So This Is How It Ends

It's a luxury, I suppose, to know the instrument of one's demise.  So often its a bullet to the back of the head, or utter cardiac failure.  So I should count my blessings.

Are we getting ahead of ourselves a little?
Perhaps.
Maybe the readership needs some context.
Maybe.
Best to do it now, before you keel over.  This could be your last post ever and you don't want questions to linger.
Fine.

So.  I was making chicken and rice soup last night.  Mmmmm.  Is it chicken and rice soup, or just chicken-rice soup?  Anyway, at one point close to the completion of the project I looked down at the cutting board and saw five or ten beautifully cooked grains of rice that had somehow migrated from my spatula to the cutting board.  Being a thrifty sort, I plucked each little grain off the board and popped it in my mouth.  And as I put the last one on my tongue I had a thought:  Was I just eating rice off the same cutting board where I'd earlier chopped and skinned several pieces of raw chicken?  Is this how it ends?

These days salmonella is all the rage.  And the recent government shutdown surely hadn't improved the bacterial profile of the batch of thighs the nice people at Hannaford's sold me the other day.  It won't be long, I reflected with alarm, before I'm retching up bits of lung and shitting blood.  I could hear the doctor's voice telling me that the particular strain of salmonella that currently occupied my body was antibacterial-resistant.  In the distance, clouded by the fog of my mind, I could hear my two children bickering over who gets my obscured-box painting titled Portrait of the Portrait of Gertrude Stein.

"Crikeys," I thought as I staggered a bit, grasping the countertop to steady myself.  "One more thing to blame on the Republicans.  As if there wasn't enough."