The Jambalaya Compromise

When you are billeting (they live with you) a house full of junior hockey players (3 of them are 18 and one of them is 19), you get the opportunity to eat with them on a regular basis. With their practices often being in the afternoon with minimal food consumed prior to practice, the call to “eat dinner together” has varying levels of enthusiasm. Depending on how long ago they ate their post-practice Chik-Fil-A or Chipotle, they may not be hunger. And, if they are hungry, there is the distinct possibility the meal won’t tickle all of their taste buds.

Over the past 4ish months they have been living with us, we have found a couple of meals that will reliably pull them away from their video games and voluntarily bring them downstairs to eat with us.

  • Pizza: I cannot lie. We make a pretty good pizza. My role is “dough maker” and sausage and bacon fryer. If we have the full crew on that night, we make at least one each of the following: pepperoni, sausage, and barbecue chicken.
  • Sliders: We will make 36-48 of these. Aldi’s has the best price on the bread, and the boys love them for warmups. Since “second dinner” is usually consumed by at least half of the boys, this is a big deal.

The rest of the things we make for them have less than full enthusiasm.

  • One of them doesn’t like gravy.
  • One of them didn’t think he liked meatloaf, but he is possibly the best eater now.
  • Only one of them likes roasted sweet potato cubes with rosemary. This is one of our favorites. It is unfortunate.
  • One of them (quite possibly one of those already referred to above) doesn’t like tomatoes in any form.
  • A random thing–one of them likes lots of whipped cream on his pancakes and some baked items.
  • They will all put roasted broccoli on their plate, and sometimes they will eat it.
  • After the boys were gone one night and found out there was Chinese in the refrigerator, two of the boys came down to claim it as their second dinner that night.
  • The visit to “flavor town” left the curry and gumbo out in the cold. The fried rice entered the semi-regular meal rotation.

With these facts in mind, I felt compelled to try something new with them. Unfortunately, the available protein was pointing me toward Jambalaya. How did I handle this? I made the jambalaya as an “optional” lunch item. My gut told me one of the boys would very likely enjoy it. Two of them might think it is okay. One of them would definitely find the tomatoes and the spice beyond his range. (It would be a street he would never visit in Flavor town.) This compromise – a meal for all but only if they wanted to try it without having it as their only dinner option- allowed everyone to participate as they chose.

In the end, I did get my jambalaya. The one who enjoyed it added hot sauce because he could. The other Chinese lover thought it was good. And, the other two didn’t even try any–no matter how hard we nudged them. It made plenty and and the “second dinner” stores were replenished for a couple of days. If I can find another rice-centric recipe, I am going to try it!

Country Code 60

As I was heading home from church today, I received this delightful text from “Maria.”

Hi, I’m Maria. I’m glad to see you here. I want to find my soul mate here.  I’m 29 years old and single. (don’t talk to me about sex or I’ll be mad, under 22 Do not disturb) Add my whatsapp: +16398541530   We can share our daily life together and get to know each other better

Interestingly, the phone number she texted me from is: +60 11 7227 6439. I don’t know much about international phone numbers, but what I do know leads me to believe dear Maria is from Malaysia. (Malaysia’s country code is 60)

I am sure Maria is a delightful young lady who has reached out to me alone to build this lasting relationship. For her sake, I wish she would have chosen better. The warning about “sex talk” is also greatly appreciated. It is clear she would be the type of person I would look for if I hadn’t already been married for over 3 decades.

Sharing my life with someone based on the information she provided is going to be difficult. Do I start texting her about COVID and see where that leads? Do we talk about books we both have read? It is perplexing what she would see in a guy like me…

The biggest concern is where this dear young lady got my cell phone number. Since I have not willingly registered on any sites that “Maria” would frequent, I can only guess my number was acquired in a dark or very shaded part of the internet. Alternatively, maybe poor Maria was supposed to meet her “dream guy”, but she typed the number in incorrectly and got me. The guilt will haunt me. Yet, I am going to wonder what could have been…

Poop Shaming

While alliteration might cause me to choose a different title, I will stick with the more accepted and equally effective title chosen.

I have been there myself sometimes. I see all of the people walking their dogs. When the dogs do their business, the owners act like they were born to clean up after them. Is this consistent behavior, or is it only the behavior dog owners want you to trust always takes place?

