Making the Bed

When I was in sixth grade, I had a sleepover at BR’s house. I don’t remember much about what we did that night, but I remember the next morning very vividly. I remember his mom calling us out to breakfast, and BR stopped me at the door to his room. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked. 

“To breakfast. Why?” 

“You need to make your bed first. You should never go to someone else’s house and leave the bed unmade. It’s rude and disrespectful.” 

Stomach rumbling, I begrudgingly made the bed. It’s funny how things stick with you. Thirty years later, and I not only remember that incident, but I still make the bed every morning when I’m at someone else’s house. I can’t say that I do it very often at my own house, but that’s another matter altogether.

The Third Grade All-District Spelling Bee Champion

JR was telling me that whenever his wife questions him on the spelling of a word, he tells her that she shouldn’t doubt him because he was the third grade all-district spelling bee champion. So, I asked him how that worked, if he had to go through several levels of competition, being on stage in front of a microphone, surrounded by an enormous amount of anxiety and pressure. He said no, that they did it a little differently. It apparently was a written test, and they graded him by how many words he spelled correctly, and then compared him to other students in his school and area.

As we dug into this further, we realized that in order for this to work, they would have had to have given him a list of the words on a piece of paper and asked him to spell them. I started laughing, and I asked, “So, basically you just had to copy the word that you saw in the paper?! I think I know how you became the third grade all-district spelling bee champion! Are you sure it wasn’t just a handwriting assignment?” Then another thought hit me. How is it that everyone else missed the spelling of some of the words if they were handed to them on a piece of paper?!

The French Toast Connection

Has anyone else noticed how much Neosporin smells like French toast? It has that sweet, syrupy smell to it. I’m not sure if that was on purpose, if they were told to make it smell like that, or if it just happened. 

French toast always makes me think of my mom. She introduced me to this delicacy of delicacies, and she will always be my French toast connection. Now, I guess she's my Neosporin connection too. Except that I have no intention of ordering Neosporin whenever I go to breakfast in a restaurant.

The French Toast Connection sounds like a romantic spy movie from the 1950s, where a man chased all over the globe by foreign agents bent on killing him, must uncover the elusive connection between a fried, egg-covered breakfast bread and a cream "that helps cuts heal four days faster."

And apparently it's also a little bistro in Portland, OR.

Toast and Chocolate Milk

One of my favorite childhood memories was waking up on a Saturday morning and having toast and chocolate milk with my mom and brother.  That warm bread getting golden brown as the heat from the toaster cooked its doughy sides.  Steam rising off of it in wafts, as the butter melted into a puddle.  And the decadent smell of chocolate being stirred and stirred into the milk, turning it from a crisp white into a silky, smooth brown.

We'd take our treat into the den, cuddle up on the couch, and take turns dipping our toast into the chocolate milk.  The triangular pieces coming out dripping with the chocolaty liquid and mingling the salty with the sweet.  I know that many people that I've told that to think it sounds disgusting, but to me, it's perfect.  It reminds me of home.  Besides, don't knock it until you've tried it!

So, in a nod to my mother and brother and the sweet memories of my childhood, I made myself toast and chocolate milk tonight.  It was everything I remembered.

The Bobby Pin

A little-known fact about me is that in high school, I used to keep a bobby pin in my wallet.  It was clipped on the dollar-bill divider right in the crease of the wallet.  Hardly noticeable unless you were looking for it.  This might seem like an odd thing to have in a man's wallet.  I had a marine-cut haircut all during high school, so it obviously wasn't there for the express purpose that it was made...to hold my hair back.  So, why you might ask did I keep a bobby pin in my wallet? 

Well, to be used as a lock pick, of course, in the event (or eventuality I believed in high school) that I would be locked up somewhere and need to pick the lock to get out.  I was so paranoid that this was bound to happen to me at some point that I wanted to be ready.  So, I carried that stupid bobby around for four years, only to be disappointed that I never had a chance to use it.  Some guys carry business cards, some carry pictures of their girlfriend, some carry condoms...I carried a lock pick.  And that explains a lot about me in high school.

Smart Nora

I recently came across a product called Smart Nora.  It boasted the ability to help you or your partner with snoring, particularly snoring that is so loud that it wakes your partner up.  Since my spousal unit has a snoring problem (although, I guess it's only a problem to the person that has to listen to it), I decided that this product was exactly what we needed!

