Walgreens Relief

 

It was Christmas Card Time.  

I entered the Walgreens with my photo CD and strode to the photo counter. I was prepared to sit at the photo machine until the fellow with the white smock gave me the stink-eye for taking up too much time. 

I inserted the CD and discovered that it was blank. 

I nodded knowingly to Mr. White Smock, and went home.   

The next day, I returned with my new photo CD and once again found the machine open and ready for business.  As I sat down, I had a sudden and urgent call to go to the restroom.   

I spotted the restroom sign and took the shortest route down the feminine hygiene isle. Upon reaching the alcove, I found the clearly marked WOMEN's door, and a mysterious door surrounded by toys with no signage.  It had a fancy pushbutton lock on it because I was in a hurry... and, yes, it was locked.

Keep in mind that this is a small town where not even the gas stations lock their restroom doors.  Walgreens must believe that a bathroom related crime wave is coming to Wenatchee, Washington.  Regardless of this ominous premonition, I still had to pee.  

I knocked on the door.  No answer. 

I heard someone coming out of the women’s room and briefly considered catching it before it closed, but the woman scuttled off so quickly, I didn’t have time to ask her how she thwarted the lock, much less grab the door before it slammed shut.   

I skipped to the Pharmacy and informed the lady behind the counter that I need to use the restroom. 

The response from Mrs. Blue Smock was, “I’ll be right there.”   

At first I thought she didn’t understand me correctly, then I wondered if she was planning to instruct me and needed some preparation time.  It looked as though the latter was true, when she walked around the counter and motioned for me to follow her to the restroom alcove.   

I began to formulate all of the reasons why I was not going to share my restroom experience with her, while she walked to the unmarked door.  She knocked on it, and I said to myself, “I already tried that.”  Then she typed in 0000 ENTER, while making no effort to keep me from seeing the code.   

That action brought up many questions, all of which would delay the emptying of my bladder, so I bit my tongue. 

Then, she held the door open for me.  I walked in fully expecting her to follow me in and begin instructing.  

Much to my relief, I was left alone in the unimpressive, but fully functioning restroom.

I managed to make it back to the photo machine just as another Christmas Carder was walking up to the counter.  Mr. White Smock turned out to be very helpful despite the fact that he was visibly disturbed that I refused to un-click the shadow button on the text.  I honestly think he broke out into a sweat when I didn’t remove the shadow on my Christmas greeting.   

While he was collecting himself behind the counter, I finished up.  The machine informed me that my order would be ready in one hour, which was plenty of time to go outside and share the bathroom code to all distressed looking passers-by. 

'Tis the season!

Monkey Chocolate

It's mid afternoon, and I'm looking for the monkey chocolate… all alone.

Let me back up a bit. This really started when I took over the grocery shopping duty two years ago. The first 10 times I went to the grocery, I read the labels of hundreds of products.  After I decided what was good, I stopped reading labels… including the actual names of the products.   

For example, I once bought a small white container with a tan wave on the label and green lettering on it.  When I bought it, I read the label and ingredients.  When I ate it, I decided it was fabulous.  I buy it all the time now, but I've forgotten what it's called or what's in it besides tofu. My daughter and I refer to it as "the tofu stuff" and usually eat it within 5 minutes of getting home from the grocery store.   

So, let’s fast forward to the mid afternoon at the cereal isle where the monkey chocolate is supposed to be.   

It’s not there.   

I can’t walk up to the guy with the box cutter and name tag and say, “It seems you are out of the monkey chocolate… it’s not chocolate made of monkeys, it’s chocolate with a monkey on it… well, actually, it’s a chimpanzee and chimpanzees aren’t monkeys… I don’t think… they’re not, right? Something about the tails, or rather, they don’t have tails, and monkeys do, which makes them apes maybe?...  Bushes! There’s another chocolate from the same company with bushes on it… or maybe they’re trees, but it’s definitely greenery of some kind, and you’re out of both of them.”   

That kind of crazy-talk would only worsen my already precarious standing in the community.  So, I suck it up and continue shopping without my monkey chocolate until I get to the end of the isle and my cereal isn’t there.   

I can only take so much. 

I find the nearest guy with the box cutter and name tag and say, “Is there any way to check and see if you have any more of my cereal in the back?  You seem to be out of it.” 

He replies promptly, “Sure thing.  Which one is it?”   

