Gigantic national recall of contaminated fruit means we all need to eat more Cheetos.

I am not myself today. Except ... if I’m not me, who the hell am I? Around 9:30 this morning I started feeling weird, sad and needy, almost like I wanted to park myself on the sofa right next to Sam and hold his hand all day even though this activity is clearly NOT POSSIBLE due to: 1) nobody can eat lunch that way; 2) Sam goes to work at 1:15; and 3) my hands hurt.

Fortunately I felt considerably better after a brief two-hour nap (stop laughing) and the early arrival of today’s expected and unexpected deliveries. In case you give a crap, the expected delivery was my Amazon Subscribe & Save order for July and the unexpected delivery was a box of 100 insulin pen needles from Total Diabetes Supply, who apparently forgot that I canceled my automatic 90-day shipment subscription a few months ago. WHAT A HAPPY ACCIDENT!

And now for some updates that I’ve been promising you!

CLAYTON AND THE GROUT PEOPLE. Clayton, leader of the grout people, dropped by yesterday to address our concerns about his crew’s shitty work in our master bathroom shower, and he agreed that his people were atrocious and really sucked at their jobs. Carlos the foreman has been fired — this is the same Einstein who was introduced to us as “the best in the business” a few months ago — and his replacement will be here tomorrow at 9 a.m. to FIX THINGS and make our shower stop looking like a cheesy do-it-yourself project by a complete slob. He will also install a new door latch that’s designed to actually keep the goddamn door closed while somebody is taking a shower.

CANNED MEAT FOR SENIOR CITIZENS. I opened my very first can of Brinkman Farms turkey last night for dinner and I was, in a word, VERY UNDERWHELMED. (Okay, TWO words.) Brinkman’s big-ass cans of cooked meat — providing they’re actually edible — could be totally perfect for senior citizens with mobility issues such as yours truly who can’t stand up at the stove (or anywhere else) for more than two or three minutes at a time. I guess I was expecting something soft and wonderful like the Kirkland canned chicken we buy at Costco, forgetting that turkey is altogether a totally different kind of poultry, i.e., DRY, CHEWY AND ESSENTIALLY TASTELESS. Even gravy didn’t make it better, and here at Howdygram headquarters gravy can usually fix damn near ANYTHING. Eventually I used up the rest of the two-pound can for an uninteresting bowl of turkey salad for lunch. (Yawn.)

I hope Brinkman’s other canned meats are more appealing because I think I’m starting to feel weird, sad and needy again. Maybe I’ll give the canned ground beef a shot for dinner tonight in spaghetti sauce over a bunch of zero-calorie shirataki noodles with half a pound of parmesan cheese. (Pray for me.)

---

Now for the perfect segue into a food-related Howdygram public service announcement: LOOK OUT FOR POISONED FRUIT AT WAL-MART, COSTCO, TRADER JOE’S AND KROGER! Wawona Packing Company is recalling peaches, nectarines, plums and pluots that were packed at its Cutler, California, warehouses between June 1 and July 12. Wawona believes the products may be contaminated with listeria monocytogenes. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says the recall is NATIONWIDE.

And if that’s not lousy enough, Wegmans Markets has recalled all of its bakery products that contain fruit from Wawona Packing, including cakes, pies, tarts and pastries. For a full list of tasty desserts that might kill you, please go to FDA.gov.

This is almost as ironic as the contaminated Raisinets last year for Halloween and the E.coli ground beef recalled right before Memorial Day. Trust me, people ... WE NEED TO EAT MORE CHEETOS. Thank you for reading this.