Casa de Clemmons

Posted By stephanie on June 29, 2009

‘Twas the night after vacation, when all through the house,
Weary creatures were stirring and fumbling about;
The take-out was placed on the counter with care,
In hope that some sustenance soon would be found there.
The children were nestled all snug on the couch,
Blankied and tired and all in a slouch;
Dad with his beer and Peg on her Mac,
David settled down, the network to hack;
When from the front hall there arose such a chatter,
I sprang from my snow peas to see what was the matter.
Away to the front door I flew like a flash,
Gazed up at the transom, squinted my eyes to a slash;
The porch light through the window illuminated them well,
One mama dove head and two smaller as well.
Dad said “They hatched. Isn’t that what I see?”
And it was. Oh how? Oh how could that be?
Freida and Freddie, they were parents at last,
Baby birds, not boiled eggs and wow was that fast!
Our lament was now over and we watched with delight,
Three, now four little heads bobbing late in the night;
In wonder we marvelled at the scene taking place,
Silly grins and giggles all over my face;
As I drew up a ladder, for I wanted to spy,
But these baby birds already knew how to fly;
Fluffy little puffs, they flew out of the nest,
Circled around and then came back to rest.
We watched them in wonder for quite a long time,
Road fatigue pushed back, from the kids, not a whine;
We turned back to our Hunan, our Szechwan, our cabbage and pork,
And dug in with gusto, and gestures of fork.
Here’s to Freida and Freddie and what they did right,
Baby birdies to all, and to all a good-night.

Category: Family | 7 Comments »

Posted By stephanie on June 2, 2009

Steph here. Shocking. I know.

I have many excuses as to why I have not written in quite some time, but I shall spare you them as they are probably interesting only to me.

On that same note, as I watched Parker talking endlessly to someone during my nephew’s birthday party, I commented to a family member that I am trying to teach him not to talk until his captive’s eyes glaze over and they begin to search for a way out… And I realized! I was blathering on about his chatter! And he is 11 and I am, well, not 11. Uninvitedly and certainly most unwelcome, I recalled a book the kids and I read recently where the main character makes the comment to never pass up an opportunity to shut up. I pass up those moments like mileage markers on the autobahn with the Yeti in a Maserati close on my tail. Not so good at closing the mouth. Gotta work on that. quietly.

We are trying to become off-road cyclists. The pedaling kind. We bought P a bike and he promptly removed large portions of his epidermis/dermis and all the underlying tissue that I cannot name and we have watched a quite educational process of wound healing. Many colors are involved. Helmets are our friends.

Perhaps you remember our inept doves, Frieda and Freddie? They are back. Again. Shoddy nest making. Bottoms pressed firmly against the window above the front door. Parker has a less polite way of describing their unusual positioning but I’m not going there right now.

I am in awe of the survival of this species if these two are representative of their kind. Pantophobia grips them tightly. Fearsome foes such as the ups man, The stick-a-flyer-on-your-door man, a neighbor, a butterfly, gnat or even a wisp of pollen sends them into a panicked and bizarre flight – bumping unto walls and people, knocking their shoddily made nest to the bricks below in an unidentifiable tangle of sticks and grass and debris as they flee our porch for their lives.

Over.   And over.   And over.   And over.   And over.   Again.

If past performance is any indicator of future results, we will soon have 2 or 3 very pretty little eggs in the oft made nest. The flighty and slightly mad couple will stick around for a bit and then leave the youngsters to incubate alone in the oven that is the ceiling of our porch. We will wait expectantly for them to return to their seemingly chosen home and clutch of eggs, and after a few months we will remove the by-then hard boiled eggs and the cycle will lie dormant until next spring.

We are as of yet unwilling to let go of the hope that their parenting skills will one day improve. Hope that is. I don’t wish to imply that we have any confidence in their abilities. It is hard to have confidence in one who presses their anus against your window for much of the day. Maybe this year will be different. Maybe. Or maybe not.

Category: Family | 7 Comments »

Posted By stephanie on February 26, 2009

It all started happily enough. A quick cache grab on the way home from church. It was a beautiful night and early enough to make the find and still be home in time for the kids to stay up and watch Idol. No problem. Hypothetically. Do things ever actually work that way?

