Swimming In A Sea Of Chick Peas..................In The Caribbean Sea

My husband has this

"feeding thing":

He feeds all

 of God's creatures,

whether they want it,

or not...

If there is a remnant,
a scrap of a
piece of bread, roll or cake

in our house,

you'll find it on
 the front lawn.

If I pull a 

science experiment

out of our refrigerator,

Dr. Doolittle swoops in

& claims it for our

 Dutchess County friends.

I watch him

tearing chunks of bread & such

& tossing it from the front steps

of our house

like he's in the park

feeding the freaking pigeons.

Tuppance, this...

Oh, they'll all come out & over

to investigate his generosity,

strewn across our

football field of a lawn...

(I HAD TO SHOW A CLASSIC, OR I'D BE TOAST..)

That doesn't mean they'd touch it

with a ten-foot pole.

Sorry, no pictures available of

Bambi pole-vaulting...

Every time he starts
doling out old food,

I like to do the commentary on it,

standing behind him.

"Hey Joe,"

one deer calls out to his friend.

"Did you see what this
heartless bastard

has dumped on us

NOW?????"

"Oh, Man!

What color is that bread?"

"Do you think he intentionally

 doesn't eat this stuff & 

WAITS until it's that color,

just so he can leave it for us?????"

"I don't know, man.

But that's f'd up...

 I ain't touching it."

After one

Halloween-Birthday bash,

where Douglas had requested

Chinese food,

as his party fare of choice,

we ended up with a tray of

three thousand extra

EGG ROLLS.

Doug was all a-twitter

to count how many were left over,

as he had a BRILLIANT PLAN...

"I shall feed the family of

RED FOXES

RED FOXX 



 living in our backyard."

"Yes."

Good Lord.

Six little innocent Red Foxes,

no doubt dead on arrival

from such a gas pain,

that you could hear them scream

Dead Foxx

as they prayed for
God to take them,
quickly.

Wait. Get the mental picture.

Cabbage, Pork, Carrots &

 WonTon Wrappers

deep-fried to golden perfection.

The level of sympathy
 that I felt

for these poor,

furry creatures &

how they died

will haunt me til the day

I DIE.

Doug took the

same approach in Aruba.

Yes. THAT Aruba.

Now, this food

wasn't past its' prime....

it was just left over.

We do some

ass-kicking

food preparation

 in our tropical kitchen.

We make a beautiful, fresh

Buffalo-Mozzarella Caprese.

Uh, Moo?

We make homemade Hummus.

And Bruscettas...And Seafood Salads.

But one of our favorites

is an ice-cold

Chick Pea Salad.

We include razor thin strips of

red onion,

fresh cilantro,

holland peppers...

& fresh garlic.

It's healthy &

it's delicious.

But it requires

having a glass of

Listerine as a chaser....

Whenever we make it,

inevitably we end up snorkeling

the very next day.

As my C.P. salad is

further marinating over-night,

Doug gets all giddy,

remembering the last time

he polluted the Caribbean Sea,

feeding Garbanzo Beans

to the innocent fishies.

Don't get me wrong.

It's an absolute hoot & a half

to have fishies of all sizes

surrounding your body

in the ocean,

waiting to see
what you brought them.

Like little puppies,

licking your face...

The giggle factor is the same.

I have tried to
persuade my beloved

to stop



f'ing up the Food Chain.

Apart from remnants of the

 aforementioned

red onion,
orange, yellow & red
Holland Peppers,
garlic & cilantro

floating about in the once
 crystal-clear Aruban water,

Chick Peas contain

roughly

10 Grams of Fiber Per Serving.

Yikes.

Roughly...


is an extremely

appropriate word.

Without the proper intake of water,

fiber in a human digestive system can

mimic spackel on dry wall.

Now picture the agony of

a six-inch fish, trying to

do away with a

half-inch legume...

Ouch, Baby...very Ouch.

I think this is a big factor

in the actual cause of a

TSUNAMI...

Hey, Doug....

Stick with feeding

 those pigeons.

