“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 589 (Tuesday)

Monday night, around 9:00, I let Winston outside. Sometimes he likes to go to the backyard, sometimes to the front, and this time, he chose the front door. As usual, I turned on the porch light and stood in the doorway after letting him out. An unfamiliar generic silver car was parked in front of the house along the fence. This isn’t completely unusual, being a public street with houses inhabited by people who have guests. It was made possible by it being the first time in years that the next door neighbor took her trash barrels back to her own yard on trash day instead of waiting the usual two or three extra days.

A bald man sat behind the steering wheel. The nearby streetlight illuminated him as he shoveled food into his mouth from a square white Styrofoam takeout box. A Prime delivery van was parked diagonally across the street with the side door open towards my house. The Prime driver took a box to the porch of the house across the street.

The bald guy in the silver car lifted the container higher, set the corner to his mouth, and poured whatever was left in it into his mouth. The highly refined diner seemed unaware he was in a public place. Or maybe he was aware and was unconcerned about the activity around him – the truck parked behind him, the package delivery happening to his left, the dog peeing in the yard on the other side of the picket fence and the woman standing in the illuminated doorway to his right, watching him chow down his food. He produced a napkin which he used to wipe his mouth and then each of his fingers.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I never eat from containers and pour the remnants into my mouth. If I were to do such a thing, it would happen in the privacy of my own home. Deep inside, far from the windows and public view. Definitely not while parked in the street in front of a stranger’s house. Not without checking carefully for witnesses, anyway.

Winston came back inside and the doors were closed. A few minutes later, curious if the car was still parked there, I looked outside. The Prime delivery van was gone. The unfamiliar silver car was gone. A square white Styrofoam food container sat in the street in front of my house.

And now there are many questions. Like, what was he eating and where did it come from? Does he always park in front of other peoples’ homes at the end of dead-end streets to dine? Does he always inhale his food? Does he always litter? Did his life partner or doctor put him on a special diet and he copes with the deprivation by sneaking out to eat and then has to dispose of the evidence? And where does he live so I can return the favor? Now I’ll be on the lookout for the return of the silver car and the takeout eating litter man.

Winter food has arrived.

In other food news, because that seems to be the current life obsession, winter food mode has settled upon The Bungalowell. We are already days into soup season, and that was the lunch for the rainy day, but the rain, the dreariness, and the chill took it up a notch.

The weather kicked off a craving for thin sliced fried potatoes, and with potatoes there needs to be onions, and with that there was a hankering for kielbasa. Or maybe it started with the kielbasa and moved to potatoes from there, who knows. But there it was in the skillet and then in a bowl. 

I don’t eat much meat and the stuff I crave is rarely steak, it’s more likely to be bacon, kielbasa, or pepperoni. That’s how I roll. And I never park in front of other people’s houses to dine and then dump the packaging on the ground, but that’s just me being more of a private slob.