We pull in to the area and parked surreptitiously. Under the cover of darkness we slunk stealthily to ground zero. Well sort of, really the kids bounced happily out of the car with their headlamps strobing the area and ran full speed down the hill laughing as they went. So much for invisibility and stealth.

We called back the darting lights and targeted our coordinates. Bingo. A lone tree. We started looking around and

No.

No.

No.

A vile, brownish red slippery three inch long roach. Yes. I said a roach. I’m sorry, but this is not for sensitive constitutions. You see, it gets worse.

I recoil in mortal fear and begin whimpering. David aka roach-hugger, who is not afraid and I think that is just wrong, says “Come on. Let’s find it. I need your eyes.” I see other glistening flat vilenesses and I cower into the darkness and tremble.

My children meanwhile are foolishly and recklessly attempting to climb the other I-am-sure-they-are-infested trees in the area. “They have roaches!” I call out in desperation. The children look at me curiously and say “Okay.” and keep climbing. “Mommy? Why do you think roaches are scary?” Foolishly asks the little redheaded roach-hugging climber. I carefully and intelligently reply. “They just are!” “Is this like you being afraid of heights?” Asks the other impertinent youth, taunting me as he looks with roach-hugger at the tree festering with vectors.

“Sort of.” I reply defensively. “But roaches are really something to be afraid of.” I protest. ”It’s not irrational!” He looks at me, amused, and grins. I am not amused. And these people are not finding the cache so we can go away!

In desperation to find the cache and retreat to safety, and against my better judgement, I inch toward the tree to help look. It is ick and gross and my skin is crawling. I look frantically for the cache. I use my flashlight and start scanning up and down the trunk. As I scan upwards I freeze. No! No! On a limb overhanging me by just a few feet is a horrible slimy giant roach. Paralyzed with fear, I am instantly transported back to childhood. I am about 8 years old and in my bed. There is a cockroach on the ceiling directly above my face. He is dark and shiny and vile and perfectly still. I am frozen. White knuckles clenched around my yellow gingham bedspread, not knowing what to do. If I move, he will drop on me and that thought is too horrible to think about. If I move, he will drop on me and pursue me like a wild dog with wings, never stopping until he has overwhelmed and conquered his prey…

I snap back to the present and leap back. At that moment redheaded roach-hugger says “Mommy! There’s a roach by your foot! And over there!” It is true. They are coming for me. And I must run. And run I did. I ran until I reached the relative safety of the sidewalk. I quit. I was done. So done. I want to go home.

I spent the trip home repeatedly trying to blow my nose and dig out the roaches that I was sure had infested my nasal passages during the assault. At one point roach-hugger tossed one of the 43 used kleenexes at me and the soft whispering on my skin again put me into convulsions and spasms of roach-ridding. Giggling from the back seat. Who are these people?

We made it home and I considered bleaching myself. The roach-huggers pleaded with me to postpone the detoxification and to come watch Idol with them. Big roach-hugger made popcorn. I need to go blow my nose. Again.

Category: Family | 6 Comments »

Posted By david on January 26, 2009

Well, I have finally retired the old blogging software and installed the newer, easier to use software.  Let’s see if it spurs Stephanie along to blog much more often.

Category: Family | 5 Comments »

Posted By stephanie on December 22, 2008

Just pretend that you have a pizza party planned with, say, oh a whole lot of kids and adults. Let’s make it an End of the Year/Christmas Party just to add to the frenzy of the event. We will place the date right between Thanksgiving and Christmas for maximum effect.

Preparations for this party begin long in advance. Gifts are purchased. Supplies for crafts assembled. (Don’t laugh! I did help with crafts! Sort of. The kids did have to demonstrate to me the proper use of a glue gun.) Desserts procured and the car packed.

Ack! I forgot. This is a PIZZA party. And I have a child allergic to…CHEESE. Sharp intake of breath. This particular child would not complain if I shoved a jelly sandwich at him and said “Have at it.” as I have been known to do. (Note: Not trying to saintify said child, other things he would complain about, but not the sandwich.) Said child really likes food and food is fun to eat with friends and it is nice to be “normal” and eat what everyone else is eating-even with a bit of variation.

