The Second Cup

In my pre-child days, I was something of a food snob. I read magazines and articles and remembered the names of ‘it’ restaurants in other cities; for personal use or making suggestions to friends when they were travelling and looking for good places to eat. (Or just for feeling like a with-it, in-the-know kind of person.)

But then we had kid(s)(s) and taking them along to fine dining establishments seemed both unlikely and undesirable. So I set my sights on more attainable pleasures instead: coffee.

Since I fell into a state of caffeine dependency courtesy of my blond-wonders, it seemed only fitting that I would forego my pre-child days as a food snob and become a with-child coffee snob instead.

A good meal can set you back $100. A good latte costs roughly $5. A good meal must be eaten in a nice restaurant at a table with glasses and plates and things that can be broken. A latte can be enjoyed in a to-go cup, while sitting in your decrepit, smelling-of-rotten-oranges minivan listening to less-than-civilized children.

Hypothetically speaking. Plus, with coffee, when your kids demand that you share with them, you can’t. Because it’s coffee.

But of course, even $5 lattes add up, so I have become a fairly good in-home coffee maker. Drip cone. Unbleached filters. Good beans ground for exactly 18 seconds. Because life is too short to drink gross coffee.

So, when I was in the Windy City a couple of weeks ago, enjoying my second Intelligentsia latte in as many days, I purchased a Hario ceramic drip cone. Because the plastic drip cone I’d purchased at Monmouth three years earlier was cracked and threatened to abandon us at any moment.

In our hour(s) of need.

I also bought a new coffee grinder because the professor had dropped the lid to our old one on the tile floor in the kitchen and it had fractured, neatly, down the middle. I couldn’t bear the thought of trying to grind coffee beans one morning and ending up with a handful of plastic instead of the much-needed grounds.

So, back in Canadaland, with my not-so-fancy accoutrements, I made my first cup. After reading online about all manner of ridiculousness: washing out the filter, pre-wetting the grounds, ‘coax[ing] extraction of solids from the grounds.’ There was even talk of the need for a $60 pouring kettle.

I couldn’t be bothered to become this anal about coffee brewing, so I skipped the washing and the pre-wetting and used my go-to plastic measuring cup to ‘pour over‘ instead of a fancy steel kettle. Even with my low-class method, the first cup tasted pretty good.

But the second cup. And I make two every morning – one for me and one for the professor – not so good. Of course, you could repeat the entire process and waste two paper filters and probably get two passable cups of coffee, but who has time for that?

We’re the Johnsons. We get up at 8.05am and still manage to have our son to school by 8.15. We don’t have ten minutes to spend on brewing coffee.

All this to say there’s been a bit of a fight chez nous for the coveted first cup of coffee: the good one. Since the coffee making usually falls to me, I’ve taken it upon myself to enjoy the first cup guiltfree, passing along whatever’s in that second cup to the professor.

But the other morning, il profesore made the coffee. He set the cup in front of me. I tasted it. ‘What is that?’ I sputtered. ‘That’s the second cup,’ he laughed and walked away.

Perhaps if we had a pouring kettle…..

The Inhaler

[The end of the world's longest, random-est sequence]

I had a doctor’s appointment the morning after the poster ‘session’. I was certain five days of coughing had fractured a rib or, at the very least, left me with a collapsed lung. So I drove the twenty minutes to my and the boys’ doctor in the northwest part of the city, dropping off the professor along the way: so he could print the alphabet poster.

Percy and I sat in the waiting room, feigning interest in a National Geographic while some other little boy talked about how hungry he was and dug inside his pants. Ah, the joys.

Finally my name was called and we were shown to one of the patient rooms. Minutes later, the quintessential nice-guy-Canadian doctor showed up. I explained that I’d had this [very debilitating] cough and was about to go to Chicago and I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to collapse in the Art Institute.

‘You’re going away,’ he confirmed, ‘just you?’ And I nodded. He laughed. ‘Wasn’t it your husband who, after you got back from a trip kind of threw the kids at you and said: I’m done!’ he reminded me of the last time I went to the Midwest alone. And returned to the sounds of the Gort tossing his Trader Joe’s cookies in the car and to find the Hen with a bandaged finger after being locked inside the bathroom and burning himself on the light.

We Johnsons certainly know how to make an impression.

‘Well, let’s have a listen,’ the doctor suddenly remembered the reason for my visit and pulled out his stethoscope.

I breathed. ‘What are you doing?’ my two year old sidekick demanded. ‘I’m breathing,’ I explained.

