THE CURE FOR WHAT AILS

My fingers still smell like ginger, and my apartment mate won't be able to enter the kitchen for a while. Even if she wanted to. She's currently dozing in her room after what I believe to have been a restful day doing nearly nothing. Which was probably exactly what she needed. What with overtime, she did five very long days this week, and is a little pooped.
I only work four days.
Me no poop.

Anyhow, in preparing my dinner this evening, I used ginger, scallion, chilies, tamarind, and fish paste. Lots of chilies. My apartment mate is Cantonese, chilies are somewhat of a foreign item to her. Which means that the fumes will keep her out of the kitchen till the air clears.

Which wasn't my plan. But if she continues resting in her room, that's actually okay.

Yesterday she subjected me to a long rant about irritating bossy Filipinas at work, neurotics, and nuts. Nearly an hour. I thought it was over when she went to brush her teeth, but a yelp from the bathroom shattered the calm.


"Toad, why is there a small round turd in the trash?!?"


Perhaps I should point out now that without her glasses she can't see very well. Everytime I have reminded her of this, she brings up the time I read the destination on a bus as 'Blitspah', when it actually said '15 Third'. There is NO blitspah here. But it was six blocks away on a cold night, and one's eyes might not fully function 100% at those moments.

What she indignantly identified as a 'small round turd' was actually a cigar butt from earlier in the day. Yes, it does sort of look vaguely turdish, if you squint and the light is just so. Or aren't wearing your glasses.
But to speculate irresponsibly about doddering old geezers taking wild aim with their behinds and missing is not nice, and totally uncalled for.
A fantastic and slanderous calumny. Cruel, even paranoid.
I am not old. We are barely eight years apart.
Both of us are only middle-aged.
Nor do I dodder.

Even from several feet away, it looks like a cigar.
Only a cigar. Unmistakably a cigar.
A very good cigar.


She's never really forgiven me for the time I surprised her with durian. She recoiled, yelling that it was vile and horrible, she couldn't wait to meet my uncle and aunt so she could tell them I was doing alien autopsies, I was a right degenerate, and get that frightful thing out of here! Evil fruit!
Then she moved the refrigerator in front of the kitchen door so I couldn't get back in.


We have a somewhat adversarial relationship when it comes to the kitchen.
I may not use it when she's cooking up something to take over to her boyfriend's place, and when I'm making anything with chilies she stays out. There were a lot of chilies in my tamarind meat noodles soup.
Cut very coarse, and fried till fragrant before adding.
Precisely what she cannot tolerate.
It makes her sneeze.


Dinner was exceptionally good this evening.

And quiet.




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