Molly's Muffins

My Dad's better, but he's still getting over the cold that almost left me with an empty bedroom that would have converted nicely into a work office for me. Still, the rest of us are not without our own problems. I'm talking about my wife and I. Just the other night I thoughtfully brought her two aspirins as she sat in our bed reading.
     "Here, sweetie," I told her. "I brought you a couple of aspirin."
     "For what? " she asked. "I don't have a headache."
     "Then it's a good thing you're already in bed," I said, smoothly.
     Okay, so that's an old joke... but it's not far from the truth.
     My own particular peccadillo's have given me a new eating schedule. I only eat twice a day, which isn't bad, BUT--and, as you can see, it's a big "but"--I can't have any breads, and THAT'S what's killing me. I'm a BIG bread eater. Well, make that used to be. I'm not any longer. On the plus side, I can have all the fruit I want, which is another way of saying I go to the bathroom a lot.
     The reason for this is that my weight ballooned to 211 lbs, with no topping out in sight, so I had to take some drastic action. I remembered reading in a book by Fran Drescher* that she was on a non-white diet. That is, she wouldn't eat anything that was white. That left out white rice, potatoes, some dairies... and bread. It made sense to me. A lot of empty calories in white sugar. Plus, Fran Drescher is pretty hot to look at, so she must be doing SOMETHING right.
     But bread?
     Man, that's what I live for. As a kid, I was famous for making anything into a sandwich. Even oranges.** What has all this got to do with the story I want to tell you? Well, hang on. I'm getting to that.
     Today my wife drove my Dad to the PX (the military grocery store). He wanted to do some shopping, and she likes to spend my money there, too. I tell her she doesn't have to spend money every place she goes, but, to tell the truth, when it comes to the PX I don't really mind, because she usually brings me back one of their sandwiches.
     It's a big sandwich. A BIG sandwich. It's so big it could feed four of you, that's how big it is. But because of my new and improved eating schedule I told her that I would just take a small piece from my dad's. He always gets one, and he never finishes it.
     I won't lie to you, by the time they got back I was really hungry and looking forward to my piece of the sandwich. My dad is all smiles. He's hungry, too.
     I'm in the kitchen working on my taxes. I see my Dad's carrying the Styrofoam container the sandwich comes in. My wife's bring in a few bags of groceries.
     "Do you need some help, sweetie?" I ask her.
     "No," she says. "I'm fine."
     That's good, because I didn't really want to stop working in the middle of finding out how much money I still owed the government. I have no problems paying my taxes, I just have a problem seeing my taxes wasted. But that's neither here nor there. Which is more than you can say about my money. It's here, but soon it will be there.
     As my Dad sets the container on the counter he starts.
     Cough, cough! Sniff!
     He covers his mouth and nose with his hands.
     Cough, cough, cough! Sniff, sniff!
     I think you know where I'm going with this.
     I'm not a germaphobe, but I don't care to have someone's snot all over food I'm about to eat. Sure, I know that probably happens in restaurants, but as long as I don't know about it, it doesn't bother me.
     I remember one time awhile back I thought I'd be nice, so I bought some muffins from a restaurant called Molly's. The food there is just as good as the muffins, and the muffins are VERY good indeed. I bought a half dozen, two of which were bran, because those are my favorite.*** They come in a clear plastic container, made especially for muffins or cupcakes, and they hold exactly six.
     "Hey, Dad," I told him as I came into the house. "I brought us some muffins."
     "Ooooweee," my dad answered. He likes Molly's muffins, too. He likes them so much, he even got up from his (my) favorite chair in the great room, and forgot all about whatever baseball game he was sleeping through.
     I put the container down on the kitchen island, and went to get myself a glass of milk.
     "You want some milk, Dad?" I asked him.
     "Oh, boy. You bet," he said.
     So I got two glasses from the kitchen cabinets, took the milk out of the refrigerator, and began to pour us some. This was before I knew about Fran Drescher's anti-white diet. What I do now is add some chocolate syrup to my milk. That changes the color. Problem solved.
     Meanwhile, I saw my Dad go over to the container, and open it up.
     "There's two bran muffins in there, if you want one," I told him.
     He doesn't say anything. What he does is...
     He begins TOUCHING the muffins. He presses down lightly on one, then presses down lightly on another. Testing their sponginess, I reckon.
     I didn't say anything, because, well, because I was flabbergasted. I don't know WHY he was touching all the muffins. Maybe he was deciding which muffin he was going to eat by its ability to spring back to its natural roundness on top.
     I placed his glass of milk in front of him.
     "Which one are you going to eat, son?" he asked me, still pressing on them.
     "I bought them for you, Dad?" I told him, after a pause. "Help yourself."
     "Thanks," he said, and dug in.
     My wife walked into the kitchen right then.
     "Oh, you brought some Molly's?" she said, her eyes sparkling at the sight. She loves those muffins, too.
     I shook my head. My Dad didn't see me, because he was busy helping himself to one of the bran muffins.
     "Yeah," I told her. "I got them for Dad."
     She looked at me, the sparkle in her eyes changing to curiousity, but she took my hint. That's one of the advantages of being married as long as we have. We get the little nuances that might otherwise go missed. Later, I tell her what happened.
     "And you didn't want to eat a muffin because of that?" she chastised me. Yeah, she chastised me, but I know she doesn't like people touching HER food, either, and there was no way she was going to eat any of THOSE muffins.
     I get those little nuances, too.
     But I digress...
     The sandwich is still completely covered, and I'm hoping my wife gets to the sandwich first, so she can cut me a piece. I'd do it myself, but my Dad would take offense to that. If my wife does it, he'll just see it as part of her catering to him. For some reason, he feels entitled to being catered to. Gone are the days when he used to prefer fending for himself. Thank God he didn't have that kind of an attitude in World War II, or else we'd all be speaking Japanese.
     As for me having a piece of his sandwich, well, it's not meant to be. Before my wife can get to it, my dad opens the Styrofoam container with his germ-infested hands. He takes the sandwich out, and places it on a plate so he can cut it. He holds it with one hand, and cuts it with the other. All the while...
     Cough, cough! Sniff, sniff! COUGH! COUGH! COUGH!
     Right on the sandwich.
     "Sweetie," I tell my wife. She's busy putting away the groceries she bought. "Nevermind about the sandwich. It has bread, and that's no longer on my menu."
     "That's fine," she says, still distracted. "Do you want me to cook you something?"
     "Thanks," I say, "but I'm not hungry."
     Anymore.  
     Thanks to my Dad's expulsion of bodily fluids I decided to stick to my diet. I've lost eight pounds in two weeks, and, since I'm going to bed hungry...
     I guess I'll be losing a little bit more.
    

