The Civil Rights laws passed in the early 60s was enacted after I reached adulthood, but I could have avoided the personal aftermath by becoming a Muslim in Turkey. This startling revelation struck me yesterday, and I almost dismissed it's significance by shining it on. I had a choice back then I completely ignored.
While that doesn't surprise me, it's certainly a little depressing. I don't have that choice now because I'm an old man with deep habits. I ain't got the time left it would require to abandon my world-weary ways. I wouldn't do it anyway. The Muslims are as weird to me in theory as the people I'm stuck here with now. Everything I know about the Muslim faith has been gained through the public media. In truth, I know less about that religion in general than practically any other religion. I'm still not curious and that's a little odd to me.
I started using Splenda, the sugar substitute several years ago. I read about the research on it before it was introduced to the consumer market. I was waiting for it to show up in the grocery store. Now, Splenda has a new product I'm trying out. They somehow managed to put one gram of dietary fiber in each individual Splenda packet. I'm down with that. I've had trouble being constipated due to the prescription medicines I'm putting inside my body, and I've been led to believe that getting enough dietary fiber in my diet is the way to manage that.
I've been eating hot oatmeal in the mornings for that very purpose, and before I started with the prescription drugs it appeared to do what needs to be done to keep my toilette happening on a regular basis. But, with the introduction of the drugs into my system, everything changed, and I had some real problems with constipation. The only relief I've gotten happened when my first rheumatologist doubled the amount of my calcium/vitamin D prescription. That made things much better, and then I received the colonoscopy procedure. The result of that was another appointment to get another colonoscopy, but in June, 2019. Big relief.
So, the last couple of mornings I fixed my coffee and oatmeal and sweetened them with a mixture of a one packet serving of Splenda with the dietary fiber, and one packet of something else I'm giving a whirl, stevia, a natural sweetener I've heard my vegetarian friends rattle on about (I'm not like that. We're just friends. I don't even know why.), and by count, I consumed 8-10 grams of dietary fiber.
Since I've been to the bathroom several times this morning, I think it may be safe to assume that consuming lots of dietary fiber is an effective antidote to constipation. I think that's good news. I suspect I don't actually need all that much calcium, and I'm careful about getting enough vitamin D all the time, so I'm gonna cut back the doubled calcium to my original prescription, and I might be able to cut back on the oatmeal too, especially since I'm basically eating it for the sake of the dietary fiber.
I don't know if the article I read about how tomatoes, and especially foods that contain "cooked down" tomatoes, like what Italian cooking is famous for, is based on fact (I haven't seen much more about it), but I'm acting like it does. What I read into that information was that tomatoes have this chemical that stops the bad kind of cholesterol from coagulating in the blood stream, and it's the tomatoes that keep the Mediterraneans from having the heart diseases more commonly found in the Western cultures as much or more than the resveratrol in their famous red wines.
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-resveratrol13-2009jul13,0,53028.story
I read about Italians cooking like food was medicine for what ails them. I like the idea. I ain't being stupid about this. I can read the statistics of the Italian's health and longevity as well as any competent person, I just like the idea of cooking and preparing food (since I gotta have it) as if I were my own physician attempting to maintain my health or heal what ails me.
In that vein/vain, I chopped up some raw white onions and put them in my skillet with a dollop of canola oil to let them simmer and cook down. I added some commercially prepared flakes of roasted garlic, and lemon-flavored pepper, and a sprinkle of Parmesan/Garlic popcorn seasoning salt (not much, I'm cutting back on salt to lose weight), and then I realized I didn't have any meat for flavoring. I was wrong, and that's what tickled me.
Two days ago I was in the Wal-Mart SuperCenter shopping around for groceries, and I looked up, and here come this beautiful woman down the aisle toward me, and ignoring me as if I didn't exist as she always has. I've seen and admired her particular sort of elegant beauty on several wonderful occasions. She works for Wal-Mart, and gives the appearance of being on their management team. She may run the whole store.
The cat gets my tongue and I've never spoken a mumbling word to her. She has this silver gray hair she keeps long and usually in something that used to be called a "french twist" bun. I love older women who let their hair turn gray and keep it long. It adds so much to their character, and at this stage of my life, careactor matters. I don't know why. I'm prejudiced about it too. Particularly toward tall, beautiful, elegant women who have been beautiful and have been told of it constantly over a long lifetime. I had to say something...
I knew how to posture myself to stop her in her tracks and stare at me, so I did that, and then I watched to witness what I would say to her in order to get her attention and still show respect for her position in life. Bacon bits. Suddenly, I'm excusing myself to this woman, and telling her I'm confused, because I don't know the truth of whether I'm stopping her from her appointed duties because I'm fascinated by her beauty or whether I'm stopping her to ask where the bacon bits (like what goes in salads usually) are located in the store?
First, she did acknowledge I'd just told her I thought she was beautiful. She did it almost as a duty, as an obligation she had decided to artificially cater to in order to be politically expedient, and a barely recognizable twinkle on a personal level as if my remarks precipitated an overworked inside joke I didn't share in. Then, she walked me to the aisle entrance where the bacon bits were located, stood there until I found them, and strode officially away.
The bacon bits are processed by Hormel and were real bacon. When I remembered that I bought them as if I were going to use them in a salad, I didn't have any other salad ingredients to put the bacon bits together with, so I dumped half of them into the onior/garlic rue I was cooking up, then remembered I had a cup of cold dark-roasted Black Silk coffee left over in the pot one day old, and so I poured that in the mix also, and let all of it boil down to a pasty thickness before I added the Mexican tomato chunks, and waited for the flavors to get up next to each other.
Damn! That be some tasty shit, man, I'm good. I oughta open my own restaurant, but candidly, I'd just as soon win the lottery and let somebody else's fingers do the walking.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
