, and then tore up every single fucking plant - and a lot had survived the flood. To this day I would key his car and prop the tires.  

We had the sense to cash in our chips and gtfo.  What seemed initially like a huge financial sacrifice turned out to have been the smartest fiscal decision we've ever made. We knew that all the 'hundred year flood' stuff was BULLSHIT.  And here we are now, high and dry in a lovely historic town counting our cash and watching the Christmas lights twinkle. And the fucker who tore up all my plants is sitting with a sodden, worthless property that he sunk thousands of dollars into 

               AND I HOPE THIS FUCKED HIM OVER BAD.

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*Yes, Canada.  Because people on the American side of the border could not be arsed to repair the flood embankments along a five mile stretch of our river, and those failed, AGAIN, because if you ignore things they'll go away, and if you do a cosmetic 'repair' well hey that counts and everyone is distracted by this IT'S MAGIC WHOOSH.

During the last flood a man was KILLED in the Nooksack-Everson flood right next to where the embankment failed because the volume of water drove him under and he drowned. 

Now, this may be in poor taste, and do bear with me, Laverne, but does it matter or not that the man who was killed was Mexican? I mean, might the loss of a human life matter in the decision to let the Army Corps of Engineers do their job...? or does it matter if the life in question wasn't quite human enough for those in positions of responsibility?

Oh yes. Decisions were made. Real decisions.

And look at where this mindset has left them.

Welcome To Whatever This Is!

"You know what?" I said to myself just this afternoon, "It's time to have a Virtual Luncheon Buffet, dammit."

OOH!  Let's do!

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                                                      Let's start with drinks. Oh waiter!

A round of drinks for everyone!  And don't spare the horses! 

Or whatever I mean! I don't know!

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    'May I ask you something? Have you ever tasted Mogen David's   Extra heavy Malaga wine with soda and lime juice?'       

A New Leaf, 1971

Here, from Mogen Davids' "Menus for every Mood", is their nod to Elaine Mays' backhanded tribute:

DIGRESSION:  Now let's pay a nostalgic visit to Mogen Davids' line of products c. 1976

King of the screwtop wines, lowest in price, highest in glycerine, sugar and alcohol content, this was the tipple of the under-bridge dweller. Overtly. Proudly. So obviously so that Mogen David products were temporarily banned from stores in the downtown Portland area in the early 1980's. Because that fixed homelessness.  I mean it did, right? In downtown Portland Oregon, right?

Or here. Tip back a glass of

Or  how about a little home-made....

Or maybe some

Now let's hit the buffet!

First Up:  THE CHOW MEIN TABLE

                                              !!!YAY CHOW MEIN!!!!

Chinese as fuck!

I can almost feel the exotic trade winds blowing in from, I dunno...like, an island or something.

OH FUCK YEAH TUNAFISH. Nothing spells 'China' like canned tuna!

Best for last! Have some

Super like eat a bowl of this, and you'll be speaking Mandarin in no time.

FINE FINE FINE it's not chop suey it's chow mein. Or wait no it's chop suey. WHATEVER I MEAN. Does it matter?  They're both Chinese.

Except no. 

No they are not. 

Oh waiter!

...dang, son.  

OK you can go. Never mind. We're fine here.

No seriously we are.

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Everybody grab a fresh plate! Step up for some lovely salads!

DON'T FORGET THE SUGAR!!!!! 

And don't forget to seal it with mayonnaise - OVERNIGHT!

Go on, cremate that spinach! Add some damn ketchup!  

AND DON'T FORGET THE QUARTER CUP OF SUGAR SENOR!! 

Because everyone wants a plate of hot lettuce! Everyone!

AND DON'T FUCKIN' FORGET THAT SUGAR!!!!

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MMMM! Didn't that suck?  

Yes. It did.

Oh waiter!

Bacon grease and sugar doesn't seem to be agreeing with our guests.  Bring out some regular salad dressing, por favor.

(Foreign people love it when you speak to them in their language like this.)

Oh yes. Mineral oil. Guess where you'll be sitting in twenty minutes?  Begins with a

...if the bacon grease doesn't get you first.

Note:  this was A Real Thing beginning in the 1920's. It was called 'Dietary Dressing', and it was understood that it was meant to make the diner shit meals that their grandparents had eaten about 45 minutes after having partaken. Serious as a heart attack.

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Sadly, we come to the end to our soiree. 

But et voila!  

ONE LAST TABLE!!!!!!!

Do help yourself to some wacky amuse bouche el canapes! 

(The more French you use the cooler it makes you sound. You don't even have to know what it means. Nobody else does either.)

Grab an unregistered hand gun and get ready for some

Where's the cheese?  Only in the title. Tell you what, I won't remind the chef if you don't.

Or how about some

Makes the mouth water, doesn't it?  And just imagine how this smells on day 2!

And whatever this shit is:

And don't forget to gently, yet insinuatingly, grab a couple

MMMM! Chalk up the cane and grab your ankles!

NOW AREN'T YOU GLAD YOU CAME?  OF COURSE YOU ARE!  AND LOOK AT YOU  NOW!  YOU'RE DOG DRUNK AND  YOU SMELL LIKE MAYONNAISE! 

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My work here is done.