~SusiTheJ~

The Fishie Whisperer

The Smartest Mouse We Never Knew

Before

"THREE IDYLLIC WEEKS IN ARUBA",

ever took place,

we had earlier Aruban catastrophes on

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ISLAND.

In 2003?, Doug & I

did the same arrangement,

of tacking on extra Aruban time

to our pre-existing condition of Week 13,

from 1999 until death.

We found an apartment to stay in,

until we were due to show up

 at our hotel on Friday.

I don't recollect the exact handling of

THIS disaster,

& it certainly didn't come from

 Internet research,

but it was equally

as crappy as any other

 "non-Hotel-like joints"

that we have experienced.

This was a Pepto-pink-stucco

grouping of two-story buildings,

with private terraces.

My multi-piece lower back

somehow always ends up

on the second floor,

bouncing luggage up the stairs

(now, my husband is the

consummate gentleman &

would carry ME on his back,

if forced at gunpoint,

but I have to weigh doing it myself,

against HIS back going out &

ME carrying HIM on MY back,

for the rest of the trip.

I'll take my lumps, as they come.)  

Can't handle trauma, in volume.

Need it doled out,

little by little.

So, we get upstairs &

 check out the joint.

It's pretty crappy,

which is pretty much par

on our scorecard of Aruban get-aways.

But we're resilient!

We're not Jappy...not either of us.

We can handle pretty much any scenario,

no matter how bizarre,

as long as it's set in a

tropical locale.

We unpacked &

 settled in.

Because of our timeshare unit

that comes with a kitchen (oh, goody),

we drag along a magic suitcase,

with all kinds of culinary shit in it.

-- Wait. Don't judge me.

You don't know what we've faced,

 in trusting innkeepers to provide the basic necessities,

like FORKS.

You should see how much fun it is,

 to make food & then discover that the last inhabitant took home the only spatula.

It forced us (ok, me)

to become ridiculously

anal-retentive

about planning/packing

for our Caribbean adventures.

I took pictures of the timeshare unit,

with the drawers open,

so that I would not rely

on my senile mind to recall

what they provide &

what they do not.

"Nope, don't need a strainer,





potholders,

or


salt and pepper...."

You get the gist.

Then we'd arrive &

 realize that in order to get

that hot pot off of the stove,

I had to go into the dresser drawers,

find the comfy fru-fru socks

 that I wear for

sore feet

  

& slip them on my hands.

 I looked like

Kookala, Fran & Ollie,

getting a facial from the

steam in the pasta pot,

cause the last cheap bastards

 that stayed here

went home with a set of

 Aruba potholders,

which came,

no doubt,

 from the Aruba Dollar Store.

So, back to the magic suitcase.

We unpack some stuff &

 zip up the rest, referring back to it,

 when we need something else.

We do our grocery shopping,

which we love....

The main market there is called

"Kong Hing,"

 which I never get right.

It's inevitably Hong Kong, King Kong,

Ping Pong, Donkey Kong....

they get really pissed off,

when you don't get it right.

It's also loosely translated to:

"Attention Stupid Tourists:

 Leave your arms &
legs at the service desk." 

You can buy an

entire pineapple for fifty cents,

but an American newspaper

will set you back six and a half bucks.

Screw it.

If  I wanted to know

 what was happening in the USA,

I would have freaking stayed there.

As long as the borders are open

 when we hit the ground in New York,

I couldn't care less

 if it was eaten

 by Donkey Kong.

This STUPENDOUSmarket

(it's just so far beyond SUPER)

sells alcohol!

Even on Sunday! 

Their receipt system,

apart from doing the translation of

Aruban Florins

to U.S. Dollars,

also gives you totals by category.

Yikes.

When your liquor-subtotal

outweighs your food for two weeks,

by more than 60%,

you've got a slight problem.

Canned goods: $9.81.

Seafood: $62.75.

Plastic COCKTAIL cups: $82.00.

Alcohol:

$793.58.

God, I hope we don’t get audited.

