When I went to pick up my groceries from WalMart, they said they took away my cheese.
The girl came to my car window and actually said that. “We had to take away your cheese because it was recalled.”
I said, “Aw! You took my cheese?” The girl nodded. “The Kraft singles were recalled.”
I said, “Well, thank you for protecting me from tainted cheese. I guess.”
But seriously, I thought. How could anything bad get into Kraft singles? They are already so overprocessed and full of additives that the cheese slice part is hard to distinguish from the plastic wrapper part.
What could possibly taint a Kraft single? And more importantly, what will I make sandwiches with now?
The next day I got an email explaining –once again!–that my cheese had been recalled. It said that I should be informed, as a buyer of cheese, about the dangers of Kraft singles.
But when I looked at the reason for the recall, I couldn’t believe it.
“We have been notified that Kraft Heinz has initiated a Recall of individually wrapped Kraft Singles American processed cheese slices due to the possibility that a thin strip of the individual film may remain on the slice after the wrapper has been removed. If the film sticks to the slice and is not removed, it could be unpleasant and potentially cause a choking hazard.”
Some of the plastic sometimes gets stuck on the cheese? Yes. I know that. I’ve always known that.
I’ve been eating Kraft singles since I was a kid, and there has always been the risk of getting that little sliver of plastic wrapper in your mouth when you eat it.
It’s part of the Kraft singles experience! It’s ALWAYS been like that! And now you guys think it’s UNPLEASANT? You want to change it?
What are you planning to do? Just have the cheese UNWRAPPED? Are you kidding me? What’s next?
Are those little caramel squares going to be unwrapped now? The plastic sticks on them too, you know.
Is EVERYTHING going to be unwrapped? We’ll have to cancel Halloween! It’s an entire holiday BUILT on plastic wrapped food!
I protest vehemently. This is America. We LOVE plastic wrap.
Oh well. I guess I’ll go make a sandwich with cheese I SLICED FOR MYSELF now. Even though it’s un-American.
I just took my kids for an annual check up that resulted in a spate of referrals. (Nothing terrible; no one is dying.)
This mean I have to spend a bunch of time making annoying phone calls. UGH.
Yes, I know that’s a first world problem. Still I really hate making phone calls.
Also, I’m kind of bad at it. I literally just put a phone call on my list to make an appointment with a doctor that I had already made an appointment with.
I got all the way through the call and was about to write the appointment on the calendar, when I saw that I had already made this appointment two weeks before that.
I asked the lady on the phone if I had already scheduled some thing, and she said, “Oh yeah, here’s your consultation already on the books!” I hung up in disgrace.
Wow. That’s how you know that you’re incredibly disorganized.
I came out of church a little late one Sunday. Almost everyone had gone home. The parking lot was deserted except for a little cluster of cars with people outside them standing over to the side. All the people were gathered around looking at something intently.
I went over to see what was going on, of course. They said there was a bird who had laid an egg in the middle of the gravel lot.
I looked, and sure enough, the fat brown bird was standing there with an egg between its feet. This is in an open field fill of gravel and sand that is used for extra church parking.
Like, this is where you choose to lay an egg? Why, bird?
One of the onlookers found a couple of traffic cones and set them up to try to help make a barrier around the bird, which it disliked intensely. If you approached the bird it would become extremely agitated , flapping and squawking.
Obviously this thing was determined that it and its egg belonged right there in the church parking lot. The group of people were wondering what to do.
I said, “Do you want me to call my daughter?” (That’s ET; she has just finished vet school.)
Everyone thought that as a good idea, so I face-timed her to show her the bird in question.
ET said, “Oh, that’s how those birds are. They just lay eggs anywhere they want. We had one at the barn that laid an egg right in front of the horse stalls at the barn. We had to carefully lead the horses around it for a while.”
I asked her what we should do, and she said to leave the bird alone.
So everyone got into their cars and left, satisfied that an expert had told them it was okay not to stand guard over a bird who didn’t know that this was possibly the worst place to lay an egg. (Besides in front of a horse stall, I guess.).
I don’t know what happened; the bird wasn’t there the next Sunday. Maybe she moved the egg after the threatening people had gone. In any case, I was glad to have saved several well-meaning people from standing in an empty gravel lot all afternoon feeling confused.
Is it pathetic that I read it VERY carefully? I need to make friends! It’s hard to do as an adult.
As a little kid, you can just walk up to someone approximately your size and say, “Hi! Want to be friends?” and that’s perfectly fine. As a grown-up it might get you arrested.
Just before midnight Saturday, I heard my kids yelling that something was flying around the living room.
I figured it was just a bug, as usual, (“Just SQUISH it yourSELF!” I’m always yelling back; See my post on ineffective extermination methods.) but they were screaming a lot. “It’s BIG!” “It’s a BAT!”
So I went in there and it was not a bat. It was a bird. A confused little bird was perched up high out of everyone’s reach.
How did it get in there? Maybe it came down the chimney (the fireplace doors were open) or maybe someone let it in accidentally (birds seem to enjoy coming in the garage). Who knows? In any case, we needed to get it OUT.
First of all, I shut all the doors to the living room so it couldn’t go to any other room. Then I opened the patio door to outside. Then all heck broke loose.
