Like Fine Wine
My mother doesn’t throw away anything. I know this is a common theme with moms – saving memorabilia from life events, family vacations, and preschool art projects, but my mom takes it to a whole new level. If I am ever in need of an unusual object, I ask my mom if she has it before running to Target. My husband used to be surprised by this, but over the years he has come to appreciate it. I remember going to a Hawaiian themed party years ago and telling him to call my mom to see if she had grass skirts and leis. He thought I was crazy until he made the call and discovered that she had both items, and in fact had a grass skirt small enough for our then two year old daughter. Not only does she have everything, she usually has multiples.
Unfortunately, her aversion to throwing things out also carries over to the contents of her pantry and refrigerator. This has been an ongoing theme for my family since I can remember. I have always checked the expiration dates knowing that salad dressings found in my parents’ refrigerator could be up to five years old. It takes years to get through a bottle since there are about twenty seven varieties available at all times. I recall helping my dad move their previous fridge out to the garage and finding a bottle of bleu cheese dressing from the 90s as well as a thirty year old bottle of peppermint schnapps in the door. I think we ended up throwing out half of the contents of the refrigerator that day after discovering condiments that somehow migrated from the previous appliance from the 80s. My mom was out of town during this event or I’m sure half of the items purged would have somehow found their way to the new refrigerator.
My mom’s aversion to discarding anything is most evident at their lake house. This second home has become the dumping ground for everything she can’t bear to part with, but can no longer keep at their main home without appearing crazy. I have to admit, I have taken advantage of this storage space myself when I discovered that I was unable to discard things like my daughter’s first doll house, the one she played with a total of three hours in her life. I have since moved a handful of toys to the “playroom” at the lake house where no children ever play. I would have put all of this stuff in the basement, but that part of the house is packed with enough Christmas decorations to light up the block. There may also be a unicycle rolling around down there.
I always think of the lake house refrigerator as a relatively safe place since the house was purchased just eight years ago and isn’t used all that frequently. My thought is that perishables are purchased in smaller sizes and used quicker. This apparently is not the case. We sat down to dinner last week, and my husband, as he has become accustomed to doing, flipped over the bottle of mustard to check the date before opening it. He announced that the mustard had expired the previous year. My mom immediately ran to the refrigerator, declaring she had another bottle. Of course she had multiple bottles – there are close to thirty bottles of salad dressing in her other refrigerator. As she handed him the new yellow bottle, he flipped it over to reveal an expiration date in 2017. She didn’t give up, but returned with yet another bottle. He looked at the bottom of the third bottle to find another two year old expiration date. As my mom stood racking her brain for the last time she bought condiments I delved into the refrigerator to see what other toppings I could find for the burgers. I discovered mayo that expired in 2018 and miracle whip that expired in 2017. Apparently my mom stocked up on the condiments in 2015 and 2016 but hasn’t done so since. It makes sense, when you can’t fit any more plastic bottles of goo in your fridge doors, you stop buying.
In the end, the burgers were so good they didn’t even need toppings. My mom smeared some dill dip on her bun, my daughter and husband had plain ketchup and I ate mine with nothing at all. Who knows if my dad even noticed. He probably used the expired mustard or some twelve year old steak sauce. He is immune to expired food at this point. My mom has been pumping him full of month old lunch meat and eight year old salad dressing for years.
**I wrote this piece while listening to music as old as the salad dressing in my parents’refrigerator – Milo Goes to College
My Dad presented me with a coupon book I gave him as a gift thirty years ago. I was thinking how cute it was that I made him a handmade gift as a teenager and laughing at all of the items I included when I realized that what I forgot to include was an expiration date. None of the coupons had dates on them which meant that they were still valid. Oh shit.
The funniest part of these coupons is the fine print. Each coupon includes a description or exclusion. Some of the descriptions are apparently meant to entice. The “One Free Fix This Before Mom Sees Cover Up” option says “this will come in handy next time you spill some paint on her new carpet” which he had actually done. And I had actually helped him cover it up before my Mom saw. I am a bleaching genius.
