Morning all. We have reached the middle of the week. I think I am also starting to adjust to the time change as well. I didn’t grumble half as much this morning at my alarm clock as I did yesterday. Admittedly i did still threaten to deep fry it in boiling oil. What can i say, I’m not really a morning person. But we must push forward. And so, the morning prompt. Time to get tose brain cells firing. So set your timers because off we go.
It took me a while to get a hand on this. I think I only dimly started to see where I was going towards the end. Some mornings are like that. This was a flailing around in a sea of words kind of morning. It happens.
Wednesday, March 15th: I believe it is edible.
“I believe it is edible,” He said. They both bent over to peer into the casserole dish he just removed from the oven. It was one of the ones the housekeeper left for them to heat up in her absence. She left instructions for reheating the items she left in the oven. She taped each one to the top. Unfortunately she used an ink pen and condensation had caused some of the instructions to blur. Harry was fairly certain he could decipher them so He was left in charge of the kitchen while Sean saw to the last of the yard work.
Something was definitely lost in translation.
“Maybe if we scrape off the black bits?” Sean suggested, more because Harry looked so crestfallen than anything else. His stomach rumbled and he watched a bit of smoke curl up from what he thought might have once been a fried onion. He remembered Mrs. Jenkins liked to top most of her casserole dishes with fried onions. There was an industrial sized container of them in the pantry.
“We can add more onions after we scrape the top,” Sean said. Harry’s face lit up.
“Excellent,” he said. “That’ll fix it.
Given the charcoal like aspect of the top layer, Sean wasn’t entirely convinced, but he went to get the container of onions as Harry began scraping.
The charred layer went deep but there was still some food that looked salvageable. They each heaped their plates high and covered their portion with a healthy layer of fried onion bits. The onions almost covered up the charcoal taste of things. As Sean ate he tried to identify something beyond the onion. He was fairly certain the chewy bits were chicken. He was content to let them remain chicken in his mind and continued to eat.
The dinner wasn’t great and tasted more like onions than anything else. It was filling so neither of them felt hungty. As Harry tidied up from the dinner debacle Sean had to admit that Mrs. Jenkins casseroles always tasted a bit oniony with other bits making a backdrop in the tasting list.
“Not too bad,” Sean said. Harry beamed.
“Tomorrow night it is your turn,” he warned. Sean nodded. He took his dish to the sink and as Harry cleaned up from the casserole, discarding all of the charred bits like a murderer discards bloody clothes, he began to wash the remaining plates.
With just the two of them to clean up after, the cleanup was fairly easy. It felt strange with just the two of them there. Mrs. Jenkins was gone, visiting her sister after a car accident and their father and sisters were off at one of Maggie’s completions. Sean couldn’t remember which as she was always competing in something. She had a room stuffed with t5rophies from at least six sports.
In general Sean didn’t spend much time with his brother. They shared very few interests, had different friends and even went to different schools. They were usually bound together by the rest of the family around them. Tonight there was nothing to hold them together and they drifted off to separate parts of the house. Sean could hear the sound of Harry’s video game as he settled in for what Sean was certain would be a marathon session.
On his own, Sean took out one of the books he found at the library. Recently he spend some time unexpectedly in the local library. He ducked in to avoid one of the bullies trying to follow him and lost him inside. Surprisingly Sean found himself in a section that featured How too books. He was amazed at the sorts of things he could learn to do. The skills he could perfect.
Ten til Midnight 