The doctor sat back in his chair. ‘Well, you sound really good,’ he observed and I felt that all-too-familiar feeling of: did-I-really-come-to-the-doctor-for-him-to-tell-me-there’s-absolutely-nothing-wrong?’

He asked a few follow-up questions, pretending I hadn’t completely wasted his time. ‘I could give you this inhaler,’ he finally offered as a consolation prize, and when I nodded my head, he left the room for a second and returned with a small sample box.

For a second I imagined him opening up the box and producing a candy inhaler.

The two year old and I left the office and headed for Starbucks, to pick up a latte and breakfast sandwich [read: bribes] for the professor. I pulled up to the curb on University Drive and handed over the snacks. He handed me the poster.

‘So, what did the doctor say,’ he asked before closing the door and heading back to his office. I looked at him with the sullen look of one who’d wasted time. ‘Diagnosis adorable?’, he guessed.

‘He said I sounded really good,’ I summarized, ‘and he gave me an inhaler.’

The professor laughed and was about to close the car door when he suddenly remembered something. ’Just so you know,’ he reminds me, ‘I did not have to come clean about this. I could have kept quiet and you would never have known….’ And I, wondering what craziness he’d gotten himself into now, stared at him blankly as he pulled my [old, 'I gave it back to you'] library card from his jacket pocket.

‘You owe me $5,’ I demanded.

‘Also, I had to shrink some of the pictures, so I might have inadvertently cut someone out,’ he remembered.

‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ I waved goodbye and he walked back to his office with his snacks.

I gave the poster a once over. Sure enough, he’d left off the Hen’s similarly named classmate, Henry.

Whatever.

The Preschool Poster

[The third part in a seemingly interminable series.]

‘Did you make a poster for January?’ the preschool teacher kindly asked me when I reported for volunteering duty last Monday. ‘Ah, no,’ I replied in a voice that tried to pretend I’d been working at the computer on just such a poster the night before.

And then another week went by and I realized, much as I’d love to devote my evening to reading a book or wasting time on the internet, it was time to pay the preschool piper. I had to make another poster.

So I went downstairs to the basement and pored over the images I’d collected from my various volunteering stints. And I tried to come up with something that represented what they’d been doing in the classroom. And I kept having flashbacks to the Land of Nod alphabet prints I’d seen on Pinterest.

I would make a preschool alphabet poster, I concluded. And began the arduous process of sorting through all my not-terrible images looking for something that started with an A, B, C etcetera.

And then I cross-referenced my would-be poster with a list of student names to confirm all students were represented on the poster. Because who knows, there might be other petty parents like me who actually look at the poster to see if their kid is on there. And also, after omitting one of the teachers in my very first poster, I’m slightly paranoid about forgetting someone.

But, all of this was easy compared to my final task: asking, nay – begging – the professor to help me. Though he’d told me in no uncertain terms that he was done with preschool posters after the Canada Leaf debacle, though our marriage had very nearly imploded, though it was almost 11pm, still there was no way around it: I needed his help.

One cannot make an alphabet poster using Microsoft Word, after all.

It was a pitiful sight. Grown woman, standing nervously by the stairs, too afraid to speak. I tried pictionary: drawing a rectangle in the air, mimicking preschoolers learning their letters. It did not work. ‘I have no idea what you’re trying to say, but the answer is probably no,’ my Illustrator-savvy husband advised. ‘Willyouhelpmemakeanotherpreschoolposter’ I finally spit it out.

A second of silence, followed by ‘No, definitely not, I told you after the last one that I was done.’ But this was, of course, a half-truth. The man is not unkind, he would not allow me to humiliate myself by cutting out pictures and glueing them onto poster board; becoming the laughing stock of the preschool in the process. No, he simply needed the opportunity to voice his displeasure and, with enough begging on my part, he would eventually relent.

Minutes later I handed him my curated memory stick with 23 carefully selected images. [Sorry preschool, but you managed to do nothing that could be described in any way with an X, Y, or Z.]

After an hour of sitting on the couch beside the professor, feigning interest and commitment in the process and watching the last half of Cedar Rapids [which I quite liked] I hinted that I was tired and would it be okay if I went to bed. My better half grunted in the affirmative and I bolted down the hall before he could change his mind.

Seven hours later, when it was time to get up, he grunted again: ‘your turn’. As if to say ‘don’t even think that I’m going to make you an alphabet poster and take your kid to school.’

Fair enough.

 

Operation: VO.mit

It hit me last night (again, more profoundly), the biggest difference between having kids and not: having some control over how you spend your time. Or, in the case of having kids: having no control over how you spend your time.

