Extra Pickles, Hold the Bun

'Hey,' said DH, 'I have a good idea.'
Uh-oh, I thought.
'What might that be?' I asked.
'Go pick me up a fast-food burger and fries. I'm super hungry. But get the burger with no bun and I'll put it on a gluten-free bun when you get home.'

Hmm, that is a really good idea, isn't it? Trouble is, his being gluten-free has prevented us from making a great many poor nutritional choices over the past couple of years along exactly these lines, and this good idea of his can never now be un-known. Dang.

'Dammit, that sounds amazing. But why do I have to go?'
'Because I'm... wearing pyjamas?'
'You're clearly not wearing pyjamas.'
'Because I'm really lazy and I don't want to get off the couch?'
'I'll buy that for a dollar. Fine, I'll go.'
'Don't forget french fries.'
'Yah, yah. Hey, d'you think we should let Medium Fry in on this action?'
'I dunno. Do you think she can handle it?'
'She can totally handle it.'
'Alright. Bring her.'
 
Thus marked Medium Fry's initiation into a closely-guarded yet oft-conjectured secret of adulthood: sometimes there really is a party going on after you go to bed, kids. We've been lying all this time.

This might not seem like much of a secret of adulthood to you, but I assure you the late night burger run is more than just the sum of its delicious parts. It's sneaking out under the stars in your pyjamas on a silly, impromptu mission to satisfy Dad's meat tooth. It's alone time in the car with Mom, chatting and laughing about whatever with no interruptions. It's another small ratcheting up of the ante, a carrot for all those sticks you've endured: yeah, it sucks that you have more homework and chores and personal hygiene requirements than your little brother, but check out the perks up here.

This made me think of something I recently saw on the FB page of a group I follow. To summarize: how does your family mark the passage of your children into adulthood? Easy. We don't. Here's the gist of the thesis around my house: the passage isn't a point in time, it's a meandering, sometimes messy, path, and it doesn't need to be "marked" - it needs to be guided, taught, encouraged, allowed to make its own decisions and mistakes, and occasionally provided a timely (loving!) kick in the ass.

Or a junior bacon cheeseburger at midnight. Depending on how things are going.

Creature of Habits

It was this last habit (um, yes, of mine) that prompted DH to purchase a housecoat for me for Christmas. Like our own personal little 'save the children' campaign, subtitled '... from Mom's excessive household nudity problem.'

To be fair, it was me who first admitted I had a problem and mused aloud that maybe, just maybe, having a housecoat would help. But then DH got that certain look in his eyes - that look that says, "Housecoat? Why, that's an item I can purchase from L.L. Bean!" (because while I *may* have a household nudity problem, DH definitely has an L.L. Bean problem) - and I knew I should keep darting around naked until approximately Christmas because there was prolly gonna be a housecoat under the tree for me.

Housecoats come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The fine folks at Victoria's Secret would have you believe there is even a possibility of looking attractive in them, if your genetic stars align just so. But the folks at L.L. Bean - and therefore, by natural extension, DH - don't want to burden you with such expectations. They just want you to be warm and ugly in your housecoat.

(And I quote:) "I bought it really big for you, dear."

What the hell is that supposed to mean? "Um... thanks?"

And really big it is. He was also thoughtful enough to buy it in my favourite colour, which is typically known as "grey" but in its more massive applications is more often thought of as "pachyderm" (and regardless of the situation is never thought of as "slimming"). I can put my children inside it with me, which I can see being useful if a house fire ever forces us out of doors in inclement weather. But in the meantime I just put them in my housecoat and we spend our days haunting DH as the Ghost of Christmas Present.

"Whoooooo!" we say. "You are never gonna live this dooooooown!" 

The Pants Strike Back

Back in my Old Life, people had a habit of panicking whenever I wasn't around for any length of time. Like, any length of time. Ten minutes could be enough to set certain folk off. They'd phone a couple of times, then follow up with an email when I didn't pick up, then get my out of office response and rather than just wait the hour for my dentist appointment or whatever to wrap up, they'd start calling up other people and getting them involved in the problem. So I'd come back to three phone messages, an email saying I had three phone messages, and five people who didn't know how to solve the problem running around trying to help. It would invariably take ten times longer to delete the messages, talk everyone down from the ledge, and untangle the ensuing mess of having all those extra cooks in the kitchen - none of whom had been given the recipe - than it took to deal with the original issue.

