Our Refrigerator is Running (So Why Don't You Catch It?)

The tiny numeric dial in our refrigerator is set at 5 right now. It goes from 1 to 9 and it indicates that "9 is the coolest." 5 seems about right. Not too hot. Not too cold. Right there in the middle. I don't know how it is on your frige but apparently this lone dial also controls the freezer. And I'm not entirely sure how that is supposed to work.

All that to say...5 is not quite working for us. Sometimes I open the freezer and what used to be popsicles are now mushed up hunks of goo sealed in a plastic sack with a wooden stick floating on top. And today I opened the frige to have a pre-dinner chips and salsa snack and the bottle of salsa was frozen solid. I'm not making this up. We had to microwave the salsa. Oh, and the celery. We pulled out the celery tonight and it was all bubbled up and nasty looking. It looked as if it had come down with a terrible bout of acne since we last saw it. Then we realized that it was frozen and the water inside the celery stalk had expanded and was busting through its cellulose-skin prison.

I am not even going to attempt to understand it. All I know is: 5 is not the right setting. Melted popsicles. Swollen, frozen celery. I am not going to microwave my salsa anymore. The only problem is...I don't know which way to turn the dial. Do I turn it in a direction to get it colder? That doesn't seem smart. Gallons of milk will begin exploding. Do I turn it to get it warmer? There goes any chance of ice cream, popsicles, and oh yeah...ice.

Chuck Daddy Cheese

This is Charles. He is my friend. He lives in Kansas City. He listens to music from musicals. He calls pizza "pie." He thinks of names of older women in his free time (Carol Hathoway was one).

Congenial
Happy
Affable
Realistic
Laughing
Exciting
Silly

C-Rule in C-Lotte

This is Clint. Clint is my friend. Clint lives in Oklahoma. Clint plays the ukulele. He eats frozen fish sticks.

Courageous
Likeable
Intelligent
Nice
Tall

I Don't Mean to be Mean

'I mean' is the new 'um.' Everyone uses this little grammatical air-filler and no one even recognizes that they are doing it. In the 80s and 90s, the air-filler was 'like.' While it got pawned off on Valley Girl stereotypes, everyone used it to fill out their otherwise dull sentences. "So I was like going to the store and I like bought an avacado." Somewhere along the line of time, "um" took over. ("Um" can be substituted for its close cousin "uhh.") If you ever can't think of what to say next, throw a little 'um' in there. Maybe the motivation was because the thought of silence was too unbearable. Too awkward perhaps. Or perhaps we fill up the dead space because we don't know what to say next but we want the "floor" still. In other words, we don't know what to say but we don't want the person we are speaking (or not speaking) with to interject with something. We want the opportunity to speak even though we have no idea what to actually say. So we say 'um.' But now, 'like' and 'um' have been replaced with the preface of all prefaces: I mean.

"I mean, I was thinking that I would clear up this ear infection, I mean, maybe this Tuesday or Wednesday." I use this all the time. Why? Is it for the same reason as the 'like' and 'um' above? It doesn't really feel like a space filler. It is completely extraneous. It is this little preface stuck in there over and over. I mean, what is it that we are prefacing? Do we really want the other person to know that I sincerely mean this? Maybe it means, 'Listen, I REALLY mean this, so pay attention.' Or perhaps the emphasis is on me. 'I, me, Mr. Howell means this, so pay attention.' Unfortunately 'I mean' means neither. I don't know what it means but it doesn't mean that. I don't mean to be mean but 'I mean' means nothing to me, and yet I use it more than anyone.

Literacy is Overrated

Of all the songs to be memorized by the American populace, why in the world was it Baby Got Back?

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Kathryn randomly said this at the kitchen table the other day, "We should try chewing food up for each other sometime." It is utterances like those that confirm that she is the one.

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How do children, who believe the whole "stork theory" concerning babies, make sense of their mother's bulging stomach? How does that reconcile with a bird swooping by and just dropping a baby down from the sky?

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I'm no chemist, but how does blowing on food cool it down? Especially when you consider that your breath is hot?

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For some strange reason I've been thinking through the lyrics of 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' as of late. This song makes no sense to me. Rudolf, for whatever reason, has a red glowing blemish of a nose and is completely marginilazed within his little reindeer culture. The others "laugh and call him names" and forbid him from joining them in their "reindeer games." (What would a reindeer game look like? Odd. Simply odd.) So Rudolph is this total loser. Ok, fine. So far so good. And then Santa comes along and chooses Rudolf to be the frontman of his sleigh, mostly because Rudolph's enormous blemish of a nose can be used as some sort of headlight. And so Santa's utterly pragmatic selection of Rudolph causes all of the other reindeer to have a change of heart. They suddenly "love him" to the point that they actually "shout with glee." Furthermore, they announce that Santa's selection will "go down in history." What could possibly account for this change of heart? Santa needs a new headlight and now suddenly Rudolph, the biggest loser in all of reindeerdom, is the big man on campus? How could he be so hated one moment and so loved the next? If I were one of the cool, hateful reindeers, I would think that his being Santa's headlight would be reason for more insult. I don't know. Maybe that's just me.