For example, imagine it’s Sunday night, around 9.30pm. The kids are asleep which means I have the possibility of a couple of quiet hours. I’m thinking….update the finances, read a book, write something, address the disaster that is the digital photos folder on my desktop, or try to recreate the Starbucks Holiday Gingerbread.

And before I can settle on even one of those options, I hear crying. I run upstairs, assuming it’s Percy waking up from one of his night-naps. But the crying comes from the older boys’ room. It’s the Hen. On the floor. ‘Did you fall out of bed?’ I ask, though I hadn’t heard the corroborating thud. He is unable to talk, he just cries. His arm is wet. ‘Did you pee in the bed?’ More wordless crying. And then I see it, the pile of ‘matter’ beside his pillow. And on the floor.

Scratch Operation: what to do with my two hours of free time, and replace it with Operation: VO.mit. Which will occupy the next four hours of my evening.

Of all the ‘benign’ maladies that can potentially afflict a young person, it is barfing that I dread the most. For the mess, the smell. The clean-up. Its ability to infect other members of the household. And the way it reminds me of my childhood barfing episodes – of which there were many.

It only takes one child and a little bit of regurgitation and I turn into a crazy lady, running the washing machine(s) at all hours of the night. Cleaning bathrooms. Sweeping floors. Cleaning trash cans. Vacuuming the carpets. Scrubbing the baseboards. And washing my hands as if I’m a brain surgeon instead of a mother with a puking child.

It’s as if I – through sheer flurry of cleaning activity – hope to stave off, nay prevent, that which is irrevocably heading my way. Perhaps, if all the laundry is done, and folded, and put away, and the floors are dusted and swept, and the bathrooms are spotless….then maybe the Hen won’t barf more than once, err twice, err three times? There’s probably not an actuary out there who would endorse this bizarre attempt at an insurance policy, but at least, if I do get sick, the house is clean-ish.

Despite my disdain of working in a vomitorium, I do it anyway, because my better half seems to magically ‘disappear’ at these, the worst of times. After the scene with the Hen crying on the floor, which I handled on my own, Herr Professor came upstairs with his shirt pulled up over half his face. Despite the fact that the scene of the crime was down the hall, and in another bedroom entirely. When I dare to raise an eyebrow, he blames me: ’You’ve made me sensitive to smells.’ Because, yes, I have this sensory inability to stand inside Bath and Body Works, or walk through department stores’ cosmetic sections.

Apparently my inability to stand Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin or Dior’s Dolce Vita has rendered the professor unable to handle eau de tossed cookies. Seriously.

After helping the Hen into fresh pajamas, I set him up on the (sheet-covered) couch, and hit play for the first of a long series of DVDs. ‘Why do I get to watch so many movies?’ he asked suspiciously. Unable to believe his luck. ‘Because that’s the only good part of being sick,’ I explained, ‘you get to watch as many movies as you want.’

Well, he took that a little too much to heart. ‘I get to watch as many movies as I want,’ he boasted to anyone who dared to enter his sick space.

Wiped out after watching at least twenty DVDs in a twelve hour timespan

Our trusty vacuum cleaner broke last week and as I spent last night trying to vacuum carpets with the hose attachment, I decided ‘this aggression will not stand‘. So I logged onto the Costco website this morning. ‘I’m ordering a vacuum cleaner!’ I yelled at the professor who was sitting in the other room, trying to recover from being on Hen-duty during the hours of 3-8am. ‘You’re what?’

Maybe if I get a new vacuum cleaner, the barfing monster will stay away.

It’s possible.

Crunchy Bits

It’s the professor’s birthday, this weekend, and each year I try to make him a decent meal to celebrate his being one year older than me. He’s actually seven-months-and-five-days older, but I prefer to round. Up.

For the last few years I believe his birthday dinner – of choice – has been squash ravioli and either creme brulee or the turtle cake (recipe) from Cafe Latte in St. Paul, Minnesota. So this year, when I saw a recipe for squash lasagne on Pinterest (evil time sucking vortex and source of all my misguided ideas) I decided to try it.

Roasted, pureed squash and sweet potato. Mascarpone, mozzarella and parmesan. Sage. All combined in a hot-from-the-oven lasagne. Thank you.

What could go wrong (save the clogging of arteries from saturated fat)?

The funny thing is, years ago, when it was just the two of us, we’d go out to dinner for birthdays. To restaurants. At a time when I probably could have slaved in a messy kitchen for an entire day. With little consequence save a long clean-up.

Now, when I don’t have the time, or the counterspace, and three somewhat demanding people running over my feet, I choose – somewhat delusionally – to slave in the kitchen, thinking it will be ‘no problem at all’ to whip up a complicated meal.

It’s a strange kind of optimism that I’m afflicted with. I will think the worst about a lot of things but somehow, when it comes to how long things take or how difficult they might be, I will always err. On the wrong side of ‘short’ and ‘easy’.

Like two weeks ago, when I offered to prepare dinner for ten of the professor’s starchitect-friends. Convinced it would be easy-breezy to squeeze shopping, cleaning and cooking for ten (eleven) into a mere eight hours. Even writing that, I still can’t believe it wasn’t enough time.

It wasn’t. Well, in the strictest sense, perhaps it was. I did manage to make the Costco and Superstore runs. And clean the house. And cook the food. To buy ice and chill the beer (I was pretty impressed with myself for remembering those two things.) But I did not manage to feed my children any actual food. And I did not manage to retain my sense of humor about the affair.

And I was up till 1.30 doing dishes.

But this was supposed to be about yesterday’s squash lasagne and turtle cake.

I started with the cake, which I’ve made a thousand times before. But, this time, I decided to mix it up a bit. Instead of using the frosting recipe, I made a chocolate ganache, because, frankly, I’ve never loved that frosting recipe. It’s too sweet or grainy or something. And given my advancing age and declining tastebuds, I prefer richer slightly less-sweet things. And then, since I was already upping the ante, I decided to make salted caramel sauce instead of reverting to the usual storebought Hersey’s in the brown squeeze bottle.

Caramel and I don’t really get along. Recipes will say things like ‘caramel will cook in 6-8 minutes’ and twenty minutes later, I will still be standing in front of the stove, squinting at the bubbling sugar, trying to figure out if, indeed, the bubbles are slightly darker than they were just a minute ago. How about now? Now? Nnnnnow?

And then I’ll inevitably decide to run away and check email ‘just for a minute’ and, when I finally remember about the boiling sugar on the stove, I will come back to some sort of black treacle in a pan.

Yeah, those ‘do not leave unattended even for a minute’ warnings included in caramel sauce recipes are for people like me.

But this time, I stuck it out and I bided my time and I ended up with actual (delicious!) salted caramel sauce. Then I tackled the squash lasagne. I roasted the vegetables. I browned the butter and (burned) the garlic. I added it to the mascarpone and sage. I grated mozzarella and parmesan. I assembled it. And slid the pan in the oven.

And, just after 7pm, at a time when most other children are preparing for bed, the five (starving) Johnsons sat down to dinner. The Hen began to cry about the lasagne before he’d even tried a bite. The Gort said encouraging things like: ‘I like all of it except the crunchy bits.’

I sulkily bit into mine and it was true. Those ‘no-cook’ noodles? Hadn’t cooked at all. I mean there’s ‘al dente’ and then there’s ‘al uncooked’. Apparently the moisture content of the squash-sweet potato-mascarpone trio was not sufficient to soften my noodles.

Even after forty-five minutes in the oven.

It was disappointing, to say the least, to spend all that time on a dinner that’s not entirely palatable. Though I will say the sage scented squash and cheese combination was delicious, and convinced me to try the recipe again. Sans burnt garlic. And with fully cooked noodles.

The cake, I’m happy to report, was perfection. Well, except for the fact that one layer was decimated when I tried to remove it from the cake pan. And the other was ‘dented’ by a two year old sweet monger who thought it would be acceptable to scoop a chunk from the unfrosted top with his bare hands.

It was not.

Cups and Ice

Continuing the saga from one in a million:

After breaking into my own house and picking up the Gort from school, we headed to the library to return the 33 items we’d managed to accumulate on our last trip. It should have been 34, items. I’d checked out the movie Paris, je t’aime. I’d watched fifteen minutes of it.

And the professor had (unbeknownst to him) carted it off to New York in his black laptop. The one movie that was ‘un-renewable’ due to its ‘New and Notable’ status. Meaning you can only check it out once before the late fees start accruing. I’d given up trying to calculate the odds of all of these things happening to me on the same day.

One in two million?

After wrestling Percy away from the computers in the children’s section (read: much weeping and gnashing of teeth – seriously, how do people take 3 children to the library and check something out without making a scene?) we climbed back in the car-van and headed for the mall.

To see about getting that second cell phone.

I pulled into a parking spot and opened the side door to let the boys out. For some bizarre reason, the Gort decided to unbuckle Percy from his carseat and lift him out. Nervous about a little kid running around in a mall parking lot, I was trying to keep an eye on him while locking the car-van. Suddenly the Hen looked up at me with a stunned expression: his thumb was stuck in the now-closed van door. He had, apparently – for the first time in the history of owning this van – tried to guide the door as it closed. I panicked when I saw his face and jumped to press the button to open the door. Again. Only to find Percy was running around in the parking lot.