Some of the other fine print includes exclusions like on the “One Free Trip to Home Depot” which states “lunch not included!” I mean seriously, hardware store hot dogs? No thanks. I was also only available or willing to rub his feet on Sunday evenings during our favorite television shows because the fine print on the foot rub coupon lists four television shows it could be redeemed during. Unfortunately for me all of these shows are currently still available on demand. I clearly was not thinking ahead at sixteen. I was, however, smart enough to know that I should probably at least be entertained while I rubbed the Old Man’s feet. Being a masseuse while having to watch something like golf or baseball would have been torture.
I confiscated the coupon book before leaving their house yesterday. In all fairness, my Dad had literally used three of the coupons in the hour I was there. I do feel like it would be a waste for him not to get to use the rest though. I guess I am going to have a busy day this Sunday rubbing feet, fixing cars, shopping for gifts for my Mom and possibly going to jail. I noticed that the “Get Out of Jail Free” coupon says I will take the blame for any screw up with my Mom as long as it isn’t a felony. I didn’t mention anything about misdemeanors. I really was not thinking these things through at sixteen. It’s not like I hadn’t experienced a misdemeanor by then!
It’s also possible that we will all spend the day in the hospital if he cashes in the “Free Breakfast”” coupon. I think there is a reason this particular coupon was never used. I may have included that coupon as a joke considering I didn’t even know how to cook a pork chop. Also, why would anyone want a pork chop for breakfast?
My Dad has been having fun threatening to use coupons all day. I keep coming up with exclusions but I have a feeling I will run out of reasoning at precisely the wrong time. I already told him that the home repair coupon only covers jobs within the four walls of their main home. I could sense him handing it to me and demanding I renovate the bathroom at the lake house. My services are similar to homeowner’s insurance coverage, very limited and mostly useless.
My dad is a do-it-yourself kind of guy. He cuts his own lawn (at two houses), paints his own walls (naked), installs his own dock and boat lift (with minor disasters) and does his own bathroom renovations. And for as long as I can remember I have been his trusty assistant. When I was younger he had to bribe me to help, now I have to bully my way in. He is getting older and I don’t want him to break a hip or anything. If he did, I may have to figure out how to finish the project alone!
Today she came out to the lake after school to help demolish some walls and haul out the trash. She actually wanted to work and took part in every aspect of the project. I did have to take a broom away from her after she almost sterilized me while I was facing the opposite direction. I’m not sure what she was trying to sweep but she managed to position the handle in between my legs and pull up at the same time. Luckily I am still quite a bit taller than she is or some emergency room worker would have had an interesting story to go home with tonight.
We took a little trip with my parents this weekend. My mom decided it would be fun for Riley to have an adventure every month, so we started out the year with a quick trip to 
We had never been to this hotel/water park before and really didn’t know what to expect. I loved the fairy decor from the stained glass windows in the front to the fairy paintings above the beds in the room. Even the water park had flowers and toad stools around the lazy river. My mom got to take her place in a good lounge chair and read a book while we all ran around like little kids going down water slides and getting buckets of water dumped on our heads. She often comments that she watches two kids in the afternoon, my daughter and my dad, but on vacation it’s more like four kids. She always says she wanted to have a big family and it didn’t work out that way, but it kind of did.
The guy putting us on the raft must have been able to read our personality types by looking at us because my dad and I were facing backward and my husband and daughter were facing forward mostly on the way down. My dad and I are more the type to leap without looking and be surprised by what we get whereas my daughter and husband want to see every little bit. It was about the perfect ride for all of us. The next few times we went on were not so great for my husband who ended up backwards and motion sick by the bottom of the ride. He ended up having to sit down for 15 minutes while my dad and I went back up again with the little and down a few other slides in between. The kid can really wear you out if you aren’t careful. We ended up getting dinner, taking a second trip to the water park and blowing a weeks pay at the arcade before the night was over.
I love family parties. It gives me a chance to catch up with my cousins who I don’t see nearly enough and the aunt and uncle on my dad’d side of the family who provide me with a lot of information about my dad and what he was like as a kid. I hear about how their dad paid them for their report cards and how he got them to do all of the work around the house without ever having to lift a finger. My grandfather on my dad’s side was not a very good dad. It sometimes amazes me that his three sons all turned out to be really good dads and even better grandfathers.
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