Two Bits

I’m driving a dark-green, stick-shift three-quarter ton Ford pickup with a cracked windshield and 96,000 and change on the odometer. I’m not sure that I am up to the honor. In fact, I’m not sure I’m up to the running board (or where the running board would be, if there were a running board). The reason it’s parked in my space is that it seems that my real car ran off to Montana, and, like many runaways, nearly came to a bad end. My understanding is that it was covered by three feet of snow, and you know how those fairy tales end.

I drive carefully. For one thing, this pickup doesn’t have any pick up. When I stop at a light, the whole thing shakes. I pop it into first, and it growls and sputters into the intersection. Bikes pass us. Joggers pass us.

But I’m ambitious, and I have a  plan… I’m going hunting – moose and elk, I think–and DoFlo’s truck is the perfect vehicle. My understanding is that it will make me one of THE PEOPLE. Maybe I can run for vice president.

I haven’t figured out all the details, but I know that I’m not much good with a bow, so I hope I can borrow a friend’s 30-06. Think I’ll do my hunting from the truck. So what if it’s not sporting? I’m not interested in sporting, I’m interested in eating (and politics). Maybe I can rig up some kind of swivel-mount on the hood for the rifle, and I guess it would be a good idea to put a winch on the back to make retrieval easier. Probably better load the bed with a couple of sandbags or a grizzly for ballast, too. With any luck the bear will eat the moose–he’s just for show, anyway–and I won’t have to try to find a way to make moose steaks palatable. (I’ll keep any stray elk I happen to pick up, though).

This is an ambitious program, so I’d better get on it if I expect to get my moose AND get any campaigning done in the next two months. I hope that all of you will vote for me. I’ve got a truck! I know how to hunt! I’ve got what it takes!

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I can’t go folk dancing Friday because we are vetting Flora’s new boyfriend. If he survives, we are vetting him Saturday, too. (That will be after his first rock-climbing adventure.) This relationship is looking serious, and we are taking full advantage of his being here to check him out. My responsibility involves food. Waples eat - they eat a lot. So I am approaching this momentous task with all the gravitas it deserves. The first item on my agenda is establishing the menu, and to give you an idea of what I’m going through I’d like to provide an actual conversation–verbatim. As the curtain rises, the conversation between mother and daughter has been in progress for a couple of days. There they are, sitting in the morning room drinking tea, a fire buring merrily in the grate. Oh, no, wait-that has been over for 200 hundred years. They are each hunched over a laptop IMing each other:

Jeanne:

Does he eat sausage? White beans? Pumpkin soup?

Flora:

 Yes, no, and no

Jeanne:

Does he eat chili?

Flora:

We already have our meals planed: stroganoff and the one I can’t spell.

Jeanne:

Maybe, maybe not -  anyway, what’s this ‘we’, missy??? I might want to do something on Saturday.

Flora:

….and that “something” is going to be cooking dinner for your daughter and potential son-in-law!

Jeanne:

Yes. Maybe ’something else’, too. Aren’t you the proponent of multitasking???

Flora:

Not when it is the person in charge of my food!

Jeanne:

We’re getting off topic here. What about chili (and biscuits and gingerbread)?

Flora:

That sounds good, but what about stroganoff and the fried stuff?

Jeanne:

I’m speaking hypothetically here. ‘Chili might mean ‘beef stroganoff’, or it might mean ‘cheerios’.

Flora:

LOL! Pause Really? Longer pause Wow…Much longer pause.

Jeanne (caving):

Bagna caulda is on for Friday.

Flora:

Okay… Yes ma’am! Friday it is. Gotta go to hospital now - talk later?

Jeanne:

Great. I’ll be slaving away in preparation.

Flora:

I should hope so!

Why am I expending so much effort on this? Because it is my first midterm in pre-Mother-in-Law. I can tell that this one is important.  It isn’t because she cooks for him in spite of her hospital work-load. It isn’t because she lets him spend money on her. And it certainly isn’t because she is bringing him home this weekend. No, it’s because she is taking him rock climbing. You may well wonder when climbing became a test of true love. All I can say is that we have an unusually family.

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