Chaos Eliminators of the Electromagnetic Variety

Dear Jordan: Thank you for your lovely Midwestern hospitality. If I were a better Iowan, I would have fought harder for those dishes, but as it is, there is soup in the sink. Have a lovely afternoon. -Zoe.

She's right. There most definitely was soup in the sink. And later, after she had left and stomped out the door in those boots too small that she'd inherited from her mother's sister, the soup sat waiting on the stove, one leg in, one leg straddling the side in hesitation. It wasn't ready to commit to liquid form, having mastered so marvelously its obese and unwieldy frozen-in-the-bag capacities. I would chisel this sucker into shape.

Trudeau would say that I should neither cook something that has been in contact with plastic, nor stand so dangerously close to the microwave (without the eliminator chaos he tries to sell on his webpage). We learned about all of his tricks this weekend, spending half of our energies scoffing the book I ordered "for free" (I must defend myself here) and staring wide-eyed at his criminal record on some internet reference website. If only we had the pendant he offers for sale, to ward off not only the FDA but all those bad spirits that come in energy drink form. But as Zoe and I discovered, we from the Midwest suffer from a bit of inherent chaos, whether we except it or not. We are humble and hospitable, afraid of the guest stepping too far into the kitchen. This is our terrain. How does a Midwesterner, then, cope with an insolent bag of soup, or a criminal who claims I'm not eating enough organic apples. I suppose we fold the dish towel over the oven door, wipe our hands on our skirts and announce ever so politely, "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave."