The 876 Finest Recipes For Cooking Your Cat

The dog and I are listening to The Moody Blues sing Tuesday afternoon, both of us occasionally flinching at the unexpected summer thunder.

While I have been wrestling with what picture to use the music has moved to Isn’t Life Strange and I am nodding my head because experience has proven that truth is often stranger than fiction.

If there were no boundaries in blogging and I had no concern about what to share here I could tell you a few tales that would illustrate that in a way that would make you nod your head in agreement, but I won’t share those today so you’ll have to rely upon your own experience to determine whether you agree or not.

Light follows darkness.

My initial intent for this post had been to write about social media and blogging again. I hadn’t decided whether I was going to follow up on Blog Readers Come & Go or talk about Twitter but it was going to be one of the two.

Either one of those probably would have included commentary and or references to It Is What Every Blogger Wants and  Do You Miss Old Fashioned Blogging?

Hell, I might have even included How To Become A Social Media Superstar because that is a post worth referencing again but my mind is elsewhere.

Mostly it is focused on trying to write something that doesn’t make me cringe because I am embarrassed by the quality of the output but other things have my attention too.

I tell my children they should do their best to learn something new each day and to never waste time because you never know when you’ll regret not having more of it.

Today I learned that the devil hates me and that he has decided to use my dog as his instrument of evil because Satan has taken up residence in the dog’s ass and the gas attack almost rendered this room useless.

But if you know me well you know I am sometimes stubborn to the point of stupidity and willing to prove my bravery in the face of grave danger by pushing the envelope.

So instead of taking the laptop into the other room I stayed here so that I could use the good speakers to help me decide what songs to buy on iTunes.

Though I miss record stores and the fun of buying a new album I don’t miss paying for 13 or 14 songs when I only really liked about half of them.

What I Bought Today…So Far

1. Ain’t No Sunshine (Single Version) Bill Withers
2. Lovely Day- Bill Withers
3. I’m So Happy I Can’t Stop Crying- Toby Keith
4. Kiss On My List- Hall & Oates
5. Ooh La La- Faces
6. Mendocino County- Willie Nelson with Lee Ann Womack
7. Pancho & Lefty- Emmylou Harris
8. Rhythm Of My Heart- Rod Stewart
9. Can I Play With Madness- Iron Maiden

Serious Advice- Make It Easy For The Readers

The long time readers know I always write first for me and then for you. They know I believe it is important for a writer to be engaged and excited about the words they write because there is a better chance that energy will be transferred onto the page.

But I don’t know if I have done a good job of also expressing that I try to pay attention to the physical look of the content I put out.

So I keep hitting preview on this post to try and figure out if this post is easy on a reader’s eyes or if it looks cluttered and busy.

But what I haven’t put much effort into is trying to figure out if this post is too disjointed for you to follow.

Those who know me best will recognize this post as being a classic sign of how old Jack Steiner engages in deep thinking, how he sometimes processes the same sort of crap we all go through.

As for the rest of you, well I hope you can follow it but I am not going to make myself crazy trying to determine that. Second guessing is a good way to stop us from publishing content, sometimes you have to just write.

I figure at least a few of you will find it easy and interesting enough to keep reading so I am going to keep writing.

My parents are thinking about selling the house I grew up in and moving into something smaller and better suited for them.

The adult in me says that makes perfect sense but the kid who lives inside me too hates it.

That is my house and I dislike the idea of others living in it.

We moved into it when I was about three-years-old so it is where all of my formative memories are tied into. If they choose to do it I suppose I’ll write something more detailed and specific about it, but right now is not the time.

Doesn’t mean I won’t share a thought or two here. Doesn’t mean I won’t tell you that my grandfather died in the kitchen and that sometimes when I am there I feel his presence.

Doesn’t mean I won’t tell you about how a couple of girls helped teach me a thing or two in my bedroom and the echoes of those moments are part of why I’ll be cautious about letting my kids have boys/girls in their rooms.

But those same echoes also make me wonder how to best address those issues when the time comes too because I don’t want the kids to get themselves into trouble or to get a complex either.

****

That house is where I lay in bed and knew that one day I’d be a professional baseball player and where I knew that one day I’d live in Israel.

I’d lie in bed and daydream and think about how when I came home to visit I would walk in through the front door, hug my parents and then go put my bags in my bedroom because if I came home that would be where I would stay.

And that house is where I first learned sometimes people plan and G-d laughs.

It is where I figured out that our dreams can change and that sometimes the plans for our future had to change and that those changes would work out better than we could imagine.

Embrace The Change

The dog has wandered into a different room and my olfactory system is celebrating.

Certain scents are forever linked with important people and places. Sometimes I wonder what sort of scent I have and who recognizes it.

My kids would know the same way we all recognize the scents of our parents/grandparents but I sometimes wonder of those we have been intimate with associate a particular smell with us.

If we cooked meals together would they associate a particular scent with those memories too? I rather imagine they would, but I am fairly certain it wouldn’t be any of The 876 Finest Recipes For Cooking Your Cat.

I hate cats, but I can’t share a recipe with you because I don’t have any and I never have.

If you just exhaled in relief you don’t know me very well because I wouldn’t cook a cat. I would banish them all to Cat Island but I would never cook them.

*****

One more thing to share with you.

The  last half dozen or so showers I have taken have been punctuated by a feeling that someone else was inside my house.

Yet every time it has happened it has been during a time when I know for certain the dog and I were the only people there.

Might blog about this later, might not.

Got The Macallan 12 a good book and dinner to get to yet.

See you around…maybe.

• Saved: Life