I had a split-second decision to make: tend to child with mangled finger or keep youngest child from getting mangled in parking lot – Nicola’s Choice, as it were.

I lifted the Hen into the carseat and ran to catch up with the two year old. Through clenched teeth, I implored the other boys to stick to the side of the van while I looked at their brother’s finger. It was red. And the nail already had a blue tinge on the bottom of the nail bed.

All I could think was that I needed to find ice.

So I plopped Percy into his stroller and pushed it with my right hand while carrying the (40lb) Hen in my left arm. I, person in poor physical condition, would not be able to sustain this Herculean effort. So I asked the Gort to push the stroller, while I carried my sack of potatoes and scanned the horizon for signs of cups and ice. I caught sight of the Saucy Bread Company.

No fountain drinks. No ice.

I stopped at Cinnzeo.

No fountain drinks. No ice.

We hustled all the way to the food court and my eyes fell upon A&W. A burger joint. Sure to sell fountain drinks and ice. ‘I’ll have a Sprite please, with lots of ice.’ Figuring I could have the Hen hold the cold drink with his thumb and drink a little Sprite, for ‘shock’?

‘A&W does not carry ice,’ the high school worker informed me. No ice? Like, a company policy of no ice? ‘But I need ice,’ I despaired and scuttled over to the Chinese food vendor. They had fountain drinks. And ice. ‘Can I just have a cup of ice,’ I pleaded, certain the kid’s finger would fall off by the time I managed to find him some ice.

She handed me a styrofoam cup filled with frozen pellets and I gave her ten cents and we four hobbled over to the nearest table and seated our pathetic selves. The Hen proceeded to wail about the horror that was freezing cold on his very sore thumb. The guy at the table behind us, stared – trying to figure out if I was hurting the boy or helping him.

‘I will buy you ice cream,’ I bribed-pleaded, ‘but you have to let me put ice on your finger. Otherwise we’ll have to go to the hospital.’ I did not have the mental fortitude to take three boys to the Children’s Hospital.

So I held a chunk of ice to his red finger for as long as possible. And then I hadto make good on my ice cream promise. At the Marble Slab Creamery, where a tiny ‘kid’ scoop sets you back $3 and change. Which means I spent almost ten dollars for a small scoop of strawberry, vanilla bean, and coconut yogurt and all I could think was, ‘I could buy (and eat) a whole pint of Haagen Dazs Dulce de Leche for less than this.’

The Hen sat on my lap and I alternated icing his finger with feeding him pink ice cream. Until he insisted his thumb didn’t hurt anymore. And then we went to the Lego store. After which we stopped at three cell phone booths to find the best deal while the boys ran amuck. After which we made two trips up and down the escalator and elevator.

Nearly three hours later we got in the car and drove home.

[Today's 'wow-my-life-isn't-nearly-as-ridiculous-as-hers' instalment brought to you by our proud sponsor, J is for Jenerous.]

One in a million

It’s really remarkable how the unlikeliest of circumstances can all collide on the same day. Perhaps ‘remarkable’ is too positive of a word given yesterday’s events.

Say, for example, that you leave the house just shy of 2.30pm to pick up your oldest son from school. You grab some keys. You grab the (recently detached-by-force) car opener and off you go. You open the van using said car opener (is there a more technical name for that black doodad with the little buttons, because it escapes me). You buckle the baby in his car seat. And you move the keys towards the ignition.

Only to realize the keys are not your keys. You have inadvertently grabbed your husband’s set of keys. The one without a car key and (come to find out) not a single house key among the myriad of bronze-colored university keys. You could call a friend for help – perhaps plead ‘could you pick up my kid’ or ‘could you get me the number of a locksmith’. Or whatever might help you most in this particular situation.

Except your husband - the one who doesn’t carry a key to the front door – took your cellphone. To New York.

So, you are inside your car. With your kids. And you have no way of getting back inside the house. And no way of reaching anyone. You are also, perhaps, cursing. A little bit.

You try to break in to your own home. It fails. And then – light bulb, eureka moment – you remember a very useful tidbit of information. Last time you, stupidly, locked yourself out of the house you hid a house key inside your glove compartment.

Yes! you think to yourself. And run back to the car, where you start ransacking the glove box. Only to remember that, after putting said key in said glove box, you removed the key: because if you can open your car, chances are you have your car keys. Or so you told yourself at the time, marvelling at your inability to think things through.

