Today’s blog post is a transparent look into my life. Why? Because it’s just ridiculous sometimes.

People have a tendancy to glamorize spiritual abilities, such as being sensitive enough to translate Angelic messages and read energy off of objects at a crime scene. There exist schools of thought that people who are wired like me lead some sort of a superhero life with unimagineable superhero powers just waiting to be sprung into action at the right mystical moment.

We are thought to show up on the scene with our curly shoes, velvet cape, our crystal ball, our whispering spirit guides, perhaps a cool twisty wand (because everybody gets confused between a Wiccan and a Psychic), and probably an owl.

Well, that’s all very romantic and such. Until you have to make dinner.

See, the same awe-inspiring abilities that can assist law enforcement in rekindling cold cases, bridge the gap bewteen the living and the crossed-over, pull in messages from Angels and OffWorlders, and pull details from a human being off of a static object — then become a little sticking point when dealing with, well —

chicken.

To the Albertson’s Butcher that packaged up the half chicken slabs in the “$20.00 Bonus Buy” Family Meat Pack: I now know why the meat combo pack is so inexepensive.

Ladies, and gentlemen, it’s “Gut It Yourself” Chicken!

While preparing dinner tonight, I went to rinse the chicken and realized — wow — it’s liver and heart are still attached, and not just attached, but wedged WAAAAAY into the spine! If that little tidbit weren’t enough to make you gag (which I was, a lot, and the puppy was staring at me through white eyelashes with great concern as I choked into the sink), there was this big chunk of the neck with — WAIT FOR IT — three protruding arterties just flapping in the breeze like a Jeffrey Dahmer crime scene photo. More gagging commenced.

Unlike my unshakable sister Halley, who is on a fast track for medical school — I am NOT cut from that “Medical Doctor” cloth. I held this carnage, a grudge match between the slasher-movie chicken and my gag reflex. I sounded like Bill the Cat after he licked the drier vent.

Paper towel after paper towel I grabbed to attempt to put some other texture between ME – and the unyielding guts. And not only the guts, but all the WOE that had been imprinted in this chicken — energy of a sad, meaningless short life STUCK in the filter organs of the body. Which are stuck themselves.

“Jesus Christ”, I’m praying, “please help this miserable chicken that I really want to bash into the bottom of the garbage out of pure repulsed horror but now I feel guilty it had such a rotten life — and died for some schmuck like me — so I should probably eat it.”

I re-adjust my attitude thanks to guilt and overall embarrasment that I can’t breathe bewteen my gag reflex — and now my white, fluffy tiny puppy is staring at me with his head cocked.

I’m from Montana, I tell myself between dry heaves. I’ve gutted fish, and I pictured my Grandma Pinkie sucking it up with a smile on her face and sticking her thumb nail right in the middle of all the fish innards — so that seemed like a good idea.

Except it’s not a fish, whose guts pop right out. It’s a flightless sad genetically mutated land bird with I-had-a-crappy-life-and-its-your-fault energy, with angry, clingy livers and pokey empty-straw arteries plus other veins that are stonger than bailing wire because god only knows how many hormones this chicken has been injected with and now I’m swearing at the crime-scene carcass because we didn’t go organic this time around.

It’s me or dinner. So I continue hacking into the sink and just go for those livers, wedging my thumb nail under the edge Grammy Pinkie style — and the livers EXPLODE outward with an unimagineable texture unless you’re a serial killer. I guess the livers run right up the whole spine. With THAT exploding texture. The whole way.

Fish guts don’t do that. They just slide out.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS CHICKEN??

All of a sudden it hits me: I just read an article on MSN.com that the FDA forced chicken farms to stop feeding chickens food which contains so much ASENIC — in THEIR LIVERS.

I look under my fingernails and I calculate how long it will take me to die.

At this point, I just sort of black out a little bit between the gag-and-flail to rip out these imbedded guts, the frantic panting to get the knife from the drawer to cut away the neck and those three god-forsaken arteries that look like somebody’s discarded cocktail straws in a haunted house — I’m sawing through the spine with a kinda dull dollar store knife, and the sound itself is the stuff nightmares are made out of, I’ve got arsenic under my nails and no lobotomy on earth can erase the texture of those toxic, popping, exploding chicken livers.

I rinse and I go in a panic to slather this chicken in some sort of spices which will absolve the meat of ANY of what I’ve witnessed just now — so I grab the salt, flip up the lid and WHOOSH —

Coat the entire tray with a half inch of sea salt. In my hysterica, I flipped up the pour side, not the sprinkle side.

The dog is now laying down, staring at me with a really sad look on his face, his ears plastered back until he looks like an otter in mourning.

At this point I’m just furious. I’ve had my innocence stolen from this crappy $20-buck-chuck cheapo chicken and I’d be DAMNED if I was gonna let a little salt get in my way. And considering I’m sure I now have arsenic poisoning, I’m at least going to get this thing in the oven!

Thighs and legs go flying out of the pan and slide across the counter as I rinse a pound and a half of salf from the roasting pan. Back in with a skidding THUD go the disembodied chickie limbs and I realize — oh dear god, in my fury, I’ve now contaminated the counters with arsenic and woe.

I disinfect, pray, and move right to the sage, the salt, pepper, and cajun spices because I’m pretty sure that any spices developed to cover the taste and viral mung in catfish will probably kill the arsenic in this demonic and depressed chicken.

Into the oven she went at 450 degrees.

I’m praying to God my wife brings home a pizza.