The words that come from my mouth start out on the right track, then get derailed by my idiocy, “It’s pumpkin nuts and flax or something or other.  No… well… the flax word is big and pumpkins are in there somewhere but maybe not pumpkin nuts, because pumpkins don’t have nuts, they’re… well, you know, never mind.” 

I had dodged the monkey chocolate bullet only to shoot myself in the foot with pumpkin nuts.   

Much to my relief, Mr. Nametag isn’t even mildly ruffled.  He walks to the end of the cereal isle mumbling something about a green box, and scoots a beige box of Nature Lumps out of the way to reveal my green-boxed cereal! 

I beam and thank him.  He responds by saying, “Anything else I can help you find?”   

The words, “monkey chocolate” are forming in my mouth until my medulla oblongata finally rescues me.

“No thanks, I’ll quit while I’m ahead.” 

Author’s note:  The monkey chocolate did, indeed, return to the shelves (as depicted in the photo) and all is well.  I have decided that the bush chocolate is better though.

Superdad

I am no fool.  I had planned to be digging out the drainage ditch outside for a few hours, so I made a list for each of the children to work on while I was outside.   

This is good parenting.   

I also told them that they were not to interact with each other while doing their chores. 

I was being proactive. Yes, I am one smart cookie. I am dad-tastic. I am Superdad. 

I heard the screaming before I reached the ditch.   

They had attempted to devour the remaining half of my daughter’s birthday cake after confirming that I left the house.  The fundamental flaw in their plan was that they do not share well.  They managed to get the cake unevenly divided and partially eaten before I made it back through the door.   

I’m not amazed by much anymore, but I was amazed that they had managed to eat so much while screaming at each other. I checked that they each had all ten fingers, admonished them appropriately, reminded my daughter not to let her brother do the dividing next time, reminded them of their lists, and departed again.   

Hey, it was a minor setback in a foolproof dad-plan.  I’m still numero uno in dad-land.  I had confidence in my dad-ness.   

In fact, I am such a good dad that I came back to check on them after 30 minutes.

Before I walked up to the house, my cell phone started ringing.  When I answered, the screaming through the phone was slightly delayed from the real-time screaming, which I heard through my other ear as it wafted through the windows.  It was all sort of Pink Floydish, but in a bad way. 

Once inside, I checked for structural damage to the house before being entertained with the stories of woe and abuse each sibling endured from the other.  I gathered from my son that he broke his glasses in half because his sister had only bent them after she threatened to break them, and therefore, the glasses rightly should have been broken so that his sister could get into proper trouble.  From my daughter, I gathered that the breaking of the glasses led to fisticuffs, which led to screaming (because brother hit back).  

I led the children to the counter in the kitchen where the lists were lying unmolested in the sunshine.  I pointed out that the lists did not have “Fight”, “Destroy valuable items”, “Scream at sibling”, “Threaten loved ones”, or “Concoct evil plans” on them.   

The children only blinked at me.   

My son wanted to see a hanging, and was apparently waiting for me to stop jabbering and get on with it.  My daughter expected me to grant her “Unlimited Fingernail Clawing” for being framed, and was also waiting for permission to attack.  

I looked at both of my agitated children and realized what was at the core of the whole mess...

No one told them I was Superdad.  

I spent the rest of the afternoon working with them to finish their lists.    

I figure I can get back to the drainage ditch when they’re in college.

Safeway Shenanigans

Safeway is the gateway to the 80’s.   

I wasn’t aware of this myself until today.   

The first indication of something odd was when I approached the door and my great aunt Bertha was blocking the entire entrance (yes, she had the… presence to block an entire grocery store entrance).  My great aunt Bertha passed away many years ago, so I was quite surprised to see her as you can imagine.  But there she was with her flowered dress on, talking to another lady in a flowered dress about Bob Barker or something along those lines.   

I decided not to interrupt her, and besides, you had to be careful around great aunt Bertha because she talked with her arms when she got excited, and that could be dangerous.  

 Inside the Safeway, I grabbed a cart and started on the weekly shopping.  Within a minute, I was asked by a clean-cut box boy if I was finding everything okay.  He had no tattoos, no metal bits sticking out of his eyebrows, lips or nose, and (get this) his underwear was not visible.  That’s right, I’m telling you that his pants fit.   

It was about this time that I noticed that I was humming a Thompson Twins song.  It was in my head because it was playing over the speakers.   

How awesome is that!  Thompson Twins in Safeway!   

