Hang it all

Look, these were all that were left at the store.

No two of them were joined, but the hanging thingy still seemed like the logical place to put them.

So no fair saying ...

Keith, Ya Goof!

Hey! Everybody look in your drawers

Happy Father's Day, Mr. Emmett Eldred. Thanks for forwarding this email from Wally V.

Isn't this crazy? I had no idea!
(now I need to go look!)

I've been using aluminum foil for more years than I care to remember. Great stuff, but sometimes it can be a pain. You know, like when you are in the middle of doing something and you try to pull some foil out and the roll comes out of the box. Then you have to put the roll back in the box and start over. The darn roll always comes out at the wrong time.

Well, I would like to share this with you. Yesterday I went to throw out an empty Reynolds foil box and for some reason I turned it and looked at the end of the box. And written on the end it said, "Press here to lock end". Right there on the end of the box is a tab to lock the roll in place. How long has this little locking tab been there? I then looked at a generic brand of aluminum foil and it had one, too. I then looked at a box of Saran wrap and it had one too! I can't count the number of times the Saran wrap roll has jumped out when I was trying to cover something up.

I'm sharing this with my friends that did not know this. I hope I'm not the only person that didn't know about this.

I bet I know what you're going to do after reading this.....!!!

Thanks, Wally! And to each of us who's never made a close examination of a wrap box, I say: Ya Goof!

This side down

My family had to be taught the truth about the frozen pot pie, which is ...

After you heat it, you can take it out of the pan.

When my brother and sisters were growing up, we had frozen pot pies regularly. I think we favored Swanson. They only came in aluminum pans back then, and you had to bake them for dozens and dozens of minutes. I know, I know—the horror.

Anyway, it never occurred to any of us—two parents, two girls, two boys—to take a hot pot pie out of its pan, even though you always lost a little of the crust to those blasted aluminum ridges. Not knowing any better, we were eat-it-right-out-of-the-pan people.

The light bulb switched on for the entire family at once, during one memorable dinner. It was the doing of Curt Koonz—now my brother-in-law, then the boyfriend of my sister, Tina—who was eating with us. When the hot pot pies came to the table, he immediately turned his upside down onto his plate. Plud!

The rest of us stared at him—six pairs of eyes as big as pot pie pans. You could cut the enlightment with a knife. We had always used plates with pot pies only to protect the table—as big coasters, if you will.

Curt froze. "What?" he said.

Then came the sound of a half-dozen flippings. Plud! Plud! Plud! Plud! Plud! Plud!

I haven't eaten a pot pie from the pan since.

And I have five people in mind besides myself right now when I say: YaGoof!

P.S. I had a brain-freeze while writing this. Emmett had to help me with the word for the tight little folds that run up the sides of an aluminum pie pan. Hint: Six letters. Keith, YaGoof!

Just call me the boss of sauce loss

Forgive the ugly picture below. I'm trying to impart an important reminder:

Trying to save time sometimes costs you far more time than you'd ever save.

In this case, I was attempting to save the precious seconds lost in extracting barbecue sauce from a bottle that was getting low. I stored the bottle upside-down in one of the shelves in the fridge door. I've always gotten a kick out of bottles made to be stored upside down. The idea is great and simple. Simply great!

Note: My big sister and her husband have complained to me that ketchup spurts or even explodes from a bottle designed for upside-down storage, but I've never had that happen. Maybe it's due to higher air pressure in their house. Completely plausible, given how this sister can talk. Oops, did I type that out loud?

Anyway, the barbecue sauce bottle that I stored for speedy use wasn't made to be stored upside-down, but it would have done the job just fine IF I'd made sure that the cap was on tight.

Don't get ahead of me now. Let a couple beats go by to denote that two weeks passed before I next reached for that particular bottle.

That's when I found that all of the sauce had flowed out of the bottle through the loosened cap and onto the bottle's shelf ... and the shelf below that ... and the shelf below that. Like so:

The picture doesn't show the bottles that had been stored in that column of space. I took them to the sink to scrub off their tangy, sticky covering.

All I can say is: Keith ...

Two bagger

Emmett did a good job yesterday evening getting ready for his field trip today. I didn't see this directly, because I went to bed before he and Ethan and Janet did, but there was evidence when I came down this morning: I found Emmett's trip shirt on the kitchen table and his lunch all packed in the fridge, except for a small bag of chips on the counter.

On the counter, there was also a matching bag of chips that I figured was for Ethan. Every parent of multiple kids knows the importance of being equitable. This wanes only a little when kids enter double digits in age, so I assumed that Janet just snagged the second bag for Ethan when she got Emmett's.

But no. When Emmett was gathering up his stuff for us to meet the trip bus at 5:45, he grabbed both bags of chips.

"Both bags?" I said.

"Well, there are two bus rides," Emmett said. "There and back."

I rolled my eyes but let it go. Once in a while, ya gotta let a kid kick back and overeat.

Still ... Emmett, Ya Goof!

Some Chex off the ol' block

It's 24 night. Janet and I are watching the show with our friends Ames and Kenny.

We have some Chex Mix left over from a party on Saturday. I asked Emmett to carry a small plate of the Mix from the kitchen to Kenny in the living room. Along the way, Emmett tipped the plate, so he lost some of the contents. Chex Mix is slippery stuff.

I grumbled a little and helped Emmett whisk-broom the stuff up.

