The New Brother

A New Egg Joins the Family Scramble  

How do you test the fitness of a new in-law?   With FOOD of course.  

Half a year ago, I acquired a new brother-in-law—an uncommon event, as we siblings have reached the age where our children are beginning to marry. 

It’s hard to imagine an interloper fitting in like the other seven in-laws, each of whom has melded seamlessly over the years and whom I regard as a divine sister or brother from another mother.

With this later-in-life acquisition to the family, my maturity (audacity) and experience (senility) support my thinking that I merit some opinion as to his marriage suitability. I have watched and listened as the love-struck sister extolls his merits: Turns out that he’s musical ( a definite +), a fun hog (absolute+) and witty (double ++). His green hair stunt on St. Patty’s certainly marked him as a possible candidate for the lunacy of the clan, though sources report he has shown liberal leanings (slight –).

Only time and close proximity could provide a true test.  HEY!  A family reunion would be perfect. The other sisters and I hatched the covert plan involving many tents and a myriad of  travails--where his suitability as an in-law would be tested to the extreme by us--a plethora of quirky relatives. 

The day dawns and the newlywed couple pulled up in a rig that rivaled Jezabel and Ahab crossing the desert, and it unfolded like an origami box revealing each and every luxury.  

That made me, with my liquid gas coleman stacked on my truck bed, look like a camping neophyte (uh oh, huge –).

The big weight that tilted the balance came at breakfast—eggs for all, cooked in that luxurious caravan—and made to order (+++). Sunny side up? Over easy, scrambled? Could eggs in the RV be better than those fried in the great outdoors in cast iron over pump propane?

Yeeayah, Doggie!  

After what seemed like a fraction of a moment, I am savoring light, fluffy, cooked to perfection, scrambled deliciousness. 

Then the chef poked his head out and asked, “Do you taste mango?”

"In scrambled eggs?" I thought, but then replied quickly, “No.”

“Oh.” His head withdrew.

Puzzled, I keep eating. I am a purist and prefer nothing to dilute the natural flavor of farm-fresh, free-range eggs. Or plain old, store bought, whatever. Anyway…

The head reappeared, “No papaya?”

I slid my tongue over my teeth . “Nope,” I reassured him. I ate faster, spent less time dabbling and more time gobbling.  Now I'm afraid he’d admit that I had gotten the wrong order. In my experience, a family group this size dictates that you “eat what you get and don’t pitch a fit and you do it QUICK!”

Then the sister (acting as the sous chef) pokes her head out. “Are you sure? No mango, no papaya, no tropical sunset?”

I again said, “Nope, just delicious eggs.”

The sister then rolled her eyes and announced, “I guess it’s my fault for placing the air freshener right next to the cooking spray on the counter,” and she disappeared back into the RV.

My last bite of egg slipped down the wrong way as the statement registered!

But I’m not gagging, just giggling. I start to guffaw—and choke—as I realize, HE IS ME!!

AND that, being as cracked as I am, that makes him a keeper!!!

But I am left with one question?  Is Air Wick gluten-free? 

It's My Reality:  And Sometimes It Bites. And When It Does, I Write              2009

I Could've Killed My Husband!

Today, I coulda killed my husband. 

I know most of us have said that about our spouses at one time or another in our lives, but today was my day.

Let me start with a little back story, Mr. Darcey has waged an ongoing battle with digger wasps in our front yard for months. They do not like the vibration of the lawn mower and yet he feels an ongoing urge for the rumble.  Ergo, let the battle begin.

In the past he’s been stung on his ankle tendon and it truly does debilitate a man, even one who seems invulnerable like unto Achilles. I don’t worry too much because the effects haven't moved beyond extreme pain and localized swelling--of the entire affected extremity.

Last week, he and I were just getting over the dreaded grandkid gom-booee, which is whatever the two darlings have picked up by lapping up the virus of the month from the bacterial regions of the earth.  And Mr. Darcey had just been given a steroid shot to curtail the left-over racking cough.  So he could go out and mow! 

This time he got bit/stung atop his right hand.  There was an identical response, pain and swelling, but this time Dr. Me was in the vicinity!  So I doped him up with a couple of Benadryl and a good experimental rub of whatever essential oil was the stink-de-jour. His body’s response was typical, four or five days of swelling resulting in an arm that from wrist to elbow resembled a spinach-loaded Popeye’s.  Remember, this response happened was while he was still on steroids. Sheesh.

Jump ahead.  This morning,  again while mowing, he comes racing in the house swatting wasps and when the panic and killing stops, we count four sting/bites. One on the chest, one on each ankle and one on the thumb joint. Dang. Here we go again! And most allergies intensify with added exposure, right?  This time I consolidate all the thought into one plan, “I gotta up the Benadryl to avoid another steroid shot.”  So my brain counts four bites and multiplies that by the two Benadryl, (those which were ineffective last time,) and I gave him six of the innocuous little pink pills. He’s in pain and he's listened to my hypebolic imagining of an entire body swollen, so he pops them down. I can tell he’s out of his mind in pain because he doesn’t stop to correct my math.  And it's a good thing that he doesn't. 

