Lord, thank You for my sweet mother-in-law, who should have given lessons to other moms-in-law. We’re glad You took her home and ended her suffering, but, OMG, please heal our sad hearts.
I haven’t always been a coffee drinker. As a child, I stole a taste from a grown-up’s cup. Bleah! I vowed I would never, ever, consume such bitter stuff.
At age 13, though, I grew desperate. Every morning when I awakened, my stork-like legs had grown another inch. My feet had grown two.
Common wisdom declared that coffee stunted a person’s growth. Okay, I would choke it down.
Mom left numerous cups of cooled coffee — with five children, she didn’t finish one for 20 years — around the house. I sampled the cups, then held my nose and drained them.
Sure enough, I stopped growing at five feet, nine inches.
During midlife, I swallowed the idea that drinking coffee also would shrink my waistline. Like Mom, I chugged a couple of pots a day (one decaffeinated). The intake didn’t diminish my waistline a single inch. Maybe if I give up decaf, too?
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: If a coffee addict, when and why did you begin your habit?
O Lord, another spectacular sunrise! Amid glorious sherbet-colored clouds, the butter-cake sun shines through dark-chocolate trees … um, sorry, Jesus, dieting is getting to me. But viewing Your generous artistry day after day — OMG, where do we funny little people get off, thinking You aren’t Love?
“Nine out of ten people like chocolate. The tenth person always lies.” —Unknown
In case you didn’t collide with card, candy, and teddy bear displays, I’ll inform you: Valentine’s Day was Monday. Think in terms of a major apology gift. Half-price chocolates save money, but will they impress your lady?
Perhaps I can suggest tips for future reference.
At all costs, avoid the “I-love-you-every-day-why-should-I-give-you-a-gift-now?” defense. Like the adage, “It doesn’t matter who wins or loses,” it contains elements of truth. But you’ll lose, big time. Unless you think sleeping on the couch — or driveway — is fun.
Fortunately, my husband figured this out. He’s come a long way since our first Valentine’s Day, when he gave me a history book. No, I’m not making that up.
After 47 years, though, he’s a master gift giver. Hubby should offer lessons on finding cards that make a wife’s heart sing. However, he faced a common February quandary: I adore chocolate, but I’m dieting. Should he give me only a card?
Some men bypass the obvious solution: flowers. Instead, they buy their ladies lingerie.
Seriously? When women are hating mirrors, are suffering from starvation, and are pushed around by skinny exercise gurus wearing Spandex?
Admittedly, it’s a cruel dilemma — only one of thousands women inflict on men.
Guys should blame marketing geniuses of the late 1800s and early 1900s who married chocolate and Valentine’s Day.
During the 1860s, beverage manufacturer Richard Cadbury discovered the answer to his own dilemma: how to use cocoa butter that remained after processing chocolate drinks. Before his descendants manufactured the eggs associated with his name, Cadbury marketed valentine candies in beautiful boxes he designed himself.
Milton Hershey reinforced the Valentine’s Day-chocolate connection when he began selling tear-dropped chocolate “kisses” named for smoochy sounds chocolate made during processing.
For a time, chocolate equaled milk chocolate. When I, a second grader, received my first Valentine’s Day chocolates from towheaded Paul Henry, I didn’t nitpick about milk chocolate, dark chocolate, bittersweet, or semisweet. Unlike modern connoisseurs, I didn’t debate whether white or ruby chocolate are true chocolate.
Question free candy? Stupid.
Speaking of stupidity, some gourmets have “diversified” chocolate. They’ve invented a chocolate éclair hot dog. Chocolate and black pepper goat cheese truffles. Even chocolate calamari soup.
I told my love, “While I crave both seafood and chocolate, please don’t get creative on me this Valentine’s Day, okay?”
“Since when have I been creative?”
True.
“By the way,” Hubby continued, “why should I give you chocolates, when you’ve only given me cards?”
Touché.
However, he, too, has been avoiding seconds at dinner. Toughening up with weights.
Should I give him the ultimate symbol of my love and concern for his health: broccoli dipped in dark chocolate?
Maybe just a card. …
Tune in February 14, 2023, to see if these old lovers learned anything during their chocolate chat.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What does Valentine’s Day look like at your house?
O Lord, don’t You think going directly from Christmas decorations to Valentine’s Day hearts makes sense? After all, both holidays are rooted in Your love. (And, OMG, maybe You could help Hubby take the hint about chocolates?)
Do you also wish a superhero would swoop down and fly you to a beach where sunshine is the only butt-warmer needed?
My Super Swooper hasn’t appeared. Still, throughout my life, small-time heroes have popped up like crocuses through snow.
My family was staying in a church’s back rooms with no bathing facilities. Mom’s friend shared her old-fashioned bathtub, making the world a less stinky place.
