Got buttons?

You know those extra buttons that clothing manufacturers so thoughtfully include with the garments they sell? Does anyone ever use those buttons? I have faithfully saved every button that came with every shirt, skirt, dress, or pair of pants I've ever bought, and I have never, ever used any of them. I have buttons dating from clothes I wore when I used my babysitting money to buy them, clothes that long ago went into the donation bag. I feel guilty for having given away clothes without also including the extra buttons. Like giving your sandwich to someone who is hungry but keeping the cookies for yourself.

Every time I've moved, I have studied my burgeoning button collection, wondering if it is worth taking along some 300-odd buttons that I have never used. But I dare not get rid of them, for then I'd be sure to lose 6 buttons off a shirt in one day. Keeping a button collection is like keeping an umbrella in your car: As long as it is there, it will never rain while you are out driving, but if you once forget and leave it in the house, it will rain like Noah ain't never seen.

The ironic thing is that if I ever did need an extra button, the one I needed would be sure to come up missing. I would pour out the whole collection on my kitchen table, or the bed, and frantically comb through it for, say, a largish black button with four holes. And what I would find would be 17 silver buttons with fancy little edges, or one bright red square button, or 5 lion's-head buttons, but no largish black button with four holes. And then what would I do?

I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd ask my mom if I could look through her button collection. With over 7 decades' worth of buttons, she would be bound to have what I need.

Toys, good and otherwise

My sister came to visit this weekend, as she often does when there are no better offers. We had a lot of things on our to-do list, like hanging pictures, painting the bathroom, and cleaning out the basement. It was a very ambitious list and the two of us, together, could accomplish a lot on it. So, naturally, we went shopping instead.

At one store I happened upon the PERFECT Christmas gift for the great-nieces and nephews on my side of the family. As you are no doubt aware, the only thing better than finding the perfect Christmas gift for someone is finding it in October. This never happens to me, perhaps because I do not generally start my shopping until after Christmas. But because I was not looking for gifts, of course I found them.

It was such a great find that I immediately rushed to show my sister. "Nyah, nyah," I sang when I found her. "I'm gonna be the favorite aunt-ie!"

Her face went pale, even though she knows there is no way in the world she can be toppled from her status of Favorite Aunt (of the Whole World, Not Just Family). She did, however, agree that with this toy, I could considerably raise my own status, which is currently Who Are You, Again?

In case any of the children's parents are reading this, this toy is a chicken that does the chicken dance, complete with off-key singing. But the BEST part is that when the chicken crosses the line (or the road) (sorry) from amusing to annoying, instead of simply shutting it off, your sweet, innocent children can put their chubby little hands around the chicken's neck and squeeze for all they're worth. This immediately induces the chicken to start fighting for its life, thrashing around, making pathetic squawking noises, flapping it wings violently, etc. Isn't that great?! This toy could change your child's whole career outlook, inspiring him or her to become a butcher!

Of course I am just kidding. I would never get such a mind-sucking, violence-inducing toy for a child. Or for my husband, for that matter. There's no telling what he would do with it.

Once, for instance, Joe and I were in a mall (Yes, I got him into a shopping mall. But just once) and walked past this display where a kid about 16 years old (who turned out to be the salesman) was maneuvering some sort of flying contraption. It narrowly missed the heads of several shoppers, including ours. I guess that was how he tried to get people's attention.

It got Joe's attention, all right. Before my eyes, he turned from a 30-something-old guy on the brink of marriage to a 10-year-old struck with infatuation over a toy helicopter. It could hover, fly straight up and down, and do other sorts of fascinating things (if you are a guy). It was without a doubt the coolest toy he'd seen since parting ways with his GI Joe action figures some decades earlier. The kid, seeing Joe's obvious interest (drool puddling on his shirt, etc.), offered him the controls. I glared at the kid and tugged on Joe, which is the universal command for "Let's get out of here!" This had about as much effect as asking a two-year-old if he wants to stop playing with his favorite trains to go potty.

I could see this toy ending up on our wedding registry, amidst the Addison dinner plates and Monet wine goblets. Absolutely useless flying thing, 1. Please ship directly to groom's residence, immediately.