So…

I dislodge the bread maker from the bottom of the pantry, upsetting a bottle of mineral water and two rectangular lunchboxes. I right the bottle, toss the lunch boxes unceremoniously back into the pantry and calculate the time…1 hour for the bread maker to work its magic, another 30 minutes for rising, (in a warm oven to help us all out) Pop that puppy in the oven and we can be out of the house in 2 hours. That will work. I think. If all goes perfectly. Ha!

I start tossing ingredients into the little mixing/kneading/whatever else it does pot-like container. I have momentary angst remembering the dead yeast of Ren-Fest pretzels. I use a new three strip of yeast hoping for health among the colony and push start. I relax and start cleaning up the mess. I continue the neurotic reiterating of our timeline in my head and realize…TOPPINGS! Pizza is not simply dough. Another sharp intake of breath. Scour kitchen. Begin to defrost spaghetti sauce. Lots of vegetables, meat, tomato sauce…that will work. Toss a can of sliced black olives (in the cute little can with drawings of olive slices floating about on the golden label) in the mix for good measure and tell the kids we have to be ready to dash to the car with hot pizza in hand. Bread maker beeps and I grab half of the dough and begin kneading. The other half of the dough languishes, forgotten in the bread maker. The pizza does work and is taken hot and steaming to the party where it is promptly consumed by a grinning boy sitting amongst his friends.

The poor forgotten half-lump of now cold pizza dough sits sadly and uselessly on the counter of the empty cold house. (It really was cold; we hadn’t turned the heat on yet. Think “Cold as a penguin’s bum” type of cold.)

We returned from the party many hours later and I scanned the kitchen disaster and the old dough still in the bread maker. “I don’t care.” I thought and went to read a book on the 1889 Johnstown Flood. Much more interesting than my cold, dirty kitchen. The kids went out side to play and I steeped a cup of green tea and read of the disaster.

That evening, we did clean the kitchen and David looked at the dough lump, now getting a dry crusty layer on top, and asked what I wanted to do with it. “I don’t know.” I wittily answered and tossed the dough into a bowl, covered it with a dish towel and shoved it into the middle shelf of the refrigerator next to the half eaten container of hummus and some pomegranate juice.

That was Friday.

Then there was Saturday.

And Sunday.

And Monday.

Monday noonish, I was again rifling through the fridge looking for some lunch sustenance and I saw the old dough and made a face. Lifting the cloth, the dough was crusty and blah. Still having the wrinkled, splatted form my careless tossing gave it on Friday.

I shrugged, “Bread sounds good.” I thought. “Wonder what would happen if I baked this pathetic looking stuff?”

I kneaded the dough. Trying vainly to fold in the dry crusty area, it eventually became elastic and felt…well, okay. I warmed the oven and place the bread in to rise. An hour later it looked pretty good. I slashed the top and painted it with some water and baked it.

I pulled it out when it turned golden and fought the kids off with the vicious snapping of a dishtowel, (With the tip wet so it cracks menacingly. I am really mean.) spouting comments about cooling to “protect the crumb” that were never heard anyway. It smelled of Italian herbs (it <i>was </i>a pizza crust after all) and fresh bread and who could blame them?

After about 20 minutes, neither the kids nor I could wait any longer. (None of us has had lunch, remember?) Still warm, we cut the loaf. It was very pretty and I gasped. It was velvety and smooth. The most delicate bread I have ever made. It tasted even better. We were eating slice after slice, buttered and unbuttered. Caroline had the most restraint of the three of us and said “We must keep some for Daddy. This is so good!” So we stopped with reluctance.

I am sure this was the best bread I have ever made. From 3 day old, carelessly stored pizza dough.

And I don’t think I have any hope of ever making it just the same way again.

But it sure was good.

Category: Family | 1 Comment »

Posted By stephanie on December 2, 2008

It was a dark and stormy night. Not really. I was a beautiful crisp Thanksgiving morning. But everything sounds more ominous and mysterious in the dark and the storms and such.

