Yes, I know. As soon as I figure out how to do it, and what to put in its place, I will get rid of it.

The silence. But of course, it’s not completely silent. I can hear the faint sound of the freeway, the occasional drop of redwood debris on the skylight. Perhaps tonight everything is muffled by the coating of pollen.

Stiff, the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach.

The cake was a success, if only because I remembered to buy cake flour, which produced an ethereal lightness that floated into the system with more than the usual ease. The frosting was less joyful, though also lighter simply because a goodly portion of the chocolate stuck to the pot in which it was melted. I don’t have a double boiler, and didn’t want to search for a metal bowl I could put over the saucepan.

Therefore, the creaminess of the frosting was compromised by bits of crunchy, overcooked chocolate. To make up for the paleness, I added cocoa.

So it was with a curious detachment that I found myself, fork hovering, with the last piece of cake yesterday. Thanks to removing sugar from my diet for two months, I no longer eat desserts with the same relish. This is a mixed blessing.

When the kids were younger, cakes were manipulated into dinosaur and jet plane shapes, and I was grateful for the adhesive, forgiving cover of a thick frosting. By the time they got into video game parties, it wasn’t so much about the food as it was, ‘how many monitors and playstations can we get in here’.

The Waters of March is one of my favorites.

By this time each day, I will have been staring at a monitor for almost eight hours straight. Before my day is over, I will log in another four or five hours. What I would like to be able to do is remove the eyeballs, and pop them in a glass of something refreshingly cool. I will sit with empty sockets, and wait patiently, perhaps enjoying a few orange sections. At the end of the soak time, I will put the eyes back in, and magically, the red will be gone, and I can start up once again. renewed. Think of the market for this product!

Various trees have been stripped, and now I have too many bags of oranges. Left in the garage, they rot quickly, and something needs to be done. But maybe not today. Today, the sun is out, and I want to go look at the daffodils, the ones I stuck in the ground just a few weeks ago. I only have a few minutes before duty calls me elsewhere, and it’s dark by the time I get home again.

For years when I was little, I was afraid to eat sandwich spread, because my brothers told me those little green things were boogers.

Naturally, my sibs and I tried the foods we’d seen others eat. The sugar sandwich wasn’t bad, if a bit crunchy, and the mayonnaise one quite good, if you liked mayonnaise, which I still do.

On the other hand, we never tried the bread sandwich. We had watched a man who bought a small loaf of Wonder bread, and proceeded to eat most of it by sandwiching a slice between two others.

I went to elementary school in a little southern town, where some of the kids came to class barefoot. When it came time to enter the always-steamy cafeteria, we took a tray, and waited as the lunch ladies doled out the day’s fare. The ladies were a silent bunch, with meaty arms and delicate hairnets. I don’t remember if the barefoot kids did without, ate their own food, or stood in line with the rest of us.

The meat portion of the divided plastic plate was either spaghetti, macaroni and cheese, or a hot dog. Some days, we got fried bologna, which I had never encountered at home, and regarded as a treat since it came with gravy. There would be a dollop of turnip greens, maybe some creamed corn, and always, a slice of white bread across the top. Once in a while, the milk was chocolate.

It soon became apparent that I never ate the bread. A few kids would ask if they could have it even before we sat down.

Much has been made of this Elvis favorite. When you mash a banana into peanut butter, you are not making art, but rather a muddy-looking mix that gets a bit more colorful if you add grape jam. I never went as far as frying mine in butter, and the cold version is very tasty as it is.

But now in these low-carb days, bread is pretty much out of the question. Which leaves the muddied mass, so I’ll just take the peanut butter plain, on a spoon, and not much of it at that.

What tides me over on a rushed afternoon is peanut butter, straight out of the jar. It used to be Skippy’s reduced fat, but the stuff in the fridge is Trader Joe’s. The only ingredients are peanuts and salt. Obviously, Elvis was a peanut butter fan.

Once you’ve mastered eating fried chicken or barbecued ribs at the keyboard, you can pat yourself on the back (after washing the hands, of course). But if you’re like me, you’ll find it impossible to get back to work till you’ve flossed.

I eat lunch between 10:30 and 11:00 due to my work, which gets hectic around noon. Sometimes I forget to eat before dinner, and if I do, I get shaky and irritable.

Last year, I hand-pollinated the blossoms, but the crop is small. I buy Blenheims by the case at the apricot stand near the community center in Sunnyvale.

Progress is slow, but just wait.

Or it can be something else