It Started Out To Be About Egg Salad

After visiting my mom today, I stopped by Save A Lot to pick up a few things, and spent eighty-three dollars. EIGHTY-THREE DOLLARS! That's two-lane blacktop robbery! All I got were bananas and potatoes and onions and cheese and sour cream and spaghetti sauce and pizza sauce and bacon and sausage biscuits and fish and shrimp and frozen beef-with-broccoli, and a foil baking pan to use as a liner in my onion bin. Oh. And four of the unique 4/$1.00 metal six-ounce bottles of Diet Coke for Hick to collect. Such a shame, that Diet Coke never to cross the refined palate of a Thevictorian.

Speaking of Thevictorians...we all flew our separate ways today. Hick took off to the bank to get some big bills suitable for gift-giving, and to cash a birthday check my mom had sent him. The Pony waited at home to be chauffeured to his bowling league. Genius left College to take another student home to a somewhat nearby town, then return to the homestead for the first time since before Halloween. I took my mom some egg salad that I whipped up this morning. There would have been more, but The Pony and I each had a boiled egg for breakfast. Mom will never know. Is it a bad sign that she asked if it would need mayonnaise? Because I put mayonnaise in it. And mustard. And chopped pickles and onions. And fresh-ground black pepper.

The egg salad was intended to be our lunch. I saved enough. But Hick said he ate "a" slider at the bowling alley. Uh huh. I'm pretty sure nobody eats just one slider. I thought by definition sliders were small sandwiches made to be eaten in plural. I was so busy that my deadline to leave for Mom's house arrived before I had time for lunch, so I grabbed a handful of Chex Mix and hit the road. Our egg salad sits alone on the top shelf of Frig II, its future mate, Nutty Oat Bread, feet away in the corner cabinet.

Around 4:00, that golden hour when Hick becomes restless, as if on cue, stomping around, letting me know that I should be getting supper ready so he won't be late for the auction (a guy took HIS seat a couple weeks ago!)...Hick grabbed himself a snack. Because, you know, he only had "a" slider for lunch.

Hick's snack was Chex Mix and Diet Root Beer. Now one might imagine a snack to be served up in a bowl, Styrofoam, perhaps, as Thevictorians are wont to use, and a can or glass of Diet Root Beer. One might as well imagine Val as a unicorn. This is Hick we're talking about. He sat down on the couch (which we had a spat about this morning, him declaring it a LOVE SEAT, while I declared that was impossible, because THERE IS NO LOVE IN THIS HOUSE), and...where was I? Hick had his Chex Mix in the opaque plastic quart container which once held take-out hot-and-sour soup. And his Diet Root Beer (generic, of course, and not bought by Val, most likely an auction bargain) in the original two-liter bottle. To be swigged from. No glass. No ice. Straight off the kitchen table, not even in Frig II.

Lest one not notice that Hick was having a snack, let the record show that unless one had severe hearing loss and a dead hearing aid battery, it was impossible not to notice Hick having his snack. He dug into that soup container for Chex like he was crushing cornflakes to coat faux fried chicken for the oven. He swilled from that two-liter bottle like a cartoon hillbilly chugging moonshine from an earthenware jug. The open-mouthed Chex chomping was reminiscent of a cow masticating corn on the feed lot.

He was much quieter with the fish an hour later. Which gives me slim hope for those never-ending post-retirement days when we share three meals for eternity.