The biggest challenge of this particular Turkey Day was ovening. One oven. Lots of food. And one particularly big food. Meet Mr. Turkey. David and I scheduled out the time food needed to be in and out of said oven in order for all food to be cooked and consumable at approximately the same time. But the turkey was a problem. The surely-they-know-what-they-are-talking-about folks that printed the cooking instructions on my turkey gave me clear directions that my turkey should be cooked for 6 hours. No more. No less. My I-think-I-trust-them-more people at my cookbook assured me that 3 hours would be sufficient. 3 hours. 6 hours. Quite a difference here folks. And I AM trying to serve people food at some sort of predictable time. And I have all this other stuff to pop into the oven jiffy-quick when Turkey Man pops out.

We decide to trust our cookbook friends and plan on a three hour tanning session for Turkey B. Schmidt. The time comes and we hoist the big boy out of his salt bath and onto his basking platform. Into the oven he goes. I mentioned my turkey angst (I really really really dislike dry poultry, really any meat overdone is not a favorite for me and I had no desire to end up with 18.39 pounds of salted and nicely flavored jerky.) to my sister, we’ll just call her Tecca and she said she would bring over her handy dandy poke into the turkey and monitor his temp whilst he roasts oven thermometer.

Tecca, Indy and Lathan arrive and the timer beeps to say Turkey Lurkey is done on one side and wants to bask on his belly.

Side note: Flipping a partially cooked, hot, slippery, 18+ pound turkey that has begun to stick to the side of the pan is dramatic to say the least. End of side note.

Tom is now settle comfortably and ready to be probed. Well, to be honest, he may not have been ready but we were and considering that he had no head or guts, he had no real defense.

Probe in, display is set up. Cute little display shows a hypothetical turkey and tells us the essential data. In the kitchen, we settle in to consume all of the before-dinner foods and talk. We also discover that a pop up toaster and a pizza pan light enough to balance on top of Fowl Timothy, is sufficient for some tasty bruchetta breads. Good to know.

I look up.

The thermometer says 173. Ack! 170-175 was our target to pull Turk out of his oven sauna. “But it has only been two hours!” I protest. Multiple probings confirm the initial reading and I realize…We have cut nothing! The bread is still in the refrigerator! The bacon is not yet wrapped around the green beans! We haven’t even finished the essential pre-eating!

Lana and Tecca start chopping and wrapping, I slice and toss. Children are given tasks. Guys deal with the I-tan-awfully-easily turkey. Pans are flinging into the oven from all directions. Colorful piles of chopped vegetable begin to rise from the countertops.

And then we ate. Quite a bit in fact. And I marveled that the wonder that was Tecca’s supermometer. Decided we must have one. It saved us from what certainly would have been dry, icky bird.

We enjoyed the rest of the evening and then were off to RenFest and more family time.

We arrived home Sunday evening. David walked to the kitchen, pulled out a small rectangular white thing with a silver cord and looked at me. My eyes opened in disbelief and I stared. “Is that…?” I began and stopped. He sighed and nodded his head slowly and spoke. “I was reading reviews on oven thermometers and decided we should get a certain one. Then I looked at the picture and it clicked.” It was in the small drawer to the left of the sink. With the lemon squeezer, the baster and the little yellow ceramic egg separator Meredith gave me years ago.

We had one. All of the time we were marveling at the wonders of Tecca’s thermometer as if we had never used one. And we had one in a drawer we open daily.

Sharp ones we are.

Category: Family | Comments Off

Posted By stephanie on October 24, 2008

Fear. Many things are deserving of a healthy dose of caution. Playing with rattlesnakes. Plutonium. The LBJ freeway. Blazing wildfires. Tidal waves. Hippopotamuses. Me using sharp knives.

Then there is the climbing wall at the gym.

On a whim, we took the kids to the gym last night during the open climb hours for some new fun. The place was deserted, as it was only 5 o’clock and we walked right up to the table with the attendants. They gave us our harnesses and asked if we had climbed before. I did some rock climbing in college on actual rocks, but never an indoor wall, so we said no. I did tell them I knew how to belay and could belay one of the kids. They said that they had 5 Auto-Belay stations and everyone can just climb on their own. (Note: Did you hear that? “Auto-Belay” You clip in and the cable actually holds tension as you climb, and then as you kick off to go down, it gently lowers you to the ground. Very nice.) So now I have no useful skills and I stand looking at the brightly colored fake-rock nubs on the wall. A tall wall. A very very very tall wall.