*Don't judge me. I've learned a lot from The Nanny.

**Don't judge me. I was a kid.

***Don't judge me. My bowel movements are VERY regular.

 
 
Raising My Father
     @JimDuchene
          jimduchene.blogspot.com
               RaisingMyFather.blogspot.com
                   

I Retired For This?

as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine

 

My wife and I are cleaning the oakwood floors downstairs. Wood floors need a good, old fashioned cleaning and waxing several times a year to keep it rich looking, and all that cleaning and waxing takes an awful lot of elbow grease. The whole affair takes too long to do all at once, so we do it in sections. We are on our knees cleaning the floor.
     Which reminds me of the following joke (if you don't care for jokes that are a bit on the politically incorrect side, then I suggest you skip the following paragraph):
     What's the difference between the mass in a catholic church and the mass in a gay church? In the gay church, only HALF the congregation are on their knees.
     But I digress...
     By all of us, I mean not my Dad. He's sitting on his (my) favorite chair. I don't see him from the angle and direction I'm in, but I know he's there because I can hear him.
     Mmm... smack, smack, smack! Ahh, click, click, click! Ohh, weee! Smack! Ahhh!
     I'm almost positive that he doesn't know he's making those noises. They just find their way out of him, like various other noises from various other parts of his body.
     "Ahhh--smack, smack, smack--what are you all doing?" he asks.
     We're both using a cleaner and micro towels. My Dad can see exactly what we're doing. He's just making conversation.
     I think to myself, what are we doing? What does it look like we're doing? I've got my wife on her knees, and not in the fun way.
     "We're cleaning the floors, Dad," I tell him. I'm not too nice when I'm in the middle of hard work. I know that. So I try to be nice. Nice, but still not in the mood for long explanations.
     My wife, the saint that she is, takes a little more time to explain it to him.
     "We're cleaning the floors, Dad," she tells him. "Right now, we're using a wood cleaner, because your son is going to have to wax it. We have to clean it in sections, because it's too much work to do all at once. The floor will look better when we're done. You'll see."
     She's just spent a lot of effort and wordage telling him the same thing I just told him. I think she just wanted to take a break.
     "Yeah," my Dad says to us. "I thought so."
     You know, when we were buying the house, wooden floors seemed like a good idea. They're beautiful to look at, but... who the heck knew they were so much work? We had an option to buy fake wooden floors that looked just as good as the real thing, but I thought that would be taking the cheap way out. I didn't realize that, after retiring, because of those wooden floors I'd be spending all my time off working harder than I ever did when I had a job.
     Later--much later--after the floor is clean, I'm on my knees adding a wax finish to it.
     My Dad walks by.
     "Still working on it, huh?" he tells me, and stands over me (not too close, or I might put him to work) to inspect, not admire, the great job I'm doing. (That's right. I'm patting myself on the back. somebody has to.)
     "Yeah," I tell him. "Now I'm waxing it."
     Smack, smack, smack!
     "Yeah... I thought so."
     Smack!
     He lifts his nose and sniffs around.
     "What's that smell?" he asks.
     "What smell?" I say.
     "That smell," he says, waving him arms around himself, to indicate the air.
     "I don't smell anything."
     "You don't smell it?"
     "Smell what?"
     "That smell." Still waving.
     "You mean the wax?"
     "Wax?"
     "Yeah, the wax I'm waxing the floors with."
     "Yeah, that wax. Do you smell it?"
     "Dad," I tell him, hating to break the news to him, "it's odorless. It doesn't smell."
     "Sure, it smells. I can smell it."
     I think the wax he smells is the gas he just passed.
     "Son," he tells me, "that stuff stinks. I'm surprised you can't smell it. Something must be wrong with your sniffer."
     My sniffer?
     Finally, I'm finished. Dad goes off to his room, and I go upstairs To get cleaned up, and claim my reward. My wife's not always a saint.
     The next morning, my Dad comes into the kitchen. I'm sitting at the kitchen island, enjoying a nice, hot cup of coffee. My wife, with a smile on her face, is making us breakfast. We're both tired from all the physical exertion from the day before.
     Cleaning and waxing the wood floors was pretty tiring, too.
     My Dad takes a look around.
     "Your floors look the same," he tells us, and then sits down and waits to be served breakfast.
     Yeah... I thought so.
    
    

Raising My Father

JimDuchene.blogspot.com

RaisingMyFather.blogspot.com

@JimDuchene