Nov
21
Me, peering at the grocery checkout card swiper: “Heh. I always think it’s oddly charming when someone’s signature is on one of these screens in ink.”
Cashier (flatly): “Mmm, not really. It doesn’t come off.”
Okay, fine, maybe I need to get out more, and I guess I’m not the one tasked with trying to clean the screens every day, but it is charming. It’s always a careful Palmer Method script, and I can picture the customer—elderly, maybe a bit trembly-handed—dutifully signing her name with a ballpoint pen (fished from a leathery-smelling pocket in her oversized purse, the tip dusted with crumpled Kleenex motes), only to be told by the irritated clerk that she was supposed to use that plastic doohickey hanging off the end of the machine instead. Well how was I supposed to…? she thinks, her cheeks turning pink. Pens, papers, screens, buttons. Can’t they just settle on something?
I sometimes take the kids to the store after I pick Riley up from school, just to grab something for dinner or stock up on some needed item like toilet paper (which I am just now remembering that I forgot this afternoon, damn it all to hell), and it’s nearly always a terrible idea. One kid is all hopped up from being released from school and the other is excited to see his brother and to be doing something other than hanging around a boring old adult all day long, and they’re as impossible to control as two cats who have also recently lapped up a triple shot espresso.
Dylan in particular makes his way through stores in a frustratingly distracted, dreamy fashion, exclaiming at top volume over random things he recognizes (“HEY! WE have that cereal!”) and wandering directly into the paths of oncoming carts. I find myself saying, “Watch where you’re going, buddy,” over and over and over, but honestly it’s more for appearances than anything else. He never watches where he’s going, but at least any potentially annoyed fellow shoppers can see that I am by god asking him to do so. Most of the time I steer him via Maternal Eagle Claw/Border Collie Maneuver: one hand clamped on the back of the jacket, the other propelling him by sort of shoving him in the direction I want him to go.
As crazy-making as it is to try and ferry them both through a store while not forgetting the toilet paper (dammit) in the process, I have to admire their ability to find entertainment in the mundane. For instance, did you know that the bags of Purina have pictures of cats on them? And that some fruit is bumpy and weird and looks like a monster? And there are fish in the seafood display—like, for real, actual fish in there!
Oh, there is so much to marvel over.
Nov
20
Two posts in two days! What! Bee tee dubs: if you would like to discontinue email notifications, you can easily do so at the bottom of this page, exactly like how you signed up. No muss, no fuss, no need to send me a terse one-word email to UNSUBSCRIBE. I am not spamming you, I promise! I don’t even send those emails! It’s a plugin thingie which means as far as I’m concerned it works via tiny elves that live inside my WordPress installation.
Today I am feeling sorry for a football guy. Specifically, the football guy who came out during the few remaining seconds of the Ducks game last night and tried to kick a … what, a field goal? I’m not really sure how football works, either. (Elves?) Anyway, the score was like 35-38 and he had to try and kick that ball what look like about twenty million miles, and he missed, and the Ducks lost. And today the paper had this enormous blaring headline, MISSED KICK COST OREGON, something like that, and I kept thinking how shitty that is for that guy since it’s not like he lost the game all by himself, and can you even imagine the insane pressure he was under as he was out on the field staring down that ball? And how terrible he probably felt afterwards? GAH. This is why I can’t watch sports. Also on account of most of the games being brain-meltingly boring and taking at least five hours too long.
The other thing happening today is that I am wearing the world’s most comfortable pair of boots. I escaped the house for a while this morning and found myself in a DSW—that’s Discount Shoe Warehouse, don’t you know—and I came across a pair of Børns (Martinas, I think they’re called?) that I’ve been eyeballing for months:
Cute, and better yet, they feel amazing. Best of all: they were marked down about 40%, so now they are mine. Retail therapy, for the win!
Also immensely cheering: it has been freezing here in Seattle lately, but today was crisp and clear and cold rather than wet and depressing and cold. A glorious day for soaking up city views:
Now I have a question for you. My assignment for Thanksgiving next week is to bring cranberry sauce and rolls to JB’s brother’s wife’s parents’ house, where we’re having dinner on Thursday. (Wow, that was ridiculously complicated. My sister-in-law’s parents’ house, how about that.) Can you recommend any super-easy, super-delicious recipes for rolls? Preferably something that doesn’t require waiting around for yeast to do its mysterious thing, because I always seem to fuck that up? (“HERE ARE YOUR ROLLS I AM VERY SORRY THEY LOOK LIKE HOCKEY PUCKS.”) Or if you have a no-fail, everyone-loves-it cranberry sauce recipe, I’d love to hear that too.
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