Slivered almonds

Please comment and tell me I am not the only person who has zoned out in the salty snack food aisle of the grocery store in search of a small package of slivered almonds for the healthy fresh green beans. I know those almonds are somewhere in that store. I've seen them there before. The packages hang from a hook, and have dark green on the label. I've wandered the baking aisle, the health food aisle, the produce department, the dried fruit section, and the nut department over by the magazines and candy. My brain just can't make the right association for the search keywords. I have Googlefreeze Grocerymeltdown.

And worse, when I give up, go home, and cook the green beans, and cook them, and cook them still more, they continue to have the texture of garden hose and the flavor of pencil erasers. Sometimes I just can't find my groove.



Tonight I've wasted nearly a half hour Googling in search of an entertaining vine weed we used to call "Chinese lantern" or "Popberry" when I was a sprout back in the Cornhusker State. My students are building fairy houses, hence the need for nature lanterns. The weed was less annoying than dandelions or spurge, so my parents didn't fret much about it. You couldn't braid the vine into a chain the way you could clover, though, so you would never be discovered looking photogenic by a movie producer in a big convertible when you were sitting out in the front yard in the evening.

We spent a lot of summer evenings sitting down at the end of the driveway betting which color car would drive by next. When that got too slow, we played Kick the Can until the fireflies came out. Heat lightning and humming cicadas. Sphinx moths zipping around the honeysuckle bush. Calamine lotion. Maybe almonds some other day, or else running through the sprinkler.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder