Pertinent to my Interests

One thing you should know about me is that I don’t use warm milk to make anything. Instant oatmeal? Hot water. Hot cocoa? Hot water. It’s water, it’s always water, it will never be milk. Who has time to warm milk when water is so damn cheap and easy?

I bought this color-changing hot cocoa mix for the kids this weekend, and the directions called for warm milk. Normally I would ignore directions like that, but the color-changing aspect gave me pause: what if it needs lactose in order to change color?

“How do I even warm milk?!” I called to my husband from the kitchen. He was sitting on the couch looking at his phone, enjoying a well-deserved break after removing the air conditioning units from the windows.

“Put it in the microwave,” he said, not looking up from his phone.

“But like… how long? In what container?” I responded as I struggled to find a microwave-safe container.

“Just heat it and stir it until it seems warm,” he said, now looking up from the couch with some concern. “Use the big Pyrex measuring glass.”

“But how can I tell if it’s warm? And what power level should I use?” I asked, spilling milk all over the Pyrex glass and countertop. “How long does it take to burn?”

“Just… ” my husband appeared at my side. “I’ll do it.”

Men aren’t the only ones who can weaponize incompetence.

We had pet rabbits when I was a kid. They lived in a backyard hutch, and they really weren’t good pets, but I, at seven years old, knew exactly what would improve our situation: baby bunnies. So I did what any intelligent child raised in a religious household would do and I started praying for baby bunnies every night. I think I did this for at least a year.

I did not realize it would take more than thirty years for this particular prayer to be answered.

We had professional landscaping done this year; both of our yards were completely ripped up and redone, and when the workmen pulled the deck off the back of the house they uncovered a nest of five baby bunnies who were just starting to open their eyes.

Have you ever seen baby bunnies up close? They are the most precious little things. Even more precious than kittens who you know will grow up to become sock murderers.

With workmen and machinery crisscrossing our backyard the babies could not stay where they were. I wrapped the pile of babies in a dish towel, snuggled them up in a mixing bowl, and put them in the downstairs bathroom shower. Perhaps an odd choice, but the downstairs bathroom is dark and quiet, and the cats are unable to get into the shower through the big glass door. They were safe for now, but what next?

I called the local wildlife rehab place and we developed a strategy, Operation Bunny Daycare. It turns out that mother rabbits do not visit their babies during the day; they only come around the nest at night to feed and clean the little ones. So in the evenings we would head outside, dig a hole as near to the original nest site as possible, and carefully place the babies inside. Every morning before the workmen arrived we would go back outside to gather up the babies and their nesting material and bring them into the safety of daycare.

It worked beautifully. Mama Bunny returned every night to feed her little ones. I hung up a sign on the shower door that read “Casey’s Daycare for Exceptional Bunnies.” Our house was ground zero for cuteness.

The cats had no clue what was going on.

Of course, no bunny daycare is without its heartache. One of the babies escaped the outside nest overnight and didn’t survive the cold. We found him the nest morning and I think we all cried. Every night we worried if Mama Bunny would return. I even packed up the babies one day and brought them to the wildlife rehab place for a wellness check, just to make sure they had been fed.

Despite my many warnings to my children that this project was probably going to end in tragedy, it didn’t. About a week into our bunny daycare the babies mysteriously disappeared from the nest, and over the next couple evenings we spotted them outside with Mama Bunny, frolicking in our backyard dirt.

That bunny daycare sign is still hanging in our basement bathroom. And I still love going back to my cameral roll and looking at the pictures of the sweet little babies who were under our care for just a short while. Seven-year-old Casey was not wrong: baby bunnies really did improve my life.

Now I’m praying for kittens. If I get started now, I’ll get kittens around the time I’m seventy.

School picture day was this week, which means in about a month we’ll receive an overpriced packet of photos and I’ll take down the old photos hanging in the kitchen and put up the new ones.

I don’t want to take down last year’s school pictures in which my oldest has a cowlick, and an ugly shirt. My youngest’s hair looks good but he’s wearing an old fleece that proclaims OLD NAVY in giant letters.

I was gone for school picture day last year. My grandma had just received a terminal diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and as soon as I heard the news I knew I needed to go see her immediately.

I did not get to say goodbye to my grandpa; he died in the hospital before I could get out to Washington to see him. I did say goodbye to my dad, and was there for the last, awful forty-eight hours with him. I am glad I was there at the end–it was the right thing to be there–but those are hours of his life that I would rather forget.

I didn’t want to miss my grandma, but also didn’t want to come out when she was not herself. I think I booked plane tickets within two days of her diagnosis, and was playing board games with her at assisted living within four days.

My husband stepped up to the plate at home, didn’t hesitate at all when I said I wanted to visit my grandma right now. He’s the one who works full-time, he’s the one who is busy, but he never complained about being left holding all the household responsibilities with about two days of notice.

But he did forget it was picture day, and I don’t think either of us even realized until the pictures came back weeks later and I started laughing at the sight of my oldest’s cowlick. My husband was horrified.

“Ugh, these are terrible!” he said. “I’m so mad I forgot about picture day; we’ll have to do retakes.”

“No!” I pleaded. “No, we can’t do retakes! I love these! Every time I walk by them I’ll remember that I got to visit my grandma when she was still well and that my husband stepped in and took over everything without complaining!”

I begged, and the kids whined, and we managed to convince him to skip retakes. So for almost a year now I have been walking by these school photos and feeling both amusement at the cowlick and gratitude for that last game of Quiddler with my grandma.

I don’t want to take these pictures down.

At just under five feet six inches tall, I am taller than the average woman in the United States. But I am short.

I am short because I live with a tall person. And let me tell you something about tall people: they love to place things up high. If the choice is between putting something on the top shelf or a middle shelf they will always choose the top shelf. I frequently can’t even see where my tall person has unintentionally hidden these items, and am surprised to learn later that we do, indeed, have Benadryl.*

My husband is so tall–and his arms so long–he can touch the ceiling in our house without even standing on his tiptoes.

Meanwhile, I’ll set off the smoke detector while cooking and can only anxiously wave my little corgi arms at the hush button.

This is what years of living with a tall person has done to me: I now believe that I am a short person. And I am always pleasantly surprised when I stand next to another full-grown adult and can see the top of their head.

“Ah, yes,” I think proudly to myself. “I am a tall corgi!”

*The reverse works in my favor: I keep my stash of Casey Treats on a very low shelf and in ten years he still hasn’t found them.

I crossed the street with a priest today and had these thoughts in this order:

1. Am I less likely to get hit by a car right now?
2. Does this guy know how to perform exorcisms? He seems like the kind of priest who would perform exorcisms.
3. Is he constantly making up priest jokes in his head?

If I were a priest I would be constantly making up jokes because every moment of my day would be a humorous set-up. A priest, a fat lady, and a bicyclist are crossing the street… A priest walks into a hair salon… A priest, an atheist, and a poodle are in the cheese aisle…