Bacon, Eggs, and Whales

Me and breakfast don't get along very well. I usually have to sneak up behind it on tiptoe. First I have to lull it into a false sense of security, waiting until it thinks the time for danger has long passed. Even then, I can only grab onto a bit of it, allowing the rest to escape.

What am I talking about? For many years now, my stomach has rebelled at eating much in the morning. I'm not one to believe it's a good idea to skip breakfast altogether, but I usually try to eat something light--an English muffin; a bowl of cereal; or maybe, at most, a slice of toast and a scrambled egg. Even then, I don't usually eat until I've been up for a couple hours. I've been told that this happens to a lot of people who have had their gallbladders removed; I don't know for a fact that my missing gallbladder's the culprit, but it sure makes it difficult sometimes.

My husband, on the other hand, absolutely LOVES to go out to breakfast and rarely has the chance. About once or twice a year, I'll make the effort to go out to breakfast with him, and then suffer the consequences the rest of the morning. Now, I understand that a reasonable person with even a pinch of self-restraint would just go out and order something like an English muffin. That's all well and good except for two things: I have absolutely no self-restraint (just look at my fabric stash if you don't believe me!) and I really DO like breakfast foods. A lot. Potatoes with bacon, onions, and green peppers are one of our favorite simple dinners. We have omelets for dinner about once a month. Pancakes or waffles may appear on the dinner table from time to time. And for some perverse reason, I have no problem eating these foods at dinner time. Breakfast is another matter.

My husband told me today that his sister, his brother, and his brother's new wife want us to join them for breakfast on Sunday. Don't cha just hate that? So do I go and suffer? Not go? Go and pretend that I can just order an English muffin when everyone around me is eating good stuff? Why do people want to get out of the house that early anyway? As far as I'm concerned, leaving the house before noon on any day that's not a work day is just absolutely asking for trouble. What's wrong with people?!

I'd kind of like to see my brother-in-law and his new wife. My brother in law--a real man's man who's spent most of his 50 years hunting and fishing--finally met his match. This gal snagged him and reeled him up to the altar as easily as he'd reel in a trout. Naida--and I'm not sure I'm even spelling her name right--is originally from somewhere in South America. They met at a bar where she liked to go watch karaoke so she could read the words and learn English. True story. Turns out she'd never been fishing before, but now she's taken to it like a duck to water, so they're coming up here to do some fishing this weekend with my father-in-law.

And what does this have to do with whales? Not a whole lot unless my brother-in-law and his lovely bride end up catching one, but the possibility is there, since we have a mom and her baby swimming around one of our local rivers. Rumors are that they came to talk to AH-nold about the environment, little realizing that he spends most of his time in Los Angeles. It's kind of odd to know we have a couple whales swimming around the city, 70 miles away from where they're supposed to be. Remember my post about bridges and that one I really, really hate that goes up about a mile into the sky before coming down on the other side of the river? I guess maybe the engineer who designed that baby knew we'd be accommodating whales. Scientists are gathering here in Sacramento to help return the whales to the ocean, serenading them with recordings of other whales. And if that fails, there's talk about mustering up a flotilla of watercraft to herd them back to the sea. Personally, though, I kind of suspect that if we got my brother-in-law and my new sister-in-law out to the river to sing karaoke, those whales would head back home, away from the crazy early-rising, breakfast-eating, singing humans without a backward glance!