This week,
everyone, for some reason or other,
seemed to be writing about breakfast:
about correct nutrition,
or in one case beer and cigs after a concert,
or the social value of a big,
American, British, or Canadian,
breakfast.
Which more or less puts me up a creek without a croissant.
Because…..
Drum roll….
I don’t eat breakfast.
In fact,
one sign of whether I am well, happy, and doing what I should be doing with my life is….
ta da….
no breakfast.
Ok, on a bad day a pot of so black the spoon stands up Irish breakfast,
or Canadian Red Rose tea,
or,
on a day when I just wish the world would get up and go away,
even blacker tea,
served by Harold,
the love of my life,
in a tea mug that looks exactly like a spindly, wobbly-legged goofy looking giraffe-
you drink from the pursed lips-
I think he probably bought just to make me totally crazy,
which it does,
but it also makes me laugh every time I see it.
Which is not a bad thing.
So…
to summarize,
if you come to visit us,
warn us ahead you want breakfast,
and which kind, please,
as Germans eat hard rolls with cheese and luncheon meat,
our Japanese visitors asked for daikon- white radish,
and our Spanish friends eat white baguette bread with olive oil.
Unless they decide to go the Full Breakfast route,
at which point they are usually smart enough
to eat in a coffee shop before asking us to join them,
or coming to visit afterwards.
Not that I can’t do the breakfast thing if I have to.
Traditional in my family was always some kind of hot grain…
grits, oats, cream of wheat, rice porridge,
you get the picture.
And maybe looking at the puddle,
with lumps and milk,
or burnt Saturday pancakes with too much syrup,
is the basis for my aversion.
(Puleeze, don’t ever believe that raisins hide lumps)
Either way,
if you just drop in some day,
you will have to take pot luck-
pigs ears in aspic for Harold,
tea for me.
Unless…
and here is the one BIG exception,
you are a Canadian giant airedale,
like the second love of my life,
after Harold.
(and before we had the rest of the family.)
Mugg
(Abigail Abbingdon Upstart Muggins)
and I were the first up every morning-
since I had seven am classes.
So after she went out to rouse the birds,
chase the neighbor’s cat,
and do her morning ablutions,
I would get dressed,
turn on the heat in the freezing house,
and then we would breakfast.
Sitting on the convection heater vent.
Her head on my leg,
watching every bite of my yoghurt,
until,
in the end,
she licked the spoon,
and got the remains-
in the yoghurt cup she very carefully held between two crossed paws,
before planting her entire head in it,
up to the eyebrows,
finally pulling it down a bit,
so she could see,
and racing around the house,
once through the backyard-
the triumph round-
“Boy look at me- I really got that yoghurt”
after which she would stop in front of me so I could pull it off and wash her face.
I had three great years of morning yoghurt killing with Mugg
before I left for grad school.
Where I met Harald.
And went back to tea-
Hey, maybe when they invent a human head size yoghurt cup…
Of course, with Harald there IS the advantage of the Saturday morning breakfast ritual.
‘Nuff said.
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Quahog on a Tightrope 