Commotion

Last night G and I watched Iron Man 2, which was quite good. It ended at about 11:30, and I sent her off to brush her teeth while I filled a glass of water in case she got thirsty in the night. When I brought it in, she was already in bed, and I could hear voices in the driveway below her window. We live in a condo complex, so imagine two rows of townhomes with attached garages facing each other and a long driveway (actually a little street with its own name) running between them and then letting out onto the main road.

As I switched off G's bedside lamp, the voices erupted into a full-blown argument:

Man (screaming): Fuck you, bitch!
Woman: [unintelligible]
Man: [unintelligible] Don't you ever [unintelligible] again!

At this point I heard the sound of several loud slaps and ran upstairs to my own bedroom to get my phone. When I came back about 30 seconds later, the argument was still raging and G said "Mom, what is it?" I said "Sshh, I'm going to call the cops" and pulled aside her curtain just in time to see the man reach through the driver's-side window of his car and shove the woman, who was standing just outside the car as if he'd thrown her out, so that she fell into the driveway with the contents of her handbag spilling around her. Then he peeled out onto the street and roared off, leaving her lying there in the dark.

I thought of going outside, but didn't want to rush out there right away in case the jackhole in the car decided to come back and perhaps beat us both up, or worse, run us over. So I opened up G's window and called down to the woman, who was starting to move around a little, feebly, "Are you okay? Do you need me to call anyone for you?"

She sat up, seeming stunned. "I think I'm all right."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah...I just need to pick up my stuff. It's okay. Thanks."

"Okay, if you're sure," I said.

I closed the window, but kept watching through a gap in the curtain while she slowly collected her fallen belongings and put them back into her bag. G said, "What happened?" and I said "That guy was an ass, he hit her and pushed her down. Never have a boyfriend like that." She said "What are you going to do now?" and I said "I'm going to wait and make sure she's really okay."

After a minute or so, the woman got all her things together, stood up and walked out into the glow of the streetlamp just outside the driveway. At this point I finally got a better look at her--she was youngish, maybe 30 or so, with dark hair, and dressed the way you would dress to go out on a Saturday night, in a black tank top and black pants, with heels. She stood there in the pool of light for a moment and then turned left and disappeared from view, digging through her bag as if she were looking for her phone.

I thought about calling the police anyway: even if the guy was long gone, they could have caught up with her easily since she was on foot, and perhaps taken a report or at least found her a ride. But it also crossed my mind that there was a small chance it could be a prostitution-related thing--I didn't think it was, but having grown up in a terrible neighborhood where prostitution was rampant, I knew it wasn't impossible either. If that had been the case, I could have caused her a lot of trouble by getting cops involved, and she was already having a hard enough night, so I let her go. I hope she got home or to a friend's house all right--our area is quite safe, so she was almost certainly in less danger walking, even alone at night, than she would have been with the guy who smacked her around.

G has an unshakable belief that I can handle just about any emergency that might arise (zombie apocalypse? no problem, Mom's got it) so she stayed calm through the whole thing and went tranquilly off to sleep afterward, but I was full of adrenaline for a long time. The most worrisome part is that not a single other person in any of the surrounding buildings so much as looked out a window to see if this poor woman was alive or dead. It wasn't even midnight yet, so I can't have been the only one awake. It's nice to know that the neighbors would be right there for me if I ever screamed in the night. Jeez.

Esta es la hora del gato

Last night G wanted me to lie down with her at bedtime. I agreed, and as I lay on her bed, half asleep in the dark, I suddenly heard a deep Spanish-sounding voice proclaim:

"This is the hour of the cat."

Needless to say, this gave me quite a start. Then I realized that it was this talking Puss in Boots, which we bought for G when she was five or six, and which she's long since outgrown and forgotten. Either Puss's batteries are finally running down after all these years, or he would like me to liberate him from the bottom of the basket of discarded stuffed animals in her closet. Maybe both.