In the end, it was Joe's reluctance to spend money on the thing that got us out of there without the toy. But all the way through the mall -- and for some time afterward -- it was all he talked about. The beautiful Christmas decorations impressed him not a bit. Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Great Pumpkin could have all walked right past him together and he would not have noticed. He was too busy planning how, IF he were to get this toy, he could mount it on some sort of track around the ceiling and actually make it useful by making it into a conveyor and having it fetch things for us. I thought that's what HE was for, but obviously I didn't know much of anything at that point.

So, yes, parents of children we buy gifts for, I realize the importance of choosing wisely when it comes to toys. That's why, this Christmas, everyone will be getting the Librarian Action Figure, with AMAZING Shushing Action! At least it might bring a little quiet to your home.

Tell us what toy from your childhood -- or belonging to your child -- stands out in your mind, fun or otherwise! What toy do you wish you or your child had never laid eyes on? Where can I get it for your child for Christmas?? (Just kidding on that last one.)

The electrician who didn't want to work

Some time ago I called an electrician to restore the lights in our bedroom and stairway to working order. It took him five minutes to determine that he was going to need to climb up into the attic and work from there. It took him two hours to try to figure out a way to avoid doing this.

I didn't blame him. Our attic opening is roughly the size of a keyhole. Things have been collecting up there -- debris, insulation, dead animals -- for 167 years. No, I did not blame him for wanting to find some other way to fix the problem. But I wasn't paying him by the hour to avoid working.

After I followed him around for two hours, pointedly looking at my watch every few seconds, he finally resigned himself to his fate. When you determine that you must do something you don't want to do, the best thing is to rope someone else into doing it with you. So he looked at me and said solemnly , "I'm going to need your help."

"Like...handing you tools and stuff?" I said hopefully. I wasn't getting paid to go into the attic, and I fervently prayed that I would not have to.

"No, it's a bit more complicated than that," he said. He went into the bathroom, took off the cover plate from the outlet, and motioned vaguely to the wires living behind it. "I'll be fishing wire down from the attic, and I need you to pull it for me."

I looked at the network of wires in the wall. It looked like those kids' puzzles where you have to figure out which balloon the clown is holding by following the string, which is hopelessly entangled with about 159 other strings.

"Will this be painful?" I asked.

"Nah," he said. "Only if you touch the wrong wires."

Thus reassured, I was immediately inducted as an Electrician's Apprentice. I felt a great sympathy for those young men of yore who were apprenticed to, say, a master joiner and had absolutely no idea what a joiner joined, or why, and who really wanted to just watch the clouds float by.

First, I was told, the electrician was going to have to drill. I expected him to drill into wood somewhere, so you can imagine my surprise when the drill started coming through the ceiling.

I protested this as strongly as I could, given that he was up in the attic and I was down a floor. He either did not hear me or chose not to.

Sighing, I readied myself for my responsibility of watching the little network of wires and, when I saw a new wire coming down, pulling on it. Our "creative communication" went something like this:

Electrician: Do you see it?
Me, hearing only what sounded like a cat crying from afar: What?
Electrician: I SAID, DO YOU SEE THE WIRE?
Me: Oh. Yes. I see it.
Electrician: WHAT?
Me: I SAID, I SEE IT!
Electrician: Mffmd mmfdem.
Me: WHAT?
Electrician: I SAID, PULL THE WIRE!

And so it went. Interestingly, I could hear perfectly fine when something went wrong up in the attic and the electrician used a few words that I'm sure are not in the Manual of Fixing Electrical Things.

Now, lest you think this apprentice thing was a cush job, let me say that the wire was not all that easy to pull. In fact, I had to tug so hard on it that I kept expecting, at any moment, to see the electrician himself pop right through the opening. Fortunately this did not happen.

After I had pulled enough wire to completely surround the bathroom, he came down from the attic. I was disappointed when I did not receive some sort of badge for my courage and heroism, or at least a diploma for successful completion of the Electrician Apprenticeship.

He wrote up his invoice and gave it to me. I looked it over. "I don't see anything on here about the hole in the bathroom ceiling," I said. "Don't I get a credit for that? Or how about the cupboard shelf that broke when you used it to walk across the beams in the attic? Or..."

