I couldn't decide if what I was doing was a good or bad. Spending time outdoors..... Good, sitting on the hard cement..... Bad. Doing an activity with the kids..... Good, this activity involved swinging a hammer..... Bad. Finding and eating something that has been said to fight cancer..... Good, but also contains cyanide..... Bad. Patiently and reflectively cracking each individual nut..... Good, feeding my obsessive compulsive disorder..... Bad.
It's not uncommon to leave a neighbors house after a visit with some sort of a gift.... fresh baked cookies, a jar of honey, bottled preserves, I've even received some form of meat pulled from the freezer. A neighbor's gift was the case with my current bowl full of nuts.
I had no idea that if you let apricot pits completely dry out, you can crack open their shell and eat what you find inside. Like almonds in looks and taste, it's just another bit of knowledge acquired from my wise fellow town folk. It was time for me to grab my hammer and my bowl full of pits, collected from months of apricot eating, and head out back for some nut cracking. Anything loud around here draws an audience, so before long I had two more hammer swinging helpers. I did convince Abe to hand over his large sledge hammer in exchange for my own much smaller tool.
We sat together learning the art of nut cracking and discovering first hand the meaning of several nut expressions. Some nuts really are hard to crack.... you do feel a little nutty and a bit like a nut case after continually cracking hundreds of nuts.... and lastly you never really can get that horribly bitter taste out of your mouth after eating a bad nut.
So there you have it, our afternoon in a nutshell.... now all we have left is to enjoy the fruits of our labor..... Good.... Yes, definitely good!
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