text: This whole flaring potato thing started about a week ago. You see, my wife had been eyeballing the bone-in, spiral cut ham that had been floating around in the bottom of my garage freezer since two Christmases ago. Hell, it could have been five Christmases for all I know--time sure does seem to fly by these days. Anyway, she's eyeballing this frosty ball of pig flesh and decides she’s got a real hankering for honeyed ham. Not just sugar coated ham--mind you--but bee juice glazed ham and flaring garlic mashed potatoes. Now, the only problem is that we ain’t got no flaring potatoes. And--I don’t know if you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of months--but we got a real motherflaring pandemic on our hands, here. Next thing you know, the wife and I are smack dab in the middle of a little argument about the necessity of root vegetables during the apocalypse. And I gotta say, I think I did pretty good. So there I was, dumbdeffer me all masked up and covered in hand sanitizer like I found a surplus of Drakkar Noir, roaming the aisles of the local discount grocery chain in search of tubers. I searched high, I searched low, and I couldn’t find a single tater anywhere I looked--skin red, brown, or even canned for Sol’s sake. That was, until I turned a corner and found the holy grail. Sitting on a pallet far off in the corner was a single cardboard box with a glowing red word: Idaho. It called to me like a message from the sun god, himself. I strode up to that coveted box, placed my hands upon the sides of it, and lifted with all my might. Fueled by the thought of a happy wife and the happy life that went with it, I hefted that box all the way to the register and slapped it down on the conveyor with a flourish. I think I might have even slapped the top of the box and tossed the cashier a wink. I can’t be certain--adrenaline was coursing through my veins like Monster in a Twitch streamer. I paid, hauled the box home to my fortress of quarantine, and proudly presented it to the mother of my children. I was filled with joy! My innate manly need to provide filled to the brim by the most epic of quests and the bounty received from it. I waited for her reaction. And waited. And waited. She looked at me for the longest time, expression blank, clearly overwhelmed by my success. I stared back, patiently waiting for the recognition that was due to me. The seconds stretched to minutes, and the minutes to an eternity. When she finally spoke, she said, “I’ve decided that I don’t want potatoes anymore. Too many carbs.” So anyway, that’s how I wound up with a fifty pound box of potatoes. I microwaved one for breakfast today, with a little sour cream and black pepper. It was pretty good. Forty-nine more pounds to go...