Aglio e olio e uovo

 I almost forgot the main thing.

Because it happened the next day and the motivating element had evaporated.

Rolled to 7 if that means anything, not completely thinned. The dough is 1 egg and flour. That's it. No tap water or oil. No salt. 

Tempted to cut them this overly long such as you buy novelty noodles but those extra long noodles will not mix well with sauce and those would be a pure mess to eat. 

Although if there were children around then I would do it because they could slurp the noodles. That would be fun. Each kid gets like three noodles. Piled on a plate. With sauce. Find an end and suck it. The thing slips and slides around like a snake being sucked into the kid's mouth and disappears with a whip leaving a sauce-slash across the kid's face. Whip whip whip, slash slash slash, all the kids all around playing with their food whipping their own faces with wet noodles. It's how they actually eat it. They do that anyway but now with extra long Hollywood style Lady and Tramp length noodles. Why waste a good chance like that? 

I read some cooks or some households or some people or perhaps just a few crackpots equate the noodle length with the length of one's life so to purposefully break them to fit into a pot or some reason of convenience is to purposefully shorten your own life.

What a load. 

But that still makes me not want to cut them. 

But I cut them anyway.

Two of these. 

The second egg is the thing that I almost forgot. Essential yesterday when I thought of this but unessential the next day when I am actually starving and making it. Then as I am going ... egg! Oh Man, that sounds perfect. Like carbonara. But don't call it that, just put another egg in it and eat it.  

Butter is browning in a pan then garlic is added then starch-water from the boiling pot of noodles on the next burner to stop the frying action immediately and bring it all down to boiling temperature. 

The noodles are not 100% done. They continue to cook in the pan. They absorb water as this goes for a minute. I stand there and watch how the water absorbs. I add more. It takes up the water, I add starchy water. I keep adding and stirring for a minute until the absorption settles down then I add more starchy water and cheese. Turn off the heat. Observe the reaction. Have the pan not boiling then pour over the egg, stir or flip all around and get it out of the pan and onto a plate away from residual pan heat. 

 

Okay, see, I did that while maneuvering this camera and tripod. So a dope like me can do this and the camera without messing it up, then so can a dope genius like you. 

The following is personal and irrelevant to this. None of your biz wax. It's just that I am so tetched. I meant to say touched.

I looked up the sign "miracle" again and that pissed me off a bit. Why didn't this sign stick? All the other signs do. Why not this one? I extemporized but not satisfied so I looked it up. The first dictionary I saw uses the same sign for "magic" except with more wow factor thrown in. That means you must discern "magic" or "miracle" when someone is talking to you. What a bummer. It gets down to handwriting. And intuition. That's why I didn't recall it. It's such a bummer. It's a goofy sign that people do different ways. Religious people do "wow happen." 

"Wow" is in most solutions. That's what I thought. That's what I did. 

Saying the word "magic" in sign language forces me to think of my older brother every single time that I use the sign. I must. The mental pathways run parallel. 

This caused me to write to my older brother and tell him this. I don't think he knows. There is a lot of stuff that goes on relating to him that I don't think he knows.

I wrote him saying that I bet him $10.00 he does not recall the magic he brought to my life all the time. I bet he does not recall us being sent to wash our hands. We were constantly told to go wash our hands. You two boys go wash your hands. So we did. Over and over and over a million times, at least a couple times a day. We two stood at a sink, any sink anywhere, and washed our hands. 

Barry said, "Hey, Bobby look at me." I looked at him. "I am magic." He spritzed my face with water from his wet hands. Just a joke. Always messing with me. So incidental to him. So magic to me. I physically felt his magic power on my face.

How'd you do that?  How'd you do that? How'd you do that? How'd you do that? How'd you do that? How'd you do that? How'd you do that? How'd you do that? How'd you do that? How'd you do that? 

He told me. 

Water? That's all? Fuck. 

See how he showed me magic then disappointed in the next moment. 

That hand motion Barry made for his magic spritz in my face is the ASL sign for magic. That's why Barry's face spritzing and ASL magic really do go together.

The second hand-washing sink episode was magic and real.

At another sink again, our hands were soapy. Barry formed an "O" with his fingers and thumb and blew the soap film that filled the O into a bubble and blew the bubble off his fingers and into the bathroom. Is my brother f'k'n magic or what?  We were sent to wash our hands and we were up there blowing bubbles. He taught me to blow bubbles in the bathroom with our fingers. Fingers and soap. Bubbles. Magic.  

I was writing this page. Ping. Mail server delivered 6 emails. I dropped this and went straight to my brother's email. He is never this fast to reply. I expected him to demand $10.00 for remembering when I bet he would not. He has a very good memory. I was mentally preparing to have Paypal transfer it, instead he said this: 

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

You introduced me to Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin, cooking, sewing fantastic stuff, photography and an abundance of creativity. I was truly amazed when you sold the Egyptian pictures back to the Reserve Bank.  

I’ve told the story many times of how you sprayed fluorescent paint colors on a canvas and then covered it with black paint.  I thought you hated it and were starting it over. I saw MAGIC when you chipped tiny bits of black paint off and the Colorado night sky, full of stars and other universes, appeared before my eyes. Even today when I look at the stars, I think of two things; camping in the Colorado mountains and your picture.

Your loving and admiring brother and sister-in-law,

Barry & Brenda

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

I didn't know what back to the bank means. Then I realized he is referring to shredded currency used in the plaster. FRB is the only place that shreds currency. It's part of the reason they were interested. I don't think he knows they wrote a rather long article about that in both of their two newsletters, local and regional. And I don't think he knows about all the other crap they had me do because of that. And he left out a lot more really great things than he put in like hang gliding, skiing, dog training in tracking, amazing rock climbing with the dog. His email got me thinking of things he left out and I must say I am truly touched. I didn't think that he thought any of this stuff. I thought he was impenetrable.  I did not expect this. But I did know he would show my email to his wife. Nothing is complete with him until it is shared with her.

Spritz. Water in your face. Magic.