Unknown drivers pulled over 1950s Chevys to give my young father rides to work.
As a preschooler, I pilfered a necklace from Etta, the Church Lady. Mom forced my confession before Etta and God. Both pardoned me. Later, Etta gave me a necklace of my very own.
A preacher gave me a Hershey bar and told me I could sing.
Serious hero points go to children’s education leaders who kept straight faces and saved mine. Assured any scripture memorization qualified for a prize, I recited Song of Solomon passages. Unknown to me, they weren’t about palm trees and goats.
As a teen driver, I smashed a pastor’s car, yet he maintained his religion.
At my first job, I dumped salads with French dressing on a lady wearing a white suit. She waved off my tearful apology: “No problem. I have six kids.”
A college student, I worked summer nights in a rough Western town. The cook drank coffee out front, wearing a snarl no cowboy challenged. “If anybody hassles you, I’ll break ’em in two.”
Less menacing, a couple with small children picked up my boyfriend and I for church every week.
Despite my future in-laws’ visions of a marital Titanic, they supported our wedding during medical school.
Other small-time heroes zoomed in:
An unemployed couple slid 10 dollars under our door.
A child brightened my tough workday by saying I was pretty.
A stranger, concerned about my pregnancy, pushed my shopping cart and unloaded groceries.
A snowplow operator cleared our driveway, with homemade bread for payment.
I’d asked a Burger King counterperson to reheat cold fries. Upon hearing I’d been dieting and hoped to enjoy a treat, she handed me smoking-hot replacements.
A young college student carried this old adult student’s backpack up three flights of stairs.
A grouchy, nonfiction editor didn’t throw me out for mistakenly pitching fiction to her at 8:00 a.m. She ultimately published several of my pieces.
A writing friend grabbed me before I entered an important meeting wearing a Chiquita banana sticker on my power-suited butt.
All these and more have rescued me. I can’t count how many times my family has saved me.
Who needs Super Swooper, anyway?
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Who are your small-time heroes?
O Lord, You know I adore my grandchildren. Hence, I’ve also learned to enjoy granddogs and grandcats. But OMG, it took me awhile before I petted the grandrats.
When I last experienced grandchild deprivation, I suffered symptoms involving credit cards and Easter outfits for everyone through 2029. So, Grandpa cheered our scheduled grandkid time.
The six- and eight-year-olds slept in, and so did we. Whatever Mom fed them, I wished I’d had it when she was a kid.
Grandpa played Monopoly with the older boy, a self-confessed math genius. I listened to piano “concerts” by Little Brother, a grandma-confessed musical genius. Grandpa, who mortgaged all his deeds, defeated the fiscally responsible eight-year-old.
Later, Hubby asked me, “Am I a bad grandpa for beating my grandson?”
“Absolutely.” I crossed my arms. “Plus, think of the lesson you taught: go into debt, and you’ll win.”
“Just teaching him the American way.”
Before Grandpa taught more patriotic principles, I suggested we visit a nearby children’s museum.
Our grandsons climbed and slithered through the museum’s kid-size “ant maze.”
“This will wear them out,” I said smugly.
Grandpa high-fived me. We decided to put the museum in our will.
The elder grandson chose me, an obvious pushover, to supervise his further exploration. The younger tugged Hubby to a huge semi.
He perched behind the steering wheel. “When I grow up, I wanta drive a truck like this!”
I fled the vision of him loose on the interstate. The eight-year-old and I played games with giant checkers. (Grandma proved the loser he’d hoped for.) We banged on pipes, triangles, and tambourines at the music-making exhibit. I offered to dance to his newest composition, but he nixed that idea.
Instead, I sat while he investigated the miniature grocery store. I nearly dozed off — until I saw him wiggling a fake salami through the window of a play schoolhouse where an earnest little teacher was holding class.
I proposed, “Want to return to the ant maze?”
“Yeah!” He zipped to the top. “Come in, Grandma!”
“I’d get stuck. The Jaws of Life would have to cut me out.”
“Awesome!”
Thankfully, his brother interrupted, my panting hubby behind him. “Whoever coined the word ‘babysit’?” he complained.
In the maze, the hunter and hunted clashed about who should be dead.
I diverted their attention to a cage containing an enormous, fake reptile: “Doesn’t he look real?”
The boys pressed noses against the glass.
The “fake” snake raised its head.
I fainted dead away.
I awoke to “Cool, Grandma. Do it again!”
Hubby hauled me up. “Grandpa’s back can’t take it.”
Riding home, our grandsons’ subdued state confirmed that baths, a storybook and prayer would usher them to Dreamland. Instead, they exploded from the car like twin firecrackers.
Would we survive the night? Or the next day, when the next batch of grandkids arrived?
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Who wears out whom at your house?