Monday night I made hummus for dinner, and it was fabulous, let me tell you. Hummus is a paste made from chickpeas (which I don't like cause they are chalky as licking a dirty blackboard so I use cannellini beans instead) with lemon juice (I substituted lime juice because that's what I had) and tahini which is like peanut butter, but made with sesame seeds. I did not substitute for that because I'm very fond of tahini. Still I suppose it was basically a dish inspired by hummus.
Anyway then you dump all that in a food processor and let her rip. You wind up with something smooth and beige, sort of a bean pudding. I slather it on multigrain bread and wolf it down. Mmmmm. Problem is shortly after shoveling it in my pie hole, my other hole chimes in. Yes, the social grief of flatulence. My digestion seems to be working like a steam engine since it doesn't take any time for the gales to start blowing. One minute I'm lying quietly in bed and the next thing I know the sheets are rippling in the breeze. Oh dear.
It's bad enough when I can keep all this gassy tempest to myself, but I had an appointment with my chiropractor the next day. Chiropractic adjustments take place with you face down, with your cheese trumpet pointing up directly towards the good doctor. I couldn't risk tooting right in his face, so I rescheduled, barely able to shout over the typhoon to leave him a voicemail.
Then today, just after all the gassy trauma had settled down, wildfire smoke blew into San Francisco. We have had an amazing summer with no smoke at all which is almost unprecedented. I just last week was telling someone what a relief it was to not choke on the air. I suppose this is my payback for being for presumptuous.
Every breath today has been just a little more difficult than the one before with the breezes having a distinctly barbecue-y smell to them. My eyes itch and my throat feels like I've been gargling with charcoal. I shut the windows and broke out my air purifier (which I should have used earlier after setting it on "cheese cutting".) It didn't seem terribly effective; I mentioned last year that its indicator is a little light show that shifts from red through purple to blue to show the quality of the air it's putting out, sort of like a mood ring. All afternoon it's been a sullen red, and once it finally turned blue (which is what you want) I went out into the kitchen and noticed the air there was not in the least bit worse. Bamboozled by technology again.
Men whose beauty is like a cool breeze:
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At least you've never suffered fanny farts - there is no holding them in, and they can bubble away for 10 minutes at a time - the upside is that they don't smell.
ReplyDeleteI hope your air is breathable now.
Sx
Good god, I had heard of them, but never knew they were so dramatic.
DeleteThe moral of the story is "don't eat pulses if you don't want farts!"
ReplyDeleteMy Nan always used to quote a supposed gravestone:
Wherever you be,
Let your wind blow free.
For the want of a fart
Was the death of me.
Jx
I have to go look up a translation of "pulses." Once again Jon's English needs to come with subtitles for me.
DeleteSo eat your beans at every meal.
ReplyDeleteJust think -- you could be San Francisco's Le Pétomane!
Anonymous, too
Some of that got cut off. It started "My dad had a relevant rhyme:
DeleteBeans, beans, the musical fruit
The more you eat, the more you toot
The more you toot, the better you feel
So eat....
I remember that poem from my innocent youth.
DeleteMy mother would freak out if we used the word fart when we were younger, but that all changed when, years later in our store, she was looking for a word to describe a particularly hideous female pain in the ass customer.
ReplyDeleteShe asked, "Would cunt be the right word?"
The fart issue vanished.
It's all a matter of perspective I suppose.
ReplyDeleteOne advantage of living alone is farting as needed.
ReplyDeleteMy diet is structured to keep constipation away. Beans, chickpeas, yogurt, leafy greens are an important part of that maintenance. Farts happen.
Living alone with one's farts is, indeed, an advantage.
DeleteYou can buy charcoal underwear pads that filters out the stench, Amazon sells them, so I'm told. I never break wind but my maid of all work does and her guffs are enough to gag a maggot.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure any underwear with built in pads qualifies as diapers and I will struggle against them til my dying fart.
DeleteI have cancelled appointments for the very same reason. I might let Mr. Glasses get away with a modest squeak in the vestibule, though.
ReplyDeleteI know what I mean.
ReplyDelete