#108. or, Are you going to put that in your mouth?

  I've been back in the tractor the last week or so, making feed to get the cows through the winter. Sometimes when I'm there, I have free time to keep up on reading and commenting, but this particular job requires most, if not all of my attention. I haven't been around too much and I am sorry for that. On the plus side, my mind has been wandering at 6 miles an hour again, (actually, 3.5 miles an hour on this job.)  and I have a few ideas banked up.

  As much as I don't need it, I usually end up snacking in the tractor. Lately, my snack of choice has been pistachios. Pistachios are an awesome treat, they require a little effort to break into them, which is good, because it prevents me from shovelling them into my mouth by the handful. I'm pretty much restricted to one at a time. But I have noticed that if I could get a bag of pre-shelled pistachios, I think I would be a lot more picky with which ones go into my mouth. It seems, the more effort it requires me to break into my food, the more eagerly I consume it. Too many times, after I've shelled one, and fired the nut toward my mouth, I catch a glimpse of a brown, shrivelled, half decayed, morsel in that split second hang time between my hand and my mouth. But I always end up eating them.

  Now, I can't say that I have an aversion for putting odd things in my mouth. When we travel, I try to go out of my way to try to sample the local fare. I've tasted some odd things. My dad is the one that taught me you can tell tell if you have anti-freeze in your oil by putting some of the oil from the dipstick onto your tongue. If it's there, it will taste sweet. Of course, he's passed away now. I don't think licking dipsticks had anything to do with that. At least I hope not? Or I might be in trouble later on.

  I think my wife and I have been fairly good parents. I know from the first kid to the last, we went from "GOOD LORD, DON'T PUT THAT IN YOUR MOUTH, IT'S BEEN ON THE FLOOR!" to  "HEY! If you're going to eat handfuls of dirt, at least move to the other end of the sandbox where the cat doesn't shit!"
We did the whole don't take candy from strangers thing, don't eat things out of the garbage, or off the street and all of that. But I noticed that sort of all went out the window when we went to the two different parades in the towns we live between, over the last couple of weeks.

  If you're a kid living near a rural community, the annual parade is cool because you get to come home with a bag full of candy, collected off the street, thrown from the floats as they go by. Now, my youngest son is 12. He's at that age where it isn't quite cool to be running out onto the street to gather candies. But don't get me wrong, we still WANTS the candy. At the beginning of the parade, he'll just stand on the curb and if candy comes his way, he will pick those up. All the while, I'm standing there with him, pointing out ones he missed and that he should be running out farther to get more candy. It occurred to me that basically, I'm telling him to run out into traffic, take candy from strangers, and put food picked up off the street into his mouth.

  Another thing I noticed, after he picked up a handful of peanuts in the shell, I asked him for those because I love peanuts in the shell. While I was opening them and eating them while we stood there watching the parade go by, I realized the peanuts had been thrown out onto the street AFTER the miniature horses and covered waggons had all gone by. Yummy.

  After the parade, we went to the small midway that they had at the fair grounds. I decided he should experience elephant ears. Because you can't go to the fair without eating carnival food. These particular elephant ears were quite bad. Although, they did actually resemble an elephants ears pretty much exactly. In fact, while I had intended to split it with my kid, he didn't eat more that a couple bites, it was so bad. They were really tough and chewy. I'm not sure that they weren't actually the ears of an elephant we were chewing on.

  I'm sort of glad parade and fair season is passed. I need to try to get back to eating healthier things. Maybe mix in a salad or two. Of course, with harvest right on top of us, I'm going to be in the tractor and combine for a long stretch this fall,  I'll probably still be bringing along my big bag of pistachios.

   The good thing about pistachios is that they are supposed to be good for the health of your penis. And who doesn't want a healthy penis? Except I think I'm going to start trying to avoid the brown ones.

          ...........um.........brown pistachio, that is.


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