Chapter 47. Pincushion.

Chapter 47

Pin Cushion.

Tuesday afternoon it rained.  Hard.   Looking out our front window, I saw that the car cover had blown off of the Alfa which had been leaking slowly and steadily to the point of worry and mildew and potentially rust that winter.  I needed to get a carton of organic free range free roaming stock that guaranteed the chicken went happily straight to bird heaven don’t worry don’t worry about it from the garage anyway.  After the rain finally stopped, I went outside to get the stock and take the car cover out of the rain gutter and towel off the interior of the Alfa.  I was wearing a pair of old slippers with soles worn smooth over may years and pajamas at 3 in the afternoon.  Bad idea.

After retrieving the happy happy chicken stock out of the garage, on leaving the back yard, I made a quick detour onto the side path that ran through the garden to put the lid back on the compost bin as the top had blown off several days ago.  Another bad idea.  This shouldn’t and wouldn’t have been a big deal if I had been wearing shoes with soles that grip or the paving stones weren’t shiny, wet and green moldy from a winter’s worth of rain.

I don’t fall often and with the yoga and meditation I had been doing for the past year, I believe, even if there is no empirical truth to back this up, that my sense of balance had improved greatly as a result.  Well, none of that mattered a bit at that moment.  This fall happened so fast there was no time to even attempt to balance myself.  One moment I was up taking my first step on the path and then next I was seamlessly down for the count.

As my right foot planted it immediately slid out and my left knee, now bent at a 45 degree angle, rammed into the top of the wooden planter box which bordered the side of the path as my right struck the paving stones.  The pain was immediate and real.  I had one thought, “this is going to hurt a lot more tomorrow.” Sitting on the wet ground and pulling up my pajama pants, I was relieved to see no blood.  There was a long red line that stretched across the knee cap where the collision had occurred.  Nice.

I limped over to the Alfa and finished the job before going back inside. The rest of the day was spent with the well-known post fall regimen of ice, ibuprofen, elevation and arnica.  I was happy to have already started the aforementioned lazy man’s chicken soup and it simmered quietly bringing good smells and vibes into the kitchen.  I ate dinner alone, knee iced, in front of the Daily Show.  Only big foot white dog was happy about any of this, it meant more couch time with company and that is where she sat curled up next to me snoring doing her best to take as much space as doggily possible.

She who seems to always be working late found me later in bed at 8:30, leg propped up, watching the Warriors struggle through Don Nelson led listless loss, eyes closed and fading quickly with the help of a massive mug of chamomile tea.  Not surprisingly she, exhausted from yet another 12 hour work day, did not notice the state of her husband, said a quick hello, gave me a routine peck on the cheek and went right to the bathroom to shower because she was cold.

She did ask in passing if there was dinner and I told her that there was soup waiting in the fridge.  A few minutes later she, swathed in flannel like a newborn, went downstairs and I sat there wondering, just what would it take to get her attention?  Severed limbs?  Piercing screams of pain?  Blood spouting from veins and arteries a la Python or Dan Akroyd’s famous Julia Child imitation?  Now I know that with all fairness and to her credit, there was not much to see except a man lying in a bed with his leg elevated. Maybe that was not as dramatic as I would have thought it to be.  Maybe not.

I decided not to bring up the fall and after complimenting the soup “Nice soup”, she gave a quick good night “Good night dear”, pulled the blankets completely over her head and went to sleep almost instantaneously as I watched, no make that stared at her, in a combination of shock and then not because the same thing had happened so many nights before.

I never got used to this side of she who is otherwise a good wife and neither have many of my friends who get the same treatment from their respective spouses.  For us, it all starts and ends with the attention to detail, or more importantly the lack hereof.  So much just seems to float by our wives and never reach their consciousness.  We don’t know whether to even bother to point these moments out anymore (usually they get pissed off when we do) and that is where I find myself these days, not even bothering, shrugging my shoulders and saying “whatever you want dear.”

The next morning went down the very same path as she who compliments those late night board meetings with very early parents meetings was out the door before I awoke.  I really didn’t know what to do with this behavior, couldn’t tell if she plain out forgot that today was surgery day or not.

After carefully showering the trip downstairs was slow, descending step by step, so as not to aggravate the now swollen knee.  There in the middle of the dining room table was a short note right to the point, “Call me when you come out of surgery and let me know if you are OK.”  And if I wasn’t?   Then what?  In the end run there was no need to dwell on it, that was the extent of the sympathy call and there would be no more.  It never was different and it wasn’t going to change now.   There was no time to deal with my feelings about her feelings, I had a date with a scalpel in the city in an hour and it was time to go. It was toast, coffee and limp out the door.