On a side note, Puss's random speech reminded me of my mother's belief that P communicates with her through a similar battery-operated toy that she keeps in her family's car. She's been insisting for years that this thing speaks up at opportune moments and she knows, knows that P is somehow controlling it, to which I've always countered that a.) odd experiences aside (and I've had much odder ones than she has), I don't really believe that dead people can communicate with anyone;  b.) if P could communicate with anyone, it would be with me and no one else; and c.) P was a direct-verging-on-blunt man who didn't fuck around, and if he had something to say, he'd find a direct way to say it. I imagine if I told my mother about Puss, she'd tell me that P was behind that somehow too. It's a good thing she can't see me roll my eyes over the phone.

Faire thee well

Today we went to the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. We've been several times before, but our last visit was at least five years ago, and I was ready for another trip. G was all over the idea when I proposed it last night, but when it was actually time to get ready and leave this morning, she said she had changed her mind and wanted to stay home and play video games all day. "Some people just want to be lazy," she opined, to which I said unfeelingly, "Yes, well, your desire to be lazy is interfering with my desire to have fun, so get dressed and let's go."

This is not us, but if we had gone in costume, I like to think we would have looked that good.

A troop of combatants marching away after a staged battle.

Horses! We both spent a long time patting them and scratching their necks. They seemed to enjoy it, or at least not to mind.

Let's all take a moment here to be grateful for our automatic washing machines.

I'm not sure what this pile of brush and sticks and random objects was supposed to be. Maybe they were planning to burn someone as a witch later on.

I wish I could tell you that G was completely into the Faire once we arrived, but of the three hours we spent there, at least two of them were set to a constant refrain of "It's so hot! My feet hurt! There's too much dust! It's so hot! I can't do this anymore!" However, she did enjoy some of it, especially the horses and the booth where she got to shoot bolts from a crossbow. As for me, I would have enjoyed myself more if there had been more enthusiasm and less complaining, but it was good to make the point that sometimes you have to suck it up and do what someone else wants to do, rather than what you want to do. Only children don't get much practice at that, since they never have to sit through their older sister's dance class or their little brother's Barney video, but it's a lesson everyone needs to learn before they're grown up.

The real highlight of the day came on our way home, when we stopped at a KFC to pee (both of us would rather have exploded than use the port-a-potties at the Faire) and get something to drink. As we pushed open the front door, we nearly collided with a guy dressed up like Colonel Sanders, white goatee, pale-pink suit, string tie and all. He was doing some sort of promotional appearance and there was a professional photographer who would take your photo with him, so of course I could not resist saying to G, "Now's your chance to get a picture with The Colonel!" The look of absolute horror on her face was a wonder to behold. I managed to play it off for about five seconds before I broke down, laughed, and told her I was only joking. It was a surreal moment, though. You don't expect to walk into KFC and see The Colonel any more than you expect to walk into McDonald's and see a man in a clown suit.

Things you don't see every day

While driving earlier, I happened to glance to the right and saw an older woman (70ish) with one of those wheeled wire baskets that people take when they walk to the supermarket. The unusual part: she was running with it, pushing the empty basket in front of her like a jogging stroller. She was going so fast that by the time I said "Hey, look!" to G, she was gone.

We happened to be on my way to visit my mother, who is in town for the night, so when we got to her hotel, she and I brainstormed some reasons for a senior citizen to be hauling ass down the street with a shopping basket on New Year's Eve. My favorite was her suggestion that the woman had knocked down another old lady and stolen the basket from her, and was trying to make a getaway. Wild old women! What sort of geriatric hijinks will they come up with next?

Spirits of earth and air

April 16, 2008:

So the other night (Thursday, I think) I woke up at about 1 a.m. because I had heard someone call my name, loud and close by, as if they were trying to wake me up. I looked around, but obviously there wasn't anyone there, so I went back to sleep.

