Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

A Christmas Miracle

We sport a minimalist Christmas style here at Casa S______. The balsa wood slat tree goes on the hook, the illuminated deer couple go in the yard, boom, done, 20 minutes.

Sadly, one night last week the bulbs in Mrs Deer's head blew out. In the dark it looked like there was a decapitated deer grazing in my yard. She had early trauma to her head: that must be what caused this later frailty.

Once there was a time I would have pitched her in the trash and bought a new second wife for Mr. Deer, but, times have changed. Mending is better than spending this December.

The head was illuminated by a string of Christmas lights, so I thought we might have a spare string. When I hit the basement I was caught up in a surge of smugness. "My basement is so organized, I could just walk right up to this clearly-labeled box." I proudly gazed at the tidy wall of shelves.

I had been rooting through the Xmas box for a full futile minute ("I know I had a spare once!"), when my peripheral vision registered these odd boxes by my leg.

"Nooooo," I thought. "Those aren't - those can't be - three brand new unboxed illuminated Christmas deer."

But they WERE.

All I can remember is that two years ago we bought Mr. Deer, and then I bought three similar deer at Garden Ridge, but then realized they were smaller, lighter deer and would not match exactly. Besides, I found the matching Mrs. Deer at the hardware store. So, instead of returning the lesser deer, like I would now that I'm on a budget, I must have just shoved them in the basement and completely forgotten them.

The first one I opened was indeed a baby deer compared to the headless Mom. Not all the baby doe's lights worked, so I had to buy a replacement string for her, and then one for Mrs. Deer, and then after I performed minor surgery on Mrs Deer's motor, we have an addition to the Deer Family with a spare and an heir.

It's like we have a deer larder!

 

Hair

Thanksgiving went off without too much of note, until the very last moment.

We were all at the door, doing the long goodbye, in which we must all hug each other or shake hands or make some kind of contact. I am not a hugger. We are not a hugging people. Mom and Dad didn't even do intra-family hugging. Gary's mom, however, is a hugger, and if you dare depart her house without a hug she will demand one. Fine. She's nice enough to hug.

During the long goodbye (honestly sometimes I visit the restroom when I hear someone say goodbye because that means you have a good twenty minutes), Gary started fluffing my hair. We've recently made a deal that if he wants my hair natural then he was in charge of seeing I don't go out looking unkempt.

Wilma saw him fluffing my hair, and decided to help fluff.

"Oh! Your hair! It's so soft!" (more fluffing) "It's like cotton candy!"

Gary said "Her hair is really soft," while I leaned against him and tried to pretend this was not going on. I closed my eyes and thought it was almost over when I felt another hand in my hair.

"Oh!" my sister-in law Sandy said, "It is soft! What kind of conditioner do you use?"

I murmured to Gary, "Thank you so much. This is my dream. What I have always longed for."

My nephew said, "Well, now I have to touch it." Which he did. "Don't take this the wrong way, but it's like petting a really fluffy dog."

"Thank you," I said.

"Your face is really red," he added.

My new brother-in-law said, "Well, now I have to get in in this." And as he was patting my hair, Ken my father in law came over and added his hand in.

At that point every single person there was patting my hair. Which yes, is very soft. At that point I threw them off and started groping at their heads in retaliation.

 And then, after all that, they still wanted hugs. Crazy coarse-haired people.

Larder

I love having Gary make the food. He can out-cook, out-chop, and out-sauce me every day. He is an artist, and I can tell because he flings his artistic temprament at me if I dare to intrude on HIS kitchen.

Sadly it was once MY kitchen, and while I like the new food, I mourn the loss of my kitchen. Gary's kitchen is more ... abundant than mine, and that abundance has flowed into the laundry room, the countertops, and the top of the refrigerator.

For example, when I ran the kitchen, the pantry and spice rack looked like this:

This is the current state of Gary's pantry

and here are the spices:

It is chaos. Any sugestion that I might organize the pantry is met with a scene from Hoarders. "DON'T TOUCH MY PANTRY  I NEED EVERY ONE OF THOSE THINGS IN THAT EXACT SPOT."