One hour later I found myself sitting in a tiny nondescript medical office on Sacramento Street with a group of fellow sun damaged voyagers.  They ranged from much older veterans of the cuts, burns and frozen tissue to people more my age. Most read and after they explained the routine, I did too.  Others compared surgeries and deformities like athletes going over game results. I can’t say whether I felt any emotions that morning, I knew why I was there and I just wanted to get on with it and kept within.

As the nurse explained it, the routine was simple. They would go in, remove the bad cells and measure a perimeter of healthy tissue around it.  Then they would lab test the healthy edges of the incision.  If it came out clean, they patched you up.  If it didn’t they went in again.  And if needed, in again until gone.

The removal portion of the story happened fast and just as during the biopsy, the pain was limited to the first few moments when the Novocaine shots went into my left nostril and then burned like hell.  After that I numbed up quickly, that strange swollen feeling spreading into my mouth and lips.  The nurses, pleasant and efficient, asked regularly if I was feeling OK.  I told them that my lips hadn’t felt this numb since the 1980’s.

Youngsters that they are, they didn’t get the joke.

The surgeon, a young, intelligent and totally professional woman, did the first cut quickly and I felt nothing whatsoever. She offered just enough information to keep me posted and set about her work like any other day.  As I sat there under the hot bright lights I wondered, did some part of me feel that pain?  Where does the pain go when you are numb?  Is your nose screaming as it gets sliced?

It was over in minutes and then there was only the waiting.  I was too uncomfortable to read so I sat listening to the inane conversations of the staff with the rest of the cut crew. I tried to make the time go by as quickly as possible by clearing my mind and that seemed to help until old reliable, my stomach took over and thoughts of lunch began.  Being a good San Francisco office crew they knew where to send me, a great Burmese restaurant on Clement that I had been meaning to try for years.

I felt pretty weird limping through the Richmond with the left side of my face fully bandaged like a deranged patriot wearing sweats.  Who knows what people would think had happened to me that morning.  I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of a good meal.  I deliberately walked the 10 blocks to the restaurant with determination and of course missed it twice.  Once there, the host quickly found a seat tucked in a corner, merciful for me and their patrons.  Who would want to look at me over their festive lunch? The service was quick and a few minutes later, with my mouth still half numb, I guided the beautiful green vegetable curry in slowly and carefully.  Carrots, peas, potatoes, tofu, god it all tasted so damn good.  I determined that I needed a straw to drink the green tea that came with it.  I didn’t care how the tea went in, it both revitalized and refreshed.  There was solace and wonder in the complexity of the curry and peace in the warm comforting green tea.  I was ready for round 2.

When I returned to the office that afternoon results had come in from the lab.  They hadn’t got it all and would be going in again.  For the first time I felt uncertainty in the process. Up until then I had been nonchalant and matter of fact.  I began to worry about how long I would be there and whether this procedure was going to work.   I thought about how big the hole was going to be in my nose and whether it would ever heal.  As I did, a thought welled up from inside:  It was my man buddha. He spoke to me quietly. Calmly.  You are here and lucky to get such care. You are in the hands of capable people who are going to get this thing out of your body.  It is not fatal.  It is local and this is the worst of it. Relax and let the moments happen.  And my anxieties disappeared like a candle that had just been blown out.

This voice was still foreign.  Yet it lived within me now, a calming influence that I had never experienced.  And each time that I felt this way it became more natural and less odd.  So I relaxed and they called my name and I went into the surgery room again.

Well, that one got it and another hour later they gave me the good news from the lab and the repair process began.  That was the surprise. The reconstruction took 5 times as long as the cuts did and were 10 times as brutal.  It was a physical attack on my face.  A new round of numbing shots, the dull sense of pounding as she cut flaps of skin and moved them over the wound (all patiently explained) and the needlework reconstruction.  “Think of these as hundreds of small stitches that will dissolve over the next 6 months”, she said.  Then to top it off there came the sick smell of yourself burning during the closing sets of cauterization.  When it was over they asked how I felt.  I told them that I felt like I had been assaulted.