Apparently, someone out there (not me) took it upon themselves to call this assumption into question. The flags I saw this morning made me wonder what dog walkers do when no one is watching. The flagged product in the image is weathered more than the 5 other feces piles recognized by the frustrated individual. It must have frustrated them greatly that they could not flag coyote scat when deposited in the middle of the sidewalk. Of course, the origin of sidewalks is only assumed to be from coyotes. Vindictive owners waging a campaign on the positive effects of letting excrement break down naturally might also be responsible. After all, the feces fulfill their purpose in fertilizing wherever destiny deposits them.

While I don’t plan on cleaning up after the canines who have been flagged, I do take comfort knowing someone else out there does think like I do. When those thoughts enter my brain, I am content to let them die a quick death. I have a neighbor who believes otherwise. He/she believes this is a battle worth fighting. They want to mark every battle waged with a flag. When the owner goes by, they want that flag to trigger immense guilt within the hearts of those lazy dog owners. They are fighting for the dignity of the grass these “poop piles” are desecrating.

Transitioning from poop to Christmas is not easy to do. I will save that for the more gifted bloggers. To those who celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Just A Shard…

On another morning this past week, the heavily callused bottom of my foot had to ward off an attack from a shard of clear glass. It was barely a tickle as my foot’s defenses developed over multiple decades kicked in. (I love how I used a foot verb to describe the defenses the foot has against sharp objects, but I digress.) It was barely bigger than a grain of salt. With no knowledge of invasive creatures that poop glass of such small sizes, I had to seek out another culprit for my attempted injury.

With the recent mouse adventure still fresh on my mind, I vowed to take a more logical approach on solving this mystery.

  • The Kitchen: Did any baking go on that could have caused a glass (actual glass or a baking item)to be thrown into the far reaches of the kitchen area? I couldn’t think of anything, but the extra kids in our house are not always the best proactive communicators.
  • Christmas: Christmas decorations only started going out yesterday. The shard made its appearance/penetration at the end of last week. No candle holders or broken ornaments to blame here. The culprit must be something else…
  • Shoes: Could anyone have walked through a field (it wouldn’t have to be a full field, but visualizing a full field of glass sure is more interesting than saying a “broken drinking glass”.) of glass and brought some of it into the house on their shoes?

It is the latter that is likely the winner with some slight modifications. At the beginning of November, we had new windows installed in our home. With the exception of one window, all windows on the first floor are now new. According to the building code, if a window is within so many feet (maybe 4?) of a door, the window must have tempered glass. Tempered glass is glass that shatters into a million tiny pieces when it breaks. This prevents the glass from developing sharp edges that could cause serious injury. When the glass from the window near the back door was taken out, the glass broke into SO many pieces. While tarps were laid out prior to the removal and brooms/mops circumnavigating the floor numerous times, one of our residents encountered a very small piece of glass under the table during dinner within a couple days of the window installation.

While my glass prick or tickle was a month removed from the “window swap party”, no other explanation can account for it. It was kind of like a bacteria that was lingering around with the hopes it could bring down one more victim. If it were a suitable victim, the bacteria could take down a household, then a street, then a town, a state, and then the world. In this case, my calluses were like my immune system. And…yes, it is time to end this posting…;-)

The Mouse that Got Away

The day started with me in the bathroom staring at something that easily could have been a piece of black rice. After extensive testing and asking the “bug guy” who came to do his quarterly spraying what it was, it was determined it was nothing excreted from the floor of our house. When presented with the evidence, the bug guy tried to put me at ease, saying, “If you only saw one, it is probably from a cockroach.” [Please see the image below]

With the faithful bug guy alerted and spraying the whole house, I hoped he would leave with a smile on his face and the word, “nothing” on his lips. Unfortunately, this was not the case. While in the downstairs guest bedroom, he drew my attention to some additional evidence. “These look a little old. They are definitely from a mouse.” [The bug guy also told me about finding a raccoon in an attic in Dallas. The raccoon had a minion of rats that he did not hesitate to use as ammo on anyone who would enter his domain.] We did not have an infestation. We could not write the problem off. Somehow our house had acquired a mouse, and the evidence was in two rooms.

I didn’t immediately tell my wife. I let the visions of glue traps dance through my head. I worried about how I would find the ideal spot to place the traps in light of minimal evidence of our resident rodent. I tried to forgive myself for somehow allowing an uninvited creature to join our family. There is always room for geckos and small lizards to have easy access to our homes, but adding a warm-blooded home-crasher to the census was beyond what I could easily digest.

