Alfredo Agony

*Yep, I've joined another blog carnival. If I have to suffer, I want to share it with you. Today's humor topic is Injustice. Let's watch the fun.*

Injustice is a lot like a cat. Its path is unplanned and chaotic, but when it settles in your lap, it's there long enough to turn your legs into pincushions unless someone starts up the electric can opener and whirs your way to freedom.

That’s how I feel about the Alfredo sauce. Not the cat part; there’s no cure for that short of finding someone with a more comfortable lap or a bit of string stuck to their shoe. But from years of experience as the youngest of four children, and therefore susceptible to various methods of sibling torture, I have intimate knowledge that injustice is tolerable only when it is ruining the lives of people I don’t know.

When it hits me squarely in the grocery store shelf, it’s unbearable.

The trouble is that I’m not the type that spends a lot of time in the kitchen for fun. For me cooking doesn’t have the allure that, say, cruising down the Autobahn at a number divisible by 150 or stalking Johnny Depp on Twitter might have.

So in the interest of compromise, which is acceptable whenever it benefits me personally, I like to visit the “bottled for your convenience by the loving hands of somebody else” section of the store for a couple of jars of Alfredo sauce for a quick, pre-Twitter meal.

I’ll even go as far as opening the jars myself when I get home instead of asking the “What’s For Dinner” twins to do it for me. Teenage boys are nice to have around the house when you’ve got leftover pizza on hand or there’s some obvious body humor jokes that have been seriously overlooked, but when it comes to kitchen labor, they’re about as useful as a bonnet on a tom cat.

My doctor tells me that eating the stuff is kind of like caulking your arteries, but I don’t know much about caulk, either, except that it’s not near as good as the white sauce when you add it to noodles. It’s just one of nature’s little jokes that something so good to eat fills the body’s passageways with the stuff that Elmer’s is made of. But that’s injustice for you. Once you get a little patch, it spreads like tacky clothes in Ashley Olson’s closet.

If it’s that bad for me, I want to get it on sale. The savings offset the petrified artery situation. But it’s when the little glass jars of goodness go on sale that I have a problem.

I suspect my family is holding the newspaper hostage. Or perhaps once the newsprint hits the breakfast table, Scottie beams the whole thing down to a planet filled children who rip out the comic sections and stuff the rest behind the couch. So before I find out the stuff is on sale, it’s all sold out.

You’d think you could count on your family when time is short and price reductions are on the line. But the priorities in my house vary widely according to random factors such as the amount of gasoline in the car or the availability of high-speed Internet access. When it comes to something as mundane as the grocery store circulars, interest polls reach a new low, and the newspaper ends up as kitty litter.

So when I aim my little grocery cart toward the pasta aisle, there’s nothing there but an empty shelf and an echo.

I guess it’s take-out for supper again. But there’s an Italian restaurant right down the street. I think I can live with the injustice.

Something's Afoot

Raelynn unfurled a leg longer than the weeds in my herb garden and regarded one foot. She pulled out a cell phone and pressed a button. Immediate attention from Emergency services was essential.

The only numbers I have on speed dial are my kids and the plant doctor. If the Peta people cared as much about geraniums as they do about houseflies, they’d be hurling organic fertilizer at me every time I strolled through the Lawn and Garden section at Sears. A day doesn’t go by at my house without another senseless murder surrounded by potting soil and peat moss. But more important matters were afoot here.

My dear friend Raelynn was experiencing a crisis. Climbing out of her Town Car, she’d chipped the polish on one of her piggies.

Raelynn spends more money on her big toe than most people spend on their first real car—not the beater that got you through college and collapsed in a sigh of oil-induced relief on graduation day, but the one whose odometer turned to 100 for nobody but you. Spread this kind of upkeep over all available footage, and I could float a Ferrari over the Autobahn like a hovercraft for what she spends on the care and feeding of her feet.

If I ever spend that much time on a part of my body I haven’t seen since the last time Waldo was spotted, please repossess my WalMart Master Card.

“They’ll take me at four,” she said, snapping her cell phone shut the way a prosecuting attorney would close a file of incriminating evidence in front of a condescending judge. She watched as I shucked off my Converse sneakers.

“You could take better care of your feet. It isn’t that hard.”

“I don’t have time for all that oil and lotion and sanding them with a rock. I’ve got to peel the potatoes for dinner and vacuum the living room.”

“You use frozen potatoes. How long can it take to push Start? And that little automatic vacuum cleaner of yours scurries around like a mouse sucking up hairballs. It’s like playing room to room air hockey.”

“Well, it’s too much trouble.”

“Taking care of your feet is easier than cooking dinner. Why, after you wash and dry them. . .”

“You have to wash them?”

Raelynn looked at me as if I’d suggested she upholster her Lincoln with vinyl siding.

“You don’t wash your feet?”

“I’m not exactly sure where they are. I figure they must be at the bottom of the pile somewhere. They get the soap and water runoff when I take a shower.”

She blinked. “You’re going with me this afternoon. You need it more than I do.”

Two hours later my feet were softer than cumulous clouds, better decorated than my guest bedroom, and smelled like the perfume tester counter at the mall. I was afraid to walk.

The girl in charge of my new look played the cash register like a slot machine and announced a total. I could have bought a registered Shih Tzu and a groomer to find its eyes for what I paid for my feet. I handed over the little piece of plastic that big girls use to buy new toys and sighed.

That night, Bill and I spent the evening calculating whether it was worth sacrificing the kids’ college education to support my feet in their new lifestyle.

“Well, he said, watching the light dance off of the Pink Passion polish. It gives a whole new meaning to the term “foot the bill.”

Pressing Matters

Last weekend I was sick. As nature dictates when a crisis occurs, the dryer broke, the dishwasher turned sulky, and the oven raced from 0 to 5000 degrees like it was on the appliance Autobahn. I should have expected it. Nothing in the house is the same when the Mama is out of sorts.

I realize now that I should have taken time to explain to the appliances that I was planning on taking sick leave, but who knew? That sort of thing is not built into the job description, and besides, appliances are too sensitive these days anyway. Who can deal with a microwave that flings its turntable across the kitchen like a Frisbee when you push the wrong button?

When I was a kid, Mama’s washing machine could jog around the back porch with a load of delicates like it was the pajama marathon and be ready to take on sheets and towels without even stopping to empty the lint trap. On the other hand, my washing machine is very particular about how things are packed and when and where extracurricular items like, say, laundry detergent or fabric softener are added. And don’t even think about taking it for a spin unless you’ve distributed your blouses carefully in a crisscross design. One shoulder pad out of place and you’re unbalanced. Then the thing buzzes in an insulting manner like the wrong answer signal on Jeopardy.

I can remember back in the precomputerzoic era, Mama peacefully ironing basketfuls of clothes while we watched Password together on our black and white television set. Our clothes were fresh and clean back then, hanging neatly pressed in rows in our closets. These days I can Twitter on my cell phone and catch up with movie reviews on my laptop while I yank the clothes out of the dryer and toss them at the kids to put away.

But just now I’m huddled in front of a screen full of static showing on my television that needs a digital converter, my computer won’t load You Tube because my dial up connection is flaky, and I’m wearing my last clean pair of jeans because even with special delivery, the part I bought on e-Bay to fix my dryer won’t arrive until tomorrow. My damp, wrinkled clothes are hanging like monkeys in a rain forest from shower curtain rods, unused televsion antennae, and taller family members.

I wish Mom were here. She could show me how to turn on the iron.