Who knew that mere months later you would actually have the car opener….but not the keys. Seriously, what are the odds?

So, then you cross your fingers and hope that one particular window, which is sometimes locked sometimes not, is still unlocked. You determine it is. Rip the screen. Catapult your four year old through it. And he (with a considerable amount of trouble) manages to unlock the front door.

Well, first he manages to deadbolt the door, which leads to all manner of frustration and pantomime. And then he manages to unlock the whole thing and you grab the correct set of keys and race to the son’s school. Miraculously, ‘only’ five minutes late to the blond boy wonder standing idly on the steps, waiting for his mother.

You vow never to let such ridiculous circumstances cause you stress. Ever again. You vow, to drive directly to the mall and purchase a second cell phone plan. To put a house key in the glove compartment. Or at least on your husband’s key ring. To learn every possible lesson you can from this ridiculous situation.

Little do you know, in just forty minutes, yet another bizarre set of circumstances will conspire against you.

A Girl’s Grill

I went to the Superstore a couple of weeks ago where I got sidetracked by the ‘clearance’ cart in the housewares section.

There was a teeny tiny grill. Marked down to some unknown amount. It was bright yellow. And adorable. And surely just the thing for wintertime grilling. Or marshmallow roasting without the hassle of trying to light charcoal in a grill twenty times the size?

It spoke to me as John Cage from Ally McBeal might have said. So I bought the grill.

At checkout I learned the grill cost $3.44. Suddenly, I loved it even more.

But there is, of course, the matter of lighting a grill. And the fact that I’ve never in all my thirtysome years lit any sort of grill. And the professor, who is our resident light-er, was playing soccer in Cochrane. And I had marshmallows. And the Hen had been so excited when I’d shown him my adorable yellow grill and intimated that it was small enough that I might let him roast his own marshmallows.

So I did what people in this day and age do when they face a conundrum of any kind.

I put it on Facebook. ‘So…..lighting a grill, how would one go about that?’

Soon enough, I had answers. What I love about Facebook, even more than the immediate responses, is that you get responses from a very random cross-section of those you call friends.

The Professor’s-cousin’s-husband replies: ‘Charcoal, lighter fluid, match.’

It seemed so obvious. But of course he had no idea that I’ve never lit anything on fire. And that I didn’t have any lighter fluid.

I reply: ‘If one had no lighter fluid, what would one do?’

Professor’s-Cousin’s-Husband replies: ‘Order a pizza.’

Which was, of course, a funny reply. Except ordering pizza won’t roast my marshmallows.

I reply: ‘That is the wrong answer!’

Friend-from-university-who-lives-in-Japan replies: ‘This could get dangerous! I have a feeling you are going to be eyebrow-less! What else do you have on hand that is flammable? (are you sure that there isn’t lighter fluid in your briquets? That is the kind we usually buy.)

I reply, fairly certain we don’t have lighter-fluid-laced-briquettes: ’paper? magazines?’

Calgary-friend replies: ‘Husband.’

Begging the question – is the husband the thing-that-is-flammable….or should the husband figure out the grill. Neither option being available to me since David Beckham Himself is in Cochrane, undoubtedly trying to score 9 goals so he can become his league’s top scorer.

Mother-in-law replies: ‘One time it took Dennis (father-in-law) and Ron Farnum two hours to get it going – using newspaper, leaves, alcohol (keep the kids away) and once started even a hairdryer to keep the flame going!!!! It was a late supper. I hope you have much better luck!’

[This would explain why the professor keeps the hairdryer in the kitchen when he goes to light the grill.]

Friend-living-in-Japan replies: ‘Alcohol?! Better get the fire dept on speed dial!’

Mother-in-law explains: ‘They have much better briquettes in north america than where we were.’

[That would be Bolivia. And possibly even the jungle.]

Cloaked with blind optimism, and with matchbook in hand, I venture outside to light something on fire. I steal briquettes from the ‘big’ grill. I dump them in the little grill. I tear up pieces of paper and scatter them on and around the briquettes. I light match. Upon match. And the fueled-by-paper-only fire lasts roughly 2.1 seconds before vanishing in a tiny heap of charred remnants.

I fear our neighbors, whose kitchen looks out onto our deck, are making a youtube video of me; useless mother-of-three. Trying to light a grill. Sort of like those youtube videos of septuagenerians trying to get a webcam to work. I’m faced with a choice: defer marshmallow roasting until the next day when the soccer star will be home. Or toast a marshmallow in 2.1 seconds.

I decide to try the 2.1 second approach. It chars the Hen’s marshmallow and leaves Percy’s virtually pristine. The Gort is playing Lego in the basement, missing out on all the fun.

