I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing

Don't you just love these two knuckleheads?

I am feeling pretty amorous feelings about my life today to tell you the truth.

I don't know, it's just the way the clouds leaned in close to kiss the mountains, the way Maggie jumped with excitement when she saw me for our walk and how she told me she'd been so excited to tell me about her weekend. Something about how the leaves swirled around our feet as we dodged kids on bikes in the afternoon scurry, and how afterwards I ran the fastest and strongest and freest run I've ever been able to run before, and how I even remembered to fold The Holbsy's laundry too.

How can you not love a day like that?

I hummed Jingle Bells all the way through my grocery shopping. The tune gave me the just the pep I needed to maneuver the crowded aisles and not get upset when I was violently cart-boxed at the jam section. I just hummed my little hum until the aisleways reopened and I could look both ways and cross myself for good luck before venturing out and risking spinal cord injury again. I mean, the WinCo is a scary place on a Tuesday afternoon! Scary but lovely! When I got back to the car I saw that miraculously I had completed my grocery rounds in under sixteen minutes! I mean, who does that? It was a Christmas miracle!

A word on the WinCo, if you like. The WinCo is a CRAZY PLACE. If you've never been to the WinCo in Moscow before then you'd never know the thrill that is taking your life into your own hands to buy bread and a gallon of rice milk. It is just pure craziness in there. It's like I go to WinCo and then so does the whole town, all at the same time, and it is people! carts! food! lines! screaming children! bulk wheat!

Now that I consider it truthfully, I do not really think it possible that there are enough homes in the Moscow area to house all of the people who seem to magically appear inside the WinCo when I walk through the doors. They are like extras in a movie, existing solely to flesh out the aisles, these fake people with their fake carts full of fake food that you just know they're not going to eat because as soon as you leave the store someone will call CUT and these people will just vaporize into thin air. I'm fairly certain that the WinCo mystically becomes empty and creepy and dark as a vacant hangar the moment the doors slide shut behind me. Otherwise, how to explain it? I mean, that really is the most logical way.

Also I bought five kinds of mustards!

True story, The Holbs texted me today like so as I was chatting it up with my friend K-to-the-Endall:

Were you trying to make a statement by buying ten different mustards?

Are you as enamored by that as I am? Swoon! (I hate that word a little bit.) What kind of a statement could you possibly make with mustards?

I mean, there was this one time when I made him a week's worth of peanut butter and honey sandwiches for work all at once because he kept nagging at me to make him a lunch every morning, so then he just had to take these soggy sandwiches to work all week and isn't that funny? I mean, that was definitely a statement-making food decision, but mustards?

(I did buy him real mayonnaise today which, well, if that's not a statement of deep and abiding love then I give up.)

The loving truth is that as I pushed my cart down the aisle while singing of Santa Claus and his impending sojourn to the southern parts of the globe I happened to spot all these mustards just sitting there being all cute and diverse and mustardly, and I just fell in love with them. I mean, I fell in love with mustards.

Mustard! Good heavens! Dijon and Honey Dijon and Sweet Mustard and Sweet Hot Mustard and Spicy Mustard and Deli Mustard, all with cute cartoony German men on the front wearing a handlebar mustache and lederhosen, I mean, come on! What a world to live in with so many choices of mustards! And what do you do with mustards? I mean, really. Such attention to detail here! I had to buy them all because they were like a family. My family. My family of mustards.

Don't you love that?

I find I just want to kiss things. Can I kiss you? Here, I will kiss Petey.

Oh! Here's another! I loved going to K-to-the-Endalls house tonight and getting forgetful and going to the right house number but on the wrong street only to find the creepiest house in all of Moscow. The creepiest. What are the odds of that happening? I loved calling her to tell her that her house was scary and having her say in an offended tone No, my house is Charming. I loved the relief I felt when I realized that she did not in fact live in some rapist's back yard but rather in a lovely and really very charming and well lit part of town. Because Moscow isn't scary by definition you know but I was still pretty sure I was about to die anyway.

I also love the fact that we established that I can blog about this and she will not think I am a dork.

Because I am a dork, and I would deserve it, you know.

What a world!

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What, you want more? Well, I have it on the D-L that there are more chicken hijinks happening at Nat Nests, and also there's a really interesting marital advice request at Ask The Rat that could really use your eyeballs and the wisdom connected to them via ocular nerves or spinal cords or whatever is that holds it all together. You're welcome!