It isn't just that foodstuffs are disorganized, there are just soooooo many foodstuffs. His larder of staples is far more varied than mine.

In my larder, I made sure to always have: flour, sugar, salt, milk, two cans of cream of mushroom soup, two boxes of Jiffy corn muffin mix, and two boxes of chicken stock.

Gary, however, is an artist, and he needs the whole pallete. Back in the day I would say, "I need to buy almonds for this green bean recipe, then I'll make almond cookies to use the rest of the bag."

In the supermaket, Gary spies the almonds. "DO WE HAVE ALMONDS? WE NEED ALMONDS."

"Why?"

"BECAUSE I MIGHT WANT TO ADD ALMONDS THE NEXT TIME I MAKE A STEW! BUY A BIG BAG OF ALMONDS."

(He keeps trying to make stew crunchy, for some reason.)

Essentially, his goal is to have one of every item in the supermarket. Wait, no - two, because you need one in case you use the first one. In that case the back-up stays on the shelf and the missing can is replaced so you have a pair. It's like a Noah's Ark of groceries. (I mentioned this at the in-laws and they cautioned me that I need to be sure to rotate the cans, so the backup is eventually used. They also have a larder.)

Here is small sample of the mini-mart taking over our laundry room. (Today the laundry room, tomorrow the still-tidy basement and garage.)

Every one of those cans is a staple.

"Water chestnuts? We need two cans of water chestnuts?"

"WATER CHESTNUTS ARE ESSENTIAL! WE NEED THEM ON HAND!"

I suppose he read a fifties cookbook and he wants to be prepared if I suddenly bring six friends home from work unannounced. Or, perhaps it's in case Incognito Jesus does a spot check and wants water chestnuts.

(Granted, if Gary had pulled the stunt of bringing home six people from work I would politely ask, "Cheerios or Raisin Bran?")

Anyway, he is stocking up. You'd think it would be economical, because we could stock up on sale items. But no. Sale items never catch his eye. My larder was more frugal since it's more economical to a) buy food b) eat food c) buy more food. As it stands now, we will never come out ahead on this deal. If we die in a car wreck, some lucky person will inherit a fully-stocked larder, because the goal is not to eat the food, it is to collect the food.

So, I've given up. This was last week's shopping list.

 

Car Bombs R Us

Something about today reminded me of car bombs. Perhaps someone referenced fiddles, or Russian Jews, or tradition. Or it could be I saw a toy store out of the corner of my eye. These things all say "car bomb" to me because of my history with car bombs.

I was young the evening the car bomb went off 100 yards away from me. It was 1979 or 1980, I assume, because I was on a date with Joey S______, watching Fiddler On the Roof. (I know the movie doesn't fit the time. I remember thinking, "Why are they playing this old movie?") We were in the Halls Ferry Cinema, unaware that in the parking lot of the Children’s Palace toy store next door a car bomb was ticking away.

The opening credits rolled, Tevye was singing about tradition, and then there was a metallic boom that shook the wall. Audience heads swivled toward the noise,paused, then swiveled back because there was dancing on screen. I wrote it off as a kid kicking a soccer ball against the wall of the theater, because we were sitting by the outside wall of the outermost cine of the Halls Ferry 6 Cine. (Only 6! So quaint. The days that movie houses came in half-dozens.)

The next day the boyfriend let me know that his mother had been very worried, because a car bomb had exploded in the parking lot of the Children’s Palace next door to the cinema. So, if you ever happen to hear something that sounds like a soccer ball being kicked against a theater, stand back, it may be a car bomb.

Of course, now that I have access to All Truth in internet form, I can find no history of a Children's Palace car bomb. I am undeterred, because I remember the Internet kept pretty quiet about the time someone drove past Grant's Farm and shot a Clydesdale. I couldn't find one word about that, and that happened. Besides, that was about the same time as the Leisure bombings, and I suppose if a bomb goes off and no one dies, it's like the tree falling silently in the forest. Just another car bombing at the toy store.

What is most odd to me is that I didn't think to tell you all about this before.