HeinZen

When you work opposite hours from the person you live with, only seeing each other on weekends, the house is divided into the way individual people live. Her house is clean and mine is messy. She rakes leaves and hours later, I burn incense and admire the row of leaf bags and wonder "Were those always here?"

I have my routine every evening, and that usually includes finding a note, or something new, or something left on display for me to see. Weeks are their own cycles. Mondays are lovey notes left on the bathroom mirror, but by Thursday, you're two cavemen who pass in the night, and instead of notes, just a broken coffee grinder is smashed to pieces in a pile at the back door, and that means, "I broke this. Maybe on Saturday we could go get a new one?"

Tonight, I got into the kitchen, tripping over the starving pet masses and noticed a full page article involving ketchup stuck to the fridge. I glanced at it, knowing exactly what the article was- some clever, condescending foray into organic ketchups- rather, "catsups", substances not deserving the brand name distinction. Jen's been hinting at this catsup crossover for a while now, trying to sneak different kinds into shopping carts, and, yes, apologizing to meat clerks, after I deposit the offending article wherever I am standing when I notice it and liberate the cart. She knows I don't care for it. I have very few thresholds left, and that one, I'm not even going to peer over the edge. Not interested. I don't want a new kind of Ketchup. I'd rather have none at all, and I mean that very seriously. It doesn't need to be upgraded, it doesn't need to be made healthy or otherwise improved upon, it just simply is. 

I tore the article page down instantly, grabbed my bottle of squeeze Heinz from the fridge, and wrote my reply on the paper for her to see later tonight.  I'll catch hell for the mess, but I thought what she had suggested is equally as insensitive.

I went downtown for a while, and returned to a house that actually reeks of ketchup. I went into the kitchen and my note still stands on the stove-top, though the paper is getting very wet.  I was admiring its dark red loveliness, wishing I could write everything with a squeeze bottle, when I glanced at a cluster of words down near the bottom of the page.  It says, "Artists who draw words with ketchup on their food have an easy going approach to life".  I smugly nodded, as my cat jumped up onto the stove and almost stepped into the N.  Then I tried to see what more of the article I could read. Might as well read it, I thought, since I have to go to debate camp over it tonight after I've already been asleep for an hour.

It's an article about people who love Ketchup. It's trivia, it's interesting, and from what I can make out of the paragraphs not saturated in red dye #5 and salty sugar gel, it's not at all a veiled threat to take away my freedom. Good thing I'm easy going- I really could have over reacted.

Comments

[MegaTwatty]

I understand this in more ways than one.

[sircomfrey]

An update for you then- when Jen got home and saw the mess, she laughed like crazy and said, "I only kept the article so we could send it to Twatty!".

So basically I blame you, as does the cat who successfully landed on the ketchuppy letters hours later, and still can't get the taste out of his toes.