I clip Caroline on to the belay rope and she tentatively begins to scale the wall. I remember some climbing skills and start coaching her. (She is on auto-belay so I am just standing there like a doof.) She gets it. And likes it. She eventually makes it about halfway up the wall and needs a break. I clip her out and we walk to another section of wall (around the corner where NO ONE CAN SEE ME) and I clip myself in.

I start to scale up and after dropping back down 13-17 times (the auto-belay is fun) I start to remember how to climb. It is tough, but really fun. I inch my way up the wall and suddenly remember Caroline, who I had instructed to stay to the side of me, but close. I glanced down at her and AH! The child is fine but a dizzying, paralyzing fear shot through me. Nausea. Cold. My head is about to explode. I breathe shakily and hard. My entire body begins to tremble and I cannot go up or down. My hands clutch at the handholds and I feel my knuckles grate against the wall as I cling for, what feels like, my life. I lean my head against the wall and keep telling myself “This is not real. It is irrational. I am fine. Just look up.” But no good. I am paralyzed, panting and shaking with fear.

Disgusted, I eventually force myself to let go and kick away from the wall. The auto-belay, as if mocking me, gently floats me to the ground. Caroline, unaware of my issues, says “Mommy! You were almost to the top! You were so high! Was it fun?” and then “Are you okay? Are you really scared? Really?” as she looks at my white face and trembling body and hands. I just leaned against the wall and tried to breathe. Irritated. And a bit mad.

Fear. An irrational fear of heights. Irrational reason, but the fear is real. And debilitating. And maddening.

I survey the wall. I had been about 30 feet up and only about 10 feet from the top. My hands calm down enough for me to clip out and clip Caroline in. She climbs for a bit and I watch and coach and calm down. A man walks over and says “I saw you climb. You were almost to the top. Why did you stop?”

Great.

A witness.

I want to tell him I just happened to like that particular fake red rock and once I saw it, I was done. Instead I breathed out “Fear of heights.” and grimaced. “This wall does that to you.” He replied. “After four or five tries, you’ll be fine.” “Yeah. Right.” I thought.

Caroline signaled that she needed a break, so I clipped her out again and using a bit of irritated adrenalin, clipped myself back in. I stared up at the same section of wall and it mocked me with its fake rock and spatter paint and auto-belay. I told Caroline I wasn’t going to look down. She tells me not to be scared and pats my arm. I love my girl.

I start up and this time, eventually make it to the top. Thankful that no one can see my white, shaking face and hear my gut rumbling and my blood pounding through every vessel in my body, I kick down, done for the day.

Caroline waits again for me to stop shaking again so I can clip out. Her face is amazed as she asks “Is this really scary to you, Mommy?” I reply that it is, but that she (and I) are quite safe and that it is more like her being scared of a nightmare. It seems real and scary, but the danger is all in your mind. She looks at me concerned and a bit confused.

We go to her favorite spot and after a few tries she makes it to the top. She is a good little climber. And quite unafraid.

Unlike her mama.

Category: Family | 3 Comments »

Posted By stephanie on October 9, 2008

I am sitting at my computer in an odd, wired, tired, prednisone and Sudafed altered sort of state and am going to tell you a story.

As a bit of context, the ragweed in my area have mounted a full out assault on my wimpy allergic system. (I’m sure there is a much more accurate medical diagnosis, but this will suffice for my purposes.) As the ragweed organized (The assault has been on in a scattered and easily controlled manner for the better part of two weeks.) into battalions and mounted their offensive, I sank deeper and deeper into our overstuffed off-white living room chair and proceeded to use all of the kleenex in the house. (I am down to one partial box. And it is the small square box, not the big rectangle. And it has brown stripes and the word Ultra on the side.) A combination of the sinking and the reverberating sneezes, coughing and no speaking voice at all, has made for an interesting beginning of the week.