They’ll find nothing illegal,

but I just know they’ll judge us.

So we get all of our great

grocery items put away,

in their proper place.

 

We go to sleep & when Mr. Coffee

wakes up to make the coffee,

 he discovers half a bag

 of some healthy snack we picked up,

like

Crunchy Cheetos

(Hey! It’s made with cheese)

chewed into like Cujo was roaming the neighborhood and stopped in for a bite.

There were Cheeto remnants everywhere.

I think this sloppy little mouse

stepped in the cheddar cheese residue &

 tracked it everywhere!

So inconsiderate.  

Hhhrrrmmppp.

So we jump back into our car &

 head right the hell back to Ping Pong

 for some nice glue traps,

which were imported from Holland,

the Mothership of Aruba.

 

Doug buys out all of the

damned glue traps that he can find,

plus four jars of the

 shittiest peanut butter

from The Netherlands,

 

to the tune of forty-seven

 American bucks.

I thought it was a tad excessive,

but I was not going there.

When we got back to Shangri-La,

Doug set about

setting up the sting operation. 

 He disinfected that kitchen,

like he was prepping for surgery.

Then he laid out all of the traps,

in a diabolical pattern,

that would not only trap the mouse...

once he got him into his lair,

but pretty much

piss the mouse off

so badly

by not leaving him

(I’m assuming gender here)

a fraction of an inch to

 manipulate his mousy little body,

that the mouse would not only get stuck,

but first commit suicide,

out of pure frustration...

in our uber-sterile kitchen.

He carefully placed

these extremely sticky traps

 in the exact configuration

that he had drawn up

on a piece of scrap paper,

when we had first returned.

On each trap,

he used an ice cream scoop

to generously dole out

a golf ball-size-serving

of the aforementioned

lousy peanut butter.

He threw away

the papers from the traps,

carefully cleaned the scoop &

 stepped back to survey his handiwork.

 He looked pleased,

which scared me a little.

He quietly turned off

 the kitchen light &

 we went to bed.

Waking up with Doug

the next morning,

was akin to waking up

 with my brother on

Christmas morning, 1966-1979:

He hated me,

but on the Eve, I HAD

to sleep in his room, in his bunk bed,

so that I didn’t get a jump

 on the Christmas morning goodies. 

 Doug was similarly

a little territorial

with the viewing

of our very frustrated,

 very dead mouse.

We had to enter

the kitchen TOGETHER,

side by side.

We had a fever pitch of anticipation,

 approaching the kitchen.

Holding my hand,

we crept into the kitchen.

Why did we do that?

Was he afraid that the mouse

 might only be stuck &

 not fully dead &

 any excitement might

put him into cardiac arrest???

 I don’t know. 

Doug reached for the light switch &

 I think I uttered a

small sound of euphoria,

 just as I swore you could hear

 that loser sound effect they play on

 Let’s Make A Deal!,

when you in fact,

lose.

 We looked at his matrix of

white rectangles

& were quite perplexed

to find not so much as

 one goddamned mouse,

along with not a single

remaining scoop

of shitty Dutch peanut butter.

The little bastards ate

EVERY SINGLE SCOOP OF

PEANUT BUTTER.

We stood there,

mouths agape,

like a couple of homeowners

 that had just put the key in the front door & discovered they’d been completely

 cleaned out by burglars. 

There wasn’t so much as

 a single strand

of mouse hair left behind.

It was such a clean job.

We were pissed off,

but I have to say

very impressed.

We threw out scenarios

of how they had pulled this job off:

Visions of them dipping

their little feet into

Goo Gone &

 sliding straight into the scoops.

They might have then

stood up on their hind legs &

 lifted the scoops,

 with all their might.

It was either that or

 they have a little circus act,

where they suspend

each other from their legs &

 the other mouse simply lifts the scoop

 off of the tacky paper.

They were organized.

I’ll give them that.

As we

Monday-Morning-Quarterback,

we are giving up on

non-brand-name hotel venues

in the Caribbean.

Jus’ sayin………..

~SusiTheJ~