I'm just gonna come right out and say it: my specialty is vegetation. Vegetation. Frankly, it's generally not all that pressing. I know this; you know this; why the hell didn't they know this? One of life's enduring mysteries. I've started thinking of the Vegetation Emergency as a recent entry into the long list of cryptids that humanity just can't seem to shake its belief in. I picture it being green and leafy and vaguely humanoid, shaking hands with Ogopogo and Sasquatch as they welcome it into the fold: "Hey, man, good to meet you. You really caused a stir out there today - nicely done."

I started setting my out of office response to read, "If you are suffering a Vegetation Emergency, please contact (so-and-so) for assistance. Otherwise, I will address your request when I return from the fricking dentist in thirty minutes so keep your panties on already."

(Okay, so those last thirteen words are pure fantasy, but I dearly wished from the bottom of my withered little heart that I could say them.) Not that deploying this clever message changed anything, mind you, but it did make me feel a little better to passive-aggressively point out that there is no such thing as a Vegetation Emergency. (Medium Fry asked me for an example of an oxymoron yesterday and that is precisely the example I gave her. True story.)

So fast forward to my New Life, and you can imagine my surprise when my good friend - let's call her The Boss - called me up one day as I was heading back to site after vacation and said, "Hey, I need you stop at (such-and-such) Creek on your way in. They're having a Vegetation Emergency out there."

...  "No. They're not."

"What?"

"You know better: there's no such thing."

"Well, they think they are anyway. Can you stop in?"

(I should mention at this point that I was on a pants strike at the time of this conversation - it was just too damn hot for pants for the duration of my vacation, and I wasn't quite back to work yet, sooo...)

"Um, I'm not exactly dressed for the occasion."

"Don't worry about it. Just go help them out."

"Seriously. I'm wearing a skirt."

"Haha, Wes won't mind. Tell him I said it was alright by me."

"Okay, Boss. Whatever you say. Tell him I'm on my way."

Dang.

Oh well, I thought, it'll just be Wes and maybe a couple of his helpers. I'll just pop in and pop out and no one will even know about this major safety violation and wildly inappropriate pipeline right-of-way fashion faux pas...

And this is how it came to be that I found myself on right-of-way, in a skirt and some token safety goggles, stopping dead the activities of no fewer than eleven pipeline construction workers. A trackhoe slowly creaked to a halt, mid-scoop. Three fellows who were hand-bombing some erosion berms put down their shovels and stared. The construction foreman and inspector looked up from their conversation and grinned and waved. I died a little inside.

(I should also mention that there aren't a lot of women around your typical construction spread. And none of them are wearing skirts.)

(weakly) "Uh, Boss told me you guys are having a, um, vegetation *gag* emergency?"

"Oh, yep, yep, right over here, we don't know what to do about this."

"Y'know, I was just driving back from vacation - I wouldn't normally wear - it's just that Boss said..."

"Oh, no, haha, it's great, just great. Man, this is the best thing we've seen all year! Thanks for coming out. Like, really, thanks. You're gonna be famous now."

Wouldn't you know, it turned out not to be a Vegetation Emergency after all, yet that fantastical creature still managed to follow me all the way from my Old Life to rise from the depths of someone's imagination in the middle of Saskatchewan and bite me in the ass again. Amazing.
    

Apron Strings

I had a meeting with a financial planner last Thursday. Hey, here's something no one tells you about meeting with a financial planner: it's a lot like buying a swimsuit. So save up your self-esteem before you head in, 'cause you're gonna feel like ass afterward.

At one point during our meeting, financial planner guy said, "It's really something they should teach in school." First of all: Riiiiight. Have you met kids, buddy? It takes them two weeks to learn how to work combination locks. GICs are probably a little out of their grasp.

