Winner-Winner-Chicken-Dinner

Award-winning wings.
Right to your door.

I haven't had Pizza Hut in years, but I have unmistakable memories of the experience, and it was far from pleasant.

Here's what I would like to know:
What kind of award did these wings win? 
And exactly who gave this award?

My guess is that it is some sort of smokers' association. 
I've heard their taste-buds are less functional.

It's the only reasonable explanation.

Wrong, Again

He pointed to the lone bottle in the rack.
"You'll probably need to get more wine."
My husband's parting words.

"Maybe not," I'd said, vanilla-cool and twice as bland. "Maybe I won't need to drink if you're not here."

Joking.
Okay, half-joking.

But it was around 24 hours later and shortly before 2 p.m. when I realized I'd been wrong, again.

After all, it is the Summer of the Incessant Questions, and endurance of that kind requires fermented fortitude.

So, it was off to CVS.

Six bottles should last the week.
I hope. 

Clean as a Whistle

“When you get inside, put your backpack away and then go straight up to the shower.”
“Why?”
“I’m bringing you to your dad’s, and I want you to be clean as a whistle.”
“Whistles aren’t clean. They’re germy. You always say—“

She continued, but she didn’t have to. I know what I always say.

‘Don’t touch that whistle. You don’t know where it’s been.’

‘Put that whistle down and go wash your hands. And your face. And brush your teeth, just to be safe.’

Sometimes I look forward to when she gets old enough to understand the concept of expressions.

When It Rains

When it rains in the early morning hours, I dream that the pink fiberglass insulation up in the attic is absorbing leaks from the roof.

Between slaps at the snooze button, I imagine climbing up the fold-down ladder in the hall and surveying the scene:

puffy pink mounds,
swollen from floor to ceiling,
wobbling like Jell-o
with the weight of all that water.

At 6:19, I poke Russ in the ribs.

“Wake up. Wake up! Before you shave, will you go check the attic? I think today’s the day.”
“I think you’re crazy,” he mumbles.

That's what happens.
Every time it rains.

Cassette

Caleb and Mia found a book on tape today in the bag of toy parts that had been gathered for departure. They had no idea what the small rectangular cartridge was, so they brought it to Hannah. She tried to explain it to them, and then she asked Russ if we had a cassette player.

“I’m pretty sure there’s one on the boom box in Caleb’s room,” he said.

“Boom box?” Mia repeated, perplexed but tickled by the term.
“Oh, I think I know what he's talking about,” Caleb announced. “C’mon!”

The two tromped up the stairs.

They returned within thirty seconds.

“Done already?” Russ asked.

“Well, we put it in and it made a screechy noise and then all this stringy stuff popped out."

Before they went outside to play, they turned and gave us one last glance. The expressions on their faces said it all:
You really expected us to believe that there were words on that string?

Choosing Produce

It has never occurred to me to be picky when selecting corn. Corn has always seemed appropriately mysterious, all cloaked in husk and silk.

Corn is maybe the only produce I haven’t been picky about, and yet here was this lady, all edges and elbows, crowding me away from the crate at the supermarket so that she have first dibs and squeeze them all.

Train Table

Hannah loathes the train table in the family room. She has mentioned--with increasing frequency--that perhaps it is time to trade it in for a more grownup coffee table.

“Nobody even really uses the train part anymore,” she reasons.

My counterattack is two-fold: first, even if they don’t use the inside as much, everybody uses the surface every day for activities such as coloring, legos, paying bills, etc. Second of all, it is very handy for when company with younger children visit (which is almost never, but still.)

The truth of the matter is that I can’t part with the train table. To upgrade to a more grownup one is to acknowledge that our babies are no longer babies. I’m not emotionally ready for that. Maybe when Mia goes to college, I tell myself.

 

As you can plainly see, the surface is quite functional.

 

 

Shazam! The whole room is a little brighter and better when it is in train mode.
PS-- the thing on the end table is a Christmas Snake. Oh, there's a story there!

 

Previously Fr

There was only one package of ground turkey left at Sprouts, and the price wasn’t that great. Upon closer inspection of the packaging, something unusual caught my eye. At the bottom corner of the store-printed label, it said “Previously Fr”.