A little while after that, I woke up again, and as I opened my eyes, I saw something over my bed in the dark, probably two feet above me and the same distance in front of me. I described it as an irregular circle to someone the next day, but it wasn't really round enough to be a circle -- almost a kite shape, but more circular than that. (Vague, I know, but I only saw it for a few seconds and it's been a while since then.) It wasn't very big, and I had a distinct impression that it was flat. It had a glow to it, and there were colors within the glow, green and blue, like the colors you see in an opal.

I was in the process of sitting up in bed as I woke up -- it felt like coming up through water toward the surface -- and as I sat up and got closer to whatever-it-was, it flew backward away from me, as if it were being pulled on a string. (If you've ever had a floater in your eye, it was a bit like that, the way they drift off to the side of your vision as you try to look at them.) By the time I was sitting all the way up, it was gone.

It wasn't a frightening experience -- I just lay down again and thought about it for a minute or two before turning over and going back to sleep -- but it was very odd. I don't really believe in ghosts (I don't not believe in them, but I don't have any real proof they exist, either) but it was almost enough to make me think I'd been visited by some sort of spirit.

Dec. 2, 2008:

... Maybe six months ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a strange, kite-shaped glowing object hovering over me, glowing with half a dozen opalescent colors. I saw it for a split second and then it flew backward and disappeared. I had forgotten about it until last night, when I had a similar experience.

The last time this happened, I had gone to bed fairly late and hadn't been asleep very long, and I woke up because I heard someone say my name. This time, I had also gone to bed late, but I don't know what woke me, only that I opened my eyes and this thing was directly in front of my face. It wasn't solid like the last time, but made up of dozens or hundreds of tiny red and green lights. They were connected in a vaguely spherical shape by strands of something I couldn't quite see, and the overall effect was of a tangled bundle of Christmas-tree lights. I saw it and I said out loud, as if I were answering a question someone had asked me while I was sleeping, "It's because you aren't here. I wouldn't do it if you were here." Whatever-it-was then flew backward over my head and (I assume) disappeared through the headboard of the bed. I looked at the clock -- it was 1:41 a.m. -- and then I calmly went back to sleep and didn't think about it again until I was in the shower this morning.

Time to lay off the crack, eh?

April 20, 2009:

Twice in the past I've written about waking up shortly after falling asleep to see glowing/lighted objects hanging just over my bed. Well, last night my subconscious took it to a new level, because I saw an actual person in front of me. I had fallen asleep about half an hour before, and as I started to wake up I saw a young man (maybe in his early twenties) with short, dark blond or light brown hair, holding something in his hands. He wasn't transparent by any means, but he clearly wasn't solid either, if that makes any sense. I woke up and sat up at the same time, with that coming-up-through-water feeling I've had before, and I tried to grab at him, but he was moving away from me, and my hands went through him. By the time I was sitting all the way up, he was gone and I was fully awake. I looked over at the clock and saw that it was 1:22 a.m. ...

... I know it must have been a dream, but it wasn't like a dream at all because there wasn't any plot preceding it -- he wasn't a character in a dream I was having, he was just there as I woke up. If anything, it was like I woke up because I knew he was there and wanted to get a better look at him, or possibly at what he was holding.

I hadn't been bothered by the two glowing-light experiences, but this one did disturb me a bit -- I wasn't frightened, just a little freaked out because well, I thought I'd seen a stranger in my room. But I was really tired, so after a couple of minutes I just shrugged and went back to sleep. I told my dad about it when he called earlier this evening, and he said I should write it all down and turn it into a best-selling novel. He would say that. :)

April 25, 2009:

... Also, here's something that I have to admit freaked me out a bit. Last Saturday, I had that strange experience, and today, I found out that my mother's youngest brother had died unexpectedly a couple of days before it happened. The last time I saw him, 25 years ago, he was about the age of the young man I saw in my dream, and looked similar, with light hair. But the really spooky bit is that it turns out a few months ago, he had lost the fingers from his right hand in an accident and was deeply depressed about it. I had thought the man I saw/dreamt of/whatever was showing me something in his cupped hands, but maybe what he was showing me was his hands themselves -- that they had been restored and were whole. I generally consider myself to be a skeptic, but sometimes it's hard to be one when weird things like this happen.

