And me being in charge isn’t going to help the quality of the ornaments either. The ones we made today don’t look all that great, but at least Mom was around to spruce them up if they needed a little extra TLC. But now that we’re losing our infamous Inspector #1, along with all her crafting flair, there’s no telling what the ornaments are going to look like.
The thing is, the craft crisis we’re in the middle of seems inconsequential compared to what might happen to us on the road trip.
I guess that camp counselor motto of “Expect the best, but prepare for the worst” might be helpful. But I don’t even know what the best could be, so how could I possibly expect it? And as for planning for the worst, I don’t even want to think about that.
Funny that you already know how things turn out.
Is it bad?
I wish you could write me a letter.
Love,
Me
P.S. Just before Mom went to bed, she informed me that one of my most critical responsibilities while she’s gone is to make sure Gram takes her blood pressure and cholesterol medicine. How am I supposed to do that? If Gram didn’t even tell Mom she had high blood pressure and high cholesterol, I’d like to know how I’m supposed to make sure she takes her medication.
Dear Me,
Expect the best, but prepare for the worst?
Mom’s only been gone a few hours, and already, I don’t really think that’s very good advice.
All of us have burned fingers from the glue gun, splinters from the Popsicle sticks, and paper cuts from the card stock.
And if there was an award for the crankiest, most irritable, most frustrated ornament-maker, Gram, Mimi, and I would be neck-in-neck for first place.
Needless to say, not very elf-like attitudes.
And all we have to show for our workplace injuries is a meager pile of crooked candy canes; not-quite-round, somewhat mangled-looking wreaths; and Christmas bells that bulge more than Santa’s belly.
It actually made me miss Mom more than I had that first year I went to sleepaway summer camp in second grade.
I know, I know. You probably thought I’d never write something like that. Neither did I. But if Gram’s condo really was the North Pole and Gram, Mimi, and I really were elves, the three of us would be fired for sure.
After we’d played Mimi’s Christmas CD six times, Mimi sighed and said, “The Lord says he’ll never give us more than we can handle, but we’re sure in a real pickle here.”
Gram wasn’t encouraged one little bit by Mimi’s paraphrased scripture with a twist.
Her response was, “Pickle?! Pickle?! We passed pickle a long time ago!”
Gram was right. At our last count, we had completed only eighty-seven ornaments, which meant we had one hundred thirteen left to go. At this rate, we were going to miss all of Gram’s karaoke contests. And Mimi might just have to drum up more donations so she could ship all those Bibles from the post office since it didn’t look like the three of us would be going any farther than Gram’s living room any time soon.
Even though all those Saturday volunteer training sessions had taught me I should be full of PEP—Patience, Enthusiasm, and Positiveness—I told Gram and Mimi that nobody was going to pay for these ornaments because they all looked like junk.
“Pay for them?” Gram said. “People wouldn’t take these things if we gave them away for free. That confounded Gert! She’s the reason we’re sitting here in the middle of a pile of glitter and glue like a bunch of idiots!”
“Madge!” Mimi scolded.
And then, through gritted teeth, Gram went on to say that she’d like to get her hands on Gert’s skinny, little, wrinkled neck.
But she couldn’t finish what she was saying, because Mimi scolded her again, hitting the palm of her hand on top of her TV tray causing a small snowstorm of glitter.
“Madge Callahan! Is that any way to talk?”
Funny that Mimi thought Gram was being so hard on Gert when most people would’ve said much worse things than what Gram was saying.
Maybe I should’ve been glad. Because of confounded Gert and these ornaments, it’s possible we wouldn’t be able to go on the road trip at all. Avoiding the trip and just staying at Sunny Sandy Shores would most likely make my life a whole lot easier, especially now that Mom was gone.
But when I looked around Gram’s living room, which was literally wall-to-wall craft supplies, a road trip away from the huge mess we were in seemed better than staying back at the condo trying to make two hundred of anything.
Besides that, if we didn’t go, Gram wouldn’t get to sing karaoke, and after seeing her talking to Grandpa’s photo, I knew I’d end up feeling bad about that.
Gram decided we needed a break, so the three of us went into the kitchen to eat the rest of my chocolate chip cookies. And it was while Gram and Mimi raved about how good my cookies tasted that an idea hit me as hard as one of the line drives I’d missed during softball tryouts.
“Why don’t we make cookies to sell at your booth?”
Both Gram and Mimi stopped chewing at the same time.
“Samantha, that’s a wonderful idea!”
“What a sweet miracle from above!”
(I’ll bet you can guess who said what without me even telling you.)
So, our new plan was to bake cookies the next day and store them in Gram’s freezer. Then, we’d leave for the road trip the day after that. Gram would only miss one of her contests, leaving her two chances to qualify for the Seniors Got Talent karaoke contest at the Borlandsville Fun in the Sun County Fair, and we’d still have plenty of time to deliver all of Mimi’s Bibles.
At this point, you might be feeling a little flutter of excitement. Things seem to be taking a slight turn for the better. But, unfortunately that sweet, wonderful, miracle of an idea and the trip being back on again led to a new insurmountable problem for me.