There were so many things this could mean!

Previously frozen?
Previously from Thanksgiving turkeys?
Previously fresh, but on its way out?

The possibilities were infinite, and they were getting more and more disgusting the more I thought about it.

 

Our ground turkey purchase would need to wait. We used TVP in the spaghetti sauce that night.

Wasted

Too much of my life has been wasted worrying that the birds in the Walmart pharmacy drive-through are going to swoop into my open car window.

From now on, I'm just going to go inside to pick up our medicine.

161 Candles

 

According to Google, today is Julius Richard Petri's 161st birthday. I'm uncomfortable with numbers that high when discussing birthdays. I don't know why; it just creeps me out.

Well, I made the mistake of clicking on that google tribute, and look what happened. Now I am creeped out AND grossed out. Happy freakin' birthday, JRP!

Ode

From the bottom
Of my heart
I present to you this ode:

Fan Boy and Chum Chum Visit in the Shade

(a prepositional phrase-based poem)

Near the traffic-laden intersection where cars speed

Across Legacy and Alma
Beside the busy six-lane thoroughfare

On the sidewalk

At the entrance
To the apartments

In the shade

Beneath the only two trees offering mercy
From the heat that is generated
By the evening’s setting sun

Fan Boy and Chum Chum share their daily visit

In their motorized wheelchairs
Until inevitable darkness arrives

While the rest of the city celebrates the arrival

Of Spring.

Not a Penny More

For ‘Type-A’ folks like me, there is a deep sense of self-satisfaction when you can coax the gas pump into finishing on an even dollar amount. Back in the good old days, that number was $18.00 or even $22.00.

It is with bitter resentment that I am now forced to celebrate a victory of an even $54.00 (or if I’m driving the Big Pig, $72.00.) $72.01 is significantly less special and not at all worthy of a split-second celebration for the perfect finish.

I’ve never attempted to apply this game to groceries. There are too many variables, too many opportunities for disappointment.

Today was different.

Today defied the odds.

Here is what I bought:

4 lbs of strawberries

3.39 lbs of Jonagold apples
2.13 lbs vine-ripened heirloom tomatoes
3.74 lbs of russet potatoes
2.99 lbs sweet potatoes
3.44 lbs yellow onions
3 limes
2 cucumbers
1 bunch of cilantro

The grand total? Exactly $20.00. Not a penny more!

“Wow,” said the cashier.

“Wow,” I said.
“Wow,” echoed the eaves-dropping customer in line behind me.

Today shall go down in the annals of history, at least for our family. And maybe for the cashier and the eavesdropper, both of whom genuinely seemed impressed.

Perhaps the Type-A community is larger than I’d thought.

I departed Sprouts with a helium happiness in my heart—the same sensation that happens when you try to do mundane tasks on your birthday and the whole time you’re feeling a bit more special. You know the feeling, don’t you?

Who would have thought that such joy could happen on an ordinary Tuesday in May, and all because the supermarket receipt landed precisely an even dollar amount.

And not a penny more.

I don't normally take pictures of receipts, but SOMEBODY accused me of exaggerating on this one.
I'm looking at you, Russ.

Lessons Learned by a Lovely Lady Lawn-Jockey

I’d seen Russ use the leaf-vacuum blower thing a zillion times. Company was on the way over to swim, and the previous night’s storm had blown at least an inch of green pollen and dry leaves on the back porch. Vacuuming is one of my finest skills—Russ said I’d be a natural at this. How hard could it be?

Here are a few important details that Russ forgot to mention:

1.       Don’t wear a dress, unless mooning your neighborhood was part of your plan.

2.       Don’t point the blower toward the house while standing less than three feet away. You’ll be tasting dirt and rubbing pollen from your eyes for the rest of the day.

3.       Don’t suck up bugs and spiders unless you are fully prepared to visit with them again when you’re emptying the vacuum bag into the yard bag. They’ll probably still be alive, and they will definitely be angry.

Maybe he thought these tidbits of information were extraneous. Perhaps he thought it would be common sense. Really, he should know by now-- you cannot rely on common sense when you have such an uncommon wife.

