Misadventures in Mayonnaise
I don’t normally post pornography here but I’m going to make an exception just this once. After all, mayonnaise is involved, and when mayonnaise is involved, it’s perfectly natural.
Ahh, to be young again. I remember the first time I saw a jar of mayonnaise just sitting there, waiting to be snatched and opened up. It was at the Piggly Wiggly. And I was buy-curious.
Hello, world! Grandpa Wiggly here with more of your correspondence. Today’s letter asks one of Grandpa Wiggly’s favorite questions in the whole wide world:
Dear Grandpa Wiggly,
What did you have for dinner last night? I had pizza and a few beers.
Josh
Well, grandchildren Josh, first things first: Beer is not a good thing to have for dinner. In fact, drinking in general can be very dangerous if you’re not careful. It can lead to accidents or even marriage (eek! 🙂 and you don’t want that. You’re also at a higher risk of going off on a drunken tirade. Casual drinking can still be fun. Just don’t drink and drive. Ever! If you need a ride, call your Grandpa Wiggly.
You must have known that I love talking about my last night’s supper. I assume you mean supper, because Grandpa Wiggly considers dinner to be what most people call lunch. My supper is what you probably call dinner. Even though you asked about dinner, which is lunch to me but supper to you, your clearly initiated inquiry indicated a meal consumed “last night.”
Many years ago, my ill-tempered, one-armed wife, Effie, or as some of the mean kids on the block call her, Grandma Nub, instituted an executive marriage dinner decision by eliminating the light midday meal known as lunch all together, and instead began cooking a heartier (and heavier) dinner. We usually eat dinner between 10 and 11 in the morning, followed by a short walk, and then a refreshing afternoon nap. That’s when Effie watches her stories. Such rubbish!
Regardless of all that, I had the same thing for supper last night as I did for dinner, which is lunch to you. Are you with me, Josh? Okie dokie!
Part of what fuels Grandpa Wiggly is what goes into Grandpa Wiggly, and what goes into Grandpa Wiggly comes out of Grandpa Wiggly. Effie didn’t cook any supper last night so I had my two favorite foods: corn niblets and wet bread. As you probably know, Grandpa Wiggly no longer has his original teeth. “You’re all gums,” Effie says. That’s just what happens when you get old. You start to lose things like teeth, hair, pants, and even your… um… I forgot. What was Grandpa Wiggly going on about again?
Haha! I’m just joshing you!
So, Internet, do you eat dinner or supper? What did you have for supper (or dinner) last night?
Wildlife rescue workers in Florida have discovered that a common sandwich ingredient is perfect for cleaning toxic crude from the skin of oiled sea turtles. Can you guess which one? It’s not mustard. Not salsa. I’ll give you a hint: It rhymes with mayonnaise!
As most of you know, I’m a manic mayonnaise enthusiast and a staunch advocate of the life-saving power of mayonnaise. Mayonnaise saved the lives of Jewish children from the Nazis during World War II. Now mayonnaise is being used to save the lives of hundreds of gulf sea turtles from a crude black death. Beth Buczynski over at Crisp Green will tell you all about it: Common Condiment Helps Save Gulf Sea Turtles.
Mayonnaise: Is there anything it can’t do?
Oh boy! The emailman just delivered my very first correspondence!
Dear Grandpa Wiggly,
Why does my mommy call Wednesdays hump day?
Jessie
Portland, Oregon
Well Jessie, your mommy likely calls Wednesday “hump day” because Wednesday is the middle of the week. Assuming your mum works the traditional Monday through Friday, Wednesday is the hump in the workweek. Once Wednesday has come and gone, you are over the hump and the rest of the week is downhill. Wheeeeee!
Now of course Wednesday is only considered hump day if you look at your week from the five-day workweek perspective. In a seven-day week that begins with Monday, Thursday would technically be the hump. Wednesday would be the hump in a seven-day week that begins with the Sabbath. I should probably specify the Christian Sabbath, Sunday. Friday evening to Saturday evening is the Jewish Sabbath, which I guess would make Saturday night to Sunday night their Monday, and Tuesday night to Wednesday night their hump day. Unless they round up, which would make… This is too confusing. I should have just said Sunday instead of Sabbath and been done with it.