Secondly: Alright everyone, fess up. How many times have you said those same words about things you only learned about as an adult? In reality, there's only so much time in a day in the classroom, and reading and multiplication are pretty handy skills sooo... you're prolly gonna have to figure some stuff out on your own at some point. Exactly what those things are depends a lot on what your parents know: I'll bet Financial Planner's kids don't know a thing about edible and useful plants, for instance, but mine sure do. (Heck, Small Fry has even cottoned on to some of the salient points of taxonomy - he asked me the other day whether my glasses were in the window family.) So my kids are probably going to need financial planning advice one day, and his kids are not going to know what to wipe their butts with if they need to poop in the woods. You win; you lose.

To be totally honest, I'm always criticizing stuff Medium Fry learns in school. I don't agree with this; I think they should have taken a more nuanced approach with that; wtf is an integer? - y'know, those kinds of things. But I gotta tell ya, it wasn't until she signed up for Foods class this year that I really came into my own. I feel like - I dunno - like a Kitchen Elder or something. All sage and savvy and rocking an apron. Here are just some of the many quality things that Medium Fry has learned in my kitchen that they didn't teach her in Foods class:

- Freezer Management.
- The importance of having a designated no-garlic-or-onions spatula.
- Real vanilla. Real butter. Show that recipe some respect.
- (New cuss words - various.)
- No point putting the battery back in until the smoke clears.
- Clean As You Go.
- Nutmeg: proceed with caution.
- Whisk faster! Faster!
- Don't count your chickens before they hatch, but do count your eggs before you start cooking.
- No! You do not need to mix the wet and dry ingredients in separate bowls!
- Okay, well, you do for this recipe, but not that last one.
- Sleep while the baby sleeps; cry while the baby cries; wash dishes while the muffins bake.
- Are you kidding? No one ever helps me wash dishes. I'm just going to sit and drink my tea awhile.
- Srsly. Put some veggies on the menu, kid.
- You don't decide what to bake; what to bake is preordained by the number of bananas turning to mush on the counter or the quantity of slightly-past-due yogurt in the fridge.
- This also applies to what to make for supper. (See 'Freezer Management.')
- When you are old enough to get PMS, you will need this recipe. Here, I'll write you out a copy myself.

Yup, my kids will grow up able to wipe their butts in the forest, swear like sailors and cook a decent meal. I think we're still ahead of the curve.

Beer Garden

I got the weirdest message from an old buddy recently. Like, really old - I don't think he's ever seen me without braces. He found me through LinkedIn. If he still worked at McDonald's after all these years I would not have accepted his invitation to connect, however, it seemed as if he had embarked on a suitably high-powered professional career, so I accepted. (People seem less suspect to me if they have at least $40K in student loan debts kicking around.)

Accept!

Within minutes, I had an email in my inbox. Old Buddy jumped right in with a brief synopsis of his life for the past seventeen years - university, career, marriage, kids, divorce - and followed up with a resounding, "All the while wishing I was with you instead."

Hmm. I really need to stop equating the burden of student loan debt with any qualities more redeeming than the capacity to fill out a lot of forms.

Delete!
 
That is messed up in, like, ten different directions. First off, are you dying to meet the Fantasy Me this poor fellow has been manufacturing in his head all this time? Because I sure am. I wonder if she at all resembles the Fantasy Me who lives in my head...

I had been genuinely happy to hear from my Old Buddy, but then he lobbed this awkward L-bomb at me and I was crushed. It would have been easier to deal with if he had said I ruined his life by more active means - at least then I could apologize. But how can I be culpable for the unauthorized misrepresentation of my likeness in his fantasy life, or the passive cruelty of a teenaged me? I didn't even know how he felt.

The worst thing for me is that this shakes my belief in the possibility of friendship between men and women. Is there always an ulterior motive on the part of at least one party involved in the (ostensible) friendship? Is the true, platonic, gender-neutral relationship like the Yeti or the small batch of chili - mythical creatures, existence never proven? Have millions of years of human evolution culminated in nothing better than bilaterally symmetrical sacks of hormones that surf professional networking sites hunting for the one that got away?

I've been mulling over this dilemma for a few weeks now - and it is a dilemma, because I have several male friends who are pretty special to me. I know I'm feeling evolved enough not to need to club them over the head and drag them back to my cave for some hot monkey love, and for all I joke about men I'm not actually convinced that they're a different species (if we prick them, do they not bleed?) so I have to assume we're all more or less on the same level. Not to mention that I would have to be a pretty insufferable bighead to go around thinking everyone who wants to occasionally catch up over a beer is secretly in love with me. (If we start catching up over Beef Wellington and red wine and a crackling fire, well, I might start to wonder, but beer - no big.) 