I managed to drive home, let her a voice mail to let her know that I was fine, and passed out in bed after eating some chicken soup and taking a Vicodin, the feeling having now returned to the left side of my face with a dull and steady march of gradually elevating pain.  I am not much on painkillers and try to avoid them where possible, but this was not a time to put ego over suffering.  I slept soundly and did not hear a thing when she came home.

The next few days are difficult to remember and that is not just because of the pain pills.  I have seen pictures of patients emerging from plastic surgery and that is what I looked like.  My left eye, especially the eyelid, was swollen shut and my right was not far behind.  My face seemed to have doubled in size.  It could have been featured in an ad for a midnight horror show at a downtown movie theatre that was already going out of business.  Surgery, small or large, knocks you on your ass.

The damage didn’t heal quickly and I stayed inside, not wishing to deal with the world feeling like a freak. At least the enforced rest helped my knee to heal. She who became concerned at the scope of my swelling was as supportive as she could be, bringing me milk shakes and oatmeal, all that I could eat for the first few days.  Mostly I just sat in bed, listened to music through my headphones (classical and trance/chant) and thought.  My left eye was still way to closed to read or write.

I thought that I could meditate lying prone but quickly found that meditating in bed was not going to work.  My brain would wander all over the place, the monkey was in control, and then I would fall asleep.  So despite the condition of my body, 2 days later I headed back to the mancave and the cushun.  The routine of Manful Mediation was what I craved and there I returned to peace again.

In my meditations that spring something kept coming back to me. It was a new concept that had been haunting me in small pieces while it emerged.  A feeling that was not a part of my being, an idea that I could never ever have felt earlier in my life for a host of reasons, many of which had been explored in these manful meditations.

It was this:  Gratitude.

Gratitude was an entirely novel feeling for me. One that could only emerge with the passage of a huge chunk of free time and the sense of renewed perspective that this phase of my life had gradually worn into me moment by quiet moment.

I had no idea that so much could change in my life.  No idea that so much internal satisfaction existed outside of work.   No idea that I could alter the way that I looked at the world every day.

With gratitude came the realization that I was lucky.  Not lucky in the stupid sense, but in the way that my chance had brought real opportunity to do something different with my life. Lucky that my efforts went into something and not to waste.

Lucky to have exited an impossible work situation one month before the country shot full speed into a recession with dollars in my pocket instead of a worthless IOU or a lawsuit.  Lucky to spend my days with she who works hard, looks good and brings home the lardons.   Fortunate to have 2 kidults who bought into the work ethic we taught them and talk to me with humor, love and respect that is mutual.  To have the support of friends who were there during those dark days when nothing good was happening and I just needed to talk and talk. And most of all grateful to have my health back (blood pressure was 130/70 this morning thank you very much!).

Lucky to have stumbled into manful meditation like a drunk coming home from a long night who finds his way home and feels his key going into the lock and the door opening.  Happy to have a dog that could walk and walk and when that was done walk some more and howl at you when you were too lazy to go out until you did.

Thankful to live in a neighborhood that was safe and beautiful.  Thankful for the sight of clouds flowing over the golden gate bridge into the bay.  Thankful for the clean ionized post rain air.

Thankful that my past was now a past and not a present.   Somehow I had managed to put a lot of baggage behind me and locked the door to that basement tight.  These meditations had helped me to close many of those doors and to find peace in subjects that had tortured me for year (my youth and my family for example.).

My gratitude meditations continued through to Friday morning.   That morning the recovery started as the pain began to diminish and the swelling didn’t look worse for the first time.  And I was so grateful that when my personal order of cancer came up in the cosmic kitchen it wasn’t the kind that spread.

Finishing my gratitude meditation, I felt that familiar urge returning, the desire to get out a cookbook to celebrate the scars that would heal.  I settled on something traditional but somewhat time consuming.  After not liking duck for as long as I could remember, I had picked up a taste for those super dark rich meaty dense quackers in the past year starting in a small café in Lille.  Their intense flavor suddenly attracted me and I was going to make some French comfort food.  A cassoulet.

Well kind of. Why kind of?  Because I don’t know how to make the duck confit part, that’s why.  So I cheat with a package of duck breast confit.  The dish still works.

Faux Cassoulet:

1 package Duck Brest Confit.

2 cups of white canelli beans. Cooking white beans is child’s play.  Soak them over night.  Rinse.  Cook slowly with 4:1 water until they fall apart.  So much better than the can.

1 onion diced.

6 heads garlic.  Diced.

4 sausages.