Mondays are just Mondays. Everybody hates Mondays! Unless of course your Mondays are part of your weekend. Sunday is Grandpa Wiggly’s Friday so that makes Monday and Tuesday my weekend. Mondays are so terrible that many businesses are closed. Hitler was born on a Monday, which back then they called Saturday in Austria–Hungary. Monday is usually when I make mayonnaise for the week, that’s why I call it Mayonnaise Monday! (Did you know mayonnaise saved children from the Nazis? It’s true!)
My ill-tempered, one-armed wife, currently sleeping on the sofa covered in cats, Effie, disagrees with the official Wiggly Calendar. Then again, her week consists of twice as many days on account of her bitterness and cattiness about everything and nothing. She follows the cat calendar, and I don’t mean those 16-month calendars of cuddly cute cat pictures that are sold in the mall around Christmas. I mean the feline calendar.
One cat year is equivalent to fifteen (!) human years. Once you factor in that cats have nine lives, I can’t even begin to fathom when cat hump day falls. That sounds like a task for Math. Or cats. Or a wizard!
For yours wiggly, Wednesday is the first day of my week because, as all of you know grandchildren know, Wednesday is Wiggly Wednesday. That makes Saturday Grandpa Wiggly’s hump day, which makes today, Tuesday, my Sunday.
So, Jessie, now you know why your mum calls Wednesday “hump day.” If I’m wrong and there happens to be another reason, I think that’s a conversation best left between the two of you. Thanks for writing!
I have a nighttime routine like I’m sure many people do. Nothing special. But my wife — oh lord! She is incorrigible! She has to make sure all of her cats are in the bedroom before she will even crawl into bed. (She could care less about the whereabouts of my cat Mayonnaise.)
One by one she seeks out each cat (this alone can take some time), carries them back to her bedroom and places them on the bed. It’s a rather time-consuming process considering she only has one arm. Some of the cats don’t like to be picked up or carried, and all of the cats hate to be put in a particular spot, much like every cat in existence. Cats are independent, they prefer to pick and choose their own spots. Once all cats are present and accounted for, she can then get into bed peacefully.
Sounds simple enough, right? Well, it gets tricky…
For starters, while she’s out collecting the rest of the cats, some of the already collected cats (you know who you are!) attempt to escape. Sometimes they do. If this happens the process suffers a major setback or she might even have to start all over.
Certain cats have specific spots on the bed. For instance: Effie wants her dear, sweet (socially awkward) Linus as close to her as humanly possible so that she can snuggle him between her warm nub and body. Oscar, on the other hand, she wants at the foot of the bed because he is a “miserable beast who pretends to be asleep and bites in the night.”
Then there’s Frederick, who has a personal vendetta against Percy that my wife says stems from deep rooted jealousy. Apparently there’s some sort of torrid love triangle involving Fredrick and Percy competing for the affections of Lady Marmalade. Effie insists that the three of them must be split up at night and that neither male can be closer to Marmalade than the other so as to discourage either from engaging in unauthorized nighttime canoodling with Marmalade because that would lead to confrontation. For the record, all of these cats have been Bob Barker’d (spayed and neutered).
Effie is only satisfied once she has seen all of her cats in the same place at the same time. Why, you ask? Well, she has theories (lord, does she ever have theories!) that some of her cats collude to delve into trickery together to outsmart her. She posits that if, say, one of the cats (in most cases it would likely be Oscar) wants to sneak out of the house that a devious arrangement would have been pre-orchestrated between said cat and an accomplice cat to fool her. Meaning, one cat could be accounted for in one part of the house and then quickly, under the cover of darkness, travel to a second part of the house where he would be counted a second time in place of the escaping cat. And before you ask, yes, she can tell the difference between her cats, she chooses to perform this cat collecting with minimal lighting so that she can sneak up on them quietly and catch them off guard. Let me tell you, there is nothing sneaky or quiet about a one-armed lady who goes bump in the night. It’s a CAT-astrophe!
The cats are in no way required to stay on the bed or in her room throughout the whole night, although she prefers that they do and takes it personally when most of them decide to leave.
Yes, I am married to a crazy cat lady. And I love it!