For the next 15 minutes, I sat on a Little Debbie display and sang along with English Beat, Blondie, Howard Jones, and UB 40.  I bumped into another guy in the dairy aisle who was also singing, and we managed some shaky harmony on the Go Go’s classic, "Vacation".   

By the time I made it around to produce, I was feeling pretty happy with my shopping trip.  It was in amongst the potatoes that I decided to do what I wanted to do in 1982 at the local Kroger.  I wanted to make a face on the cabbage… like Mr. Potato Head.   

My mother would not allow one of her sons to handle the produce in the store, so my Mr. Cabbage Head never came to life.  Today, though, was 1982 all over again, so I thought to myself, “Self, you go and make your Mr. Cabbage Head.”   

I found some pearl onions, string beans and snow peas, and went to the cabbages and started rearranging them to suit my needs.  The young man working in produce asked me if I needed any help, and I replied, “No thank you, I’d like to make this cabbage face by myself.” 

It should be noted that his nose only had two proper holes, and his underwear was not visible at all.
Man, I miss the 80’s.

Mosquitoes and Oatmeal

At the last minute, my buddy and his 6-year-old son invited us to go camping.

Cool ... except that it was 97 degrees.

After both soccer games, I raced home with the sweaty kids, pulled the soccer bags out of the car, and threw all the camping gear in the car. 

Nothing was packed, so it looked like a Boy Scout had exploded in the way-back of the Subaru.

We met up with the two other dads and their boys, and caravanned to the Minotaur Lake trailhead. The trail was steep... not steep like my insurance rate, but steep like a dusty, rocky, tree rooty, crawl-up trail. 

Within a half-mile, both of my children pulled off their shoes and socks. Neither of my children have skin on their feet.  Whatever it is, it’s tougher than duct tape and has the aesthetic quality of cantaloupe rinds. 

Within the next mile, we passed a couple sliding down the trail. The woman (who must have been a mom) saw my barefooted children with their backpacks on, scrambling up the trail, and gave me a stare that made me feel like I had pancreatic cancer.

After the stare-down, I recovered well enough to convince my kids to finish the trudge by using a box of Mike and Ike’s and a quart of Kool-Aid.

At the campsite, the mosquitoes were doing Rock, Paper, Scissors for first blood. They ate the Deet off of us to kill time. We built a little fire and kept throwing green limbs on for the smoke. While convulsing from smoke inhalation, my daughter managed to spit out, “Why do the mosquitoes not bite us when we’re standing in the smoke?” To which I replied, while gasping for air, “They have to breathe too,”

We abandoned the smoke for a swim in the lake, and in a moment, we were standing on chunks of granite a few feet above a crystal clear alpine lake.

• There was no one else swimming – clue #1. 
• There was a snowfield dripping into the lake – clue #2. 
• There was apparently nothing alive in the lake – clue #3. 

I jumped in anyway.

There is a sensation that occurs when your internal organs freeze. Walt Disney probably can relate. I came to the surface and, without a choice, scrambled for the bank. I apparently played it off well enough, because both of my children jumped in afterward. It was so cold, they couldn’t scream… believe me when I say that they would have screamed if it had been possible.

Back at camp we ate a lovely meal, which tasted like campfire smoke, and sat around telling stories and coughing until about 10pm. Oddly enough, it was so cold at bedtime that the mosquitoes were finally gone.

The next morning we looked like survivors of a Chicken Pox epidemic, and with the rising of the sun, came the rising of the mosquitoes. It was a zombie movie except with mosquitoes and daylight. I got out my iPhone and started calculating how many drops of blood I could loose before needing to lie down with a cookie and a juice box.

I packed up the instant oatmeal and rounded up the children who were standing in the renewed campfire. We made it back to the car in one hour, and headed home. My daughter is excited because it looks like she has a bad case of acne, which, according to her, makes her look like she’s a teen-ager.

I suppose every cloud of mosquitoes has a silver lining.

Bird Rebounds

I’m never washing my windows again.

It's not that I'm lazy, I'm just looking out for the birds.
I’m here in the house and there are birds bouncing off the windows like two guys in foam rubber Sumo wrestler suits. The noise makes me cringe every time I hear it.

Thunk.

That was the sound of a little bird who should have had a helmet on. There is no way that doesn’t cause brain damage. I wonder if they fly back to their nests and the other birds have to chirp slower to them.

Today, after a seriously loud thunk, my son picked up a female grosbeak that was wandering around on the lawn. He decided it must be divine province that brought the bird to him, so he put it back down on the grass to go find a suitable prison.

