The shopping question I hate most:

"Did you find everything you were looking for?"

I wish they wouldn't ask that. The answer is too often no, and where does the conversation go after that?

"Did you find everything you were looking for?"
"No, you didn't have queen-sized purple cotton bed sheets."
[or "No, you didn't have black stretch pants for a baby boy."]
[or "No, you didn't have deodorant that smells like cookies."]
[or "No, you didn't have a painting of downtown Boise done in the style of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner."]
[or "No, you didn't have reasonably priced gouda cheese."]
"Oh. Yeah. We don't have that."
"Yep."

Did either of us get anything out of that exchange? I certainly did not. So I usually answer the question like this:

"Yes."

But then I feel a little bit resentful because they put me in a position where I had to lie.

The shopping question I hate least:

"Would it be all right if we gave you all this stuff for free?"

A great day

1. I signed my name as "Dr. Gee" on the receipt at Dr. Gee's office.
2. I accidentally lost said receipt before I could hand it back to the billing lady.
3. I locked my keys, phone, and burp rags in the car and had to wait for the locksmith (after borrowing a smart phone from a stranger) with a barf-covered baby.

Pancakes

When the waiter came to check on us at dinner the other night, he found that I had eaten every single bite of my four gigantic blueberry pancakes as well as my two eggs and two bacons.

He said,

"Oh! You ate it all!"

I said,

He tried to recover by saying,

"That's awesome."

But did he really think it was awesome? I didn't really think it was awesome. I thought it was horrific.

Here's the thing: I love pancakes. If I'm going to eat pancakes, I'm REALLY going to eat pancakes. I think, in general, I eat like a man.

Here's the other thing: Parks and Recreation had a disappointingly not funny first season, but then after that, it started to get amazing. I figured this out when I was out of stuff to watch on Netflix. There's this one part when Andy and his band are playing for the senior citizens and no one is cheering or flashing them so he can't tell if they're doing okay. His bandmate says "Maybe you should try singing like Louis Armstrong." Andy says, "Maybe, yeah." Then he adds, "Here's the thing, though: Who is that?"

So.... now I have this one phrase that I find myself plopping into every single conversation I have. Plop.