After dinner, I mentioned to my wife the excitement she had missed while at work. I mentioned the bug guy and the mouse evidence discovered by both him and me. I barely told her about my concerns when she said, “It was probably when [our daughter’s name] came over for Thanksgiving. She brought her hamster[Kevin], and he escaped one night. Remember how they couldn’t believe they found Kevin after Kevin was out of his cage for a few hours.” And, yes, I did remember.The present theory that the mouse wasn’t a mouse but a hamster is the preferred one. This does not mean we don’t have a very clean mouse strolling through the various rooms of our home with a creature following him making sure very little evidence is left behind. What I can say for sure is Kevin may look like a hamster, but in the eyes of a bug guy, he is a mouse.

Bananas Over Bananas

As the kids worked their way through breakfast this morning, the last banana was eaten. I mumbled a phrase that included “Sam’s” and “restocking” to appease those who felt cheated of their full banana breakfast quota.

While at Sam’s along with the two bunches of bananas, I had a variety of snack bars, salads, and the ever-necessary package of toilet paper. (Some members of our household just love the stuff.). The self-checkout lane was open. I was happy to forego building a relationship with a cashier. Unfortunately, I had to meet a team of employees floating around helping those who were challenged by the self-scanner. In my case, it was necessary. When I attempted to scan my bananas, the screen displayed a “RETRY” prompt. I attempted to scan both bunches of bananas before the “team” told me, “Someone else had problems with this register earlier. I guess we are going to have to shut it down now.” They continued talking. I heard words like, “cancel transaction” and “so sorry.”, but I was moving on to a new lane by then.

After letting a couple people ahead of me and attempting to jump in quicker moving lanes, I eventually had the opportunity to scan my cart of groceries again. After scanning my proteins, I went after my bananas again. Immediately after scanning one of the bunches, the “RETRY” came up on the screen again. I dropped the scanner into the basket and gave the “team” the evil eye. The team lead punched in her code and circumvented the scanner with the bananas. My question of, “Shouldn’t you check to see if there is a problem with that SKU?” was met with a stare and assurance that it would take care of itself, eventually.

As I was finishing my transaction, the person next to me also paralyzed the self-checkout while scanning bananas. The reassuring team calmed her by saying, “We had two other customers who had the same problem this morning.” I am pretty sure they knew it was me both times, but did they?

Not Living In a Monastery

As I gave a friend a rather complete text of what has happened the past couple of days, he reminded me we don’t live in a monastery. What has happened at our house to make our lives less than tranquil? Hmmm…what could it be?

Could it be the hockey players?

  • It could. One of them knew he was injured, but didn’t know the extent of it. After getting an x-ray yesterday, he found out his hip is fractured. There is more information to gather, but it certainly does keep it from being boring around her.
  • The other hockey player is quiet, and we are never sure what he is plotting. The mere mention of “Cheese Cake Factory” will bring a Door Dash delivery immediately following dinner. And, when he is not eating cheesecake, he is indulging in “hockey-ish” activities.

Maybe it is the exchange students?

  • Between their eating (or not eating), and their social media-ing (they are never NOT doing this). they squeeze in ice skating or other forms of “chilling”.
  • Now that they are at the halfway point, we will observe whether their clothes purchases decrease and whether they pick up an extra suitcase…or two.

What about for my wife and I?

  • My wife is working again after her Christmas vacation. I won’t say it was hard, but she needed 2 Coke Zeroes from Sonic to get her through.
  • I got to talk to the IRS and seethe, as they told me for the second time, the form was completed incorrectly. “We want to help you, but your paperwork is wrong!! And, have you had the booster vaccine? You have not? Then we definitely cannot help you.” So, that is how my day went.

As is often the case when making a blog entry where the subjects have names, it is better to avoid specifics. Assume everything stated above is a sanitized, non-specific version of the truth. If you can’t do that, just picture 6 adults and two teenagers sharing a house where no more than 3 people enjoy the same menu for dinner. And those who don’t like it can’t wait for the meal to be over before grabbing snacks in the pantry and disappearing for the rest of the night.

Sermon Resolution

Today’s sermon reminded me how important it is to have a minimum weekly dose of straight-talk preaching. At times in my spiritual past, I inhaled multiple sermons daily over the internet. Of late, I have either decided I don’t need that much, or I have allowed my worldly priorities to shove the sermons down the list far too many notches.  I need to do better. I need to listen to less Spotify playlist and more Christ-focused sermons.

This may not qualify as a “resolution”, but it certainly should be a STRONG encouragement for me to trend in a more God-centered direction. Wherever Flight #2022 takes us, I want to end the flight, quoting more scripture and reciting less from the news networks. Our “Pilot” doesn’t need a co-pilot. I need to do a better job letting my life reflect that. 