Discuss ...

Things you don't see every day

Today I saw a clown randomly walking down a busy street. No sign of a birthday party or circus anywhere nearby -- just a guy in full clown regalia, walking along as if he were heading for the bus stop or the supermarket.

"Hey, there's a clown!" I said to my friend, who was driving. Perhaps not the most astute remark, but what else can you say in that situation?

Anyway, now I want to go back at the same time tomorrow and see if he's there again. I'm imagining him making the same trek every day, sweating under his red nose and greasepaint, off to a destination only he knows. It's the March of the Lone Clown.

From the sublime to the ridiculous

In the women's restroom where I work, there's a toilet stall that has a "Closed for Repairs" sign on it about one day out of every three. It's getting to the point where I will never go into that stall even when it appears to be functioning just fine, because the recurring nature of the problem makes me suspicious that it might recur again at any minute.

What if the toilet won't flush?

What if flushing causes a geyser of something awful to erupt all the way up to the ceiling?

What if there's a boa constrictor living in the pipes and it comes out twice a week to feed?

And today is one of those days?

It just doesn't seem to be worth the risk, and it isn't as if there aren't plenty of other stalls to choose from. But I do confess to being curious about what might be behind that closed stall door with its handwritten sign scribbled in black marker. I keep thinking maybe I'll peek in, but I've seen a lot of horror movies, and every time someone says Oh, I'll just take a quick look and starts reaching for a door handle, you know they're doomed. I don't want to be found sprawled out on the restroom floor with an expression of terror on my face and a mysterious puddle all around me.

Yeah? Um, yeah.

This evening, while I was getting my roots touched up, the stylist asked me the dreaded question:

"Are you married?"

Even after two-plus years, this one always throws me off my stride. My automatic impulse is to say yes, because I was married for most of my adult life to this point, and while I may not have an actual living breathing husband these days, I certainly don't think of myself as single. In fact, I doubt that it's possible ever to go back to being really, truly single in the way a never-married person is single, whether you're divorced or widowed or your spouse has packed a bag and left no forwarding address.

So when I'm asked this question, I have to bite down on the "yes" that wants to pop out of my mouth, and at the same time, I have to decide exactly how I'm going to explain my status. Sometimes I say "I'm widowed," and sometimes I say "My husband died." Sometimes, if I'm asked "What does your husband do?" rather than "Are you married?" I go subtle and say "When he was alive, he was a stay-at-home dad," and see if they work it out. Whatever I say, I have to say it quickly, or else there's an awkward pause, and that just makes it worse.

Tonight, what I chose to say was "My husband died a couple of years ago," and what I got back was possibly the strangest response I've ever received to that revelation. Without missing a beat, the stylist said "Yeah?" as if I had just told her that I liked cupcakes or that I had a golden retriever at home, and then she went on painting eye-watering chemical slop all over my hair. On the one hand, this was a relief because it meant we didn't have to have the I'm sorry/That's OK/I didn't know/You couldn't have/How old was he?/Thirty-six conversation that usually comes next. On the other hand, her total lack of surprise made me nervous because I wasn't sure she'd heard me right. Had I mumbled the "died" part? Had she heard "died" but mentally translated it into "divorced?" Was she going to ask a follow-up question that would make me have to repeat myself?

As it turns out, she must have heard, because she didn't utter another word on the topic. I was on edge for the rest of the hour I spent in her chair, though. Why do people insist on asking that question, anyway? I don't think I've ever asked anyone if they're married or not -- if they are, either they have a ring on, or they say something that makes it obvious, or both. But it seems to be a standard conversational gambit for the rest of the world, especially for hairstylists. They must teach them to ask about it at hairstylist school, somewhere between "Shampooing 101" and "Achieving Colors Not Found In Nature."

