I learned that I didn't have lids when I went to pack up the leftover spaghetti last night. That's when I learned that we didn't have any normal sized Tupperware, either.
Most of our "Tupperware" comes as a result of foods we buy; we buy things in plastic containers and when they're gone, we use those as storage containers; it's like the "Circle of Life" applied to lunchmeat. So we don't actually have "Tupperware" any more than the copies I make are "Xeroxes" or the tissues I don't use are "Kleenex." (I don't use "Kleenex," or any other tissue, because we've made the decision in our house to cut some corners, economically speaking, and one of the corners we cut is to not buy Kleenex or napkins when we have toilet paper and paper towels, and they fill in admirably for the other two.)
(We use the toilet paper as tissues, and the paper towels as napkins. That's how that works. I felt I should explain that before you began picturing us sitting around the dinner table each with a roll of toilet paper alongside his or her plate, and asked yourself Just how messy are these people?)
(The answer is, though, pretty messy.)
So we don't have any Tupperware. Instead, we have the leftover containers of other things we buy. That means our leftovers are not stored neatly in little see-through bins with tight-fitting lids that are stacked in an organized way in the refrigerator; they're slopped haphazardly into the container the butter came in, or the plastic box the lunchmeat was stored in, or the bin from the caramel corn that I used up putting it on my Blue Moon ice cream sundae.
Yes, I invented a Blue Moon/Caramel Corn sundae. I also invented the chocolate/banana cake sundae. I estimate that 97% of my creative power these days is directed at coming up with new things to mix into my ice cream.
The other 3% is devoted to trying to figure out what to get the Babies! to play with to keep them happy, which is why we have no Tupperware or Tupperware lids-- because I give them to the Babies! to play with whenever it's my turn to watch them.
The Babies!, Mr F and Mr Bunches, are entirely uninterested in their toys. As I sit here now, I can see in this very room where they usually play, a truck, Hokey Pokey Elmo, a small green cube that makes "ribbit" noises and has frogs on it and wiggles, a little "Baby Walkman" that plays nursery rhymes when it sings, a couple of balls and blocks and Legoes (note: they're not actually Legoes, any more than our Tupperware is Tupperware) and some more.
I know what you're thinking, now: Man, you really need to pick up. And I do. But I can't because I'm exhausted because the Babies! were in this room until they went to bed for their nap a few minutes ago, and they did not play with any of that junk which I so lovingly spread out for them. Instead, they played with: my Entertainment Weekly magazine, Sweetie's calculator, an ice cube I accidentally dropped on the floor, the whisk from the drawer, 23 little tupperware lids and containers they pulled from the drawer where we keep them, the centerpiece to our table, a chair, the decorative rocks we have to put into all of our plants to keep the cats out of them, and a baby carrot from the refrigerator which I accidentally dropped, too.
The Babies! playing with the containers would not be so bad, except that they break or lose them then, and we run out and can't buy enough new ones quickly enough; do you know how long it takes to go through a whole bin of butter?
They broke the only one we had that was large enough to hold leftover spaghetti, which was actually okay because that one was never available for use, as it was generally pressed into service to hold some tiny amount of something.
We had one, exactly one, container large enough to store, say, all the leftover spaghetti. We had tons of smaller containers that could be used to store cookies or cheese or some tomatoes or something. So, invariably, when the older kids were cleaning up after dinner, they would pull out the largest container, first, and put the smallest amount of material in there that they possibly could. If we had one atom of material leftover after supper, they would store it quickly in that largest container. I would open the refrigerator and see, there on the middle shelf, some gallons of milk and our large tupperware container, which was being used to store a single quark.
Then they'd complain that they couldn't put anything else away and ask if they should just throw it out. That's their solution to everything: Should I just throw it out? Having saved the iota of leftovers in the largest container available, they then assume that throwing things out is the best and quickest possible solution to the mess that remains. The Boy tried to talk us into buying and using paper plates and plastic forks one time so that we could just throw out our dishes. (We refused; we may not go whole hog and by those la-di-da 'napkins' but there are some lines we will not cross.)
So there I was, last night, having to clean up after spaghetti and having no containers to put the spaghetti in, because they were all broken or maybe thrown out or possibly being used as bath toys by the Babies! or had been stuffed under the couch or thrown at the cats, or whatever it is happens to things in our house. I ended up having to put all the noodles and meatballs and sauce into five different smaller containers, creating little spaghetti snack-packs, at least a couple of which didn't have lids and had to be wrapped in plastic bags and stored in the refrigerator that day, causing me to fret that the refrigerator was even more cluttered and trashy looking than usual.
I don't know why I worry about the refrigerator so much, but I do. I associate a messy refrigerator with being the kind of trashy, classless people that my parents used to frown about when we were kids and tell us we were turning into. Quit all that yelling and screaming, they'd yell and scream, do you want to end up like the ------? And they'd insert the name of the people down the street who lived in the brown-and-white house and whose son was probably in juvie for a while and who only mowed their lawn every third week or so, and didn't do any landscaping, and had old, crummy cars and ... it was hard to see what was wrong with them, but there was clearly something wrong with them, and they probably also had a messy refrigerator.