1 cup chicken stock.

Bread crumbs.

Optional but SO GOOD:  Duck fat.

In a heavy pan sauté onions and garlic at low heat until translucent.

While sautéing, cut the sausages into 1 inch pieces or if feeling aggressive, remove the meat from the casings and crumble.  You choose the sausage, it’s a flavor thing and personal.  I like duck sausage in this dish, others will only use pork.

Heat the oven to 345.

In a ceramic baking dish combine the sausage/onion/garlic mixture with the white beans that you have drained into a layer that covers the bottom of the baking pan along with enough stock to moisten.  Place the duck breasts over the mixture.  Cover the dish with bread crumbs and spoon duck fat over the breasts and the bean mixture.  Bake for an hour or until mixture has deep brown golden color and has begun to bubble.

Find a Rhone or a Chateau Neuf De Pape and an aggressive white for she who does not drink red wine and make sure she isn’t too late that evening.

While you are cooking, here are some songs of gratitude and happiness.

You Make Me So Very Happy.  Blood Sweat and Tears.

Happy Jack.  The Who.

Sea of Joy.  Blind Faith.

The Best Thing That Never Happened.  Paul Westerberg.

Joy.  Shakti.

Pride and Joy.  Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughn.

Oh, and what her first words through the door that night?

“It smells good in here.  You must be feeling better.”

I was.

Hey, what was that in her hand?  Were those roses?

Things were looking up.

Chapter 46. Light? Tunnel. Light? Tunnel.

Chapter 46

Light?  Tunnel?  Light?  Tunnel?

 

When I returned home from that highly disconcerting and disturbing visit to the skin doctor that afternoon, I found an unexpected greeting from opportunity on that old-fashioned messenger, the answering machine.  Expecting to find a voice mail from my doctor’s office confirming the date for cancer surgery, instead I had one from John saying that he had my resume, thought we should talk, and would I be available for a meeting next Monday.

 

Would I?  I don’t know, let me think about that for a moment.  I mean, how could I find time to go to a job interview, even though we hadn’t said the word job, I guess that it was.  What, between walking white dog, cooking for she who is too busy and would just eat another egg, hiking in the hills, watching SCTV reruns and meditating, I was overwhelmed with stuff to do. Could I find the time?  Fuck yeah!

 

I found the phone (couldn’t anyone ever put them back in their chargers? Ever?) called him back and he wasn’t there.  In my most it’s cool whatever don’t show that you are too interested be friendly job voice, I left a return message that Monday morning was good and to please call or email back with a time.  Then I hung up and yelled loud.  It felt good. Sure enough, an email came in an hour later while I was cooking dinner confirming Monday at 11 with an address and directions.

 

All of my manful meditation training and a healthy natural sense of paranoia of anything that sounded remotely like a job possibility put my expectations into full lockdown mode.  This insured that any excitement I felt stayed as dull as a 20 year-old butter knife.  But as I kept my self-imposed sense of cool, I had a good feeling about where this could go, knowing full well that my good feelings had been wrong before.

 

I broke the news on both developments that evening over dinner. She who remains gainfully employed reassured me that no matter what the outcome, it would be good for me to at least have an interview.  Good?  Was she kidding?  Like an air hose that appears to a drowning man out of nowhere good.  It had been over 18 months since this period of underemployment began.  YES, it would be a good thing to get out of the house.  YES it would be a good thing to work again.  I just smiled and yes deared.

 

Yet on the subject of the C that had taken up housekeeping in my nose, she was stoic, surprisingly so.  Once she got the facts, i.e. that it was not likely to spread and likely not fatal, she closed the subject down quick.  Her reaction was not dismissive but not emotional either, very matter of fact and we’ll get through it together.  If I was looking for a shoulder to cry on, it wasn’t being offered so I dropped the subject, holding it in reserve for later when I would need it.

 

March 2009 was ending and it had been a rainy one.  28 out of 30 days found the skies gray cloudy and moist.  The next weekend featured those two days that it did not.  They were glorious days, temperatures in the low 60’s, skies washed bright azure blue and buds everywhere in full smell and bloom.  Between the beginning of spring and newly found vague hope for a job, optimism began a long slow ascent from the depths of my soul.  It felt weird, somewhat out of place and dangerous, like looking at a woman with her blouse just a bit too undone for comfort but looking nonetheless.