But he was already out the door, on to his next Apprentice, who I'm sure he hoped would not have an attic.

Raisins

There seems to be an undue amount of attention given to raisins in the comments about the hypothetical casserole I wrote about the other day. I would just like to make assurances that there were NO raisins, real or hypothetical, or anything remotely resembling a raisin, in my hypothetical casserole.

I prefer to eat my raisins plain, out of the box, so there is NO chance of confusing them with something that might move, if you know what I mean.

Audiobooks, revisited

I know I have spoken harshly in the past about audiobooks that attempt to teach you something, as opposed to books that aim to wipe away every last vestige of brain matter you may possess. I much prefer the latter. But lately I've come close to reconsidering my position on this. Nonfiction audiobooks can actually offer several benefits.

First, they give you something to talk about with your spouse at dinner. It is well known that the number one cause of lack of communication among spouses is not listening to "intelligent" audiobooks. If the most exciting dinner conversation you have is whether to put more salt on the vegetables, imagine how that conversation can be transformed when you have spent your commute listening to a riveting account of how mold grows!

When I was listening to The Mayflower -- a book I highly recommend whenever you have approximately 3500 hours of listening time available -- the story was often the centerpiece of our dinner conversations. We would barely sit down before I'd blurt out, "Guess what? Squanto died!"

And this would unleash a flurry of discussion over whether Squanto, held up to generations of schoolchildren as the "friend of the Pilgrims," died of natural causes -- as is generally assumed by the non-audiobook-listening public -- or whether things were a little more sinister than that, as maintained by the conspiracy groupees, who are never happy when someone dies of natural causes.

The people in this story became like part of the family during the time I was listening to it. It was the first thing Joe would ask about when he came home from work. "Hi, honey, how's William Bradford doing? He sure got a wallop on the head from Mrs. B's second-best iron skillet!" Of course, watching a lame TV show like Lost will accomplish the same thing. During past seasons of this show I have felt like the characters were living with us. Only when they died, it was never from natural causes.

The second benefit of audiobooks is that they give you something to talk about at the hair salon, in the post office line, at the dentist's office -- basically, wherever you have to wait and want to help speed things up a bit. After five minutes of spouting Mayflower trivia, I guarantee that you will be ushered to the front of the line so people can be rid of you.

Third, it makes you feel pretty good to know something about the world, even if it's something that happened 300 years ago. Plus, when someone asks "Are you smarter than a fifth-grader?" you can answer "yes" and back it up with proof: "Does a fifth-grader know that the Pilgrims were actually trying to find Manhattan and accidentally landed at Plymouth instead? Of course not! They don't have audiobooks in schools! If they did, those kids might learn something worth knowing!"

So I heartily recommend "intelligent" audiobooks. Someday, I may even listen to another one.

Your name is served

Neighborhood cookouts serve a lot of functions, not the least of which is to remind you, once a year, of all your neighbors' names, which you will promptly forget until next year's cookout. This year Joe and I were determined that our ignorance would not be so apparent.

"Now, let's go over everyone's names and what we know about them," said Joe, before we left with our contribution of brownies. "Hopefully we can fill in the blanks tonight."

And so we began at one end of the block, naming residents, making up names when we had no idea, and offering little interesting tidbits about them that we might be able to work into a conversation to appear knowledgeable.

"And then there's JB, the dog," Joe was saying.

"Wait a minute," I said. "I thought JB was Amanda's husband."

"No, no, that's CJ. JB is their next door neighbor's dog...can't think of their names, though."

"Well, what is Amanda and CJ's dog's name? I thought the dog was CJ."

He shrugged. (We found out later that it is Levi, shortened to Lee because the cat -- whose name we never did catch -- also has a name with two syllables, and this greatly confuses Levi. Lee.)

When we were finished, we realized we knew more about the dogs who live on the block than their owners. We did know that there was one couple with a baby, a professional bike rider (who turned out to be the dad of the baby, not a separate person), two new couples we knew absolutely nothing about, and two Steves and a Steven. Happily, there are two empty homes, which cut down on the number of names we had to come up with. We gave up entirely on who might have cats.

