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honky cracker: Skinning My Muffin
I can't get the wrapper off my muffin.
Seriously. It's like they baked the thing in the wrapper. The wrapper has become one with the muffin - like a second skin.
Skinning my muffin was not what I wanted to do first thing on a Monday morning.
I wanted to a) get my muffin and my coffee b) eat my muffin and drink my coffee and c) get this bitch underway. But no. Instead of spending the early part of my morning checking happyrobot and fiddling with my fantasy baseball team, I must instead skin my muffin.
This is no easy task. And I lack the requisite experience needed to skin, well, almost anything. I have never, for better or for worse, skinned anything in my life. And I wasn't about to start today. Oh no. Not on a cloud, humid Monday morning.
I was unable to get into the shower this morning. Last night I ate pasta and broccoli covered in garlic infused olive oil. My shoes make my feet sweat. I stink and I'm down to that emergency pair of all-too loose boxer shorts.
And now I'm skinning a muffin.
Somehow, the muffin gets skinned. Mostly. I end up with some painful chunks of muffin wrapper in my teeth from time to time, but at least I am fed.
Fed and caffeinated, I attempt to get on the T. (The Metro Boston area's sad, sad excuse for a subway system.) I have half an hour to get to work, have bits of muffin stuck in my teeth, and smell like a sweaty garlic cigarette.
This, of course, is the day the token seller decides she's going to flirt with me.
"Hi."
"Hi," I say back, pushing my $1.25 into the slot, waiting expectantly for my token.
"So..." she ellipses "it' quiet today."
"Yeah... I think some computer virus threw everyone into a tizzy and no one's leaving their homes."
"Oh. So you know about computer viruses, eh?"
"Yep."
"You come here often".
"Pretty much every time I need to get somewhere?"
"Ah. So where ya gettin'... I mean, goin'?
"Work. Can I have my token please?"
Sorry, lady. I'm just not in the mood.
Finally, I make my way down to the T stop when my ears are violated by the sounds of something that isn't silence. It sounds vaguely Lilith-fair-y... like Dar Williams with a yeast infection. More whiny folk rock on the T. What a way to start the day.
Look, lady. I miss my girlfriend too, but I'm not holin' up in a subway singing about it.
I have to put a stop to this.
"Hey!" I shout over to the girl with the guitar in the T stop.
"Yeah?"
"You know any songs about muffins?"
"Muffins?"
"Yeah. Muffins."
"No."
"Well I do."
Silence.
"Can I play it?"
"Uh.... Yeah."
I once wrote a song that, well, it has another title, but I like to call it "The Blueberry Muffin Song". And the choruses go something like this:
You think you're really somethin'
But you're not much more than a blueberry muffin
Tart and tangy, and yet bittersweet
What'll happen to you when you hit the street?
And, my personal favorite
You think you're really somethin'
But you're not much more than a blueberry muffin'
And I got no butter left to spread on you...
Just like you fucked me I hope they fuck you too
Yeah. Monday morning T patrons love the profanity.
And to think, none of this would have happened if I didn't have to skin my muffin.