A few minutes later, placing my own Chex Mix to the side, I spilled a bunch, too.

What is that line about the family that goofs together?

Poor guy wasn't left holding the bag

Be happy for Jason Carruthers. His wife, Kristie, owes him big-time.

Kristie works in the same area that I do. Above, you see her holding Jason's insulated lunch bag, which she borrowed yesterday when Jason was off work. This lunch bag is a vital piece of equipment for Jason, who travels all day as a cable technician and can't stop off for food.

Kristie assured Jason that she would bring the bag home. But she forgot. So out there somewhere is a ticked-off cable tech lugging who knows what—a pillow case lined with newspapers or something. Just hope that he's not servicing your account today.

Kristie, Ya Goof!

P.S. I've mistyped Kristie's name so many times in email that I finally just decided to go with it and call her "Krisite" all the time. Keith, Ya Goof!

Et tu, Ragu?

We've recently discovered baked potatoes. Well, re-discovered. A recent batch was so good that we cooked up four more yesterday, to accompany our Easter ham.

"Needs salsa," Ethan said. He fished in the fridge, pulled out a jar and doused his spud.

Focused on our own potatoes, none of us looked Ethan's way for a few moments. Until I thought I'd like some salsa myself and reached for Ethan's jar of ... spaghetti sauce?

Ethan's explanation: "The jars look exactly the same!" To his credit, he shrugged and took a bite of the gourmet dish we'll call Patata bollente con la salsa di spaghetti fredda.

Still ... Ethan, Ya Goof!

Generosity. With holes?

Some Dunkin Donuts appeared at work on Wednesday. At the end of the day, there were still three in the box. At the end of my day, the box was in my van.

But I forgot to bring it in, and I didn't discover that until Thursday afternoon. But hey, temperatures are freezing these days. So they were preserved, right.

In the evening, I was on my way to pick up Emmett from a rehearsal at the Junior High play (of the Elementary play—confusing, I know) and passed the YMCA. Something possessed me—kindness? whimsy? need of a blogging topic?—to stop and offer the doughnuts to my friend who works the front desk, Sam(antha).

"Want some free doughnuts, Sammy?"

"From where?"

"From work," I said. "I got them today." By today, of course, I meant yesterday. But I made up for that with a forthcoming comment. "They're not exactly super-fresh, but hey."

"Well, uh, thanks."

I have to imagine that the doughnuts made their way between the jaws of the teenage boys hanging around in the lobby. They had made their interest known when they spotted my orange-and-maroon offering with exclamations of "Oooooooh."

But say that Sam did munch one. And it was stale.

Do I net out positive because of the surprise? Or net negative because I had (sort of) presented her with pastries on the slippery slope to being trash?

How do I get myself into these situations, anyway?

Keith, Ya Goof!

Take a bite out of charity

Ironically, the apparently-huge hunks of goodness above are called Little Brownies.

They're examples of the newest model of Girl Scout Cookie. And they're sugar-free! I ordered some through a friend, Dan.

Then I got to thinking: beginner Girl Scouts are called Brownies. They sell the cookies, too. So Brownies will be selling Brownies. For other people to eat.

Isn't that just a bit disturbing? Cannibalisitic? Or at least cookie-balistic?

Or am I over-thinking this and do I just need to someone to say: Keith, Ya Goof!

Tonight's special: Unforgotten Chicken

I got home late this evening. Janet and Emmett were eating this noodle stuff in the living room, engrossed in a TV show. I got some from the pan on the stove; good stuff. When I was putting my dish back, I noticed that the oven was on. I looked inside, and there was some chicken baking.

The oven timer wasn't on, so my instant assessment was that Janet had forgotten about the chicken, and it was most likely overcooked. I turned off the oven and asked Janet about it.

"Oh, Ethan wanted that. I don't think it's done yet."

I took a closer look at the chicken, and indeed it wasn't cooked yet. Okay, fine, so I had misread the situation.

About twenty minutes later, I realized that I hadn't turned the oven back on.

Sorry, Ethan!

And, I might add: Keith, Ya Goof!

The grill of it all

Mmm. Tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. That's what I was in the mood to make for dinner last night. Three orders coming up (Janet was working late at the library and would have to fend for herself).

I had only gotten as far as getting out the cheese and bread and heating up the pan and applying some cooking spray when Emmett called to get picked up from the church. Ethan was in the kitchen.

"Keep going," I said, gesturing to the stove.

"But, but ..." This translates as: "I don't know how to make grilled cheese sandwiches." We're talking a fourteen-year-old honor student here, so I just kept moving toward the door.

"Put on the bread and keep going," I said. "It's not rocket science."

When Emmett and I got back about seven minutes later, two pieces of bread were indeed on the grill. Side by side. No cheese on top of either piece of bread. Thankfully, the stove burner had been on low, so the bread wasn't burned. Ethan was still in the kitchen, reading the sports pages.

I made a sound that I don't know how to spell. Sort of a release of breath from inside the throat. This translates as: "Why in tarnation aren't these sandwiches farther along?"

In response, Ethan said: "You just said to put on the bread."

"'And keep going,'" I said, quoting myself from earlier.

Ethan threw up his hands. "Well." This translates as: "I told you I didn't know how to make grilled cheese sandwiches."

Then ensued a conversation about being able to deduce how to make a grilled cheese sandwich simply from having eaten them with regularity. But I don't have the strength to transcribe it.

Ethan, Ya Goof!