As I made a list of what we’d need at the store in order to make two hundred jumbo-sized chocolate chip cookies, Mimi said to Gram, “Madge, since this whole mix-up has put us behind schedule, why don’t I see if Johnny can drive down tomorrow night and drop Brandy off here at the condo? That way we won’t have to stop on the way. It’ll save us a little time.”
Of course, you’re thinking what I’m thinking, right?
Who the heck are Johnny and Brandy?
And what in the world was Mimi talking about?
When I asked, Mimi told me that Johnny was her oldest son and Brandy was one of her five grandchildren.
But what Gram said next made my stomach feel worse than if I’d eaten five tons of chocolate chip cookie dough.
“Remember, we told you Brandy’s joining us on the trip?”
To which I said, “Uuuuuhh, nooooo.”
And I only wish that there was some way to impress upon you the tone of my voice when I said, “Uuuuuhh, nooooo,” because without my tone, you can’t possibly get the full meaning of these two words.
“Oh, honey!” Mimi said. “You’re going to love Brandy. And you two are just about the same age, so that should be a lot of fun.”
All I could think was, “Oh great! Now, besides everything else I had to worry about, I am going to have to handle the added stress of getting along with some random middle schooler I’ve never met.”
What if Brandy was a Goody Two-shoes, super stuck-up type?
Or worse yet, maybe Brandy would turn out to be some troublemaking delinquent who liked to peer pressure other kids into doing bad stuff.
With my luck, Brandy would be one of those really popular kids who excelled at every single thing imaginable. That would probably stink worst of all.
Mimi went on to say that she just knew the two of us would “get along like a couple of clams.”
Clams?
I doubt it.
Besides,
how does anyone even know how clams get along anyway?
Love,
Me
Dear Me,
Waking up in the morning and remembering in the first few minutes of consciousness that my task for the day is baking two hundred giant chocolate chip cookies is one thing. But, when my brain reminds me, even before my eyes have adjusted to the light, that this whole thing was my big, brilliant idea and I’m the one in charge of making it happen, my first inclination is to pull the covers over my head and stay put. That inclination grows stronger when I remember that my baking cohorts are Gram and Mimi, because if their baking skills are equal to their crafting skills, I’m honestly in way more trouble than I’m equipped to handle.
So, the day began with a trip to the Friendly Frugal Food Store, where we loaded up on all the basics—eggs, flour, sugar, vanilla. And, on top of all that, we piled the shopping cart full of economy-sized bags of mini chocolate chips. (I prefer to use mini chips in my cookies, as it allows for a much more equal distribution of chocolate in each cookie.)
Even though we left Gram’s condo super early, when we got to the Friendly Frugal, you would’ve thought it was a senior citizens’ Black Friday Sale.
“Why are there so many people here so early?” I asked completely surprised by the number of people milling about on the sidewalk waiting to push their carts through the automatic doors as soon as the store opened.
“Two reasons,” Gram said. “Old people get up really early, and it’s Florida. Everyone wants to beat the heat.”
In spite of the crowds, once inside, we maneuvered our way through the aisles pretty quickly and efficiently. Within fifteen minutes, we stood in line to check out. But this was where our Friendly Frugal Food Store experience took a turn for the worse.
There was only one person in front of us, a shopper with spiky silver hair wearing a plaid shorts outfit that made her look like a golfer, but her color-coordinated outfit wasn’t the problem. It was her cart full to the top with boxes of pasta and her fistful of coupons (one coupon for each box of pasta, to be exact) that caused the complication. Here’s why: The college-age, gum-chewing, big-haired checkout girl told the pasta lady that since the pasta was already on sale, she could only use one of her coupons per visit.
This tiny store policy caused the gum-chewing checkout girl and the coupon-clipping pasta lady to get into a courteous disagreement that escalated at the speed of light into an all-out heated argument. Once the shopper realized she was getting nowhere fast with the checkout girl (who was not backing down), she told her she was going to call the local news and tell them just how unfriendly and unfairly she was being treated at the Friendly Frugal.
She used air quotes when she said “Friendly Frugal,” and then she started digging around in her color-coordinated purse for her phone.
All the while Gram was getting super impatient, because she had to go to the bathroom.
I had a hunch the drama with the Coupon Queen was going to take a while, so I told Gram that Mimi and I would save our place in line while she went to use the restroom.
But Gram didn’t have time to answer me, because Mimi chimed in, “Oh no, honey! We don’t ever use the restrooms here.”
“She’s right, Samantha, they don’t clean those things with any regularity. We’ve complained many times, but it never does any good,” Gram explained, shifting her weight back and forth from one foot to the other.
I let out a huge sigh while I watched the spiky-haired shopper getting ready to press numbers on her phone. It looked like she might know the number of the local news by heart.
“Am I going to make this call or are you going to get a store manager?” the lady said looking up from her phone screen.
The checkout girl cracked her gum and reached for her cash register microphone.
“Manager to lane seven,” she said in an entirely apathetic voice.