 

On Monday morning at 8am I received confirmation that surgery would be on Wednesday unless the biopsy was negative.  They would let me for sure know on Tuesday.  It all seemed a bit fast but on the other hand, well, why wait?  I knew it was a long shot, but I hoped the biopsy would be negative.

 

Further instructions came by email the next morning. The biopsy showed the type of aggressive cancer they thought it was.  The instructions were not unusual, just show up at 9am and block out the day.  Surgery would be done under local anesthetic, but if I needed a pill to relax, someone would have to drive me home.  If I had question they encouraged me to call.  I couldn’t see any reason to do so.

 

Later that morning I headed out for my ‘interview’. On the drive down 880 to Oakland, where the coffee roasting plant was located, I felt detached.  Happy yet clearly keeping my distance. Prepared for any outcome, expecting only the worst and not allowing unreality to come creeping in.  After getting lost three times, I realized why I couldn’t find the place.  There was no address posted on the door of the factory.  No sign either.  Just a no solicitors warning and the smell of roasting coffee beans that led me to a bare metal front door.  No door bell either.  So I knocked.  Waited.  Knocked again.  A jet black dyed hair woman in her 50’s opened the door.  Yes?  (Yes, what happened to hello?)

 

I peered in. “Hi, my name is Jules and I have an appointment at 11 with John”.

 

At that point John emerged as the door swung open.  He looked to be in his early 40’s with a crew cut, about 5 feet 5.  “You must be Jules,” then he shook my hand vigorously, “Come on in, let’s go to the conference room. Do you want a cup of coffee?”

 

I did. We sat down and launched in.  Our meeting began, as most do when two people who are in the same industry, with an exchange of histories, who you know and what you know followed by coffee philosophy and a chat about quality.  The corporate equivalent of a dog pissing on a tree and then waiting for the other to smell it before he did the same.

 

Our discussion then turned to business. A family operation, he had recently fired his sales manager and was looking for someone to bring clarity to his brand, help reformulate his coffees, create new marketing material, design a sales plan and hit the field with their coffees. Just another typical entrepreneurial position.  Then he dropped a big one. “Oh, and yes, I hope this isn’t a deal breaker, but if you interested in pursuing discussions, you should know that we can’t afford to pay you until the sales turn around because we are losing money and have been funding the business out of our pockets this year.”

 

Nice.

 

There was only one reply for me. “Well would there be a commission?”

 

He smiled.  “Sorry, I should have mentioned that.  Yes, absolutely, and a good one, and we can cover your expenses.”

 

Just like I would have said it if I was on the other side of the desk.  He would have nothing to lose if I said yes.

 

“Would you like to see the building?”

 

“Sure.”  And why not?

 

The tour was short, it looked like no one had been working in the sales managers office for more than a few months.  It had the feel of a crypt in a tropical above ground cemetery. It smelled of dust and disappointment.   Samples from ancient sales efforts littered the desk like shattered sarcophagi. 6 of the 8 fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling fixtures were burnt out and spider webs filled the corners of the room.   No computer to be seen.

 

Nice.

 

Perhaps sensing my reaction John chimed in that they would get the place cleaned up.  Not a bad idea.

 

The rest of the tour was pretty much coffee ABC’s, bags of green coffee (not a whole but enough), a one-bag roaster (seemed like a bit much in terms of capacity) a commercial grinder and a few packaging machines.  What was most disconcerting was the lack of activity. So far I had just met two people.

 

Not want to lose momentum when we finished the walkabout and sat in John’s office I asked if we could have a follow up meeting next week to get into more details. Sure, he replied, and he pulled out a notebook.  How about Wednesday?  Without saying why, I replied that I was busy and how about a week from today?

 

“OK, same time”.

 

And we chatted a bit more about this and that (it became clear that he didn’t care about sports so that was out so we kept the discussion on family) and when that was done we shook hands and I left.

 

Everything about this situation should have been strange, but it wasn’t.  The office was quiet, even dead, but that didn’t bother me.  What I did like about it was that except for the tomb of the now departed sales manager, the plant was clean, the coffee was good and most importantly, John seemed honest.  If I had that this part right that alone would be a very big and refreshing change.  Maybe I would finally get to implement my decision not to work with creeps ever again.

 

As I pulled up to the house half an hour later and killed the engine on the Alfa I just sat for a moment and thought.  What had just happened?  Why should I even think about working for a company that is losing money?  They had no unusual products, no branding, no marketing.  Nothing except a really good cup of coffee.