I have tried everything in the past from nudging her awake (got whacked in the face because she thought she was being attacked), to talking to her (got chewed out for waking her up for no reason, because she obviously wasn't snoring), to full body launching myself into the air to "bounce" her awake (has zero effect on a Tempur-pedic mattress where you can jump up and down with a glass of wine and not spill a drop), to sleeping in another room (oddly, I can still hear her on the other side of the house too, so defeated the purpose).  The science with Smart Nora seemed more promising, though.  It works by "listening" for snoring at a certain decibel level, and then an electronic air jack raises and lowers your pillow to stimulate your relaxed throat muscles to breath normally again.  What could go wrong?!  So, we bought it.

The first two nights, it worked great.  My spousal unit got used to the gentle, slow movement of the pillow and said she had the best sleep she'd had in a long time.  Unfortunately, I didn't see any positive changes on my part, because I stayed awake all night to see if she was going to snore and if Smart Nora would control it.  It was the third night that we found the first flaw in the system.  I finally relaxed into a deep sleep, satisfied that we had finally found the solution to our snoring dilemma.  And that's when it happened.  According to an unverified source, I was so relaxed that I presumably started snoring too.  My crescendo of delight reached such wondrous heights, that Smart Nora picked up on it and started adjusting my spousal unit's pillow.  Which obviously didn't solve the real problem, which was MY collapsing air cavities.  But it created another problem as well...she wasn't asleep yet.  She was still up reading her book when her head started "bobbing" up and down...albeit ever so slowly.

So, now we're faced with a new dilemma.  Pony up a lot more money for a second system, which adjusts both of us if either of us snore, or share a single pillow.  That's it, there are no other options.  And let's be perfectly honest, there is really only one option, because the other one is ludicrous.  

So, now my wife and I have had to learn how to do synchronized "spooning" as we share the pillow.  When either of us needs to turn over, we both have to turn over.  The nice thing is that we've learned to do it without having to fully wake up, and because of Smart Nora, we still have a peaceful sleep!

Free Toaster

Free T-Fal Avante Deluxe Toaster. To a good, loving home. Chrome and black. Toasts four pieces of bread at the same time. Extra-large slots good for toast, English muffins, or bagels. Approximately ten years old, but still has many years of life left in it.

It has many fun features, such as randomly ejecting your toast two feet into the air (and possibly onto the floor) and sometimes not ejecting it at all. But this can be surprising, and has thoroughly entertained my one-year old for weeks now. It’s like a jack-in-the-box, and now he waits with bated breath every time I make toast. Will it fly across the kitchen or not?!

The right side has two cook settings: raw and blackened, which are controlled more by the toaster’s temperament that day than by the knob on the front.

There are levers that will lift your toast up so you can grab it, if you happen to have small pieces of bread, but the lever on the left tends to get stuck in the “lift up” position, so future toast will only get half cooked on that side of the toaster.

The little cooking-cage things inside that close in to hold the bread sometimes get stuck “open,” but a well-placed butter knife can easily wedge them back into place again. Although, I recommend not trying it while the toast is actually toasting as the knife can get a little warm. We like to think of it as an extra “feature.”

My wife is so eager that this toaster find a good home that will appreciate it, that she’s willing to throw in our old, burnt bread crumbs as well...free of charge!

Black Lambs Matter

CC found lamb on sale for the holiday, so he decided to treat himself to some lamb steaks. He called my wife for a recipe, because being Greek, she must have a recipe for lamb! I was half listening from the other room, while I folded laundry, and I heard them start talking about the difference between white meat and dark meet. CC mentioned that he didn’t like the dark meat as much as white meat. To which I yelled, “Black lambs matter too!”

It seemed appropriate given the current social situation with certain ethnic groups fighting for social equality under the banner and motto of “Black Lives Matter."

Mexican Mosquito

I think we have a Mexican mosquito in our house. A few days ago, I was making burritos, and he started annoyingly buzzing around my face. I tried to snuff out his useless life, but he thwarted my attempts. He flew off somewhere, and I didn’t see any sign of him again...until tonight.

I was making tacos, and sure enough, the same mosquito (at least I assume it was the same one) showed up again and was buzzing around my face. I had actually forgotten about him, supposing that he’d died or made his way back outside. I have no idea where he’s been, but as soon as I started cooking Mexican food, there he was again.

I’m going to make fajitas this weekend to see if he’ll come back. I suppose liking Mexican food is better than liking me!

