breakfast (prev posted at "Optimism from the Hills)

I found a quail in my peanuts this morning. Or rather, a quail-shaped peanut. It was so cute and little, with a fat little bottom and an itty bitty sloping head. I haven't eaten it yet. It's resting amongst the peanut shell graveyard that's spilling over my plate. I'll probably eat it soon. Peanuts--even quail-shaped ones--are meant to be eaten. Apparently there are lots of things you can do with peanuts, but I still think their most important use is to be eaten. How many peanuts are too many? 15? 30? The whole bag? Someone told me that eating the papery skins is good for you--fiber? I don't like to eat the skins. When I eat a peanut, I like to squeeze one end of the shell so it splits, then I pull the two halves apart and dump the (hopefully) two little nuts into my hand. The big ones are the most satisfying to crack open, but sometimes the little ones are extra tasty--I don't know why. So anyway, I like to pop the nuts out of their skins, sometimes shooting them across the table so they have to be retrieved prior to ingestion. What remains just adds to the little peanut shell graveyard. I have to dig amongst the bones and whispery skins to find more nuts, find the live ones. Peanut shells don't seem like regular garbage to me. I imagine them all getting together somewhere---peanut Heaven??--piles and piles of the stuff. Dry and light and skittering over blacktop, pooling in potholes. The saddest sight in the world is a wet, soggy peanut shell.