So I would like to propose a more nuanced solution to this conundrum: I know I try to avoid spending time with people I dislike, so let's just guess that, generally, we choose to be friends with people we like. And despite the astronomical divorce rate and how much everyone on Earth whines about their spouse, what does approximately every wedding invitation ever made say on it? 'Today I marry my best friend.' So let's also guess that, generally, we try to marry people we get along with. It seems to me that it naturally follows that some (highly variable) amount of future relationship potential exists between any pair of people who get along alright. What doesn't follow naturally is that potential being entertained or realized: the germination rate is as low as we choose to make it. And the occasional beer has not been proven - at least in my 'gardening' experience - to enhance that rate.

I remain a believer. Cheers to that.

The Great Pumpkin

In keeping with his nascent criminal tendencies, Small Fry lifted a mini pumpkin from the flu immunization clinic on Halloween.

In an act that I'm sure to come to regret later as having nurtured the Seeds of Badass sprouting within him, I gave the theft a decisive "meh" and carried on with our afternoon plans. However, this long-term-poor decision has turned out in the short term to be inexplicably awesome: pumpkin rolling has become the latest craze in our house. Seems there is nary an activity into which pumpkin rolling cannot be incorporated. Yoga, dominoes, lunch - you name it, my kids are rolling a mini pumpkin around in it. And that pumpkin is truly beloved: it debuted at number 1 among the most bickered-over items in the entire household arsenal of available toys.

(I don't pretend to understand this phenomenon, but it does occur to me that the job of designing new products for children must be a deceptively difficult one.)

Although it can sometimes be hard for the recipient to grasp the honour imparted by the act - sortof like when your cat brings you a dead mouse - the granting of permission to use toys of particular importance to a child can be viewed as a proximal measure of the esteem in which the child holds a given person. (At that particular point in time, anyway - again, very cat-like.) Judging by the withering look Small Fry gave me when I initially declined his sweet little invitation to "woll my pumpkin?" in favour of finishing up the dishes I was washing, it must be a bit of a cultural thing, with adults originating on some far away planet with inscrutable norms where no one rolls pumpkins or basically has any fun at all. ("Okay, okay, jeez, I'll come roll your pumpkin, just stop looking at me like that already!")

Parenting fail. I should really know better by now.

But kids know. They get it. When someone says to them what really amounts to, 'Hey, wanna do some weird shit with me that I think is pretty rad?' there's no hesitation - they're all in. They're smashing driveways and rolling pumpkins like nobody's business. If only we could carry that enthusiasm and enjoyment of the happiness of others with us over to Planet GrownUp the world would surely be a better place.

Yesterday, Small Fry invited Neighbour Baby to both roll his pumpkin and rub his sheepie. Neighbour Baby promptly and happily - yet solemnly, as befit such an occasion - obliged. And I know Small Fry would do the same for him.

Theirs is a true bromance.

Also Bread Tags

Welcome to Frecklicious' two hundredth post! Thank you for your dedicated patronage these past years. Our celebratory extravaganza has been brought to you by Stuff That I Don't Know Why It's In My House. Let's meet our Platinum Sponsors of the event:

Only slightly less effective than knitting yourself a new sweater.

I have been collecting this for precisely four hundred years; it amounts to just under $5. In "money." Worst return on investment E-V-E-R.

I repeat: I do not own a television. What could these possibly be for?

Ah, yes. The traditional Christmas... capybara.

Gold Sponsors include: jar of capers; juicer; antique silver tea set; antique* Silver jeans (*haven't fit since before I had children); Weird Al Yankovic CD; pair of ornamental swords.

Silver Sponsors include: university graduation neck tassels; bottle of butane; every diet book ever written (mint condition); adhesive novelty moustache; orphan Gladware lids; Christmas hand towels; Christmas dish towels; Christmas regular-towels.

A big shout-out to our sponsors: thanks for helping me get over my two-hundredth-post performance anxiety! I couldn't have done it without you. Mwah.