Let’s take this one in reverse order, title-wise. Yesterday morning I was at the grocery store, and I just did not hit it off with the clerk in the checkout line. I wasn’t at my neighborhood store, where all the cashiers know us and we have a nice discussion each time we meet. We talk about our families and jobs and movies we’ve seen lately – all the good stuff.
[Right here we should insert a headphones-wearing UN translator to put the above sentences into language my east coast relatives can understand. If you start chatting up your cashier in New England, you run the risk of getting that ‘well, she’s just not right in her head’ look, so this is all gobbledygook to them.]
Back to business. The cashier yesterday was simply not a friendly sort, so after my initial pleasantries I kept quiet. As I was entering my credit card, she was sending the groceries down the belt. There was a big crunch, and we both looked down to see all the food piling up on a container of strawberries that had popped open, sending berries rolling. The clerk said, “Oh. We can get you a new thing of strawberries.” But then I paused for a heartbeat, and She Had My Number. Could it possibly have been the two 4.5 year old boys I had in the front of my unwieldy truck cart, who were saying, “Lauwa! Say squiefelsmish!” over and over? It could. So she looked at me and said, “Well, you have to wash them anyway.”
Snap! However, as I mentioned above – she had my number. I didn’t have time for her to call for someone on break out back to trudge over to produce and pick out a box of strawberries for us. But we were not through, aggressive clerk and I. I went to bag the groceries and she turned the belt on again and I was suddenly in an I Love Lucy candy conveyor belt situation. Fortunately you can turn the belt off from the end, which I did. She turned it back on. I turned it off. She turned it on. It was hysterical. She couldn’t bear to have the groceries pile up at her end, and I couldn’t keep up at mine! Why did I buy so much fruit?! Why the loose potatoes, and no boxes of cereal or tissues? Squiefelsmish!
All in all, pretty entertaining, although I had a couple of decidedly east coast thoughts about the situation.
Now it’s time for a photo.
These are the apple muffins I baked for Hot Wheels’ snack day at preschool. I tried a new recipe that I found over at The Crepes of Wrath. How great is that name? Check out the site, and the recipe. You will not be disappointed. Just thinking about that site makes me hungry. The muffins are delicious, and they lead to an ridiculously obvious morality tale.
Last night, due to conditions primarily but not entirely her fault, our daughter did not finish her homework. (gasp) With utmost sincerity she vowed to do it quickly in the morning before school, and against my better judgement, I let her. This is a bewildering statement, since my cardinal rule is no homework in the morning. What, exactly, was I thinking?
Here we find out what I was thinking. In a move that neatly illustrates two common proverbs, namely ‘those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’ AND ‘the apple never falls far from the tree,’ I went out into the kitchen and decided it would be fine to bake the snack muffins in the morning.
Suffice it to say, things didn’t work out quite as we planned this morning. She discovered that at the breakfast table, she is sleepy and her little brother is loud. I discovered that just because the recipe says 30-35 minutes doesn’t mean I should not check them at my usual 20 minutes. (They turned out ok, but it was really a bad plan all around.)
And the obvious moral of the tale? Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition.