The Bear, with Gary Busey as Paul “Bear” Bryant. For those of you not in the south, Bear Bryant coached The Crimson Tide, and was the winningest coach in the history of college football.
Anyway, the movie was made back in ’84 and Fred never got a chance to see it. Lo these many years, it has apparently been his fondest wish to see it, though Bear Bryant’s family had bought up the rights and refused to allow it to be released on videotape until recently.
But I digress.
So Fred was watching the movie while I ate lunch, and after listening to Gary Busey’s voiceover, I turned to Fred, who was snuggling on the loveseat with Miz Poo, and said “He sounds an awful lot like the guy from Slingblade!” Fred turned and gave me a blank smile, then turned back to the movie.
I continued eating lunch, and then – five minutes later – Fred turned to me with a big smile.
“He sounds like Carl from Slingblade sometimes!” he said, all proud of his discovery and obviously expecting me to burst out laughing at his astute observation.
“Oh my GOD!” I said, giving him the JESUS CHRIST DO YOU EVER LISTEN TO ME?! bug-eyes.
“Oh,” he said. “Did you already say that?”
While he was out running errands on Saturday, Fred had occasion to be in the Dollar Store, where he bought me a nice big bunch of smiley-face balloons. Aren’t they great?
Naturally, Miz Poo was enthralled with the ribbons hanging from the ceiling, so we had to be careful so she wouldn’t chew off a length of ribbon and swallow it, which would make her intestines bind up and require another zillion-dollar operation.
(Soon after we took the picture, we moved the balloons so she couldn’t reach the ribbon tied to them)
I’d like to take a moment to extoll the virtues of yet another cleaning product. It’s fairly new, I believe, and in my experience it’s definitely worth the cost.
A few weeks ago I purchased a bottle of
Clorox with Teflon toilet bowl cleaner. The idea is that the “Teflon Surface Protector” keeps dirt and stuff from sticking, and so the areas you clean with it stay clean longer. I was skeptical – I mean, there were no
actual Scrubbing Bubbles with big bug-eyes and blue eyebrows and a smile peeking out in the Scrubbing Bubbles Bathroom Cleaner that my mother bought once at my behest, and I have to admit that I was deeply scarred by the disappointment, because I was going to catch a couple of Scrubbing Bubbles and keep them as pets.
But I digress.
So always an optimist, I bought the Clorox with Teflon toilet bowl cleaner, because if there’s any one place in the house where I’d prefer dirt (among other things) not to stick, it would be the toilet bowl. When the downstairs toilet needed cleaning – because Fred’s father and stepmother were coming over to watch a few episodes of
The Shield with us, and to be frank with you, the only time I bother to clean that bathroom is if someone’s coming over, and thus the reason it only gets cleaned three times a year, if that – I used the Clorox stuff to clean it.
Two weeks later? Clean as a whistle. AMAZINGLY clean and sparkly and shining. I don’t even cringe when I see the cats belly-up to the toilet bowl, partaking of some scrumptious toilet water, because it’s just THAT clean.
Yesterday, I bought a bottle of the bathroom cleaner, because the OTHER place I would like dirt and grime to stop sticking is in the bathtub – we use a lot of bath gunk in the tub, and a few days after cleaning the tub, it’s usually gunked back up – and the shower. This morning I cleaned the bathroom, using both the Clorox with Teflon products, and I have to say, so far so good. The area between the sinks has never looked so shiny. For that matter, the area around the tub is looking pretty damn good, too.
So I have to say two thumbs up to the Clorox with Teflon products. All I need now is for them to make a kitchen product, and I’ll be all set.
I was weirded out a tad at the post office yesterday. First of all, I walked in and stood in line behind a girl who had just put something in a Priority shipping box and sealed it. She looked up from her package and looked around, seeming confused.
“Oh,” she said, smiling at me. “Go ahead. I’m a little confused.” So I moved around her to stand in line. I glanced back and saw her, still confused, looking around. She saw me looking, pointed, and said “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” I asked.
“That,” she said, pointing to the section of the post office where you can buy stamps and envelopes and various things.
“That’s where you can buy stamps and envelopes and various things,” I said. “They also process packages for people, too.”
“Oh,” she said, nodding her head. She resumed perusing her package.
A few moments later, she tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and smiled at her.
“Can you – are you allowed to write directly on the box?” she asked, holding up the Priority box.
“Yes, you sure can,” I said.
She smiled, clearly embarrassed. “I’ve never mailed anything before.”
I simply smiled in response and turned back around. It’s been so long since I’ve been around other people that saying “How on earth does someone get to be an adult (she appeared to be in her mid-20s, and had no foreign accent that I could determine) having never mailed anything before?!” seemed like it would be rude.
But truly, the mind boggles. I go to the post office at least twice a week, and on at least one of those days I have one or more packages to mail. I’ve been mailing things since I was around the age of 10. How does it happen that an adult could have never mailed anything before? How? Was she locked in a convent until just recently?
I stood and wondered what her story was, but by the time I thought of a good opening question (“Seriously? You’ve never mailed anything before?”), the time to ask it had passed.
Today I’m still burning with curiosity, and I wish I’d asked anyway.
He’s a good boy. Yes he is!]]>