There followed a lot of screaming and running around and the bird flew from one corner of the room to the other.
My daughter GG was waving a broom around madly while I tried to catch the poor thing in a big bucket.
The twins simply screamed, and took photos.
Eventually, the bird got near the door and I tried switching the porchlight on and turning off all the indoor lights. Finally it flew out!
And the good news is, I only found ONE spot of bird poo it left behind.
The twins are starting high school this year, and –having experienced the car line at the high school before– I have declared that they are going to be riding the bus.
(The high school campus houses a middle school also, and the traffic jams during pick-up and drop-off time are horrendous! On Boo’s first day of school there, four years ago, I thought I had allowed plenty of time to get there. Then I spent over twenty minutes waiting in the car line and Boo was actually late to school on the first day!)
But I digress. My point is, the twins are riding the bus to and from high school.
This means they have to be at the bus stop at 6:24 am every day, which means I have to get up before five in the morning, which is way too early, but whatever. I am making it happen.
It was still dark when we went out to catch the bus. It’s August. That means it’s only getting darker, as the sun will be rising later and later as time progresses. But hey, I’ve seen worse. I’ve lived in Alaska.
In the morning they got on the bus without incident. The bus driver handed me a form to fill out, introduced himself as Mr. B, and they were off.
In the afternoon I went outside to wait for the bus to come. Sitting on my front porch, I can see the corner where the bus will stop –it’s on a busy road where the neighborhood entrance is—but it’s across the yard and past some trees. So I can see the bus when it comes, but I can’t see when the kid gets off or whatever.
Okay, so yesterday I’m sitting out there and the bus stops at the corner, and then the bus drives away. I wait, but my child never shows up.
I was only expecting one of the twins, because Little Boy stayed after school for band practice. But Little Girl never appeared.
I walked over there and looked around, but she wasn’t there. Then she texted me saying that she was still on the bus.
Ok, I thought. So you’re trapped on the bus now?
I started walking down the street because I figured the next stop shouldn’t be that far away.
I went to get the car. Then my husband pulled up in his car, and I said, “Hey you wanna go on a mission to get a kid who is trapped on the bus?” He is always up for a mission, so he hopped in.
So there is a new thing I’ve never seen before: they have an app that tells me where the bus is. I had downloaded it earlier, thinking it would just give me bus updates, but it seems that there’s a literal GPS sitting on that bus telling me exactly where the bus is in real time. I’ve never seen this before; I’m pretty excited about it actually.
Technology= WOW, am I right?
I was like, well let’s just follow the bus on the app, and then once I catch up to it, she can get off. I handed the phone to my husband and said to look at the app and figure out where the bus is.
He was looking on there while I was driving. Then he said, “Okay I have it.” He directed me to a corner in a neighborhood near ours.
“Park right here,” he said. “Then the bus will be trapped down this circle, and when it comes by, we’ll get our kid.”
He was taking this “we’re on a mission” thing very seriously.
I said okay and stopped. I put on my emergency blinkers so people could go around me and waited. Then he said, “When I see the bus coming, I’m gonna get out and stand in the street and wave my arms.”
I said, “Really?”
He said that he figured it was gonna really embarrass her but then she’d figure out how to get off the bus at the right stop after this.
Talk about tough love!
SO. He saw the bus coming and stood in the street waving his arms.
OBVIOUSLY I had to get a picture of this!!
Inside the bus driver was like, “What gives?” and tried to wave him away.
My husband went up to the window and said, “Hey my kid is on that bus, and I need it back.”
Then he explained that she didn’t get off at her stop, and the bus driver said he would take her back there.
“Nah,” said my husband, “just let her out right now and I’ll take her.”
So Little Girl got off the bus. You can imagine how incredibly embarrassing this was. She got in the car and said, “Mom. Dad stood in front of the bus. He stood in front of the bus!”
I told her how you’ve got to stand up when it’s your stop, and if he if he drives away without letting you off you yell, “Hey it’s my stop!” I don’t know why this kid doesn’t know bus etiquette. I guess because she only rode the bus in elementary school where they’re actually more careful about the kids, maybe she isn’t aware of how you’re supposed to act?
Anyways, it was the first day the driver didn’t know who was supposed to be getting on and off but…
I was pretty surprised to receive this magazine in the mail.
Yes, I still get magazines in the mail. Seriously, I get physical paper copies of magazines sent through the US postal service. I know. I’m a dinosaur.
But as a dinosaur, –a dying breed, a throwback, whatever you want to call it– I know the demographic of the average reader for women’s magazines like Better Homes and Gardens and Woman’s Day. (Both of which I read.)
Their audience is old ladies. Like me.
And I get that these magazines want to try attract a younger demographic so that they don’t die. I get it. But you can’t do it the expense of your current core audience guys. This is not the way to go. Especially with subscribers.
I cannot imagine how many grandmas were shocked speechless by the cover of Better Homes and Gardens June edition. We’ve got a man wearing a dress and PEARLS for heavens sake!
Here’s what my car had to say for itself after trapping my friend inside with all the doors locked and the alarm blaring in a residential neighborhood after nine pm:
No, Miss Chevrolet, you did not avert an attempted theft. You just bothered everyone with your horrible loud noises for no reason.
christinakosatka.com 