Feeling confident, we betook ourselves down the street to the cookout. We listened carefully to everyone's conversation, filing away information, and didn't speak much on the grounds that then we couldn't embarrass ourselves. Unfortunately, the one time we did say something, we messed up by calling Chris "Dan" (now we know there are two Chrises, although there could be more). But we were feeling pretty good about appearing to know everyone and what was going on in the neighborhood. Then someone casually mentioned that Steve had moved out.

"Which Steve?" I asked.

"The one next to you," someone else said.

"On which side?" I persisted.

"Phil's roommate."

I was dumbfounded. How had I missed that bright-red car for a week and not realized what had happened?

"And Casey, too," someone said.

I looked blank.

"The dog," they reminded me.

"Oh, right," I said. "Of course, if Steve moved out, Casey would have to go, too," I said, attempting to cover up my forgetfulness of the dog who, for reasons known only to herself, frequently visited our porch.

We found out that Jeff and Kristen plan to move sometime, and also the couple with baby. "Oh, no," I moaned later to Joe. "If they move, and the two unoccupied houses get sold or rented, that means next year we'll have four new households to learn!"

"We can just call them all Steve," Joe suggested. "We're bound to be right some of the time."

Going buggy

WARNING: Today's topic deals with bugs. Specifically, bugs in food. If this topic makes your stomach turn, please go do something that is easier to, ahem, digest -- like read the morning paper or listen to the news.

Now, the situation I am going to describe is one that you may never encounter. But if you do, it is good to be prepared. Therefore I am going to talk about what to do when a creature lands in the casserole you are making.

Understand that this is strictly a hypothetical situation. I would never allow creatures in my house, let alone in my kitchen or my casserole. Uh uh. No way.

Now that we understand that this never really, actually happened last night, we can proceed with what to do if it were to happen. Strictly hypothetically, of course. Food-invading bugs invariably choose the moment you have finished mixing up whatever it is you are making -- in this hypothetical case, a casserole -- to land in it. They do not jump or fly in after just one or two ingredients are in the bowl, which might allow you to dump everything and start over. They're not stupid. They want all the good stuff, too!

This presents a problem. It has taken you a long time to put this dish together; you've probably been working on it since breakfast. You are minutes away from putting it into the oven. Do you really want to throw the whole thing out, although utterly disgusted by this unwanted ingredient, and risk a mutiny from your hungry husband and perhaps children and dog? If you do, what will you serve instead? Do you have a backup meal at your fingertips? If so, why did you bother making the casserole in the first place?

But back to our hypothetical dilemma. Let's imagine that in this case there is no backup plan, other than to run to KFC or serve Froot Loops. Your other choice is to -- here comes the squeamish part; it's not too late to go read that newspaper -- scoop out a section of the casserole with the bug in it and cook the rest. Fortunately the bug has not run all over your casserole, in which case it would be impossible to save, but imagine that this dish has enough mayonnaise in it to effectively render the bug unable to move. For those of you who are extra-sensitive to the well-being of bugs, we will be kind and assume that in this hypothetical case, the creature died instantly.

So you scoop out a portion of the casserole that has been invaded and dispose of it, preferably using toxic waste removal methods. To be on the safe side, you should probably remove about nine-tenths of the food, which means you might have to break out those Froot Loops after all. BUT, at least all is not lost.

The next step, as you put the much smaller casserole into the oven -- and this is very important -- is to remember which side of the dish the bug was on. This is the side you will serve to the other members of your family. You, of course, will take the unadulterated side. Hey, you've been through a lot of grief with this process; this is only fair.

It is well known that any contaminated parts that might remain before baking -- although if you have followed my directions, you shouldn't have to worry about that -- will, from the heat of the oven, be turned into cheese. Just make sure you leave the dish in long enough for this process to occur, which should be about two weeks or so.

NOW, the final step in dealing with this most unpleasant hypothetical situation is to decide whether to tell anyone else. In my opinion, this can serve no purpose whatsoever. Just tell them you put extra cheese in.

Although, on second thought, if you did tell them what happened, you would probably not have to cook anymore. Hypothetically.