I've Seen Fire and I've Seen Rain. I've Seen Lentil Soup That I Thought Would Never End.

Today was among the most ridiculous days we have had since our trailerin' life began. It's been pouring rain so we have been trapped indoors here at our new campsite on the Mohican River in central Ohio. I made blueberry pancakes for breakfast which was the one solitary event of the day that went well. Billy decided to paint since we were not going to be able to do anything outside. I set to work on a big ass pot of curried lentil soup from a bag mix I had bought at some fancy food specialty store. The recipe/directions were printed on a paper tag that was tied to the bag and the bag itself contained lentils and one rather fat packet of spices, nothing else. I was supposed to add tomatoes, onions, oil, salt and water to this mix... nothing else. I followed the recipe only deviating to add in some mushrooms. After the base for the soup had been simmering for awhile I decided to give it a taste. Have any of you ever experienced a sensation of searing pain coupled with a profound reflexive urge to vomit? I have. My soup base was a crime against humanity. It was the suffering equivalent of tying someone to a chair, taping their eyes open and showing them 14 hours straight of people being tortured on video. Billy was cracking up at the gasping, choking faces I was making so after I regained some sort of composure and felt sure my blueberry pancakes were staying down I challenged him to taste it. Yeah baby. In your face funny boy.

Let me interrupt this story line to introduce another which coincides with the soup story in the timeline of our day. Right about this time... the "choking violently on soup base" time... was when the bees started to arrive. The Bees. More specifically... Yellow Jackets. Inside the trailer. First there was one... then two, then 5 and so on and so forth. Where were these bees coming from? Hey! Wouldn't we like to know! In addition to the many bees which were inside our trailer there were dozens swarming around outside. For any of you who know me very well at all THIS is my worst nightmare. Although I have graduated to a higher level of bee tolerance in the past year or so I still have a blind fear of them in close quarters. An irrational, blind fear. I fear them as though they are capable of slowly eating my flesh and brains zombie style all the while forcing me to watch reruns of "Murder She Wrote" on a wide screen tv. Scary, scary bees.

I'll sort of whiz through a few hours now. I kept adding stuff to the soup. Stuff like milk, half and half, a whole can of coconut milk... anything to try to take the raging fires of Hell out of it. Imagine chewing up about a half cup of black peppercorns in your mouth and swallowing them down. This is close to how the soup was tasting. Meanwhile Billy was on official duty trying to figure out how the bees were getting in... and they did continue to get in. Finally after examining every nook and cranny on the outside of the trailer where we thought they may be able to get in and finding no evidence pointing to bee entry we were about to give up on figuring it out. At this point I just happened to flip on the hood fan over the stove because my beautiful soup was boiling and steaming up the joint. Outside the kitchen window an angry cloud of bees erupted. AHHH HA! My main satisfaction in this moment was knowing that the intruders had been blasted with the pepper steam from the hideous soup. I am sure their tiny bee eyes were burnin'. I can't think of a better way to say "Keep Out" than with this particular soup. In fact.. that may be the one and only use for this soup... it could be used to keep away a wide variety of pests. Things such as bees, vampires, werewolves, komodo dragons, anacondas and perhaps even an invasion from China could be kept at bay. Should China ever start to seem overtly hostile we should all set to work at the stove top on a big batch of Curried Lentil Soup. Also it may work to deter snakes on a plane.

Anyway... it seems the bees were getting in through the hood vent outside. So we are now running the fan nonstop. This is annoying but not so much so as having a trailer full of bees. Running the fan keeps them out.

Due to the fact that I added about 5 gallons of various liquids to the soup in an effort to mellow it out we ended up with enough of it to actually feed China. Billy announced he would find the soup edible if he could eat it over rice. Amazing. So I made rice. He ate it. I had rice with a big scoop of peanut butter mixed in and one ladle full of the atrocity mixed in as well. It was gross. And not because of my peanut butter either. I will be throwing away the rest obviously. I should probably check with local hazardous waste disposal officials before doing so though so I don't pollute the river and kill all the fish or something.

In closing I'll mention that we are in our new campsite for the next two weeks and we have super crappy internet reception through our Verizon signal. I probably won't be posting too often because of this. I promise to make a valiant effort... but I am not sure I will get great results and picture uploading is probably not gonna happen.