I return to my computer to report on my progress. ‘Well, the village has failed me on this one. Looks like I won’t get to check ‘light a grill’ on my bucket list.’ And then I wonder if people will think that’s my subtle way of saying I’m actually dying very soon. So I try again: ‘All that to say – I’m alive and my marshmallows untoasted.’

Which doesn’t really address the potential-terminal-diagnosis.

Friend-from-Japan replies: ‘Funny! We recently got a new grill and my darling (somewhat overly organized) husband, wrote me out a list of 21 Easy Steps to Good Grilling! Lucky me…. I have filed it in the ‘for better or for worse’ category of our married life….’

I laugh because I try to picture the professor writing me a list of 21 Easy Steps to do anything. Overly organized is definitely not how I would describe him.

My mother replies (undoubtedly seconds away from calling me and asking me not to light a grill ‘until Jason gets home’): ‘and you have eyebrows so that’s good. Stay away from lighter fluid. You need one of those little chimneys, newspaper, and charcoal. P.S. I switched to gas because it was too hard to light the charcoal grill.’

Even my mother lights grills. Or at least turns a switch to light a grill. (I’m not really sure how gas grills work, either.)

Friend-from-Minneapolis adds her two cents: ‘I would have suggested Aqua Net, but since keeping your eyebrows is important to you…’

She’s funny. And then I laugh because I don’t own any hair products.

Friend-from-graduate-school-who-lives-in-Minnesota offers help: ‘We use one of those “chimneys” too (a round metal cylinder with a grate in the middle to separate the coal from newspaper), but we still struggle sometimes.’

[I didn't know about the whole 'separating the coal from the newspaper' bit. I thought the paper should touch the coals...so as to light the coals on fire?]

Friend-from-university-who-lives-in-Colorado replies: ‘I once used half a SAM’s club sized bottle of Jack Daniels. I learned not to do that a second time! Man that was a lot of booze ….’

Friend-from-Japan who also knows friend-from-Colorado replies: ‘That was an expensive fire, Rachel! Did you manage to retain your eyebrows?’

Childhood best friend from the third grade replies: ‘I am disappointed. You were born and raised in South Africa.’

The professor walked through the door shortly after 9pm. Having taken a concussion-ed teammate to the hospital.

‘How do you light a grill?’ I ask. He looks at me suspiciously. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘How do you light a grill,’ I try again.

I retrieve my tiny grill from outside and show him my latest acquisition.

‘You need to keep the paper and the coals separate,’ he concludes.

The Double Wild Goose Chase, part 2

It was Sunday and we were driving….to the tennis court of all places. ‘Maybe we should stop at home and get some snacks and water,’ I suggested, seeing as it was lunch-time.

The professor obliged and steered the van towards our domicile. He pulled up to the curb and I jumped out with the car keys, since we never seem to carry more than one set of house keys between us.

I raced around so as to minimize the wait for the passengers. I filled tupperware containers with fruit snacks and pretzels. I filled a water bottle….with water. I grabbed bug spray and my camera so as to be able to document the day the Gort begins to fulfill his athletic destiny. And, with my reusable shopping bag slung over my shoulder, I marched back outside and shut the door behind me.

Before I managed to grab the keys from the hook.

I knew right away what I’d done. I yelped, as if yelping would somehow keep the door from shutting all the way and I’d be able to push it open and grab the keys that were still dangling from the very hook where I’d placed them when I walked inside the house five minutes earlier.

I made my way along the walkway towards the car-van, where the professor was happily reclined in his seat. Taking a five-minute cat nap. Sensing my presence, he looked up. ‘I locked the keys inside the house,’ I told him. Quickly, as though ripping off a two-week-old band-aid from a hairy patch of skin.

I can’t recall what he said, exactly. Did he just glare. Did he sigh heavily. Did he say ‘I can’t believe you did that’ or ‘you’ve got to be kidding me.’ All of the above? I do remember him saying ‘you might as well get the kids out of the van, it’s going to be a while.’

As he disappeared behind the house with a screwdriver in his hand.

It had been a banner week chez Johnson for incredibly-stupid-self-inflicted-things. Eight days prior, we’d descended upon the Superstore to pick up some groceries. Percy had screamed bloody murder because the professor had had the audacity to try and push him around the store…in a stroller. So the oldest and youngest band members abandoned us before we’d even made it to the cosmetics aisle. Choosing to continue their scream session within the confines of the van.

Forty minutes or so later, when I climbed back into the car-van with the Gort and the Hen and our groceries (including ice cream), the car would not start. The battery had been thoroughly depleted.

