Chickens and Chickpeas

Markers in the day that eventually said, "GO HOME! NOW!"

• I squat down this morning in front of the little fridge in our department at work to put in my leftover sushi: *RIP* goes the seam in my jeans along my inner right thigh. Long rip. Mom told me to buy new jeans like seven months ago. Yeah. Whatever.
• I borrow safety pins from a pal on the other side of the building and nearly mangle myself in the bathroom trying to shove pins through a seam and some shredded fabric.
• The fix is better than nothing, especially after I trim away all the little straggly fabric shreds so it doesn't look like I am walking about with a Persian cat clinging to my inner thigh. And I know what jeans I want, and they cannot be purchased anywhere near the office, so THAT'S why I didn't go buy new ones, for those of you who are asking.
• Day mostly goes fine, though I can't recall if during an hour-long presentation I made if I stood in a ladylike manner or not to try to hide my safety pin surgery, especially since one of the pins had to go on the outside of the pants. Probably not: I usually stand like a bear wrestler, especially when I start to wax rhapsodic for a new, captive audience about the work we do. Ces't la vie.
• I leave the office at the end of day, going back and forth in my mind about what to do about dinner. Obviously, no Stef at home to cook tonight. I decide to run into Fred Meyer and grab some hummus and one of those handy, cooked whole chickens. I tour part of the store, grab cherries and a couple pink grapefruit, one red garnet yam, a container of hummus, and toward the chickens I head, then I'll be right next to the registers and away I can go.
• There are three chickies left. I have my hand-carry basket in one hand and reach for the chicken with the other. Just as I go to set it in the basket, the plastic dome pops off, the plastic base bends and caves, and there is a simultaneous drop of chicken and plastic into the basket and a shower all over my feet and the floor...grease from the container gushing over the basket and through it.
• I stand stupefied for a moment, wondering what wet thing was in my basket before it dawns on me that I just had a chicken grease hosing. I try to at least rectify the tilting, dripping chicken in my basket, and I get the experience of trying to grab a greased baby from its crib...no doing. I am looking about for bags, towels, something to do something, I don't even know what. I finally set the basket on the floor by the chicken case and walk to the self-checkout and look pleadingly at an employee who is approaching. "I need help, please," I tell her. She follows me and I show her my giant grease slick and explain myself. She says it's no problem and heads off to find someone, but is intercepted by that terrible alarm that happens when you try to leave the self-checkout area and you have something that has a security alarm in it, so she is waylaid rescuing some man who probably was not trying to shoplift, but gets the same alarm as the bad guys do. Poor man.
• I stand there for several more minutes, grateful that you can't see the grease spill like you could if it were chocolate milk or orange juice, but still aware that NO ONE hovers around the chicken case like this. Especially no one who keeps looking at the grease splatters on her tennis shoes while an escaped, dripping chicken lies atop grapefruit and hummus in her little basket. Trying to look slightly less tacky, I figure I should at least pick up the basket off the floor. I, that's right, forget the challenge of my pants from hours before, and I again assume the squat position in order to pick up the basket. What do I hear again, raging against the safety pins? *RIP*. I leap up in a panic, as though the safety pins have already blown their "safety" promise and suddenly become not-so-safe.
  
• Nice lady finally comes back and sets up a yellow "stay away" triangle on the floor, and she looks in my basket and says, "Okay, that's the chicken that fell on the floor?" as she is reaching for it. I tell her it only fell in my basket, and we have a quick exchange, with me saying I can still take it, and I feel badly, and she points out, no, no, it's fine, they'll take it. She goes to take it out of the basket and replicates my greased baby experience, with a few "whoa" moments of her own, but eventually decides she will win, grabs hard and takes it away. In the interim I smile at a nice lady with a cart and a small child in the front; she gives me the "been there, done that" chuckle. Employee lady returns quickly and I ask if there are paper towels anywhere, because my hands are an oil slick by now; she sends me to her counter. I come back, and she has given me a new basket and placed the fairly ungreased cherries and grapefruit in it, but has the dripping, lemon-pepper-grease-coated yam and hummus in the other hand. "You don't want these, do you?" I again say I am willing to pay for them, but she says, no, go get new ones. She is nice. I consider kissing her and decide I have already shot my weirdo points for the day. Instead I tell her I am headed to the deli to buy just one piece of chicken; it seems less dangerous. She laughs at me.
  
• I try to gather myself, and I go get one chicken breast, more hummus from the first spot I got it, and I check out some rice crackers and some organic cereal. I wind up near the cold case with a bunch of organic stuff in it. I look at some hummus they have in there and note the just over 2x price difference, and I also check out some soy cream cheese and sour cream, and decide not today. I figure my heart has calmed enough and they are far enough along in the clean up that I can just head out. So to the check stand I go.
• The drive home is safe (I decide to skip the Starbucks stop I was planning for some herbal tea--I just need to be DONE and get my tennis shoes in the washing machine and my pants into the trash) and I am already pondering posting about my clumsiness. I get home, get everything from work and the store into the house, and start to unload the two bags from Freddy's. And what's in there? BOTH freaking containers of hummus! The regular AND the organic! What the...? Clearly, I need to stay in for the rest of the evening. I am a danger to myself and others and chickens and chickpeas everywhere!

I Like That Boom Boom Pow

There are some things that still bring culture shock in Idaho. The Fourth of July is one of them.

You know those movies where almost every family on a quaint American street is lighting sparklers to celebrate the Fourth? Well, add fountains, flowers, and real, fly-into-the-air-and-burst-above-your-head-like-a-Dodger's-fireworks-show chrysanthemums, peonies, glitter palms, and rings, you have Idaho on our nation's Independence Day. (By the way, cool site for looking up firework names at NOVA: Name that Shell.)

Apparently there are actually county ordinances against such aerial fireworks outside of an official display, but you would never know it. I confess, it scares me a little, having been raised where just the sound of a firecracker was the signal to start packing for a forest fire evacuation, but I mostly giggle though the night up here.

I sat in the picturesque backyard of friends last night, having great food (including a s'more with a marshmallow perfectly toasted over their fire pit by Master Toaster Karin; never mind that I dropped the chocolate in the dirt while I was trying to catch the mallow on my graham; wipe the chocolate square on your jeans and you're good to go) and good conversation. Even while it's light out, there are the sounds of firecrackers pop-popping from the neighbors around us. As dusk arrives, the shows start. Yes, shows, as in if you stand in the front yard or sit on the back deck, you can look in the sky any direction you like and watch fireworks explode.

If you do choose to watch from the front of the house where you can see the streets and driveways nearby, you get the ground shows and the aerial shows together. Little kids running around with giant sparklers, fountains erupting, and the bigger kids and grown-ups lighting everything else.

I left the house just after 11:00 PM, and I giggled all the way home. Okay, maybe not all the way. Trying to get out of the subdivision was a little tricky. Literally every other driveway was filled with families in lawn chairs, people taking turns lighting stuff in the street. Thus, there were piles of ash to navigate, small children to avoid mowing down, and my favorite: a newly-lit, skittering flower placed in the road seconds before my car approached. Rather than have the little thing scoot under my car as I tried to drive past, I waited in the road until it died out and the kids scrambled to light another one.

The giggling did happen, though, for the remainder of the drive home, as I scanned the sky and watched happy explosions all over the place. The 30-minute drive was a hazy one, driving through all the post-firework smoke. It was like a fog had settled over the whole Treasure Valley for the evening.

At midnight, in went the earplugs for nighty-night, since it was still pretty boom-boom-pow outside. I gotta say, I like it here :)