Meanwhile, our little huntress Cockapoo went outside and saw a yellow-feathered Scooby Snack standing on lawn.

When Jay returned with a proper (totally improper) cage, he found Twig (yes, he had already named her) dangling from the mouth of a very cocky Cockapoo. The retrieved bird was not only sporting a fresh slobber glaze, it was also solidly dead, so Jay did what any pet owner would do. He got out a shovel and dug a hole in my septic field to give Twig a proper burial.

I was unaware of all of this until Jay came to me with a request for lumber. After a round of questions and semi-answers, I discovered the purpose of the lumber. A headstone... well, head-plank.

I informed Jay that the septic drainfield was one of the few places that I mow, so he couldn’t put up a head-plank there. He took it in stride and did some grave robbing.

With a new location found, and Twig lying on top of the fence like a dirt covered bird-zombie, I taught my son how to use a router and clamp down the wood properly.

An hour later, the head-plank was ready and the new grave dug. Twig was put to rest and Jay went into the house to play video games. The router, extra wood, paint, and clamps are still scattered outside, but at least he brought in all the wood chips and sawdust that had stuck to his clothing.

By now, I’m sure Tebby, the Cockapoo has dug up the grave and had lunch. I’ll go out in a little while and tamp the dirt back down, and remove the yellow feathers from the corners of her mouth so that no one will be the wiser.

Now it’s time to…. Dern, another thunk. That one sounded like a sparrow.

Father's Day

I made a terrible mistake. I thought that Father’s Day meant Father’s Day Off.

My wife got up this morning at 7:00AM to fly to Chicago. My nine year old daughter was up early and decided to make me a Father’s Day breakfast while I slept late. Her heart was in the right place, however the sound of dishes crashing was not restful.

During the kitchen destruction episode I continued to feign sleep, and before long, my twelve year old son woke me up to tell me they were going to let me sleep in. His heart was in the right place….

After I rolled over and pretended to be dead, he decided to wrestle the dog next to me on the bed. I got the hint and stumbled out of the room. My daughter wisely seated me at the table so that I couldn’t see the kitchen. The eggs and biscuit type thingy turned out pretty good. The kitchen did not turn out pretty good.

The rest of the day turned out much like the kitchen. Amidst the arguing, complaining, daily chores, kitchen triage, demands, and temper tantrums, we biked to the bakery, where my son went mentally insane.

I took a gamble that the insanity was caused by low blood sugar. The police were not called, but I have a hunch that Child Protective Services received a call that a poorly dressed man was trying to force feed a $10 piece of quiche to a screaming child.

On the ride back home, we were attacked by plants that hate bicycle tubes. After pulling the spikes out of the tires and exhausting my patch kit, we sprinted for the car while 3 of the 6 total tires slowly went flat.

At some point in the day I noticed all the charcoal in the oven from the cleaning cycle, so I found myself cleaning out the oven while the children stood behind me thinking up, and saying things that would make me mad.

I held it together for a few seconds before I pulled my head out of the oven and snapped.

“Listen up kids! This is Father’s Day! I’m the father, which makes it MY day. I’m not driving you to Evan’s house. I’m not driving you to Mariah’s house. I’m not cleaning up anything else. I’m not going to strip search your brother to find your missing Ring Pop. I’m not going to build a custom weather proof barn owl habitat. I’m not going to help you find your shorts. I’m not going to smell your flip-flops. I’m not going to look up the name of Selena Gomez’s new boy friend. And I’ll be damned if I am going to watch you shoot 347 Dark Creatures with Lego Warriors on your video game!"

"I AM going to change into my Sesame Street t-shirt, put on my Journey Escape CD, sit on the couch and read last month’s issue of Men’s Journal! Please go away into the woods… and take a box of crackers with you."

It was not my best moment.

The children steered clear for about three and a half minutes, before returning to add insult to injury. My daughter came into the room and turned off my Journey CD so that she could call her friend and arrange a play date.

I was so bamboozled by this brazen action so soon after my tirade, that I had no other choice but to give up.

I reached into my brain, removed all of my expectations of having a lovely special day, and flushed them down the toilet - that needed cleaning. I then walked downstairs, picked up a controller and shot Dark Creatures with my son until it was time to smell my daughter’s flip flops.

I fully intend to remind them of this day when they become parents. I will have my revenge. Oh, yes, I will.