Bad cakes

I laughed so hard at this blog that G got out of bed to see what all the noise was about.

The one that got me started

The one that pushed me over the edge

What the heck?

What the heck? (part II)

My stomach hurts, and I have tears running down my face. Make it stop! LOLOLOLOLOL

Back from the void

I've mentioned this before, but sometime in the six weeks between when P died and when we moved, the video iPod he'd given me for our last Christmas together disappeared. I was terribly upset and looked everywhere for it, but it was nowhere to be found, and finally I gave up and started using P's own iPod, which I'd bought him for his birthday because he liked mine so much. Every once in a while, though, the lost one would still nag at me, and I'd try looking for it again -- I even hoped, after I sold my car to a friend last spring, that he'd call to tell me that he'd found it under one of the seats. But it never happened.

Then, earlier this month, I got my boxes of photos out of storage for the first time since we moved here because I was looking for a specific picture of P to put on his plaque at the cemetery. In the top of one of the boxes were a duffel bag and beach bag, which I'd apparently stuffed in there to help fill space. I thought about throwing them away, since G and I have accumulated a lot of other tote bags in the intervening two years, but I ended up changing my mind and sticking them on a shelf in my closet instead.

So today we were going to the beach for G's cousin's birthday party, and I thought "Aha! I'll use that old beach bag for our towels." As I was going to drop my phone down into one of the side pockets, I saw something in a black leather case, and I said "AAAAAAAAGH!" because guess what it was? My iPod!

I had to reboot it, but after an hour plugged into my laptop, it was just as good as new. Actually, it is almost new, because I had only owned it for about six months when it was lost -- there's hardly a scratch on it, and only 462 songs. I've been trying to think how it possibly could have got into that bag, and I think it must have been right after P's ashes were interred. I took G to SeaWorld that weekend (seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was a miserable trip, for me anyway) and on the way home she wanted to stop at the beach in San Clemente. We couldn't find parking there, but later that afternoon I took her to a different beach, and I must have brought that bag with me. It's the only time we went to the beach on our own that summer, and the bag has been buried in a box ever since. But almost exactly two years later, here it is again. Magic!

Hey, it's Chupacabra!

On Sunday, G and I spent four hours in the special Purgatory that is a walk-in medical clinic on a weekend. We were trapped in the waiting room with a television that played Noggin nonstop, and after a while, in extreme boredom, we started imagining alternate scenarios for Franklin, the show about the anthropomorphic turtle and his friends Goose, Bear, Beaver and Rabbit.

I suggested that it would make for a very interesting episode indeed if Franklin got a new friend called Chupacabra:



"Franklin, Mom and I don't think you should play with Chupacabra anymore."



"But Dad! Chupacabra is the coolest kid in school! I mean, his teeth are weird and he drools a lot, and Goat won't come around anymore when we hang out together, but still, he's really neat."



"I'm sure he is, Franklin, but we just don't think he's a good influence. You'll need to find other friends to play with."



"Awww."

The next day:



"Hey, Chupacabra ... I hope this won't hurt your feelings, but my dad says I can't play with you anymore."



"RRRAAARGGHHHSSHHHNNNGGGHHLLAAAAAAAH!"



"I'm really sorry. I hope we can still be friends."



"GNNNNNHHHSSHHRARRRGH! RAAAHH!"



"Well, I guess I'll see you around. Good luck with the baseball game next Friday."


Next Friday:



"Franklin! Franklin! Did you hear? Chupacabra ate Goose!"



"Oh no! Why?"



"I dunno. One minute we were playing baseball, and then it was all honking and hissing and feathers flying. It was terrible."



"Wow. I guess Dad was right about Chupacabra. Thanks, Dad!"



"Well, son, that's what Mom and I are here for. Sometimes we may ask you to do something you don't want to do, like going to bed or brushing your teeth or not playing with a bloodthirsty goat-sucking monster. But we do it all because we love you."