The children of the house began to take matters into their own hands. After the 8th round of “Fend for yourselves. And please bring me some food. And make it soft.” (Still got that tooth issue going on.) (Also remember I have no voice, just an irritating squeak and rasp.) The cookbooks started opening and ingredients started flying. Literally. I could see flour poufing through my watery eyes still slunched on the overstuffed chair.

I stopped them to announce (Announce sounds so audible and this was not.) that I had to go to the doctor and get in the car. They tumbled in, flashmaster, Eragon, The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, math books, pencils. And me. In old sweats and a bright pink scrunchie, tightly clutching the last brown striped Puffs Ultra box closely.

The doc jovially told me that I looked like the poster child for allergic disease. Always my dream in life. After a whopping prednisone shot (at least the amount of burn was whopping) and a prescription for lots more prednisone to shut down the Ragweed Offensive. We went home. Still with one brown striped partial box of Puffs.

I settled back down in my chair and sneezed 87-93 times and started staring at the VCR. Why is the time never correct on the VCR? Some time passed, I have no idea if it was minutes or hours and I hear “Mom, will you put the pretzels in the oven for me?”

Eyes open to full half potential. I stagger to the kitchen. They couldn’t have heard me if I answered anyway, Phantom of the Opera was at wall shaking decibels. They have been playing it continuously for the last three days. My being sick has some perks to the small peeps. Can’t wait to read their journal assignments from this week, I’m sure they involve Raol and Christine.

Into the kitchen. (A full 10 feet from my chair, but these things take a while.) Flour is indeed poufing about and two baking pans of creatively shaped pretzels are perched on the counter. Some topped with Kosher salt, some with cinnamon and sugar. But unbaked. I toss them in the oven and Parker says perkily “If I cleaned up the kitchen and took a shower, guess how you could still find out what I have been doing?” My foggy brain goes through electronic surveillance, torture; beat it out of him etc. I finally look at him through watery eyes and cough out “I dunno.”

“Earwax!” he says excitedly. “My earwax!”

I look at him blankly and he explains. “Even if I took a shower, you could find traces of flour in my earwax and you would know I had been baking!”

I really hope he read that in a book somewhere.

Category: Family | 2 Comments »

Posted By stephanie on October 7, 2008

Ragweed is so not-my-friend.

Category: Family | Comments Off

Posted By stephanie on October 4, 2008

Our boys were off on a Geocaching-Happy Birthday Trey-cliffs and creeks guy adventure today. Caroline and I downed a Hershey bar and some peach tea, packed up and headed out for our own variety of fun.

First stop, the library. Ohhh. Gotta make a rabbit trail. I love our library. You can reserve books online and they put them on a little shelf all rubberbanded together with your name on a cute round orange sticker on each book just waiting for you to scoop them up and check out. Back on track. Anyway, I realized that I had reserved the Spanish version of Eragon for Parker instead of English. Which is all good and well…as long as Parker can read Spanish. Which he can. But only if you use a controlled vocabulary of about 50-86 words that we have covered in the Learnables I Structures program. Since I am hopeful that the book has more complexity than See Spot Run, off I went to recheck the computer catalog. Several searches later I gave up and off I went this time to the information desk for help. The librarian assured me that the catalog is confusing and this happens all the time. I think she was just trying to make me look less inept than I really was. And I like her a lot for that. A whole lot. She found the book in another library in the system and arranged for it to be delivered for me to pick up on Monday. She asked for my library card and as I was thanking her for her help and digging in my purse for my wallet…I stopped. No wallet. At all. I checked again and my heart started to race. Where was it. I knew I had already used my library card so it was in this building somewhere. Or at least it was. My brain quickly scanned our path; the hold shelves, the children’s department in the POL-RET aisle for Caroline’s The Tale of Samuel Whiskers among others, The computers, Non-Fiction for a crochet book…Wait! The computer. I glanced back and saw the terminal we used was empty. I quickly walked over and there was my wallet. Open and sitting behind the keyboard. I took a deep breath and grabbed it and went back to the info desk. I could tell by the librarian’s expression that she expected it to have been long gone. But it wasn’t. And I was glad.