The Shirt Made Me Do It

As I was at Sam’s today buying chicken, I was fighting with the plastic bags you are advised to use when putting the chicken into your cart. The first bag was coaxed into separating, so I could bag the chicken breast. The bag for the thigh was given a great deal of difficulty. After giving up on the first bag, I was presented with an opportunity. The woman walking toward me was not wearing a mask. She was wearing a t-shirt that stated, “Be A Nice Human.”

I thought to myself, “Nice humans would want me to bag my chicken thighs and not be frustrated.” My question to her as she approached was, “Are you a nice human? Could you help me get this bag open?” She may have paused slightly, but she extended her hands to try the “slippy-slidey” technique that I had been using on the bag. She tried to pull some moisture from the meat case to help her fingers better grip the bag. When this failed, she said, “Lick your fingers and you will be able to do it.”

Of course, I could. I thanked her. She told me, “I would have licked my fingers and done it, but it was your bag.” So, whether I had germs or she had germs or whether my licked fingers were covered in salmonella, I now had a bag to deposit the thighs into.

Just another life experience complicated by a post-COVID set of glasses.

Getting A Clean Floor

Our house is heavily used. With our kids out of the house, we have resorted to exchange students and billeting hockey players to maintain an adequate level of chaos within the house. To make sure we are on the same page, we need to agree on the definition of chaos. If you think chaos is something to be avoided and something unworthy of friendship, let me illustrate how piggy-backing chaos can be an advantage. Or, to say another way, we like to schedule our related unscheduled chaoses so they maximize their synergistic potential.

How do we do this? Let me relate three events obviously related, but not immediately noticed.

  1. Yesterday, our exchange students needed to do laundry. They had a very small load, but the items they wanting to have washed were of very high emotional value. I did not ask lots of questions or take particular notice of what was in the washer. My wife, however, decided the load was a little light. She chose to grab some our laundry to add to the mix. In most cases, this would be the end of the story. The clothes would have been clean, and everyone would have given thanks for the wonders of an automatic clothes washer. (We are ungrateful lot. We take nearly everything for granted. I just wanted to see if you were still reading.) When the girls (i.e. the exchange students) got their clothes out of the washer to put on the drying rack (Our previous exchange students were also afraid of the dryer’s hoarding and/or its shrinking qualities. The number of clothes washings greatly exceeds the number of tumbles the dryer dispenses.), they noticed many little pieces of paper all over the clothes. After quickly sending the paper off to a lab and getting a rapid test result, the paper was determined to be facial tissue. The guilty party apologized profusely for forgetting to check her pockets. Many pieces of tissue were scattered on the floor between the laundry room and the drying racks.
  2. As flowers are delivered to our house, the arrangements are enjoyed until they are no longer capable of bringing any more joy. When the flowers have expired, the vases are washed and placed on top of the refrigerator. (With a son working at Teleflora, his discount allowed the vases to grow at a quicker rate more recently.) Prior to yesterday, the top of the refrigerator was thought to be a safe place. Unfortunately, the loud crash we heard after the ice cream was put away last night removed this confidence. After hearing the crash, a quick glance showed big, small and very small pieces of glass spreading out from ground zero. We announced the imminent danger to anyone crazy enough to walk barefoot in the kitchen. My wife jumped into action with the broom and the dust pan. The previously unclaimed bowl of ice cream went into the trash in case some of the glass chose to land there. After 10 minutes of careful cleanup, my wife committed to a more thorough cleaning on the morrow.
  3. Unfortunately, the coordinated attacks on the floor had one plague yet to release. Having finished my coffee creamer the previous day, I opened my new one. Opening and pouring into my coffee cup were the easy part. The difficulty came when I had to place the very full container of Snickers creamer into the refrigerator. As many times as I had done this in the past, the containers on the top shelf of the frig seemed to be a maze I was unable to navigate. As I moved the black mango tea to checkmate, all of the pieces on the checkboard moved to their own positions via the quickest path available. The creamer was vengefully thrown from the board. It fell to the floor where the lid promptly snapped open. As it rolled toward the dining room table, it left a path of coffee-flavoring deliciousness in its wake. After rescuing the remaining half of the creamer, I pulled out the paper towels and had a party.

If it were only tissues scattered over the floor, a broom would have gotten it done. As this is written, the mop has not visited the sticky and glass-shard laden kitchen floor. A broom and mop will need to caress the tiles that cover the kitchen floor. Once that is completed, the full impact of these synchronized events will be appreciated.