Salmonella probably isn’t fun

Laurel and I are making a cake for Bryan (don’t tell him), a nice yellow Betty Crocker one, to celebrate his last night in town. Tomorrow he leaves for a month of bumming around Mexico, so we decided it was only fitting send him off with a made-almost-from-scratch confectionary, childishly decorated with M&M’s forming a badly misspelled declaration of love. After we’d poured the batter into the baking pan and twisted the knob on the oven to bake, Laurel ran a finger around the inside of the mixing bowl and popped it into her mouth.

“Laurel! There’s raw eggs in there!” I admonished her.

“So what? Nothing’s gonna happen,” she told me. That did it for me. I stopped just short of sticking my entire head in the bowl and polishing the metal to a dull shine with my tongue. As I licked batter off my palms, it occurred to me that someone should be telling me not to do this, but no such person was around and I can’t say I missed their presence.

I left Laurel in charge of the cake and rode her bike back to my apartment, two bottles of Trader Joe’s wine clinking around my backpack, and she didn’t tell me (no one did) how ill-prepared I was to bike. Off the top of my head, I committed the following safety violations: wearing headphones (Lonesome Crowded West); improper footwear (thong sandals two sizes too large); no helmet (not even a proper mat of hair anymore, either); failing to observe traffic signals (stop signs just shouldn’t apply to bikes). What’s more, I did all this while zooming down Ravenna Ave., the University District’s answer to Lombard Street. I avoided tragedy until I was nearly back to my apartment, when I struck one of those little concrete domes and almost went over the handle bars.

I think the two experiences above are harmless enough taken separately, but together they might spell disaster. I’m feeling a little green around the gills, but whether from the raw eggs, the near-wreck, or some frightful combination thereof I can’t say. Hopefully it’s just the ghost of today’s Mexican lunch rattling its chains, but only time will tell.