Tuesday, January 6, 2009

I Want To Be Interesting, Too

A few years ago, my friend, John McCann, started his super neato blog. I've been following it almost from day one. Over the Christmas holiday he drove up to Washington state to spend time with friends and family. He blogged the whole way...chatting about the snow and ice and weird people he had met and funny things that happened along the way and...well...I was highly entertained. John was having a very interesting time and I was interested in his interesting time. In fact, I was more interested in the interesting time John was having than than in the less interesting time I was having with a house full of peckish and highly argumentative Cuban in-laws. 

Don't get me wrong. I love Cubans. I married one. I still am married to one. But I have come to the conclusion that they're insane. Not criminally or anything like that. None of them have ever held me hostage or taken my dog out back for a beating. No. It's just that Cubans tend to argue with each other about all kinds of things. Anything. Cheese. Flan. The name of that armless man that used to sell eggs back in Havana...the one with the cleft pallette and the bone sticking out of his leg. Cubans will argue about chicken, sell-by freshness dates and what causes intestinal gas (which, it turns out, is everything). I have seen two elderly Cuban women almost kill each other over whether their mother's arroz con pollo recipe had beer or pimento. The only thing Cubans agree on is that anything under 67 degrees is freezing and requires a parka and a mad dash to the car before limbs begin to fall off. I have seen Cubans spend over three hours getting on their coats and hats and gloves and scarfs for a five foot walk from the door to the car. Once in the car, those same Cubans will spend another three hours taking off their gloves and hats and coats and scarfs because to leave them on in the car will cause an embolism.  (I have also heard a complicated theory that orange juice and milk are fine individually, but have them BOTH for breakfast and your stomach will melt.) But I digress.

The point is with all this supposedly interesting arguing going on in my home over the holidays, I was more interested in the really interesting stuff that was happening to John on his travels. And then it occurred to me. I have "interest deficit disorder." IDD is the perception that other people's lives are more interesting than your own. So, to cure myself of this, I've decided to blog on a daily basis and then read what I've done before I go to bed. Hopefully this will make me say, "Wow. What an interesting day I had." Or, "Hmmm. That wasn't quite an interesting enough day. Better do more interesting stuff tomorrow." Or, "I think I've got a book here!"

So, here goes. It's still morning, but here's what's happened so far this morning...

I got up at six to get my daughter ready for school. As I was making her lunch I think I saw Satan out the back window. It was still dark, and it was only for a moment. But he had red eyes and horns and held a Garden Weasel in an aggressive, taunting manner. 

Later in the morning my wife and I went to the market. All seemed well until we got to the checkout lane. The boxboy looked at me in a way which led me to believe he is not of our world. 

It's time for lunch.

5 comments:

  1. I hope you're having a bowl of ham jelly.

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  2. I am! I am having a bowl of ham jelly! I am! Ha ha ha! I see what you're saying! It's true!

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  3. I have a feeling this bloging thing is going to work out for you, I laughed the whole way through, and I've already decided your life is interesting and I should keep reading your blog.

    I don't live with cubans but I do live with my inlaws and I think I know more now about daily meals and Andy Griffith than I can remember of my own childhood. Today my grandmother inlaw decided I was going to have chili, because she can only eat a teaspoonful of anything and she wanted some chili. Hurray!

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  4. Your life is far more interesting than mine, sir... Satan never stops by my place anymore, I'm lucky if his brother Carl dumps trash on my lawn.

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  5. OK, I can't seem to post to your blog while at work because this one is set up to make pop-ups that the work PC doesn't like. But this is what I was a-gonna say:

    Satan was an alien bounty hunter, looking for the boxboy. Next time you see Satan, be sure to tell him; maybe he'll give you a cut... what kind of cut, well...

    Hmm. I could've sworn that you spelled it "Freunleven" in my old pal KT's
    sketchbook! Ah, the memory is the second thing to go. I can't remember what
    the first thing is.

    Ohhh, but someone else already took the blog name "freunleven" here anyway...

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