Gram sighed, and Mimi said, “Remember, patience is a virtue.”
“My bladder doesn’t know that,” Gram snapped just as the store manager showed up.
The manager explained the store policy again to the coupon lady, to which she said, “Look, I’m going to use these coupons to buy this cart of pasta even if I have to buy the pasta one box at a time, so we can do this the easy way or the hard way. It’s really up to you.”
Gram groaned.
The manager sighed.
The checkout girl cracked her gum again, while she picked at the nail polish on her right hand.
We all waited to see what would happen next, and finally the manager said, “I’ll ring you up at customer service and let you use all your coupons at once.”
As the lady pushed her cart full of pasta toward customer service with her head held high, I heard her say, “See, now was that so hard?”
The manager shook his head, and the checkout girl rolled her eyes.
Gram, Mimi, and I unloaded our cart as fast as if we were in a race on one of those grocery store game shows. Thankfully, once coupons weren’t involved, the checker was a speedy expert at her job. She had us out of the store in less than ten minutes.
Once back at Sunny Sandy Shores, Mimi and I let Gram hurry up to the condo to use the bathroom while the two of us unloaded the groceries. Before long, I was mixing up the first of many batches of chocolate chip cookie dough. While I did, Gram and Mimi greased cookie sheets at the kitchen table and arranged the cooling racks in the dining room. Mimi had brought down cookie sheets and cooling racks from her condo, and Gram had borrowed some from a neighbor on her floor so that we’d be able to make cookies continuously.
The first few trays we baked turned out pretty rough. Gram and Mimi weren’t very good at dropping the right amount of dough on the cookie sheet, and as a result, our cookies didn’t all look the same. Gram’s were really misshapen, and Mimi’s were way too small. Not only would this make it hard to sell them all for the same price, it made it hard to bake them, because some cookies burned and others weren’t baked enough to be done.
After about four baking sheets of flopped cookies, I was wondering if we shouldn’t go back to making ornaments in the living room.
As I thought about what to do with our misfit cookies, I opened one of Gram’s kitchen drawers looking for a clean spatula, and I saw an ice cream scoop. I remembered seeing someone on a baking show using a scoop like that to make big cookies that all turned out the same size.
So, we tried it.
And it worked!
And once we knew it worked, Mimi ran up to her condo and brought down her ice cream scoop. That’s when we hit our chocolate-chip cookie baking stride, and the perfectly round and expertly baked cookies piled up on the dining room table.
And when Gram said, “Samantha, our booth at the bazaar is going to be a huge hit!”, the pride that piled up inside me was higher than the highest stack of cookies.
Love,
Me
Dear Me,
So, I know I keep saying, “You’re not going to believe this… You’re not going to believe that,” but just keep reading, and you’ll realize why it’s even more true this time than the last time I wrote it.
After all the cookies were baked, Gram and I sat on the couch trying to guess the final Wheel of Fortune puzzle when Mimi walked into the condo with a tall, tanned boy following her.
“Madge and Samantha,” Mimi said, sounding like she was announcing royalty, “I’d like you to meet my little Brandy. Although as you can see, he’s not so little anymore.”
The tall boy took a step forward and said, “Hey,” and did this sort of half-wave thing.
“My real name’s Brandon,” he said. “Mimi’s the only one who still calls me Brandy. All my friends call me Brando.”
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
Brandon?!
Brandy?!!
Brando?!!!!!
>
Do you have any recollection of how much I was freaking out when this happened?
My mind was exploding!
Brandy
Is
A
BOY?!
His friends call him “Brando”?
I’d been worried that Brandy might be a snobby do-gooder or a juvenile delinquent, then this supercute, muscular, athletic-looking, dimple-faced, middle-school boy shows up?
I was going to ride in the back seat on a widow’s bucket list karaoke road trip listening to Gram sing karaoke and delivering Bibles all over south Florida with a guy who looked so good he could be on the cover of every teen magazine ever published?
Lots of girls might think this was great.
Lots of girls might dream of luck like this.
Lots of girls might be giddy with excitement at even the thought of this.
But not me.
Not us!
Guys like Brando don’t even talk to girls like me.
How could they?
They don’t even know girls like me exist.
I’d learned that in the first five minutes of middle school.
No matter how old you are, you have to remember the moment we met Brandon.
And if you’re reading this, we obviously survived, but at this moment, I can’t for the life of me see how.
Love,
Me
Dear Me,
Okay, so remember a couple letters ago when I thought that Mimi’s Christmas Choir Carols CD was bad?
That music was nothing compared to the music I’ve heard so far this morning.
Let me give you a little recap:
We started out the road trip with Broadway hits, which I actually love, but not the way Gram and Mimi were belting them out.
Mimi’s high-pitched, shrill voice and Gram’s quivery warble—which was all over the place, yet actually never seemed to land on the right note—ruined some of my favorite show tunes.
After they massacred so many songs I adored, from many of my most-treasured musicals, Mimi put in Big Band Hits. She said it reminded her of her father, because when she was growing up, he had played trombone in a jazz band called Bebop Brass.
When I Hit the Road Page 5