Then the mediation training kicked in just as it should.  There was nothing I could do until next week.  No point in creating stress in myself over what I could not change until then.  I needed to get ready for surgery the next day not to worry about what might happen in the future.

 

I walked into the living room.  Big foot white dog could be seen leaving the room after barking hello and headed to the back yard.  Why she ran away whenever we came home remained a mystery.  Standing there with the usual junk mail, I decided that this was a good time to open up a calm one and start an MM session.

 

I entered the mancave for the who knows how manyeth time and looked around thinking about all of the time that I had spent there in the past year and a half.  How many changes had occurred in how I viewed life.  But the cave felt different somehow.  I couldn’t put my finger on why, but something was amiss.

 

Sitting down and closing my eyes, I felt as if I was in the presence of an old friend.  My breathing calmed and my mind opened to the clarity of a pure mediation moment.  It came to me easily.  In the simple pattern of repletion, the MM exercises had become familiar and so much easier.  For a long long time I glided along, feeling nothing but the purity of breaths in breaths out.  Thoughts moved easily in and out of my open mind as one merged into another and I floated in a relaxed dreamy state.  I laughed to myself, I never believed that this sort of relaxation could be achieved without the use of a drink or a smoke and now I could turn it on when I wanted and more importantly, feel better afterwards.

 

Eventually my thoughts turned back to today and work. I dug deep into my working life and the experiences that I had enjoyed over the years.  The intellectual challenges as well as the personal ones.  The eye opening experience of extensive international travel contrasted by the day-to-day ugliness of working in what could only described as a ghetto.  I saw faces and places of the past 20 years, people I had not thought about suddenly appeared and just a quickly faded.

 

In the end it came back to one subject.  The bosses, the jeffes, the patrons.  Oh the people I had worked for, what a rogues gallery they had been.  Ex –FBI Jesuit priests, con-artists that were going to rebuild the city of Rome before fleeing with the proceeds, iconoclasts, Pied Pipers and risk takers, I had always been attracted to them and they to me.   I wondered, why I had always managed to work in such unconventional settings?

 

Several answers emerged in the meditation.  I didn’t want to work in a typical business setting.  That I had accomplished.  The other reason was more subtle but the key.  Have you ever taken a personality assessment test and been surprised at how accurate the results were?  Mine had pegged me as a person who can be trusted and one who spans the creative and business sides of an enterprise.   Those traits made my career. They allowed me to work with people who were otherwise impossible even crazy, taking their visions, making them real and building them.  I had worked for them long enough.

 

At the end of the meditation I thought about today’s meeting and I wondered about how I got there.  Was it fate or networking?  Did it matter?  Can we ever truly understand the fates that guide us?  The moment you look up from the wheel and instead of hitting that car ahead of you, you have just enough time to hit the brakes?  Chance?  Fate? Hitting these imponderables I began the process of emerging back into the room.

 

Something was still amiss.  Rising from the cushun I saw and now smelled what had gone wrong.  Big foot white dog had left a big brown runny shit in the corner of the mancave.  No more salmon skin treats for her.

After cleaning up her mess and taking the trash out I hit the kitchen.  And I stood and stood there and then waited some more. Just what is a dinner for these transitional moments?  Nothing came to mind, so I went back to a tried and true favorite.  This was a time for comfort and stability, not one to cut new ground.

 

Yes mom, you were talking to me but I took some liberty with your favorite cure all.

 

Updated chicken soup in a hurry.

 

All soups are about the stock.  You can make it three ways, from scratch, from an aseptic box or from a bouillon cube.  Today was not a scratch day.  I am not a complete fan of the box, so I like to add some water and a bouillon cube, the combination seems to work.

 

In a large cast iron pot sauté an onion until translucent in olive oil.

Add 1 box of chicken stock, 1 cup water and one bouillon cube.  Stir.

Cook for 10 minutes.

Add ½ cup cooked rice and any other vegetables you think might work (they need to be already cooked).

Simmer and pretend you worked on it all day.

Garnish with parsley.

 

Songs for the working men (and women).

 

Big Boss Man, Jimmy Reed

Summertime Blues, Mose Allison or the Who.

Working In A Coal Mine.  Lee Dorsey.

I’ve Got Work To Do.  Isely Brothers.

Julie’s Been Working For the Drug Squad.  The Clash.

Working on Chain Gang.  Sam Cooke.

Mr. President, Have Pity on The Working Man.  Randy Newman.