Good Morning! Grab a cup and settle in. I hope you like breakfast burritos. They started out as breakfast tacos, but these are a little larger and so we roll ’em up burrito style. A good strong cup of coffee is just right with them, along with a cool glass of milk.

First I fry the chorizo with diced potatoes. Chorizo is a spicy Mexican sausage and, as is true of all sausages, just don’t ask what’s in it. Just eat it and adore it, as Paul and I do. This is the first layer placed on the foundation of flour tortilla. If you have a gas stove, the best way to warm a tortilla is straight over the gas flame.

Back home in Texas, one can get breakfast tacos with barbecued brisket and they are heavenly. But I haven’t done a brisket since I got to South Carolina; this is a matter I must rectify, and soon. But I digress…

Next comes fluffy scrambled eggs. I appreciate  your tact in not asking why I don’t use one of the four wire whips of varying sizes I own, or the immersion blender to scramble the eggs instead of the humble fork. The habits of childhood never leave one.

Now, a generous sprinkling of cheese. Today is just cheddar, though I am also fond of pepperjack on a breakfast taco or burrito.

Hot sauce, because in California we are weened on it. Better is if I’ve made fresh salsa but alas, only hot sauce today. I buy it online by the case, from California.

Paul and I are both fond of diced green onions. Ok, I am more than fond of green onions, I adore them. If there is a tablespoon of left-over diced green onions, I will save those onions and find something to put them in or on.

I would wait until we are done eating before telling you the most exciting thing that happened this week: I became Carole, Slayer of Snakes, the First of Her Name. Let me pour you another cup and explain: I was alerted by Blanca’s barking. Blanca is a very vocal dog, but most of her vocalizations are not standard-issue barking. She grumps and whines and whisper-barks, fusses and yelps at Ivan, when there is a Ballmergency, or she wants attention. So genuine barking, like watch-dog barking, is so rare it brings me running.

Flying out the side door, I find Blanca barking, and Ivan hissing, and the two of them have cornered a black snake! Said snake was not happy and was striking at both animals in turn, and then at me, trying to get the animals back because I had no idea if this was a Good Snake or a Bad Snake. I don’t remember the little rhyme about yellow on red or black or whatever, and except when a rattle is present, I am snake-clueless.

Back through the house and into the garage  for my weapon of choice: the flat-headed shovel. Blanca and Ivan, still working as a team, have held the snake at bay and with two wallopings of my shovel, it was dead. So very dead.  A little bit of guts-leaking-out-one-side-dead. I was sorry it took two swings as I wanted to be merciful, but I am no Ned Stark, although a case could be made that in this situation, I was certainly Jon Snow, who Knows Nothing.

Paul came home just as I was putting Dead Snake into a plastic grocery bag for burial. He offered to take a picture of me brandishing it, but I have no real need for fame. Plus I didn’t have makeup on.

It turns out it was a harmless snake, a black Rat Snake, who eats, predictably, rats and other rodents. But I am told it will bite and though not poisonous, it can lead to infection.

 

So I murdered a potentially good snake.

 

 

 

 

My other exciting news is that soon, when you visit we’ll have fresh tomatoes, as my lesson in macro photography shows. (Of course I’m about as good with plants as with snakes, so maybe don’t hold your breath on those tomatoes.)

 

 

 

How was your week? Did anything unexpected wander into your life? I hope you didn’t kill it.