humor – Page 8 – Deep Dark Thoughts

By Special Request

For EM1’s birthday this year, she made a special request. She did not want a birthday cake like every other year of her life. This time, she wanted me to make Macarons.

“No sweat. Happy to do it,” I told her.

My initial thought was that Macarons are like fussy cookies. I have baked lots of cookies in my day, so this should be a piece of cake (if you’ll pardon the pun). After a little bit of research, I was quickly dissuaded of the idea that the little French sweets were anything like cookies. They are nothing like cookies. They may be flat and round, but the tricky bastards are only camouflaging themselves like an innocent cookie when in reality they are evil and do not belong in a normal human being’s kitchen.

Okay, maybe not actually evil, but the rest of my opinion stands.

My second thought was, instead of making them, I’ll just go out and buy some. It’ll be easier and I’ll just tell EM1 that I made them. Problem solved.

Until I started looking at prices.

Have you ever bought a Macaron? They are quite a bit more expensive than I expected, and since I had no desire to mortgage the house just to buy cookies (sorry … not cookies) I was back to square one. Only, I was actually further back than square one, since I now realized that this project might take a little more time and effort than I had originally planned.

Turned out, I was wrong about that assumption as well.

It took A LOT more time and effort than I originally planned.

I found a recipe online called “Basic French Macarons – perfect for beginners.” There are so many oxymorons in that statement I don’t even know where to start. The word “basic” should be nowhere in that sentence, and “perfect for beginners” is so misleading the author should be sued for libel.

There were only seven ingredients in the recipe, so in the beginning I thought I had a chance of creating something edible. The world is so full of horrible things that I should know better by now than to ever hope something will turn out the way it was promised. For such a small list of ingredients, there was an inordinate amount of sifting, separating, whisking, whipping, and folding.

I know what those words usually mean, but when applying them to baking I’m a little lost. In general, if I can’t do it with a bowl and a spoon, it just ain’t happening.

I suppose it might have helped if I had read the instructions the day before and had some idea of what I was doing before I started. The recipe called for room temperature butter and eggs. I keep both those items in the refrigerator, so the first step of making Macarons for me was “set butter and eggs on counter and go watch an hour of Netflix.”

That was the part of the baking experience that worked out okay. I had time to start season 5 of American Horror Story. Score one for the Chef!

Next, I pre-heated the oven and mixed my Macaron ingredients into the mixing bowl. The mixture came out like a lumpy green oatmeal. I am pretty sure that is not the desired texture, however I was not about wait another hour while I brought two more eggs up to room temperature. I was committed and already stuck in enemy territory.

I placed the oddly rigid mass into a piping bag and squirted out two dozen circles of batter on two baking sheets. Okay, if I’m being honest, I piped out two dozen ovals, triangles, and various blobs. You would think circles would be easy.

And you would be very, very wrong.

I read the next line in the recipe and it said, “let the Macarons sit out on the counter for up to a couple hours, until batter becomes stiff and rubbery.”

Crap.

I turned the oven back off and sat down to watch episode two of season five of American Horror Story. Baking had become an awful lot like binge watching television.

When the batter was ready, I turned the oven back on, waited for it to heat up (while watching more TV), then popped the first of the baking sheets in to cook for the recommended 17 to 20 minutes.

After which, I sat back down on the couch to finish watching episode 3.

Twenty-five minutes later, I pulled out my dark brown, crumbling Macarons from the smoking oven.

Cookie sheet number two went in, and this time, I paid more attention to the time. At the end of 17 minutes, I pulled out the oddly shaped, but properly baked, lumps of batter.

As they cooled, I made the filling. This turned out to be pretty straight forward. Butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla. Even I didn’t screw up that combination.

By the time I was finished baking EM1’s requested birthday treat, I had a plate with seven incredibly sad looking Macarons. But they were homemade, as promised, and they looked almost edible. Of course, I couldn’t try them out myself since there weren’t enough survivors for sampling. I can only hope they tasted better than they looked.

They probably didn’t.

It was a lot of work and I admit that initially I was a little bothered by EM1’s odd request for a birthday dessert. A cake would have been much easier and cheaper, not to mention I could have made it in half the time it took to make the Macarons.

I’m not mad at her, though. With only seven Macarons on the plate, EM1 ate them all on her own.