"I love you guys too."

Hugs all around. Credits roll.

G has a slightly twisted sense of humor (gosh, I wonder where she got it) and is fascinated by the legend of el chupacabra, so she found this hysterical -- in fact, it was her idea for Chupacabra to consume one of the other animals. Somehow I doubt it would appeal to the preschool set, though, so I think we'll pass on sending a script treatment off to Noggin. Hee.

Inquiring minds want to know

One of the things I love about having site stats (I use StatCounter), if anyone is interested) is being able to see what sorts of keywords people use to reach this blog. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that a lot of them don't find what they're looking for once they arrive, so I thought I'd try to provide answers to a few recent searches. Here they are:

broccoli potato gratin

Far and away the most common search string, this finally made me feel so guilty for being a Google tease that I put a link to an actual broccoli-potato gratin recipe in that post.

what chaps my hide means

It means that something irritates the living daylights out of you. You may remember it from the old Pace Picante Sauce commercials with the cowboys sitting around the campfire and eating salsa. ("New York City? Git a rope!")

how to know if the shoe fits

I've been told that there should be a thumb's width of space between the end of the shoe and the child's big toe. However, no matter what size G tries on, she always claims to be able to feel me pressing down on the shoe, so it's either a myth or I have freakishly fat mutant thumbs.

gumball machine mechanics

You put the quarter in the slot and turn the little dial thingy, and then the gumball rolls down a sort of chute and fetches up against the metal door. Open that door slowly and be ready to catch, or the gumball will shoot out at maximum escape velocity and end up on the floor, and no one likes that.

schoolgirl miniskirts

Ugh. Sounds like a pervert. If this is you, don't let the door hit you on your way out.

teenage boy bedspreads

I don't have a teenage boy and have never been one, but considering what P's tastes ran to when I first met him (he was 23 at the time, so not too far off), I would recommend something with either a supermodel or a sports team logo on it.

blow to the head and pain at the back of the eye

You are seriously injured. Get off the Internet and head to the nearest emergency room, stat.

santa lantern made out of milk jug

I never even dreamt this was possible, but look! It is, and here's how you can do it.

questions to know more about you

Oh Lord, don't even ask. I'm terrible at small talk.

perfect poop

Perfectionism is such a curse. Stop worrying about trying to produce the perfect poop, and just accept each poop for the unique creation that it is. As I think Shakespeare once said, "This above all, to thine own poop be true." Words to live by. :)

If only I had an address for this one

Dear Guy Who Was Driving in Front of Me This Afternoon,

Congratulations. I thought I'd seen every sort of automotive accoutrement known to mankind, but you are the first person I've ever encountered with a large pair of fake testicles dangling from the undercarriage of his truck.

What were you thinking?

I mean, really, what were you thinking? What sort of thought process makes a person go, "Okay, I've got my bumper sticker, I've got my license-plate frame ... what else can I add to turn my vehicle into a personal statement? Oh, I know! How about some fake testicles?"

It boggles the mind.

Also, I'm curious about how you get along in life while driving a truck that's decorated in this fashion. What do your dates think when you pick them up in it? If you have kids, do you drop them off at school and then zoom off with your fake testicles swinging jauntily in the wind? When you're going to lunch with your boss and he asks if you can drive, do you say "Sure, no problem. It's the grey Chevy with the balls under the bumper?"

Do you get more traffic tickets than other people? Because I know if I were a cop, I wouldn't be likely to give you and your dangly bits a pass if you were going a few miles faster than the speed limit, or if you pulled off a California stop at a red light. If anything, I'd probably start looking for a reason to give you a ticket for something as soon as I saw you, even if I couldn't get away with writing in "Has fake testicles" on the form.

I will say one thing for you, Truck Guy, and it is this: the sight of you driving in front of me made me laugh harder than anything else that happened all day. But beyond that, I'm sorry to tell you that although your truck may have balls, you have no class.

