Relax

 Hi Natty!  How are you?  I guess you are very excited at this time, but you must learn how to relax.  Yes Honey, you are becoming very popular.  But don't let it control you.  Fame isn't worth the suffering it causes.  Relax and you will enjoy your success more, and have more fun.  You wouldn't go surfing all tense and stressed out, would you?  Relax, and ride the wave.  Not that I actually surf, but I do a lot of spiritual surfing, if I may call it that.  And life is so much more enjoyable when I relax.

Are you hungry? I made rice for dinner.  Rice is more laborious than bread for instance, not just from prepping and cooking but eating and cleaning is extra labor.  So I prefer rice with only one dish.  Like teriyaki chicken.  That's what I had for dinner.  My teriyaki chicken recipe is getting more stable.  I like it with raw onions, but we could use tofu or something else you like.  Teriyaki chicken doesn't go with hot sauce.  It becomes salty, because the hot sauce overwhelms the teriyaki sauce.  So if you like it hot and spicy, you have to use fresh hot peppers.  Want some teriyaki chicken?

The evening off

 Hi Natty!  What's going on?  I hope you are comfy over there, and having a wonderful time.  I recently bookmarked a Vancouver news site, just to see what's going on at your home town.  8°C?  Brrrr!!  I hope you have central heating at your house.  I hate to think that you need to go outside to chop wood.  Or are you in Los Angeles right now?  It's good that you found an agency there.  I do hope they treat you well.  LA has a reputation of being really cliquey, so please make loud noises if people aren't treating you right.  Ya Allah, please protect my Natty.  You were in Venice Beach this summer, right?  You must have seen what this guy saw:

Dammit, I can't feed these cats any snacks whatsoever!  Just a little bit of bread, and they get diarrhea.  These pampered cats have to eat the same thing every time, and only the same thing.  Yet they bug me for snacks, and try to eat my dinner while I'm still cooking it!  Spoiled brat cats!  So I locked them up in the kitty litter room while I spent the evening making my dinner very slowly.  Allah gave me the evening off and I didn't have to do yard work.  I had planned for yard work though, so I prepped curry pups for dinner.  I spent the extra free time watching YouTube while eating dinner.  I got full quickly.  Usually I can finish all my food, but tonight I had one pup left over.  I guess I shouldn't have watched that video of people pooping on the streets of LA.

I took a snapshot of Mary Unknown7's avatar with her mouth open, and you can see that the teeth are not set properly.  They could be prettier too, after all, these are digital teeth.  It's definitely an excuse to upgrade more, even though I like this mesh head.  Mary's avatar must have the best tech available.  Because we have work to do, in the name of Allah!

I survived the past 10 years, praise be to Allah

 Hi Natty!  What's up?  I hope you are healthy and enjoying life.  What are you having for dinner?  I made beef and potato stew to go with some fresh mini pita breads.  It's got beef and potatoes of course, and I added some garlic and red hot chilli peppers.  I rubbed my face after handling the peppers but I didn't touch my eyes, so all I had to suffer was a hot face.  I sprinkled some sesame seeds on top.  I love that stuff!  My mother gave me some brown gravy powder, and that's what I used to make the broth.  Powerful stuff, 1½ tablespoons to a pint of water made some thick gravy, but you can't mix it with other seasonings or experiment with it, or you'll get heartburn.  It has to be straight up.  My Mom gave it to me about 10 years ago, and probably had it in her freezer longer than that before deciding to get rid of it by giving it to me.  It doesn't go bad though, it doesn't seem to at least, and I've used it occasionally over the years and it has stayed the same.  I guess if I die today, I won't be able to write this letter tomorrow.  But that would be the case regardless, such is life.  From Allah is our origin, and to Allah is our return.

Wow, it's almost the end of the year!  What happened the last 10 years?  In 2009, a couple of months before the stock market crash, I moved to this country after doing music business in America and being homeless.  I knew my enemies would pursue me, but I was disoriented by this location after being in America for so long.  As usual, Allah saved my butt over and over again just like back in the US.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  And it's the same today, the only effective defense I have is the help of God.  So it's a spiritual life for me, and a spiritual life for my wife as well.  Please be aware of that.  So what did happen the last 10 years?  Among other things, a convicted criminal came into office and guess what: I voted for him.  I admit I voted partisan politics, but I didn't vote for him the next time around.  It didn't make my life any better, it was just the right thing to do.  What did make my life better was meeting Mary Unknown7 the person after I completed "Woo Hoo".  I thought I was an OK singer, but she blew me away.  Ya Allah, please protect me as I try my best to protect her.

Sesame!

 First off, I want to apologize for our being late today.  Internet was bad today, so we couldn't stream and Mary Unknown7 didn't show up to her gig at the karaoke joint until about midnight.  Even then, the Internet cut out again at 12:30 am, so she could only sing for half an hour online.  Locally, everything was normal.  The Internet service seems to have been restored since, so tomorrow Mary will sing online for 2 hours at the usual time inshaAllah.