Now, women are not the only gender whose depths are totally unfathomable to the opposite genus of the species. While in pain, the husband heads back outside to move the mower in from the north forty and again, in he races--and again, he is swatting wasps and has been bitten/stung on his eyelid!

I coulda killed him!!!

But no worries, the Benadryl will probably kick in at anytime and it will do it for me.

When I read the bottle to see if we could up the dosage even more, I find the answer is NO.

Not just No, but,

OH NO!

Not to exceed six pills in a 24 hour period. What?

Hmmmm, I wonder what happens if you do?

He goes to shower and lie down and I get in the car to go off to church, only to discover the day-before-yesterday’s groceries sitting forgotten in the back seat and I discover that the fish has gone-off. Bad fish. Yeech. Such is the bite of reality that is my life.  

So I clean that up and head off to church where the first medical professional I meet advises me to go home and monitor the patient since, “that’s a boatload of Benadryl.”  "Just make sure he's still breathing."  He was joking, right?  

Turns out that Benadryl is a really bad high.  All the google comments are warnings that suggest that this is not the party drug of choice because the side-effects are "a real downer, dude."   

Yeah. I really coulda killed him.

After this experience, there is one thing I have learned for certain.  

Probably 12 hours is the upper safety limit for the left-in-the-car fish.

That's My Reality, and Sometimes It Bites.  

Sept. 2016

Food or Famine - Not Hoarding

Hey all,  

I'm pandemic posting for want of anything else to do, just to fill the aching void.  Today I'm musing about panic buying and empty store shelves.  

Food panic has become a staple of this pandemic and I think we need to step outside our current sugar canister and consider that the bulk of the problem should not all be heaped upon the hoarders.  Based on my pandemic binge-viewing I suspect that we're misdirecting a big heap of the blame for our food shortage.  

Given my wealth of experience, I'd have to say that we hoarders are typically introverts who's biggest problem is our inability to sidle around our homes alongside the newspapers stacked to our ceilings.  The shortages can't all be blamed on hoarders, because if we hoarders are any good at what we been blamed for, we’ve already been storing food alongside our newspapers and trust me.  We ran out of space for food late in the 1980's!  Add that to the fact that most hoarders would rather be found dead than go out into the world with the ravening hoard to scavenge for food and you may begin to agree with me that pandemic food shortages might have a different source. 

What if the problem is more sinister?  What if we’ve designed our nation into starvation?  

Just for a moment, imagine the showcase kitchen fitted with wall-sized refrigeration, double ovens and microwave drawers.  Perfection right?  Well, there is a flaw in the beautiful kitchen design with its quartzite counter tops and lighted cabinetry.  And I postulate that this is what has led to the nation’s food shortage.  

The basic design flaw that's caused our food emergency is that we've placed form over function—our nation's problem is that beautiful kitchen.  

  

Don’t get me wrong, the answer isn't simple appliance ignorance akin to my boss’s problem who can't run his new conduction/convection range.  “Please call the service representative and ask them to come and teach me how to use my oven.”  My thought was, “I think that warranty expired two years ago.”  

Nope, it's not simple stove stupidity that is blame for this round of panic buying.  Nope, this problem  is big and it can’t be resolved with a youtube video or a food channel how-to. 

The Pandemic flaw is that our designer kitchens are food-less.  Designers discovered that if you store food without rotation, you invite bugs, so beautiful kitchens have been filled with faux vegetables and fake fruit.  Across the United States, our kitchens have engineered shelving that unfold like a pop-up card to reveal fancy calligraphed tins filled with empty-ness.   

American's have carefully cultivated an ignorance in basic food acquisition and preparation skills.  That coupled with no time to prepare because we are working frantically to pay for those beautiful kitchens, means that as a whole, America eats out.  

Often. And that means there is NO FOOD IN THOSE HOMES.  

And now that Americans have been ordered by national emergency to eat in, we are forced to begin to replace the internet influencer-fueled faux life with reality.  And in the case of food, there is the need to acquire basic food supplies and that--THAT--is what’s contributing to the nation's food shortages. 

I'm reminded of Robin, that cute influencer from Houston who stands outside her gorgeous, (empty) pantry with a package of rice in one hand and one of beans in the other, while she muses that she does not currently know how to cook beans and rice, but her mother has assured her that she could live off them in a pinch.  Well, this is the pinch and that handful of food will indeed make one meal.  Or maybe two.  

So please stop blaming the hoarders and begin to direct the concern toward the ones that are truly at risk.  Those beautiful, ignorant, unrealistic people who were caught unprepared and are now struggling to fix their fundamental design flaw.   Basic food storage.  

Have a little empathy for everyone in the nation who are just now struggling to learn what basic necessities look like and how to prepare them.  And even if you can only throw them a bone, with their bean and rice storage, they might make a really tasty soup.  

That's My Reality, and Sometimes It Bites and When it does, I Write.            Mar. 2020 for the Win