Tuna Noodle Casserole, In Which I Eat It: Can #4

Can #4VAL2F 1ZSNG 09:59 (might be 1ZSWG, it is hard to say, there is blurring).
best by Aug 20 2009 Also dented, somewhat crumpled even, at the bottom.

I live like the Boy in the Bubble. This building, and the people in it, keep me safe, do stuff for me, save my life day after day.

Lee and the Lady Chae, they give me a recipe for tuna casserole that has cheese in it. Beautiful readers, did your tuna casserole have cheese in it? Mine did not. It did have peas, which I did not like. Neither, back then, did I like tuna casserole. Team Chae's recipe gives you a choice, one cup of grated cheddar cheese or two cups of grated cheddar cheese. Which would you, dear readers, choose? They also give me a chain tool to fix my broken bike. So far I have not been able to fix the bike, or return the chain tool. They don't ask, when will you return it? They ask if everything's okay.

Last night my life was spiraling down, and out of control, readers. And then I thought I'd better take a break with tuna casserole, think about my mom for awhile. But I had no, what do you call it, glass square dish that goes in the oven? Well, my neighbors Chris and Q (not from Star Trek) and Jonathan Archer (not from Star Trek either) and his Significant Other, well, they both got kids, and they put them to bed around, I don't know, 7 or 8? Whenever I need something from them. And I get afraid to knock on their doors 'round about that time. But, man, I need that thing, whatever it's called...got to get my life back together, eat tuna casserole, think about my mom: Mom the Great.

So I text them, and I email them, which I can only do, on both counts, because of them. That's right, both my phone and my internet connection are testaments to their never-ending generosity. Next thing I know: I hear pots and pans a-rattlin' across the hall. When I got over there, there was Lady Chris all over the floor, glass whatever they're called, all over the place...

"I hope this is good enough," she says.
"Is it big enough?" she says.
"Is it glassy enough?" she says.
"I know we have a glassier one somewhere," she says. "Please, give me just another moment, and I'll find it."

"No, no," I say, a tear in my eye, "this one is just the right amount of glassy, and it's size cannot be bettered."

And that, dearest readers, is how I come to eat the tuna casserole, which I pulled out of the oven with the brand new oven mit you can see obscuring my face above (a gift, I might add, from those same neighbors). A tuna noodle casserole made, yes, from some questionable tuna, but whose cheese could not have been tastier, and whose size could not be bettered.