Killing them Softly

Looks like I am killing all my relatives off, one by one, ready to collect the inheritance.

I am still recovering from the house-full of family and their pets during the holidays.  Mom was the last to leave.  Since she is older, she likes to take direct flights when she can.  The only direct flight available meant we had to get up at 5:00 in the morning and rush around.  This meant I couldn't cook the usual large breakfast of bacon, eggs and greens, or serve my mother her favorites.

I decided that it wasn't enough to just have a smoothie and some coffee, so I whipped up a few scrambled eggs with butter.  Usually she eats skim milk, bran cereal, decaf coffee and half a grapefruit for breakfast.

She downed the egg in a few seconds and asked how it was cooked.  I replied that I just cooked it in some butter.  She declared it delicious!  We NEVER had butter at home when I was a kid.  Too expensive.  I did get butter through the subsidized school lunch program, but there was never any butter in the home, even for baking Christmas cookies.

A few days after her trip home, she called and announced that since the visit, she had been eating an egg cooked in butter every morning for breakfast.  This is a big switch, because ever since my teen years, she had been on a low fat diet in order to reduce her cholesterol, which was inching towards a very unhealthy 200.  After her heart disease risk scare more than 30 years ago, we quit eating foods cooked in bacon and had only low-fat cheeses, diet margarine, and skim milk.

Yes, I am contributing to my mother's decline.  I say, if you are close to your last meal, let them all be drowned in butter.