And I think that is punishment enough for anybody.

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Asleep At the Wheel

As I have mentioned before, my first job in law enforcement was with the Hillsborough Police Department. What I may have failed to mention about HPD was that it was an extremely small agency. The city was residential homes only – no businesses and no shops – and no more than about 11,000 people resided there.

My badge number was 23, and that was the highest numbered badge in the agency. That might give you some idea of just how small we were.

I worked the graveyard shift for the first several years. Ordinarily, working all night as a police officer is not terribly difficult as there is always something to do to keep you awake and busy. Not in Hillsborough, however. It seemed like the town rolled up its streets at 11 o’clock every night.

With no businesses, and all the residents asleep at night, there was very little for an officer to do in the wee hours of the morning in that town. This was before we had cellphones that would let you watch movies, play games, or check out social media. In fact, if I’m being totally honest, this was before we had cell phones at all.

Some nights, I would read a book. Others, I might meet another officer in our department break room and put a movie into the VHS. Sometimes, however, I would park my car in a dark corner, turn my radio to maximum, and fall asleep.

This may shock some people who have never tried to stay up all night driving a car at slow speeds when there are absolutely no calls for service and nothing to do, but sometimes a graveyard cop just needs to take a nap.

It didn’t happen all the time, but it wasn’t rare either. Rather than fall asleep while driving and waking up parked on someone’s front lawn (which also happened more than I care to remember) it was safer to just park somewhere isolated and close my eyes. I had supervisors that told us they would rather we get some sleep when we need it, instead of crashing the patrol car. It meant less paperwork for them and smaller insurance premiums for the city.

Until one day in briefing, we got a new memo. My sergeant announced that the new chief, Bob McNichol, had announced a moratorium on any cops sleeping while on duty. It had always technically been against the rules, but now the chief was asking the supervisors to enforce the rule and write up any officers caught sleeping in their patrol cars.

My sergeant shook his head at the new order. “This is bullshit,” he said to me and the other officers in the briefing room. “When the chief was a patrol officer, he was asleep in his uniform more than he was awake in it. They might as well have been pajamas.”

But the rules are the rules. My sergeant told us all that from that day forward, if he caught anyone sleeping, it would mean a write up in their file.

I lasted about a week.

One night, there was nothing going on and I was absolutely exhausted from lack of sleep during that past day. The sergeant had warned everyone to stay awake, but it wasn’t as if he was driving around actively searching for officers breaking this particular rule. I decided that I was going to risk it. Just this once.

I pulled my patrol car into the city corps yard, where all the black and white vehicles that needed repair or that had not yet been put into service were located, backed into an empty parking spot to blend in with all the other vehicles, and closed my eyes.

I must have been more tired than I thought. I went out. Hard.

When I woke up, the sun was coming up and the sky had already lightened considerably.

I wiped the sleep crud out of my eyes and looked around. That was when my heart stopped beating for a second.

Parked directly next to me was my sergeant’s car, and he was sitting behind the wheel barely three feet away from me. I figured I was busted and resigned myself to a new letter in my file. I even spent a moment wondering if I should sign the reprimand in blue ink or use red just for dramatic effect.

That’s when I noticed something odd. My sergeant wasn’t looking at me. In fact, he wasn’t looking at anything.

He was fast asleep.

I guess he had pulled up next to me, then while waiting for me to wake up and notice him parked right beside me, he dozed off.

One trick you learn about sleeping in a patrol car is: always leave the car running. That way the radio is always on and you can keep the heater running on particularly cold nights. It is also a lot quieter if you need to leave in a hurry without having to start your engine first.

When I realized that the sergeant was out, I dropped my car into gear, released the brake, and let the car slowly roll out of the parking spot. When I was about ten feet away, I hit the gas and fled for the open road.

At the end of my shift, I just happened to see my sergeant in the halls of the police station as I was getting ready to leave. He waved at me and said, “See you tomorrow.”

I waved back.

That was it. No comments or reprimands about sleeping. I guess my disappearing act had made him realize that he, too, had fallen asleep. I had dodged a bullet.

Fortunately, he had no desire to throw stones in this particular glass house.

That was just fine with me. If he didn’t want to talk about it, then neither did I.

I ran for the parking lot, jumped in my personal vehicle and headed home.

