It's Magic (you know, never believe it's not so...)

When the weather dares to dip below 70, my thoughts turn to two things: The hours I will spend wrapped up in a blanket, sipping hot herbal tea and reading books - and chili. The former, for the record, never actually happens, at least not for longer than 3.4 minutes when I inevitably nod off sitting up like my great Aunt Agnes (God rest her soul), but the latter is very much a reality, mostly because it involves both cheese and sour cream. (Or at least it did involve sour cream, until I had to give it up, but that's a story for later).

So earlier this fall I headed to the Ghetto Grocery for provisions: diced tomatoes, onions, garlic, meat (for Dom), veggies to saute (for me), elbow macaroni and Chili Magic. For those unfamiliar with its goodness, Chili Magic is a stout little can containing beans and a spicy roux concentrate that just requires the companionship of meat (or veggies) and tomatoes. Chili purists may scoff, but I won the annual City Paper Chili Cook-Off one year with this baby, and it's never steered me wrong.

Until tonight.

But before I go there, it's important to note that the Ghetto Grocery (my least favorite place on earth, and almost the site of a full-on knock-down-drag-out between me and an elderly woman who I kept accidentally ramming with my cart while waiting in line for what felt like 4 hours) did not have the Chili Magic. They had every other permutation of chili imaginable - in the can, in a dry packet, in a jar, etc. - but not the greatest product ever created by human hands. But I would not be denied. I came right home and ordered myself not one but two cases of Chili Magic from buythecase.net, stocking up like the proverbial squirrel for the winter.

I made one round of chili a few weeks ago, and we ate off of it for a good, long while. Then I made two huge pots of chili last night with the intention of eating off of them most of this week, or at least until Thanksgiving, where I will snub the chili in favor of a carbapalooza, the likes of which the world has never seen. On the first night, we ate the chili, enjoyed it, and that was that. Tonight was pretty much an instant replay, with one exception: Dom and I have taken turns farting out the most ungodly, noxious fumes since the second we set down our spoons. I'm telling you, I've never seen (or smelled) anything like it.

And, as if to emphasize my point, Dom just blew a gasket on the chair. "There's a lot more where that came from, babe," he said, dead serious. "I mean, there are days of gas left."


I know it's all very fourth grade, but he blows cheeks, and then it's like my body hears and responds in its own, audible way. Been like this for hours, and it's given me a solid case of the giggles. Back in Nashville, everybody thinks we're rock stars - the couple that dared to leave our cozy little surburban community and venture north to the biggest, baddest city of all. When they think of us, I'm sure they envision dinners in Manhattan at neighborhood cafes, followed up by walks around Central Park and then a late-night latte with our friends Monica and Chandler at some or another coffee shop. I doubt they're thinking of Dom, stretched out on the chair in his long johns (which he wore to work because he didn't have any clean underwear left), farting into infinity - or me, in the exact same sweatpants and shirt I've had on since I got out of bed, propped up at the computer, blowing a hole in my Ikea chair with the Black Death coming out of my ass. It smells like spices. It smells like concentrate.

It smells like the death of romance.