Weekend Update

These were the first sights my groggy little eyes beheld today. Henry must have made a detour to the kitchen before coming to rouse me with his usual morning delightsomeness.

And our first words:

Me: "Good morning, Mister Will-umms! Whacha doin'?"

Henry: "Havin' Pea-nit budder."

S i m p l e A s T h a t !
Henry's demonstrating quite a capacity for self-reliance lately. He knows how to help himself to tortilla chips and cold cereal, and at least once during every day, he brings me a can of beans from the pantry, (pinto or refried,) and the can opener, and says with evident pride, "Oh look, mom! It's beans! Le'ss make 'em fer dinner!"

And what he's unable to secure with his own brawn and wit, he could certainly schmooze a nice, soft-hearted woman for. When I get dressed in anything fancier than yoga pants and a T-shirt, he gives me a scrutinizing once over and exclaims, "Oh, mom! Dat's cute, mom! You look great!" Or, "Oh mom! I like dat pants!" I get congratulated and celebrated for many a menial task. The other morning I was blending up eggs and flour to make German Pancakes for breakfast and as soon as I turned the blender on, he said, "Oh mom, goo' job, mom! Dat's gre-e-a-a-a-t!" I wish you coud hear his little voice say these things...that's what makes it all so cute, it just oozes with wonder and cheer. You might think he does it for the fruit snacks that I am inclined to dole out more generously after such flattery, but I think, I know that Henry pays me those compliments out of the genuine goodness of his 14 Carat Gold Heart.

However! There's a little spot on that golden heart that is slightly tarnished by a wiley, mischevious inclination. As I mentioned in Friday's post, we have to be very careful about what we say because his cheerful little voice repeats most everything right back to us. Last night on our walk, for example, at one point the air around us filled with such putrid stench that Nate made the very civil and refined observation that, "Oh my gosh! It smells like a cow's butt!" And Henry said right back, "it mae-ow like cow butt!" I think he knows full well when he says something crude because those comments are always followed by from-the-gut laughs and several, increasingly louder repeats of the unsophisticated utterance.

We had a good laugh over Sushi on Friday night when the waitress brought four little dishes of pickled cucumbers to the table and our friend, Dan, dipped each of his fingertips into the cucumbers. Nate looked at him with perplexity plastered over his face and asked, "What are you doing, man?"

Dan said, "I think those are to dip your hands into...you know, just kind of to freshen up, so they smell good." And he was dead serious. We finally convinced him (well, it didn't take much convinving,) that the hot, rolled up cloths were for hand freshening and that the cucumbers were in fact to eat.

Etiquette faux pas aside, we had a lovely time...though I do wish I could like sushi. It seems like sort of a chichi (pronounced: she-she), uppity food to like, and I just don't. It's not the fish part, it's the raw part, although I'm similarly squeamish about calamari and caviar. Unsophisticated, I know. I just don't like picking little black somethings out of my teeth an hour after the meal and realizing that they're fish eggs. Nate thinks I'm prissy, unwilling to explore the unfamiliar...but I always taste everything and am gracious about it, I just don't enjoy it. And to belabor this issue just a bit more, it's not the unfamiliar part that deters me, 'cause there ain't nothin' more familiar than beef and I don't fancy that much these days either.

Sometimes Nate and I just have little differences of opinion...skirmishes, if you will. Like last night when we were waiting for our sheets to dry...and I made a comment about how our dryer has been taking unusually long lately. Nate popped up like a singed cat, asking, "Well, how long has it been since you cleaned out the lint trap?" My stomach = sinking! "I hardly ever use the dryer, sweetie...it can't be that full." Unable to remember the last time I cleaned the trap, as we power-walked to the laundry room together, I was uttering silent prayers to the lint gods, hoping against hope that they'd show me a miracle and empty that trap. Nate was saying really encouraging and kind things, like, "I'm betting there's at least in inch of lint piled up in there." Alas! There are no lint gods. And Nate was right. There was like a hamburger of smooshed lint stuck to the trap...rows of different colored fibers from the different loads that had been dried...and a BIG thick patty of feathers in the middle from that one time when I dried our down comforter. Oops! I got a big schpiel about how if the motor on our dryer burns up, I'll have to buy a new one from my "fun fund" and how if I don't take care of our things we're not going to ever be able to have nice things...and do you know what I did? I laughed. And laughed. I could not help myself. It was the most inopportune moment for laughter, but I could not hold it back. And finally after several stubborn minutes with tightly pursed lips...Nate laughed too because he is the KING of inopportune laughter. (snicker, snicker, chortle...) "What? You fell down four flights of stairs and broke both of your legs? (ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!) And your pelvis? (...Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!) Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that....(hee-hee-hee-hee-ha-ha-ha!)"

It's a really unfortunate habit. I took the "Responsible Dryer Operator Oath" last night and do here-by pledge myself to more conscientious care of all of our belongings. I love you, Nate, and it was jolly fun to fall asleep with sore cheeks and stiff abdominals from an evening of uncontrollably juvenile laughter!

Hope you're all similarly blessed to find humor and levity in your lint trap and the other mundane and utilitarian things of life.