I have officially acclimated to life on the northern plains. Here’s proof:
It was snowing and the temperature was hovering around freezing, so I raised my windshield wipers when I pulled into the parking lot at work today. Raising my wipers to prevent the blades from freezing to the windshield never even crossed my mind when I lived in the PNW. Even the first couple of years out here, I rarely remembered to do so…and mangled a blade more than once turning them on.
The signs that I’m assimilating to the Midwest have been around for a while, I guess. They were subtle at first: I developed an affinity for Culver’s and started measuring distance in time rather than miles (“work is 10 minutes away, Wall’s an hour east”). But it really hit home the other day when I opened the fridge and was dismayed to find we’d run out of cheese curds. “Oh, jeeze!” I declared. “No curds left. Guess a trip to the grocery store is in order.”
I’m not totally there yet. I didn’t end that last sentence with “don’tcha know”; I’ve never been to a fish fry on Friday; and I don’t call traffic signals “stop-and-go lights.”
Give me another few years, however, and I make no promises.
When we had Christmas-light Kelly and her husband “Big Daddy”Joe over for dinner last Friday, Tara did something that confused me. She’d made macaroni salad and, when it came time to eat, took the plastic container out of the fridge and proceeded to reach for a Pyrex serving bowl.
“What are you doing, babe?” I wondered out loud.
“Serving the macaroni salad,” she replied.
“Why are you putting it in a new bowl?”
“This is a serving bowl.”
“Can’t you just serve it out of the container it’s already in?”
“That’s not a serving bowl.”
“But if you’re serving food out of it, doesn’t it become a serving bowl?”
At this point Christmas-light Kelly interjected. “Sometimes we like to use our fancy serving ware,” she said, coming to Tara’s defense.
I’m not sure who this “we” is that CLK was referring to, but I’ll tell you who it isn’t: me. Why dirty a second bowl when you’ve got a perfectly serviceable one all ready to go? Just stick a spoon in there and pass it around! I guess the issue is that it was plastic, and therefore, not as…pretty? I’ll take functionality and fewer dishes to wash any day of the week!
I have a hunch Big Daddy agrees, too.
I stopped by Ye Olde Publishing Company on my lunch hour yesterday to pick up the spring issue of their parenting magazine. This is the one where both Tara and I contributed articles. Gotta admit, it’s pretty cool to see my wife’s name in print, right there on page 20. She acts like it’s not a big deal, but I think she is secretly thrilled. She’s just afraid I’ll use the fact that she’s now got a published article as leverage to get her to start blogging again. I would never do that!
I’ve actually already been dropping hints for years, reminding her that we never would have met if not for blogging, and how much less wonderful would our lives have been without each other?!
I’m like a Jewish mother when it comes to laying down guilt trips.
Not that I expect Tara to actually dust off her blog (yes, she’s got one) again, but Ashley at YOPC did say we both have open invitations to contribute to future issues. Perhaps little by little I can chip away at her defenses and finally get her to cave in.
I mean, you’d read a Tara-penned blog post, right?
Mark My Words 
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