I can’t say that was the last time I ever fell asleep while on duty, but I can say that was the last time I ever let myself get caught.

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The New Abnormal

Over the past couple weeks, the Wilbanks’ household has been dealing with some changes. We are not unique in this respect, I am sure, as most people are trying to adapt and make sense of the struggles in our world today. A very short time ago, people came and went freely, traveling from place to place without a second thought. Today, it feels as if we have all been placed on some type of world-wide house arrest.

I used to have the entire house pretty much to myself every day. My youngest daughter was off to college, and my wife and my oldest kid both had jobs to go to. That is no longer the case.

EM1 and my wife are both working from home these days, and EM2 was asked to pack up and move out of her college dorm room. She is back at home with the rest of us, attending classes remotely on her laptop. (Which is interesting to observe, since as a music major she is required to attend saxophone lessons and be graded on her performance.)

It is a bizarre dynamic. We could all be sitting on the couch one minute, then the next EM2 jumps up and says, “I have to go to class!” That is when she runs into her bedroom, closes the door, and we start to hear saxophone music throughout the house.

Similarly, EM1 will tell us, “I have to go to work.” She then locks herself in her room and starts recording worship music for a church service that will be uploaded onto the internet three days later. Her church is no longer conducting live services on Sundays, so EM1 and the pastor record their portions of the service during the week and splice it all together to post on Sunday mornings.

Between EM1 and EM2, the house is always filled with music. I guess that is a good thing, but I must admit I am more used to having absolute quiet during the day. It is a lot harder to take a nap and binge-watch movies when someone is playing scales over and over on a brass instrument.

Since my wife is home all day, she has started tagging along with me when I am running errands. This is both a blessing and a curse. The other day, we were on our way to the college to pick up EM2 and bring her home, when my wife looked at her phone and told me, “This isn’t good.”

I asked her what the problem was.

She said, “I need to go back home and answer this email. I have to make some phone calls.”

I made a U-turn, took her back to the house and then went to pick up my daughter by myself, 45 minutes later than originally planned.

This isn’t totally new, however. I have mentioned in a previous blog that she is a bit of a workaholic and does the same thing when she is supposed to be on vacation. (You can find that story here if you’re interested.) So, the fact that she has been told by her boss to stay home hasn’t slowed her down one bit. The only difference is now instead of ignoring her family from her job site, we all have to sit in the same room with her and watch her ignore us from three feet away.

The second biggest challenge with all of us being home is that during the slow times we struggle to find things to do that we can all enjoy. For example: we have run out of things to talk about. How can you have a conversation when all four of you are constantly together experiencing the exact same thing at all times?

Me: “Hey, something funny happened to me today while I was fixing myself some lunch.”

EM2: “Yeah, we all saw you do it, and it wasn’t really that funny.”

End of conversation.

So, we try to find other things to distract us from the boredom. We tried baking some cookies recently. That actually was kind of enjoyable, until EM1 sucked all the fun out of it by frosting the cookies so that they spelled out the word, “QUARANTINE!” She has a knack for focusing on the worst parts of anything. I swear, that kid could ruin a New Orleans funeral procession.

Most of the time we simply default to sitting on the couch and turning on the TV. This is not as relaxing as it sounds. The four of us rarely like the same movies or television programs and we argue about what to watch more than we actually watch anything. We recently instigated an “each person gets to pick one thing” policy, but that too has its drawbacks.

After watching a movie that I picked, EM1 got to choose what we saw next. She selected a music video of a K-Pop group (which was not surprising as this is just about the only thing she watches any more). The video was 15 minutes long and, when it ended, I said it was mom’s turn to choose.

EM1 then spent the next half hour complaining that I was not being fair since my movie was 90 minutes long and her video was only 15. I told her we each get to pick one thing to watch regardless of how long it was. EM1 just complained louder. I felt like I was lecturing a three year on how to take turns on a swing.

This is what my life has become.

I don’t foresee any major changes in the near future, so I’m strapping in for a long and bumpy ride. I understand why we all need to stay home. It’s for the greater good. I only hope that in my case, the cure isn’t worse than the disease.

With my family, it could go either way.

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Last Line of Defense

I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know when it happened. Somehow, without my realizing it was occurring, I became the designated “killer of all multi-legged things that get into the house.”