Sincerely,

The Startled Person in the SUV Behind You

I'll take it any way I can get it

G and I are at the 7-11, getting snacks for her Friday movie night. At the cash register, she sees a singing stuffed lion left over from Valentine's Day and exclaims over how cute it is.

Guy Who Owns the 7-11: You want to buy it? I give you a very good price.
Me: Oh, no thanks! We already have way too many animals at home.
Guy Who Owns the 7-11: Ha ha! You have lots of animals at home, and (pointing to G) you have one here too!
Me (politely, even though I think this is a rather offensive remark): Ha ha.
Guy Who Owns the 7-11: When you come back, I give you a very good price on the lion!
G: Can we come back tomorrow and get it, Mom? Can we?
Me: No, baby, we don't need it.
G: But --!
Me: Time to go!

We go outside and get into the car, G still talking about the lion and asking why we can't come back for it. As I'm putting the key in the ignition, there's a tap on the window. I look up, and there's a short, scruffy, slightly demented-looking guy standing right outside, eating what appears to be a chili dog in a cardboard tray. I roll my window down a little bit, figuring I can always back up over his foot if he bothers me.

Me: Yes?
Demented-Looking Guy: We've been doing surveillance all night, and you were the best mom. You passed the mom test.
Me: Um, thanks.

Having said his piece, the demented-looking guy strolls away, still eating his chili dog, and prepares to cross an eight-lane boulevard outside the crosswalk and against the light.

G: Who was that?
Me: That was a crazy man.

The embarrassing part? I actually felt a warm glow of pride at the comment. Apparently I am insecure enough about my parenting to accept validation from anyone, even a chili-dog-eating weirdo at the convenience store. Oh well.

Intercession I didn't even ask for

St. Jude just called me.

No, really. The phone rang, and when I looked at the caller ID, it said "ST JUDE." I didn't answer it because I don't answer any calls from people I don't know personally, and that includes former apostles. But I'm amused by the idea of St. Jude ringing me up, whether to chat about the weather, to ask if I have any particularly thorny problems I need solved, or to tell me that my issues are beyond all help. Or, if my guess about the real purpose of the call is right, to hit me up for a donation.

Run, run, as fast as you can

Let's say that for the last couple of days, you've really been craving gingerbread (the soft cake kind, not the hard kind) and telling yourself that you'll pick up some mix when you do your regular shopping. When you finally get to the grocery store, you arrive in the baking aisle to discover an older lady kneeling on the floor and loading her arms with boxes from the bottom shelf. Ha ha, wouldn't it be funny if she were buying all the gingerbread mix? you think. Then, drawing closer, you realize that she is buying all the gingerbread mix -- eight boxes of it -- and there's nothing left on the shelf for you but a black, empty, gingerbread-less hole.

Do you:

A. Say, "Get back here with those boxes, woman! Who told you that you could buy all the frickin' gingerbread?"

B. Say, "Excuse me, ma'am, I hate to ask, but I came here especially for gingerbread mix and I was wondering if you'd mind letting me have just one box?"

C. Stand there gaping at the cruelty of life and muttering "I can't believe she took every single box!" indignantly under your breath until your child asks "Are you really mad at that lady, Mom?"

It will probably come as no surprise that I chose option C and sulked off toward the milk, all unfulfilled and grumbling. Isn't there some sort of unwritten rule of shopping etiquette that says Thou shalt not take all there is of anything, unless there's only one to begin with? Sort of like leaving the last slice of pizza in the box in case someone else wants some? If there isn't, there ought to be.

Anyway, G spotted a box of gingerbread cookie mix in another aisle, so we were able to make gingerbread men (snowmen, because I couldn't find a people-shaped cutter in the drawer) with some gingerbread stars and moons to use up the dough scraps. It wasn't quite what I wanted, but it was better than no gingerbread at all. Bring on the holidays!