Chicken Little and Other Stories

Ever since the bird-flu outbreak, the SB has sworn off poultry in it's many glorious forms - boiled/fried/scrambled/omelett-ed eggs, tandoori/fried/curried chicken and even pastries* which might have egg as an ingredient.

Nothing can convince him. Not the explanation, "But it's been cooked at above 100 degrees Celsius and everyone knows that 70 is enough!"; not the government's declaration of the state's bird-flu-freeness; nope, not even Sanjay Dutt in all his shirtless** (and arm wrestling with an animated chicken) glory.

The SB refers to this unreasonable, unfair rejection of normal-breakfast-food as being 'risk averse'; we, to send home a point, run around the house screaming that 'the sky is about to fall on our heads any moment now and we'd better take cover!'.

In adherence to the non-interference treaty of September '05*** however, he cannot stop, hamper or protest against *our* consumption of poultry. Except for frowning in disapproval whenever we cheerfully call up the corner store to send us a dozen eggs.

Which is why, it is even more fun to call him into the kitchen when we're making breakfast and say, "Look SB! Yummy fried bird-flu!", and watch him turn some very interesting shades of purple.

Such fun!


*Souffles and mousses (in which the eggs ARE RAW!), he is, inexplicably enough, okay with.
**An honour, previously conferred upon Salman the Unbelievably Lucky.
***"I will not presume to know better than you, what is good for you, so help me god."


***

In other news, we have discovered that we're quite terribly susceptible to the enthusiasm-bug. By which we mean, a couple of words at the right time, at the right place, and we're absolutely bubbling over with the stuff.

One (seemingly innocent) conversation with a certain somebody (you know who you are...Yes! You!) about the benefits of fitness, and we're thinking - "Hmmm...he has a point there. You DO feel better after a run...it would be great if we could fit into that pair of jeans again...Oh! Remember that slinky black dress*?! We'd forgotten all about it!! We could wear that!" - and from there, it's just one small step to showing up in the gym all shiny and happy and scaring-the-daylights-out-of-the-gym-instructor.

We are blinded by visions of shopping for doll-sized articles of clothing and slipping into them with nary a wiggle, and don't even notice the rest of the people in the gym, slowly backing off from the earthquake, the epicenter of which is us. We run up to the instructor after every couple of minutes, deluding ourselves that the look in his eyes is the 'you-go-girl! of non-verbal communication, when it is actually the okay!-crazy-lady-on-the-loose-people!-man-your-stations-NOW! of it.

The problem with the enthusiasm-bug is, it lacks foresight, or no wait, what it lacks is near-future-as-in-what-will-happen-tomorrow-foresight.

So now, while we *do* believe that fitness is a good thing, we're pretty sure that being this enthusiastic about it, is not.

Because today, we woke up, no closer to the body beautiful, but with a gait that bore a striking resemblance to the Tin Man's, pre-oiling. And feeling like a herd of elephants slow-danced over us the night before.

Ouch.


* Yes. We do own a slinky black dress. It is tucked away with all the other 26"- waisted (wasted?) outfits in the Wardrobe of Hope.