I never wanted the responsibility. I didn’t ask for the position, but apparently it was bestowed upon me by the democratic decree of the other members of my household. I just wish someone had told me when it was happening so I could have removed my name from contention.

Unfortunately, whether I saw it coming or not, I am now the one responsible for removing all spiders, ants, beetles, bugs, bees, wasps, crickets, roaches, moths, mice, mosquitos, gnats, frogs, flies, centipedes, and even the occasional snake from our house.

Just the other night, I was curled up in bed, not quite fully asleep but already slipping into that wonderful pre-sleep dream state, when a voice from out of the darkness said, “Are you awake?”

Well, I wasn’t awake, and I was about to tell the rude, interrupting presence to go away when I realized for the first time that I wasn’t dreaming the voice. It was an actual voice.

It asked again, “Are you awake?”

I opened one eye and saw a blond head peeking around the frame of my bedroom door. It was my daughter, EM1, lurking in the hallway like the world’s worst burglar. I asked her what she wanted. Or, at least I tried to, but I was so groggy I’m not sure exactly what came out of my mouth.

She said, “There’s a spider in the bathroom. Can you come get it?”

Keep in mind, this is a twenty-three-year-old woman asking me to get up in the middle of the night to kill a spider. I wonder what she is going to do when she is living on her own and a spider wanders into her apartment. Call me in the middle of the night to come over and remove it?

Of course not. That’s a silly thing to even contemplate.

I know EM1 is never moving out of my house.

Anyway, I crawled out of bed and staggered down the hallway to EM1’s bathroom to see the eight-legged monster that was preventing any of us from going to sleep that night. EM1 pointed up at one of the walls, close to the ceiling, indicating a tiny black speck about the size of the fingernail on my pinky.

“Really?” I asked. “You needed me to deal with this right now?”

“I saw it once before, but it crawled away. I didn’t want it to get away again.”

Logical, I suppose. But still inconvenient timing.

I stepped up to the wall and reached up one hand to demonstrate that the murderous bathroom dweller was well out of my reach. “I can’t get it. What do you want me to do?”

EM1 held out a cotton ball in her hand. “Do you want to throw this at it? Try to knock it down?”

I told her that no, I wasn’t going to throw a cotton ball at the spider, and started to explain that her suggestion was utterly ridiculous. That was when I noticed that the floor of the bathroom was littered with cotton balls. Apparently EM1 had already been attempting this odd tactic of spider removal.

“Did you throw all these?” I asked her.

“I was trying to get him off the wall.”

“And he just batted them away?”

She gave me a dirty look.

Shaking my head, I began to look around for something that would allow me to reach up high enough to remove the intruder. I found a hand towel next to the sink and picked it up. EM1 held out a hand to stop me, but instead just made an unhappy noise and said, “Go ahead.”

I guess she would rather have to wash her towel than deal with the spider any longer.

I extended the towel to its full length and swatted the hapless critter on the wall. It fell to the ground in typical spider fashion, landing with its multiple legs curled under itself in the international spider language of “You got me and now I’m quite dead.”

Tossing the towel back on the sink, I walked out of the bathroom to go back to bed.

EM1 tried to call me back to pick up the dead bug. “It’s still on the floor. Aren’t you going to get rid of it?”

“I killed it,” I told her. “You can clean it and cook it.”

I heard little squeaks of revulsion and disgust for a couple minutes, then the toilet flushed. The saga had apparently ended. As I crawled back into bed, EM1 called out, “It squished when I picked it up!”

Yeah, they’ll do that. It’s one of the hazards of spider killing. And I should know.

It’s my job.

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Another Toddler in the House

My three-year old nephew stayed with us the other night. My wife agreed to babysit for a couple days and told me about it at the last minute so I couldn’t make other plans. She knows me too well.

Having a three-year old in the house again was quite an experience. The last child I had running around me was EM2, and she turns 20 this year. I haven’t had to deal with a toddler since Friends was still making new episodes on TV. I’m not cut out for it anymore.

So, when the kid showed up, I did what anyone in my position would do. I let my wife take care of him and I hid in the den. Problem solved. Apparently, I haven’t yet lost my touch. I have a feeling that I am going to be as good at being a grandparent as I was at being a parent.

