Shut the door and turn on the stove, and set the bag of groceries down on the bar cart you use as a ramshackle kitchen island. You bought some more carnations at the store, so it’s best that you handle those now--tear off the plastic used to distinguish each small $10 bouquet from the other, and begin trimming the stems. Make sure to cut each at a forty-five degree angle, now, since that’s how Mom taught you and I think she learned from Martha Stewart, or at least whoever writes articles for Martha Stewart. Arrange them quietly, and take care to remove any leaves that will sit below the rim of the vase. Hum a tune to yourself. Maybe that new song you heard today... the one that’s not new as in recently released, the one that’s new as in new to you. Sway a little as you take the first vase to the dining table and set it down on the coaster since you don’t have a table runner and it’s still dripping from filling it a little over halfway with water. Yes, that coaster that used to be part of a set of six but is now a set of three. Start on the second vase, the one you bought from Anne because you like the way her pottery turns out. Actually, you should probably turn the stove off. It’s a waste of gas and there’s really no point in getting it hot or even warm before you need to saute those onions. Back to the flowers: you’ll want to make this one look distinct from the first, but you only have three colors and you also only bought carnations. No worries, they’re your favorite--try with this one to layer them in a new way or experiment with different heights. Sure, that looks good. Fill this vase up too. You probably should have filled it up before you arranged the flowers, but what can you do. Maybe spill a little on your way to place this vase on the bookcase in your room, next to the picture of you and Granddad and that fish he caught but said that you caught it together. Wipe it up with your sock on the way back to the kitchen. Pick all of the cuttings out of the sink and throw them in the trash--wait, no, the compost--and wash your hands.
Put on John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and light a candle. Don’t forget to buy a new one next time you’re at the store, looks like that one’s almost out. Hell, it’s been a long day--might as well pour yourself a glass of whiskey. You should pour it neat tonight; you haven’t ever really given it a shot and you’re tired of using regular ice cubes for it anyways since it always waters down too fast but you don’t have one of those special molds. Take a sip and then grab the cutting board. We’ll move quick through the cooking--that’s your time and I don’t want to interupt. But make sure you cut with care and purpose and gratitude and make doubly sure that you remember the scallions this time. And watch your fingers. You haven’t cut yourself doing this before but it’s not like you’re doing it expecting to lose a finger. And that’s when it happens, I think.
Remember that Vonnegut said that we’re all here to fart around anyways.