Stories

I stumbled into my kitchen, poured the beans in the grinder and pushed, fumbled to separate the filters, filled the pot with water and leaned against my wall oven to wait for the delicious healing brown liquid to brew.

That’s when it hit me.

Milk.  Fuck.

I scrambled to the fridge to find my worst fear fully realized.  There was not one drippy drop’s worth of cow juice in there and I’m just not a black coffee girl.  I grabbed my sunglasses and my keys and drove down the hill to my local Chevron station- which was open early and relatively non judgemental for the morning breath/ morning hair/ jammies wearing mess that I was that morning.  I grabbed a half gallon of milk and plopped it on the checkout counter.

“$4.00 please.” said the uniformed Chevron employee. “Ok.”  I muttered and reached into my pocket to get the cash.

Suddenly it hit me like my alarm clock had just rung. “Wait a minute, $4.00?  How can it be $4.00?? It’s a half a gallon of milk!!!” The checkout guy beamed with pride.  He looked me straight in the eye and declared “I was ripping you off!” He grinned ear to ear.

I just stood there.  I could find no witty retort.  No smart comeback.  I was stupefied.

I’m writing this ode to summertime while being serenaded by lovely summer music – an orchestral enchantment of a summer thunderstorm. We’ve been dry down here in Dixie and every little drop is a blessing. Fill our cups please!

Peas, purple hulls to be exact, sunflowers, peaches, butter and snap beans – all coming in with gusto from our farms and gardens. Mimi’s favorite thing is to shell peas, and after a myriad of places, we finally tracked down unshelled peas for her pleasure and leisure.

“So many places sell them shelled... I just want to sit and shell peas all day.” Mimi.

The nerve of us buying shelled peas – that would be robbing our grandmother of a blessing! Shell away Mimi…shell away! My grandmother’s delight I count a richest gain, for all I have to do is eat the peas. For there again is a favorite pastime of our matriarch – cooking peas. Alas, I shall resign my attempts and glory in the pot liquor of Mimi’s peas.

“I eat my peas with honey; I’ve done so all my life… I eat my peas with honey, so that they stay on my knife!” another Mimi-ism.

As the world becomes shortage and space obsessed, I realize how ahead of the curve I've been in making myriad reuses of everything and everyone. Call me frugal/economical and/or exploitive/anal.

I reuse big tissue boxes as snowshoes for a friend's kids (kids become two-pronged sources of love and laughs, lumbering around like "transformer bots"); I use their abandoned toy cars as conveyances for salt and pepper shakers glued on top, as "pass the salt" makes the dining room table a speedway.

I’m a staunch advocate of the five-second rule. Even endorsing an extended 10, or 20 seconds in the instance of cleaner surfaces. But when it comes to the Venice Beach Boardwalk, I’m reluctant to trust the integrity of fallen foodstuffs; cautious of sand, stale urine, or general beach-funk.

At least that was my attitude when three pieces of pizza crashed to the ground.

I was with my brother, who was visiting from college. On his last day, he asked only to “sit somewhere and sip something.” Easily satisfied. We cruised to the beach. Found a bustling boardwalk. It was Sunday. It was slammed. Finding somewhere to sit where we could order something to sip proved more difficult than anticipated.

We finally spotted an opening in the back corner of the Candle Café patio. Swooped in on a recently vacated table. Vestiges of the previous patrons remained: A couple pint glasses, and a red ketchup squeeze-bottle forgotten on the floor under my chair. I picked up the orphaned ketchup bottle and placed it on the table. We ordered beers and pizza. Our table was wiped down. Except the ketchup bottle was left behind.