Not that I’m in a hurry to find that out.

This experience was eye opening. I had forgotten a lot of the things parents of young children go through. Fortunately, my nephew was happy to remind me.

While my nephew was in the house, cartoons ran on the television set 24/7, half-eaten snacks were scattered around the floor as well as in his hair, and the shrill cry of, “Read a book?” echoed throughout my home every ten seconds.

When we fed him dinner (grilled cheese sandwich with some chips) he finished his chips first then dropped half his sandwich on the floor. Next, he asked for more chips.

I told him he had to finish his sandwich (not the part he dropped, I’m not a monster) then he could have more chips. He looked at me, nodded as if he understood, then said, “Chips?”

I told him again to eat his sandwich. He responded by pushing the plate away and saying, “all done.” I asked if he was really done eating, and he assured me he was. I took the plate away and set in on the kitchen counter. My nephew climbed down from his chair, walked into the kitchen with me, then pointed at the bag of chips on the counter and said, “The chips are right there.”

You can’t argue with that kind of logic.

Another joy of having little children in the house that I had long forgotten, was the late-night panic attack that comes with wondering if you are suddenly going to have to jump out of bed. My nephew wasn’t feeling very well when he stayed at our house, so putting him to bed went fairly smoothly. He complained a little, my wife read him another thirty or so bedtime stories, then he passed out like I had drugged his hot chocolate.

To be clear, I did not drug his hot chocolate. He didn’t have hot chocolate. I gave him water.

At about one o’clock in the morning, we were all sound asleep when I woke to an unfamiliar noise. My nephew was coughing in his sleep. I could tell my wife had woken up at the sound as well, so we both lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and listening for a repeat of the coughing. I spent at least fifteen minutes, breaking out in a cold sweat with my heart racing while I wondered if the kid was going to fall back asleep, or wake himself up.

I had flashbacks to all the sleepless nights of my own kids waking up suddenly and deciding that if they had to be awake then so did everyone else in the house. I kept waiting for my nephew to start crying or yelling for somebody to come get him.

Fortunately, that did not happen. He eventually fell back asleep on his own. After my wife and I exchanged a celebratory high-five, so did we.

The next morning, my nephew woke up before the rest of us. He must have had plenty to think about, because he apparently sat in his room and kept himself occupied for half an hour before anyone else moved.

That was the good part.

My daughter, EM1, poked her head into his room to check on him.

That turned out to be the mistake.

As soon as my nephew saw her it was as if someone finally pulled his string. Suddenly, he was Talking Tina with a broken volume control, and any hopes the rest of the family might have been harboring about further sleep were quickly dispersed.

Cartoons went back on the tv, my wife was reading picture books again, and my nephew was asking why I wasn’t making waffles yet.

That’s the other thing about three-year-olds: they never forget to remind you of the things you wish you hadn’t said. The previous day, I had mentioned that I might – might! – be willing to make waffles for breakfast. You would think the kid and I had agreed to some sort of blood oath the way he kept reminding me that he was getting waffles because I had told him he was getting waffles, and why weren’t there any waffles in front of him when I clearly promised waffles would be happening.

And, did I mention waffles?

Before you ask, yes waffles happened. What choice did I have at that point?

Over the weekend, one thing became abundantly clear: my decision not to have any more children was absolutely the right one. I don’t have the strength for this anymore. Two days was more than I could handle, and let’s be honest, my wife did the lion’s share of dealing with the boy. I stood in the room with my nephew for a couple minutes at a time, like I was trying to hold my breath underwater in a swimming pool, then bolted for my den to decompress and get ready for the next attempt.

When my own children start having kids, I may have to move to another country. I just don’t have the patience or skill set to deal with toddlers. We have nothing in common.

Or, perhaps we have too much in common. We’re both extremely self-centered, egotistical, and expect others to do our bidding without needing to so much as say please or thank you. We both want total control of the house around us and all the people in it. Maybe it’s not that I don’t like kids, maybe I just don’t want the competition.

I do have one thing, however, that most toddlers do not.

I can make my own waffles.

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A Dearth of Common Sense

My daughter, EM1, will be turning 23 this month. Not only does that make me feel very old, but it makes me wonder if her mother and I have done everything we can to prepare her for going out and making her way in the world.