Cassettes

My niece is into music CDs now. Apparently, CDs are considered retro and cool by kids today, much like vinyl records were considered retro and cool by my generation. I guess nobody really buys physical music mediums anymore. Everything is digital downloads. When I was a kid, the big thing was tape cassettes. Other than the size and portability of them (I mean who would like to have a record player mounted on the dashboard of their car?!), there was no redeeming advantage of tape cassettes. The sound quality was poor compared to vinyl records and CDs, and there was absolutely no way to skip to a particular song like you can with CDs. You either listened through the entire cassette each time, or you stopped it and rewound it over and over again for one particular song until you wore the tape out completely.

The other thing that sucked back in the day was trying to figure out the name of a particular song or who sang it. There was no Shazam or Google. You had to rely completely on the radio (or MTV) to tell you. This particular exercise of listening for a song on the radio could frustratingly take days. You'd listen day after day, hoping that the song would come on during those 30-60 min you spent in the car. And if it did happen to come on, you hoped the DJ said the name of the song and artist, so you could go buy the album on cassette later (and then wear it out). Most of the time, luck would have it that you might go hours without hearing your song and turn off the radio just before it came on. Or that it would play in a no-commercial set with the DJ only saying the name of the last song. Or more likely, you’d turn on the radio right in the middle of the song, and the DJ would have decided to say the name at the beginning on that particular day.

We also didn’t have the instant gratification people have today, like being able to download a song whenever you feel like it. Kids nowadays don’t know the pain that we went through to get music back in the day. My brother and I would stay up late (sometimes for several nights in a row), waiting for a song to come on the radio, so we could record it on our repurposed cassette with the paper stuffed in the “do not record” hole. Sometimes, you'd get the last few words of the DJ talking at the beginning as the song cued up (annoying). But other times, the golden times, you'd time it perfectly and hit the "Record" button at the exact right time. There was definitely an art to this. And for the next 3-4 min, you were jamming away to your song, finger hovering over the "Stop" button, waiting for the end, riding a high that you'd finally timed your song perfectly. And then the stupid DJ would inevitably come on and start talking through the last 15 seconds of the song and ruin the entire thing! Cussing his mother for bringing him into the world, you'd rewind the tape and cue it up for the next night when you'd try again.

And we weren’t even supposed to be up late, listening to music. We were already taking our lives in our hands by doing it the first time, and now we'd have to try again! And maybe the next night, you'd have the same thing. The DJ plays five songs in a row without interruption and then decides to talk through the song you're waiting for. Or maybe the next time you hear the song, you're in the car with no way to record it, and now you have to wait another four hours before it comes back on the rotation again. All for a poor quality recording of a song that you probably won't like in a few days anyway!

The Tide Pods

MG is a nanny for a three-year old girl. The little girl likes to help with the laundry, and her favorite part is throwing the Tide pods into the washing machine. 

But every single time, she will look at MG with a stern face and say, “We do not eat the Tide pods!” 

“I wasn’t going to.” 

“Well, we don’t do it. We don’t put them in our mouth.” 

“I’m not, but can you please put it into the washing machine?” 

“Okay, as long as you understand that we don’t do it. We don’t put it in our mouth. That’s the rule. That’s the rule!” 

“I got it. Don’t put it in my mouth.” 

“Good.” 

And then she throws the Tide pod into the machine.

Dr. S and Mr. K

I found out today that apparently when your spouse has a PhD, you’re supposed to address them first in introductions and salutations. This wouldn’t be so odd if the man is the one because they normally go first, but if it’s the woman...

So since my spousal unit has a PhD, she would go first. However, since she didn’t take my last name, we wouldn’t be Dr. and Mr. K. We’d be Dr. S and Mr. K., which sounds odd, like we’re some kind of literary monster. A spin-off of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde maybe.

Over-Exaggerate

Whenever I’m being dramatic about something, my spousal unit always tells me that I like to over-exaggerate. I tell her that I never over-exaggerate. I always exaggerate the exact right amount!

Work Chill Factor

My spousal unit asked me today if I had a long day ahead. I knew what she meant, but this turn of phrase still puzzles me. Usually I answer, “No, it’s 24 hours like every other day.” But today I told her that I had a “work chill factor.” She asked me what that was, and I replied, “It’s like how a wind chill factor can actually make the weather feel colder than it is. Well, a work chill factor is when your job can make a day seem longer than it is."