Or maybe I just took the wrong message from the lectures. I was prone to doing that, after all . Maybe those people, although classless, were not classless because they didn't landscape (although I'm pretty sure that was part of it), but classless for an entirely different reason that eluded me as a kid. I was pretty out-of-it when I was younger, and used to routinely be sitting in class when the teacher would get everyone up and we'd line up and go somewhere and everyone would know where we were headed except me. I'd follow along in my assigned alphabetical slot, and worry that I didn't have my permission slip or I was going to get a shot or I needed a juice box. We'd wind up in an assembly or getting on a bus and I'd just have no clue. I learned to fake it and hope for the best.
It was kind of an exciting way to live. Get roused from your desk and go see a filmstrip that told you about puberty; then the next time they surprised you by leaving the class, it was to go outside and look at an eclipse, or to go to the gym and here a lady sing "On the Radio" for some reason.
So I was never really clear on a whole lot as a kid, so maybe I got the wrong message from my parents and a messy refrigerator doesn't automatically mean that within a month you'll be living in a trailer park. After all, I got it wrong when Mom yelled at us about making sure we smushed up the milk cartons before throwing them away because they were taking up so much room and we kept having to empty the trash. I thought she was so concerned because we were too poor to afford more trash bags. Turns out she just didn't want to be emptying the garbage all the time and we were okay financially. Still, that was a rough period of time until I forgot all about it and went back to my comics.
But even if a messy refrigerator doesn't necessarily equate with loser-dom, it's not a good thing for me, in part because I need all the barriers I can get between me and delicious delicious snacks. As I said, I have no willpower anymore.
There was a time when I had willpower, when I could resist the siren song of leftover meatballs in the refrigerator, when I could go downstairs to get a drink of water at midnight and not grab a cookie out of the cabinet, then grab a second one for the trip upstairs, but finish it before I got back up there, resulting in my having to go back downstairs and get a third cookie and also to get the glass of water I'd originally gone down there for. That time was in my youth.
I don't know what happened. One day, I was able to make an entire batch of peanut butter cookies and not eat a single bit of the dough. Now, I find myself with a burnt tongue because I eat the Rice Krispie-bars mix right out of the pan before the marshmallows are even melted.
I call them Rice Krispie bars, but they're made with store brand "Crispy Rice Cereal." So technically they are "Crispy Rice Bars." I've said before that you know you're a financial success when you can afford to buy your furniture pre-assembled, but a better goal for me might be to get to the level where the food I'm buying doesn't go by fake names. If you ever visit and see that I'm eating "Cap'n Crunch" instead of "Kommando Krisp", you'll know I've won the lottery.
But the point is that whatever knock0ff food we've bought, I'm no longer able to avoid it. I kidded myself for a while, but I finally realized that I had no willpower in the saddest way possible, and it had nothing to do with food; instead, it had to do with a comic strip.
I was reading the Sunday paper one morning, and I got to "Blondie." I don't even know why I read "Blondie," but I do. It's never funny and I'm not 85, so it's not like I'm nostalgic or something. Still, I read it, and that morning, I read it and the beginning of the strip showed Dagwood coming home with a picture under his arm; the picture was turned away from the reader.
In the next panel, Dagwood was asking Blondie where he could hang it, and it still wasn't shown. I instantly deduced that the picture itself was the gag, and was going to move onto the third panel when I just couldn't stand it anymore. I skipped ahead to the final panel to see what the picture was.
I don't even, now, recall what the picture was; Dagwood bowling, I think, and he hung it by his bathtub. I've probably blotted it out in my mind because of the shame that I felt flooding over me, shame that burned with the heat of a thousand messy refrigerators, at having skipped ahead to the punchline of a "Blondie."
I mean, what is that? I couldn't work through 2 or 3 more panels to get to the joke? A joke that I knew, going in, would not even be funny? Would not even generate the slightest hint of a smile?
That's how I knew I no longer had even a shred of willpower. If I could not resist the... "lure" of a "Blondie" punchline, there was no hope for me in the rest of my life. From here on out, it was going to be all supersized Cokes and pants with that little patch of flexible fabric in them so that your "40-inch" waist can comfortably slide out to 42 or even 43 and nobody's the wiser, and Crocs, and reading the spoilers in movie reviews and claiming that housework is exercise and "Chicken Soup for the Golf Lover's Soul" counts as an actual book. I imagine it won't be long until I cheat at crossword puzzles and stop watching Jeopardy to switch over to Wheel of Fortune reruns and otherwise let every little thing in my life slide.
That's what having no willpower will do to you. One minute, you're a fine hunk of a man who skips dessert and jogs a couple of miles a day. The next, you're skipping ahead to the end of "Blondie" and your tongue is stuck to a wooden spoon coated with a marshmallow-and-Crispy-Rice mixture and you're letting the Babies! play with the Tupperware and you've let your refrigerator degenerate into an unholy battleground of poorly packaged foods fighting it out over the microbe of leftovers stored in the giant Tupperware containers.
I might have seen it coming, I suppose, but I was too distracted by all the things you can mix into ice cream. Like right now, we've got these Little Debbie Star Crunches, and we've also got a gallon of rainbow sherbet. I bet those would go good together.
Want a free t-shirt? Of course you do. Click there to find out how you can get one courtesy of The Best of Everything: Our Opinions Are Righter Than Yours.
The Best of Everything: Our Opinions Are Righter Than Yours!. If you want to know, or say, what's The Best, read The Best of Everything or submit your own nominee!
No comments:
Post a Comment