Next stop. The mall. I dislike the mall. Immensely. To me, the mall is an overwhelming sea of people and merchandise and noise and people criss-crossing and going all directions at once. Maybe that is why I am such a bad shopper. Sensory overload for my non multi-tasking brain. Ack. I like Target though. And all grocery stores. Grocery stores make me happy. Go figure. Caroline and I entered the mall and I quickly went into overload and suggested we get a snack. Food is good. We found a smoothie/fruit place and ordered a large cup of pineapple, melons, strawberries and kiwi fruit. Ah. This is better than shopping. We sat down and watched the SPCA animals and munched our fruit and made a silly phone call and talked. All was good. We finished up and I steeled myself and we went to our intended store. We could not find anything we liked and we were about to leave when Caroline looked stricken and gasped “Where’s my purse?” We quickly realized she left her little pink purse hanging on her chair in the foot court. “No way will it still be there.” I thought to myself as we wove our way to the escalator. As we walked up the escalator to speed things up, I saw Caroline craning her head trying to figure out where we had been sitting. I glanced over and saw an older man at the table and no little girl rhinestone studded pink purse in sight. I asked the man if he had seen a pink purse and he shook his head no. Caroline’s eyes were welling up with tears and I tried to tell her that we probably were not going to find it. I saw a cleaning lady and asked if she had seen the purse. She just looked at me confused and I realized that English was not going to be effective. I tried to demonstrate, but she did not understand me. We began to head back for the escalator when a lady came over to me. She was sitting at an adjacent table to the older man and had heard us. She told us some other people were at the table before the man and perhaps they took the purse to customer service. I thanked her and we headed toward the escalator. We saw another cleaning lady on our way down and on a whim, I asked her about our little lost purse filled with stuffed kitties and notepads and other such treasures of a small girl. She asked what color it was and radioed something in Spanish. More Spanish back from the radio. “It’s at customer service.” she answered matter of factly. Disbelief and skepticism filled my thoughts. I thanked her and we went to find the indicated area. As we came near the booth, I cautioned Caroline that it might be another purse and not hers. We asked at the desk and the attendants looked at me silently and blankly. I began to describe the purse, small, child sized, light pink with sparkly rhinestones and pockets like the back of your jeans, a zipper across the top, it has kleenex and kitties and notepads and colored pens inside… I looked at them hopefully. The woman on the left slowly reached down under the counter and still silently, slowly raised a purse. That was it! Caroline’s purse! The tears in her eyes began sparkling and hopefully any doubt as to the actual owner of the purse disappeared. (I am actually not sure as the attendants never spoke to us or smiled. But they had the purse AND released it to us, so speaking and peasantries were optional. But ya know? They did work in customer service. You would think smiles and speech would be desirable. Go figure.) Thank you to the person who took the purse down and not home with them.

Our last stop was Kroger. We were both tired and my intermittent toothache of the last two and a half weeks was in the on position. I sat in the car and pared the list down as low as I could and we headed in. My cart pusher got the cart and off we went to produce. Most of our shopping could be done in this one area so Caroline parked the cart and went to sample some fruits. I started loading the cart and thought we were done when I remembered the shallots. I breathed in deeply and turned the cart around. Back to the far corner of produce for the shallots. A chipper produce guy came over to Caroline (We have shopped at this Kroger an average of say 3 times a week for over 7 years so we are familiar faces to most of the staff.) and said “I bet my refrigerator is bigger than your refrigerator at home.” She looked confused and he continued “If your mom says it is okay, I can show you and your mom our big refrigerator.” Caroline still looked confused but said “Okay.” We left our cart and the man took us through the big, beige, swinging double doors with the ginormous kick plates and took us to where people were prepping food and on through the big sliver door to the refrigerator. He breathed out and showed Caroline that she could see her breath and pointed out the pears and broccoli and watermelons. She looked nonplussed and said “okay.” I could tell she wasn’t getting it and said “Caroline. You are IN the refrigerator. Right now. This room is one huge refrigerator.” Her eyes got wide and a smile came over her face. She started giggling and we thanked the man and went on our way. Caroline giggled the rest of the trip about being in the “Really really really big refrigerator. Mommy! We were INSIDE the refrigerator. Isn’t that funny?”

A nonstolen wallet, a loved pink purse returned to customer service and a private tour of the Kroger refrigerator. Thanks.

Category: Family | 3 Comments »