the longest most boring entry ever
Miscommunication is almost always the basis for entertainment.
Jenn has inherited a habit from Noel (just like "Joshua," this habit will surely bite me in the ass later during some awkward Ward family social faux pas, reducing me once more to tears in one of her parents' vacation homes) of communicating in terse handwritten notes left around the house. Sometimes she takes this too far, such as the time she left me cutesy love notes on every glass surface of the apartment, later realizing that while her copycat attempt was charming, it was also permanent.
My mother is planning a menu for Thanksgiving dinner that she will probably print in italics on parchment paper with pumpkins and turkeys in the margins. She wants Jenn's Furlong experience to be comfortable and welcoming, so she's saved a few lines on her shopping list for things Jenn will eat. "What do you think she'd like to have? Does she have any favorite foods or traditional dishes she enjoys?" I could tell her creamed corn, although it will not live up to Grandma's. Beyond that, I needed Jenn’s input. Of course, she left this information in the folds of a discarded sudoku puzzle under the coffee table, and I somehow found it and read it to my mom. In a bulleted list, she had:
cranberry "sauce"
yams, sweet potatoes, any mixture of a potato and marshmallow
peas!
mashed potatoes*
movie/TV convention where sleazy male uses breath spray to signal how eager he is to complete the upcoming kiss our protagonist is dreading
It seemed like a normal, thankful list. I like candied yams (although the yam is rarely sold in North America, and has a higher sugar content and less vitamin A than the more prevalent sweet potato, it still boasts the better name) and gelatinous fruit concentrates, and I'd already had the lumpy-versus-whipped discussion with Momma about the mashed potatoes. The Furlong-plus-Ward dinner menu issue seemed adequately addressed. My mother decided that since Jenn was so exclamatory in her pea request, the green bean casserole would abdicate its gloppy, onion-flavored position to creamed peas with pearl onions this year, a dish I’d thankfully never heard of.
Jenn’s anxiety over the edibility of my family’s meal is a source of amusement for me. In a text message, I told her how excited I was about my favorite traditional dishes. The creamed peas with pearl onions, I said, are an annual event. In an effort to think of something equally outlandish and unappealing, I typed every questionable adjective I’d heard to describe a dish: stewed sprouted wheat germ with pumpernickel…hmm…groin. Of course, she blew this off like she did when I sent her conglomerate messages of every template available on my phone, and didn’t realize I was serious about the peas.
Later I told her that I’d found her list and read it off to my mom. “Everything you had on the list was already planned for the meal, except the peas. My mom said she’ll incorporate the peas though.”
“What? No. The peas were a no!”
“No, look at this list. You put it on the list. Right here…’peas!’”
“Yeah, those are all NEGATIVES, not BULLETS.”
Whoops. The potatoes are a go, and the Binaca man was a reference to Tootsie. But no peas.
Jenn has inherited a habit from Noel (just like "Joshua," this habit will surely bite me in the ass later during some awkward Ward family social faux pas, reducing me once more to tears in one of her parents' vacation homes) of communicating in terse handwritten notes left around the house. Sometimes she takes this too far, such as the time she left me cutesy love notes on every glass surface of the apartment, later realizing that while her copycat attempt was charming, it was also permanent.
My mother is planning a menu for Thanksgiving dinner that she will probably print in italics on parchment paper with pumpkins and turkeys in the margins. She wants Jenn's Furlong experience to be comfortable and welcoming, so she's saved a few lines on her shopping list for things Jenn will eat. "What do you think she'd like to have? Does she have any favorite foods or traditional dishes she enjoys?" I could tell her creamed corn, although it will not live up to Grandma's. Beyond that, I needed Jenn’s input. Of course, she left this information in the folds of a discarded sudoku puzzle under the coffee table, and I somehow found it and read it to my mom. In a bulleted list, she had:
cranberry "sauce"
yams, sweet potatoes, any mixture of a potato and marshmallow
peas!
mashed potatoes*
movie/TV convention where sleazy male uses breath spray to signal how eager he is to complete the upcoming kiss our protagonist is dreading
It seemed like a normal, thankful list. I like candied yams (although the yam is rarely sold in North America, and has a higher sugar content and less vitamin A than the more prevalent sweet potato, it still boasts the better name) and gelatinous fruit concentrates, and I'd already had the lumpy-versus-whipped discussion with Momma about the mashed potatoes. The Furlong-plus-Ward dinner menu issue seemed adequately addressed. My mother decided that since Jenn was so exclamatory in her pea request, the green bean casserole would abdicate its gloppy, onion-flavored position to creamed peas with pearl onions this year, a dish I’d thankfully never heard of.
Jenn’s anxiety over the edibility of my family’s meal is a source of amusement for me. In a text message, I told her how excited I was about my favorite traditional dishes. The creamed peas with pearl onions, I said, are an annual event. In an effort to think of something equally outlandish and unappealing, I typed every questionable adjective I’d heard to describe a dish: stewed sprouted wheat germ with pumpernickel…hmm…groin. Of course, she blew this off like she did when I sent her conglomerate messages of every template available on my phone, and didn’t realize I was serious about the peas.
Later I told her that I’d found her list and read it off to my mom. “Everything you had on the list was already planned for the meal, except the peas. My mom said she’ll incorporate the peas though.”
“What? No. The peas were a no!”
“No, look at this list. You put it on the list. Right here…’peas!’”
“Yeah, those are all NEGATIVES, not BULLETS.”
Whoops. The potatoes are a go, and the Binaca man was a reference to Tootsie. But no peas.