I’ve been wanting to write for almost a year now but nothing’s come of it. It ain’t that I haven’t tried, I’ve spend a few hours a month staring at this screen writing and deleting and writing and deleting and well you get it, there’s no reason for me to keep saying it.

I thought about making this a “where have I been” thing but a) no one cares and b) if I did that I would run out of things to write about, so instead, this will be this last sentence and then I’ll write out a dream I’ve kept in my heart and mind recently.

It’s 6:00am, I slip out of bed and walk barefoot across the hardwood to the bathroom stopping to look out the window at the morning skyline. I wince at the bathroom light and begin brushing my teeth while also peeing, something I’ve done forever. I’ll go as far as to spit into the toilet because it’s just one less mess to clean up when I’m done.

After a flush and a rinse, it’s down to the kitchen, the old wooden staircase creaking softly under each step as I wander past photos of friends, family, and Anna Kendrick. Chances are I stub my toe in the kitchen, screw my face up, make up a weird curse like “Awwwwww bay leaf” and stand on one foot for a minute until the shock wears off.

I pull a big dutch oven out of the cabinet, pull celery, bell peppers, onion, and garlic out of the panry, run my knife over the sharpener a few times and get to work. It’s the third Saturday of the month, which means I’m having friends over for dinner, drinks, and maybe a game or two. They’ll come around 4:30 with kids, pets, and desserts in tow and it’s the one thing keeping me pushing through most of the weekly slog.

At some point I turn on music, probably Joe Pug or John Prine, nice early morning kitchen music while I pile the chopped vegetables and put them aside.

I turn to the stove and begin to sing to no one, pouring grapeseed oil into the dutch oven and measuring out flour for a roux. It’s late fall and finally gumbo season on the east coast. I walk to the window and look out at the sky, brilliant orange, purple, and blue, before walking back to the stove and pouring in the flour.

To make a roux, you need to stir the flour constantly, if it burns, you get to start over. When I first made gumbo, I did it low and slow and stirred for 45 minutes until I had a nice dark roux whereas now the process takes me about twenty. It’s a beautiful meditation, watching the flour and oil turn from white to blonde, blonde to brunette, and brunette to a dark, almost chocolately brown.

Once the roux is down, the onions, bell peppers, and celery join the party for a quick sweat, followed by the garlic before a quick de-glazing with a beer. Chicken goes in along with some andoullie and it goes to the back burner to burble and mingle for a few hours.

After cleaning up what I can in the kitchen, I walk outside into the October morning, close my eyes, and take a few deep breaths. After the last breath, I open my eyes and look around my small backyard; picnic table, firepit, small shed holding a lawnmower and two bicycles. I stand there in the soft, wet grass until it gets too cold on my feet and I retreat inside and get my first whiff of the garlic in the air.

It’s only 10:16am now, so after a shower and getting dressed I go for a walk downtown by the water. I’ve always loved the first whiff of the water, it’s comforting, a smell that can never be replicated, something that requires you to be present, to be in it’s enviroment. At this point I realize I left home with the stove top on (to burble the gumbo) and I quickly go back, because paranoia about burning my house down with a stove or candle has always plagued me.

I walk back down my block and see no firetrucks, walk into the house and take a deep breath of gumbo air that now consumes the house. With a giant smile on my face, I turn on College Gameday, lay down on the couch, and quickly doze off.

At 3:45 I wake back up, check the gumbo, stare at the television and watch Oklahoma pull away from Texas Tech, and go check my phone to see a few texts from friends that are coming tonight. Matthew is bringing bread, Olivia a dessert, Anthony is coming with his whole family, Sarah with hers. Another smile washes across my face, I spent a lot of my late twenties with these folks and was convinced they wouldn’t want anything to do with me by this point, maybe I was wrong.

I fuss around doing some cleaning and hear the doorbell ring around 4:20, I make sure everything’s presentable and holler “Come on in, it’s open!”

Feels real weird that I wrote this and planned to end it just like that.

Whatever, gonna write more soon, I hope.

— Do good, love you all.