Yesterday Jim declared he was taking a sick day, so he could try and get a doctor’s appointment and some medication for his raging cough. D took Jim’s car to work, and so I needed Jim to drive me to the salon. I remembered at the last minute that my gas tank was almost empty, so we absolutely had to stop, even though it was going to make me late for my shift. Jim noticed, while pumping the gas, that my tires were low enough that neglecting to fill them with air would be a safety hazard. Bad news when you want to get to work, but the alternative wasn’t…
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Like Mother, Like Son: A Mother’s Day Story About Similarities…And Vitamins.
First, a “Non-disclosure Disclosure”: I am not being compensated in any way by the brands mentioned in this post (I WISH). The mention of their names is important to the flow of my story. Thanks for your time and attention. J and I stopped at the grocery store last night on the way home from a post-lacrosse game dinner out with Jim, who drove separately. We were walking through the health and beauty section when J disappeared into the next aisle over. Eventually I made my way over to him, just in time to see him place a hand on a bottle of Flintstone’s Sour Gummies vitamins. “What do you…
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Not So Sweet.
One of the most popular candy categories in this house is Easter candy. (It’s not just for Christians, you know!) Right around February 15, when the Easter candy typically appears in stores–that’s about two weeks before the Christmas ornaments appear, right?–the four of us tend to get a little giddy. We love Cadbury eggs (creme for me and J, caramel for Jim and D, usually), Reeses peanut butter eggs, and Cadbury mini eggs, and we usually have at least one of those varieties in the house at any given time, through Easter. I have even been known to buy a few extra bags and hide them deep in the back…
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Alright, Who Ate My Feed??
Just a quick note to those of you who read Suburban Scrawl using Google Reader or any other feed reader: My sister brought it to my attention (thank you!) that the video I embedded near the end of yesterday’s post, the thing I referred to as “one of the funniest things I’ve ever created”, didn’t show up in the feed at all, meaning that if you read my post and didn’t click through to the blog page itself, you were probably thinking, “Wow, funniest thing ever, huh? Too bad she didn’t want to share it.” Rest assured, I did. So if you missed it, readers of my feed, please click…
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In The Major Understatement Of The Year, I’ll Call This Troubling.
Yesterday afternoon, the younger boy came home from school and as I was performing my daily inquiry into how his day went, he was moving away from me slowly, getting himself towards the stairs that lead up to our bedrooms. He faced me the entire time, and after a moment I realized he was doing his best to politely get away. I thought he had to use the bathroom, since he just got home. He said, “Hang on, I’ll be right back!” I heard him trying to locate something in his room before running back downstairs, a printed piece of paper shaped like a big bookmark held tightly in his…
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A Letter To The Guy Who Watched My Zumba Class This Morning
Dear Guy, It really ticked me off this morning when I arrived for my Zumba class to see you, walking up to the studio with your wife/girlfriend/sister/whatever and then pulling up a chair right next to the studio door. It was highly unusual, to say the least, that you didn’t just drop her off and then leave. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are a really nice guy who just cares about the interests of your wife/girlfriend/sister/whatever and decided to accompany her since you had nothing else to do for that hour. I’m not suggesting that you had sleazy motives at all,…
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An Open Letter To Customer Service Representatives
Dear Customer Service Representatives (specifically those of you who manage customer calls for your company’s 800 number), I understand that you field all kinds of calls from all kinds of people in all different kinds of moods every day, and I know that you have a tough job. However, when I have to explain my problem five times in order for you to get to a place where you stop interrupting me to offer solutions that have nothing to do with my needs because you didn’t let me finish, it’s annoying. It’s also annoying (to say the least) when, in response to one of my complaints about some of your…
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The Golden Rule Seems Broken.
I’ve been wondering about something I hope you can shed some light on for me. At what point in the last, say, forty or fifty years, did it become the norm for Americans to stop giving others the benefit of the doubt or even the simple courtesy of not jumping to conclusions in everyday situations? The Golden Rule seems broken to me. Let me try to explain where I’m coming from. Two weeks ago, I went to IKEA with the older boy, to get one more thing for his dorm room. One thing. Literally. And so we went to the self-checkout registers.** There were three registers open and in use,…
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So These Four Jews Go To Germany…
While on our wonderful family vacation in Germany, we had three Jewish experiences (two were planned; one was not) which I thought deserved mention in their own post. We first visited the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, which is completely different from saying that we visited Dachau. When the four of us were leaving Kat and Holger’s house to make the visit there, they made sure to tell us that though the area is known for this horrible piece of the Holocaust, the town of Dachau is a lovely place and we should make sure to visit the Altstadt there, since we’d be in the area. (Check out the website…
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Apparently I Should Be Eating More Marshmallows.
You might be surprised at what I have chosen to write about today. On second thought, you might not. In spite of the castles, the Alps, the colorful town squares in the Altstadts of Bavaria, and all of the other local flavor we experienced, what I’ve decided to tell you about first are… THE GROCERY STORES. Yes, the grocery stores. I loved going to the grocery stores in Germany. Let me back up a bit. Some of you new readers may not know the extent of my foreign fetish: you can read about why foreigners make me giddy by clicking here. Anyway, I let Kat know ahead of time that…