Hi Natty!  I had a dream about you last night.  I would rather talk to you in person about such an intimate dream, rather than this public place.  Let's just say that I needed mouthwash before we could begin.  When we are married inshaAllah, let's keep a lot of large bottles of mouthwash all over your house so it doesn't become an issue.

Have you ever wondered why they didn't say "Open (something else)" instead of "Open Sesame!"  Or did they eat a lot of sesame on that street?  Well wonder no more, because I bought sesame seeds for tonight's dinner of teriyaki chicken on white rice.  You have to roast them first, but sesame seeds do add a nice nutty flavor to foods.  It makes a big difference with teriyaki chicken, for some reason.  The basil in my yard was looking great again, so I added that in for a nice, fragrant dinner.  Want some?

My cat food is better than my human food (so say the experts)

 Hi Natty!  How are you?  If you're not working, then you must be enjoying extended vacation time at your beautiful homestead.  Ah, what a life!  But with so much time on your hands, I hope you are not feeling too lonely.  I love you and I want to be with you, but I must be able to support you comfortably.  Even if you were to join with me now and share my poverty (which I'm sure you don't want to do), it would not be easier.  There's a spike in the Covid cases in this country, and the government has banned interstate travel.  Since the state borders are closed, then they are even more xenophobic to non-locals.  So please be patient, and pray.

I like my Ramen recipe.  Not only does it make a plain old pack of Ramen great, it's the perfect portion for lunch.  I was enjoying my lunch when Lookie came up to bug me for a taste.  When I offered her the empty bowl, she sniffed at it, sneered, then walked away.  I suppose it was because I was cooking up a batch of cat food at the same time.  My cat food formula is this, folks: for half a kilo of fish, add 1½ cups of rice and ½ liter of water.  Boil the fish first in the water until the stomachs burst and dissolve.  I prefer to slow cook the fish, preferably fish that don't have scales.  Then I remove the fish to let it cool, then add the rice to slow cook until it boils, then shut off the heat to let it steam.  Of course you have to have the lid on.  After the rice has absorbed the fish broth, I add the fish meat and fish heads to it and mix.  NO SALT!  The bones I throw away, and the liver and roe I snack on.  This amount of cat food is 3 days worth for 3 adult cats.  They like it so much, that they like it even more when it's about to go bad (the third day and final portion).  You would be hard pressed to find even a grain of rice left.  And what do they do when it's close to feeding time?  They perch on my stove top.

The stud

 Hi Natty!  How's it going?  How's your weekend?  Oh, it's always the weekend now, huh?  Well, I hope you are doing great and having a marvelous time.  I just got done with dinner.  Nothing special on the menu today, just takeout rice for lunch and hot dogs for dinner.  Hot dogs rolled in dough then cooked, that is.  I should have done something else with the dough.  It wasn't inedible, but I have to give myself a thumbs down for its boringness.

Lily and Bro the kittens are not really kittens anymore.  They're almost fully grown, and are healthy and they seem happy, so alhamdulillah.  Lily should be going into heat at any time now, so hooray for that.  Bro logically should already be sexually mature.  His cat balls aren't really that big yet.  If you happen to be an expert on cat balls, then they could be about two thirds the size of fully grown balls.  Since Floofy died, the cat dynamics have changed in the house, and Bro has figured out that I need him, and I can't afford to let him run away from the homestead as male cats do.  He's a good boy though, and quite disciplined with his indoor and outdoor time.  He hasn't even been going next door lately where I first found him and his sister last Ramadan, just keeping around my house.  I need him to mate with Lookie, so I can extend Floofy's bloodline.  Lookie didn't show any interest in him the last time she was in heat, but that's what I said just now to her: "I want you to mate with him."  She peered back at me all bug eyed from within the Collar of Shame and meowed, which meant "You have to be kidding me!" or "Give me a break!"  Bro on his part has been chumming up to her, only to be met with a hiss and an occasional smack, but he doesn't give up.  That's good.  After all, "The more aggressive chimpanzee has a higher probability of copulating with the female, and thus propagating the species."  (Joyce Brothers)

Hobby

 Hi Natty!  It's Saturday evening, right past sunset and I'm eating my dinner while writing to you.  Curry pups!  Yeah I usually have curry pups for dinner after cutting the grass in the evening, because I get to eat while sitting at the computer.  So what's up with you?  I hope you are healthy and happy.  I noticed you've been shuffling around the episodes on your V,OID, and that's fine.  It's your show Honey, you can do whatever you want with it.  Just don't stress out about it OK?  Not even if stressing out were your hobby.

Do I have a hobby?  I like to work, so that's what I enjoy doing.  Unless it's labor, which I loathe, and that would stress me out.  I mean music and computer work is what I enjoy.  I don't think I have room for anything else, because this music is going to be the death of me.  But if I did have time for a hobby, I would love to build RC aircraft.  I want to build big, clunky objects that fly, none of that streamlined stuff.  And no puny, whining electric motors either.  I like those noisy, roaring gasoline turbine engines!  Ah, dream on.  Next life, maybe.