January 29, 2010...9:30 am

Silly Reindeer Games

Jump to Comments

I didn’t really want to tell this story. But this is Ralph’s Favorite Stories week at Snoodlings and I’d already vetoed one of his choices. Plus, I told Carpoolqueen I’d tell this story as a sign of solidarity and support for the tough choice she had to make at her dental appointment yesterday.

A couple of weeks ago, I was upstairs getting ready for the day when I remembered that the garbage collectors would be coming very soon to pick up our trash. Simultaneously I remembered that K and I had cleaned out my minivan the previous evening and since then, I hadn’t seen the Starbucks gift card that had been sitting in my van’s console. These two facts go together because my husband employs the scoop method of household maintenance. When he was single and did his own laundry, he’d scoop up a pile of dirty clothes and throw them in the washing machine, regardless of the colors or make of the clothing. When I married him, he didn’t have any white clothing, only khaki. When he is dealing with paper clutter and he sees that the paper on top is trash, he is likely to scoop up the whole pile and throw it away. He threw away three debit cards in the first three months that we were married. I’m not judging him. He is probably the only reason we haven’t been featured in an episode of “Hoarders”…..yet.

So as I’m remembering that the trash guys are coming I get a mental image of K scooping up trash from the car and wondered if my Starbucks card had mistakenly found its way into the scoop. I ran downstairs in my hot pink fuzzy pajama pants, threw on the red polar fleece I had hanging in the coat closet, and hurried to the dumpsters in the back yard. It was a Starbucks gift card! Plastic gold!

I live on a military base. My neighbors and I share a long driveway behind our houses so my backyard opens into the backyards of several other families. As I was digging through our trash, I became uncomfortably aware that I was not alone in the back common area. Maintenance crews were working on a water main two doors down from me. It was mid-morning and the neighborhood was bustling with activity.  And I was rummaging through the trash can wearing crazy people clothes…and a headband.

I had forgotten all about the headband.

My daughter has a headband addiction. She probably has 75 headbands that she keeps scattered throughout our house.  I can almost always find one in my bathroom and sometimes I’ll slip one on while I’m putting on my makeup to keep my hair out of my face. I just grab the closest headband I can find and the one I’d found that morning just happened to be a Christmas one. But not just any Christmas headband. No, this is the headband I was wearing that morning:

In broad daylight.

With mismatched pajamas.

While I dug through the garbage.

And I didn’t find the gift card.

So, google me. Maybe someone was quick enough to take a cellphone picture and post it in his or her blog. Entertaining the neighbors….Just another service I’m happy to provide for my neighborhood.

And thus concludes Ralph’s Favorite Stories week.  It’s been real, it’s been fun, but it hasn’t been real fun. Just so that no one can say I didn’t write anything of substance all week, I’m posting the chicken and dumplings recipe that I was talking about on Twitter last night. It’s real, it’s good and it’s really good. I’ll also be back at some point this weekend with another book review and an update on my Bible reading plan. Plan your schedule accordingly. Until then, enjoy your Friday!

22 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

22 Comments


Leave a Reply