The fact she still lives at home with us argues that no … no we haven’t.

I recently told her she has an absolute dearth of common sense.

She said, “thank you.”

Which tells me that she also has a vocabulary that does not include a correct definition for the word, “dearth.”

I think she is a smart kid, but although by all accounts of law and society she is a grown adult, I feel like she is still exactly that: a kid. I remember vividly how naïve and clueless I was when I was her age, and I am betting that in the thousand or so years since I was in my early twenties, kids have not advanced all that much.

It doesn’t help my opinion when I see her exhibiting the same type of decision-making skills I used to demonstrate at her age.

When I was in my early twenties, I recall a little road trip I took with my buddy, Wes Blalock. We both decided that taking off for a weekend to hang out in a cabin for a couple days sounded like a great idea, so we loaded up my Buick Skylark (I warned you this was a while ago) and headed out. We drove out of San Jose and made our way a few hours up into the northern California foothills.

A couple hours into our drive, we were cruising along some two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere when Wes turned to me and said, “What’s that noise?”

I had no idea what he was talking about and said so. He rolled down his window and that’s when I noticed the soft, thwip-thwip-thwip sound outside the car.

Wes started to laugh and told me, “Wouldn’t it suck if we got a flat tire right now?”

That was when the entire rear end of the car started to shake back and forth and the soft, thwip-thwip-thwip became a God-awful Whang-Whang-Whang! I swerved onto the side of the road and skidded to a halt in the dirt and gravel. When we climbed out of the car, we discovered that Wes had cursed us, and I did indeed have a flat tire.

A completely flat tire. The rubber was missing in places, the hole was big enough to put your fist through, and there were so many strands of wire sticking up from the shredded steel belt of the tire that it looked like a Halloween fright mask.

I glared at Wes because, of course, this was all entirely his fault.

Next, we unpacked the spare tire and repair kit, and by “unpacked” I mean we searched the car for three hours until we were able to locate the spare tire and repair kit. I was not terribly savvy about automobiles at that age. I’m still not, if I’m being totally honest. I can usually find where the gas goes in and, on occasion, I might replace the windshield wiper blades. Other than that… Nope.

Anyway, we pulled out the repair kit and went to work jacking up the car.

We got the tire off, and even successfully attached the spare tire without losing any lug nuts in the gravel. I am still amazed by that outcome, but grateful for it. Wes and I loaded the repair kit back in the trunk, then I looked at the ruined tire laying on the shoulder of the road.

I asked Wes, “What do we do with it?”

He shook his head.

“Do we leave it here?”

Again, a shake of the head.

We ended up deciding to take the tire with us because we thought leaving it behind might be littering.

Let me repeat that: We ended up deciding to take the tire with us because we thought leaving it behind might be littering.

We kept the tire because we did not want to leave any trash behind. Not because we might need any part of it later or anything logical like that.

We limped into a nearby town on the tiny spare tire and found an open garage. The mechanic working there said he could sell us a new tire, then asked us where we put the rim.

“The what?” I asked.

“The rim. The metal thing in the middle that the tire goes around.”

Wes and I glanced at each other, realizing for the first time just how close we had come to leaving it on the side of the road fifteen miles away.

Because we thought it was garbage.

Like I said, I was a moron at that age.

Next the mechanic told me it was going to cost about $250 for the new tire, old tire disposal fees, and balancing the new wheel on the rim. Neither Wes nor I had any cash with us. At least, not that much.

I told Wes, “I have a credit card, but my parents told me to only use it in emergencies.”

Wes stared at me as if I had just told him, “I have shoes, but my parents told me I should only put them on my feet.”

“Emergencies?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“You mean, emergencies like getting a flat tire in the middle of nowhere and needing to buy a new tire?”

“Um… yeah. I guess those kinds of emergencies.”

“Good,” he told me, “because I was starting to wonder exactly what the hell your definition of an emergency was.”

Sheepishly, I took out the credit card and paid for the tire. An hour later, we were back on the road and on our way.

Anyway, the point of my whole rambling story is this: That idiot kid that I used to be, is now my daughter, and it worries me when I think back to all the stupid stuff I used to do. I look at her and I see myself at that age.

Well, I see myself except for one important difference.

EM1 still hasn’t learned how to change a flat tire.

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