By the numbers

It has been brought to my attention that there have been no new blogs for (gasp) two days. I could blame it on the Gallant Hero, who is busy with his studies and therefore has had little opportunity to provide me with writing material. However, if I were to allow this to influence my frequency of writing, then you would see no new blog entries for the next few years.

Or, I could take the high road and admit the fault is all mine, and immediately set about to rectify the situation. Being one to shift responsibility to others whenever I can, this is personally my least favorite option, but I guess traveling on the high road never gave anyone travel sickness.

When one has little writing material to work with (i.e., nothing interesting has happened of late), one must delve into that bottomless well of ideas: can openers. Just kidding! I'm sure you will be greatly relieved to know that even I cannot think of anything new to write about THAT subject.

Our lives are increasingly controlled by numbers -- Social Security numbers, home phone numbers, cell phone numbers, work phone numbers, house numbers, student ID numbers, confirmation numbers for everything imaginable, prisoner numbers...At our house, another kind of number rules. This is the number of things we have.

The other day I was rearranging glasses and mugs in the kitchen cupboard to make room for some mugs we'd gotten last Christmas (this is how long it takes us to put away our Christmas gifts). Amazed at the seemingly endless number of glasses and mugs, I was seized with a curiosity to know exactly how many we had. I blame this abnormal curiosity on my mother, who counts obsessively and can tell you exactly how many steps there are in any given stairway, or how many boards there are in a wooden fence.

But back to our cupboard. Among water glasses, juice glasses, coffee mugs (which only one of us uses for coffee), plastic glasses (so we don't have to worry about breaking the glass ones), and kids' cups (for when all the other plastic ones are dirty), I counted 43 drinking vessels. And these are just the ones we use for every day. Fortunately, the goblets in the china cabinet did not, to my knowledge, need any rearranging, and therefore I was spared from counting those, too. I know that after our wedding we had 24 in there, but I suspect that they have been multiplying behind closed doors. They are probably holding family reunions.

Another day when I was folding towels, I said to Joe, "Did you know we have 17 washcloths?" It did not seem to impress him as overly extravagant that two people should have 17 washcloths. He merely shrugged, grabbed one off the top of the pile, and headed to the shower. He, the Math Wizard, does not waste too much time worrying about the more philosophical aspects of numbers.

The real question raised by all this number crunching, which no doubt has already formed in the minds of those of you who have been following closely, is why do we have odd numbers of everything?

Looks like I'm going to have to start checking out those family reunions going on behind closed doors.