By il profesore.

A couple of days after that, we were leaving the house for one reason or another. ‘Do you have the keys,’ the professor asked after he’d shut and locked the door. I looked at him, ‘no I don’t.’

Luckily we’d failed to lock the back door, which saved us from having to unearth screwdrivers and attempt to break in to our own home.

Which brought us to Sunday and the latest in our series of familial faux-pas. The boys crawled out of the van onto the sidewalk and ate all of the snacks. The oldest two rode their bikes up and down the sidewalk, while we waited for the professor to perform his magic.

‘Henners,’ the professor suddenly called, ‘I need you’. Which I took to mean victory was imminent. Especially after my better half said ‘does he know how to unlock the front door? A Hen-sized opening had been created….somewhere….and soon the front door would open and I’d be able to get the car keys. And the extra set of keys I vowed (then and there) to hide in a secret location.

Twenty-four hours later, as I was typing up this pathetic tale, it occurred to me: didn’t I blog about this very thing last year? Except instead of tennis…..it was baseball.

I think the bottom line for the Johnsons, besides travel with an extra set of keys at all times, or make sure you have the keys before leaving the house at all times.……is avoid athletic activity.

The Double Wild Goose Chase, part 1

Generally speaking, I consider the professor very lucky to be married to moi. But this weekend had a couple of moments when even I had to concede perhaps his luck had run out. After nearly-fifteen loooooooong years.

It began with an email in my inbox. From my better half. ‘I cancelled going to Marco’s to watch the Champions League at noon because of soccer. Should I contact him and go, now that soccer is cancelled?’

I read this and nearly spat out my coffee. ‘Should I contact him and go…now that soccer is cancelled?’ I read aloud, so the author could hear me. He laughed-shrugged ‘what’? Leave it to the professor to turn a notice of spousal abandonment into something that sounds like it is more about etiquette, than getting out of the house as quickly as possible.

‘If you’re going to Marco’s, then you’re taking the boys to the bread store first,’ I struck a deal.  ’Fine,’ he relented. Because it was the only thing he could say, ‘what’s the address?’ And I scribbled it down on a little piece of paper. The address for the kitchen of the Sidewalk Citizen Bakery.

‘It’s on 1A Street.’ I explained. ‘Number 5524. So, that’s 5th ave…downtown?’ I’d never been there, but the guy delivers bread to downtown offices on Mondays – on a bicycle – so I figured the kitchen was also…..downtown.

The professor hopped in the van with our youngest two wailers, while I and the detective stayed put. I read a few pages of my book. ‘Do you want to play War with me,’ my slightly-bored seven year old asked. ‘Okay,’ I hedged, ‘let me just take a shower first.’ Figuring the professor would be back by that time and we’d be distracted from dull card games with freshly baked scones.

I got out of the shower. No professor. It had been forty minutes, at least, since he left. And suddenly it dawned on me. 5524….would be 55th avenue. Not….5th avenue. I’d sent him downtown…..when he needed to go south. Considerably so.

The Gort and I played War. And I took pictures of him wearing his thrifted jacket. And I took pictures of the blossoms on the apple tree. And still no professor.

‘Where is Daddy,’ my oldest asked. ‘I don’t know, I think I might have given him the wrong directions,’ I replied. Nervously. ‘Maybe a tree fell on the road where he was supposed to go,’ the Gort offered, seemingly out of nowhere, followed by an equally out-of-the-blue ‘what if it’s just us two in our family from now on.’

‘Would you like that,’ I felt compelled to ask. After all, the kid had informed me earlier that he wished he didn’t have any brothers. ‘No,’ he assured me. Tout de suite. Lest I think otherwise. ‘See, and you told me earlier you didn’t like having brothers,’ I chided.

Finally, the front door opened. It was the Hen, who had run inside while his dad parked the car-van. ‘Is Daddy mad,’ I attempted to gather intelligence. He shook his head. I felt a temporary sense of relief. But then I watched the professor walk to the door with his littlest boy in one arm, a couple of brown bakery bags in the other. And a very dark look upon his face. ‘Henners said you weren’t mad,’ I protested as I opened the screen door to let him in.

‘I’m not mad…..at him.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I apologized, ‘I really thought it was downtown’. How else to defend my faux-pas.

‘People thought I was homeless,’ the professor fumed-accused, ‘attending some sort of homeless function.’

I figured I’d have to get the scoop on the case of mistaken identity at a later time. After the professor had devoured a couple of (delicious) sticky buns.

And then it was Sunday….and I faux-pas-ed….again.