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Trivial doesn’t BEGIN to describe The Great Sponge Debate

Obligatory Film Critique:

• The villain in Gaslight is the time-traveling love child of Ricardo Montalban and Michael Caine. Really. Watch it, see if I’m not right.
• I was actually half out of my seat in preparation for walking out of The Mirror Has Two Faces before Todd convinced me to stay another ten minutes. He was right; the moral of the story wasn’t at all the one I was dreading. Go see it.

Thursday morning we woke up and dragged ourselves down to the convenience store for some coffee because we were out of coffee filters. For two people so snotty about coffee we’re drinking an awful lot of it out of paper cups these days. The convenience store was remodeled about two weeks ago, so when we’re there I tend to get sidetracked, staring at the walls and floors and figuring out in my head what’s been changed. Which I’m sure looks moronic (”Bert, what in the world is that strange woman in the huge coat doing? Do you think we should point her out to the clerk? She might be dangerous.”) but is actually fascinating from a marketing/advertising point of view. For example: in order to get to the coffee section you now have to walk from one end of the store to the other and back again, whereas before you barely had to walk in the store at all for coffee. This means, of course, that your hungry early-morning commuter mind will hopefully see ten different things you can’t do without on the way to the coffee and ten more on the way back, which means higher sales for the store. On the other hand, it might have made more sense space-wise to move the coffee section. I have a great time speculating in any case.

I make a bizarre sight when I go anywhere. The Napoleon coat is covered in cat hair (I’ve started to call it my mohair Napoleon coat, tee hee) and in the summer I wear my big clompy hiking boots, in the winter my tiny boys-size-6 tennis shoes. One of the boots has a big hole in it, which I forget every once in awhile and wear in the rain or snow and then do a vaudevillian step-in-a-puddle howl-with-surprise jump-around-cursing thing. People tend to look guarded when they’re around me, as if I’m going to start singing a selection from The Sound of Music and then follow them home. Walking around with Kitey garners even sillier reactions. So the family on the other side of the convenience store door were looking at me strangely anyway as I walked up and I thought I heard Todd say, “Watch out, they’re going to open the door,” (what he actually said was something along the lines of, “Shall we go to the Indian restaurant lunch buffet next?” so you can see how easily the two are confused…ahem.) and I backed up really quickly, right into Todd who had to juggle the hot coffee he was holding so that he wouldn’t drop it, and the family on the other side ended up sidling in looking highly nervous, poor things.

We parked by the side of a river and drank coffee and read the paper while we decided which movie we wanted to see. When we were finally awake enough we drove down to the Indian restaurant, we were the only people there, and we started in on the buffet. About ten minutes later a very sweet looking couple walked in and sat down, they looked dressed up and I assumed they were on their way to the family thanksgiving dinner somewhere and had stopped at the Indian restaurant for lunch. They walked over to the buffet table, looking unsure, and chose a few different dishes and breads and went back to their table. The waiter came over to fill their water glasses and the woman said, “Hi! We were so glad to find out that you were open on thanksgiving; we’re vegetarians and don’t really fit into the family dinners, so we thought we’d treat ourselves here.” The waiter smiled and nodded and she went on. “The channa masala is wonderful today!” The waiter smiled and nodded. “It tastes different this time, is there some different spice in it?” The waiter looked blank. “Well,” she said, “In any case, it’s delicious. I just love the channa masala here.” The waiter didn’t have the heart to tell her that channa masala wasn’t one of the dishes in the buffet. Traigic.

I can sympathise with her; there’s something about being at an Indian restaurant and seeing how boorish people can be that makes me want to do a little dance complete with a sign that says, “I’m Not Like That, Honest”.

So then this Butch and Candyesque couple walks in and looks around, and it’s obvious that this was the only restaurant they could find that was open and Todd and I start eating faster because we can see that they’re going to start being highly obnoxious any minute now. There are only two vaguely American items in the buffet: lettuce and tomato salad, and chicken wing appetizers. Todd jokes that the minute Butch and Candy walked in the manager said to make more chicken wings, and we giggle when in fact the waiter does bring out more chicken wings. They talk very loudly to the waiter as if the fact that English is his second language has made him partially deaf as well. Candy gets up and wanders around the buffet and finally puts a tiny amount of salad on her plate and goes back to sit down. Butch goes over to the buffet and sees the chicken wings, his eyes light up, he grabs one with his hand, and starts eating it right there. Todd practically falls off his chair laughing. We’re standing up to leave when Candy asks the waiter, “Don’t you have any salad dressing?” and we have to get out of there fast before we make a spectacle of ourselves.

When we got home Todd had a headache, so he took some Advil and got under the covers to try to feel better. I came over to keep him company and we ended up sleeping the rest of the day away. In fact, that’s mostly how we spent the four day weekend, sleeping or reading. Todd went to the library on Friday while I was working on the computer and came back with Stephen King’s newest novel, Desperation. I got hooked and finished it yesterday. The nicest thing I have to say is that he seems to have gone to Ellipses Users Anonymous and has gotten control over his addiction; otherwise it wasn’t worth the time I spent on it.

Sunday we were both grumpy and out of sorts, nothing seemed interesting or fun and we were both going around with scowls on our faces. All of which resulted in us taking our boredom out on each other and crabbing about, I kid you not, whether it ruins a sponge when you wash an oily pot with it, until we both burst into tears. When we disagree about something we’ve gotten quite adept at talking it out and seeing the humor in it, so this was the first time we’d gotten this crabby since January. Todd was in the shower at the time so we must have made quite a silly picture, Todd sitting in the tub and me sitting on the side of the tub, holding each other and sobbing and apologizing for being creeps. No, the shower wasn’t still on, we’re not that strange. When we’d recovered we were talking about it and laughed when we realized that the things we were saying: “It made me feel awful when you said X,” and “I was thinking Y when that happened,” were the sorts of things people say to their best friend after they’ve had an argument with their sweetie. Handy to have both in one person, cuts down on phone bills.

We’ve had bad luck lately with asking for information. For example: at the Boston Science Museum we asked what time it was at the information desk; the clerk pointed to the big huge can’t-miss-it digital clock above her head. Later we asked a different clerk where to pay for parking, and he told us to pay at the Pay For Parking desk. So yesterday when we were at the grocery store buying ingredients so Todd could make vegetarian jambalaya and couldn’t find the garlic we were leery of asking. We figured asking would result in answers like, “Didn’t you see the three foot by four foot neon sign saying Garlic Here?” Finally, after seeing a plastic bin that may or may not have held garlic at one time we bit the bullet and found someone to ask. She came with us over to the produce section, pointed at the empty bin and said, “Nope, no garlic left,” which was a relief. Todd made the jambalaya when we got home. I could quite happily eat it every day for the rest of all eternity.

From the silliness file:

Todd: I was going to tell you about the white water rafting company in Canada but now I can’t remember if I’ve already told you a million times.
Sage: That’s okay, if I know the words already I’ll just sing along.
Todd: Ha ha, very funny. Anyway, there’s this white water rafting company in Quebec where they take you to the river in a helicopter, drop you off, and you make your way back to civilization by your wits in your raft.
Sage: (singing the Camptown Races chorus) Doo dah, doo dah…

Fruitcakes Celebrating Holidays

that’s why it’s called a one-person papasan, fools