Medicated Musings

I've been gone the last two days with Pinkalicious to Sickieville. It's been a journey that has been super complicated by having an infant; well, complicated for someone for whom balancing two kids is new. I made it through with the help of mass antibiotics, a sweet husband who stayed home to shield our son from the diseased germs, and sweet friends who prayed for us and brought dinner the last two nights. I am more than blessed!! But as not much as happened I thought I'd note a few of the thoughts I've had in my hours of medicated solitude.

Scarlet Fever - The diagnosis from our doctors. Pinkalicious and I both have it. What year is this? 1879? I swear, any minute Anne Shirley is going to be headed to my house (Better put Anne of Green Gables on your list if you didn't catch that reference. It's okay to watch the movie. Give me a call and we can watch it together!). For reals, it sounds like something that should have gone out with the plague. But no. It rests in our throats in 2010.

Jolly Ranchers - I love Jolly Ranchers and rarely have them. That's probably why they hold such distinctive memories for me of friends' baseball games (What, me play? You've got to be kidding!) and summers of bike riding with Kel. But where did the name "Jolly Rancher" come from? I can't think of any reason why. My best guess is that these candies are used in 12-step programs to cure cowboys of their chewing tobacco habits, thus producing jolly ranchers.

Spoons - I have six kinds of spoon in my drawers. The first is the regular spoon. I don't know the technical term. It's smaller than the soup spoon (spoon #2). Deciding whether to use the regular spoon or the soup spoon usually depends only on what I'm planning to eat with it. Soup obviously requires the soup spoon. Ice cream... it depends on how much I have in the bowl. If I've mounded it in, then the soup spoon. If I have a scoop or two (yes, for me, two scoops is not a mound), then the regular so that I can savor it for longer. There's the iced tea spoon. I have four of these and only use them for fishing the remnants out of jars, most particularly spaghetti sauce. These spoons are invaluable for this sole purpose. There are also the serving spoons, slotted and unslotted, the newer additions: baby spoons, and lastly, the grapefruit spoons. These spoons are a must for eating grapefruit. I once had to eat grapefruit with a regular spoon and it was a total bust. But in acquiring grapefruit spoons for myself, I somehow ended up with eight of them. Eight?! This does give me the opportunity in indulging in several grapefruits between dishwasher loads, but come on, eight? I'll tell you, I'm thinking a grapefruit party is on the horizon, just to make use of these puppies.

Edumacated - I think I quote movies and TV shows the way people are supposed to quote books. Isn't that why everyone has to read "Hamlet" and The Great Gatsby and The Scarlet Letter and Great Expectations, so that we can read other works of literature and be able to understand the references (Because you can hardly read two books on the New York Times Best Sellers list without some reference to Mrs. Haversham!)? If I were to construct a must-watch list, it would have to include "Seinfeld," "The Office," "Arrested Development," and "I Love Lucy." I can't get through the day without a quote from at least one of these and, might I add, many more people know who Ethel Mertz is than Hester Prynne. However, you won't get the joke about the Gatsby Swing Top in "Seinfeld" if you haven't taken American Literature.

You have just taken a peek into my hazed days. I'll pray for your sanity.