Kamikaze Grapes

Something about my husband makes 440 grapes eager to jump to certain death.

Every driveway we’ve ever had has at least one of these.

We made one in an apartment parking lot, too.

We even made one in front of the daycare—an especially impressive 1.5 liter fatality from the high floorboard of the Big Pig that left carnage for weeks.

These serial suicides would cease if he’d just properly secure the bottles, but this practical solution has been neglected or forgotten so many times throughout the years that it’s just easier to purchase insanely cheap wine.

On the bright side, when you purchase six bottles at Walmart ($2.77 per bottle and not too awful) or CVS ($3.00 each, and worth every penny of the 23-cent upgrade) the stores usually provide a six-pack cloth tote. The one at CVS is even quilted.

Now that we almost exclusively buy in bulk, the only place those grapes plunge is into our glasses. We've also amassed enough of those cloth wine bags to sew our own parachutes.

Jokes

“Mom, you smell like bullfrog.”

Mia is going through a joke telling phase, and to be honest, not a single one so far has been particularly funny.

She came home from her dad’s house this past weekend with another one:

Why did the soldier flush the toilet?

Because it was his duty.

“Get it, Mom? Duty? Doo-dy? Ha, ha, ha.”

Apparently someone named 'Wreck It' Ralph told her.
Thanks, Ralph. Thanks a bunch.

It kind of makes me miss last month’s favorite:

Knock, knock?
Who’s there?
Boo.
Boo who?
Don’t cry. It’s just a joke.

It took Russ about ten tries to teach her that one. Considering that she learned to tie her shoes in a single try after a preschool classmate showed her how to at recess, it shocks me at how painfully slow this joke-learning process has been for her.

“Pew, Mom, you smell like bullfrog.”

“Look, I know you’re trying out this whole joke thing, but I don't find that funny.“
“I’m not joking, Mom. You really do.”

Bad jokes are one thing, but disrespect is never tolerated. Never. What was causing this rude behavior? We’d had such a nice afternoon playing over at Anna and Emma’s house. The girls had splashed with the hose, and the mommies had visited in the shade. We’d had so much fun. Now I was going to have to put on my Mean Mommy attitude and figure out a pep talk and an appropriate consequence. This was really not cool.

I exhaled. Here we go.

“I beg your pardon,” I began, “but in this house—“

“You should probably take a shower and get it off, you know, so it doesn’t get on your sheets.”
“So what doesn’t get on my sheets?”
“The bullfrog. Remember? You sprayed it all over both of us when we were over at Anna’s house.”

Oh, that Bullfrog. The sunscreen-bugspray supercombo.

The night was not ruined after all. I guess the joke was on me.

Ice Custard Happiness

RITA’S , the sign screams.
It's written in big, bold, GREEN bubble letters.

Beneath it, and in fine print, are the words Ice Custard Happiness.

Apparently they do not serve alcohol. The name is a bit misleading, don’t you think?

I have sincere skepticism about the ability of frozen custard—or any custard, or anything frozen—to rival the happiness that is brought upon by adult beverages.

Ergo, I have no plans to ever be happy at their establishment.

Too Intimate

Mia’s dad resented the huge glass-plate windows at the front of the Speed Queen Laundromat. Every time we’d walk to and from the restaurant where we worked, he’d avert his eyes.

“Too intimate,” he’d say, and he’d shudder a little and then shake his head like he was trying to wipe away the image from his memory.

I didn’t fully understand that feeling until a few years later when we lived in the tiny apartment in Dallas which was practically on the northern tip of the Addison Airport runway.

I couldn’t bear to look up when those descending planes would roar overhead. Something about those sleek white underbellies made me feel uncomfortable, like I was seeing something private, something unintended for the general audience.

 

I found this image of the Speed Queen using Google Maps. Let's add Google Maps to the "too intimate" list.

 

Electric Slide

The most powerful light switch in our home is located under the staircase in the storage closet. Russ installed it a few months ago. When you pull the string, all the power goes out in the north quadrant of the house. You have to go out to the garage to flip the breaker switch to bring anything back to life.