My Whole Nother Story

I almost died last night.

At the hand of a single gourmet candy corn. 

I chewed and inhaled simultaneously and WHAM BAM!  Talk about a death wish!  I haven't choked and gagged and coughed like that since I stuck my head under the sink after spraying for cockroaches.

It was intense.  Especially after my hub started making DEMANDS on me. 

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? WHAT IT WRONG WITH YOU!?" He demanded and demanded and demanded until I couldn't even concentrate on choking to death anymore. 

"I'M DYING!  What does it look like I'm doing?"  I wanted to scream, but I couldn't catch my breath so instead I just turned around and slapped him silly. 

Somebody had to be calm and rational!

When you're gagging to death on a gourmet candy corn you'd think your life would pass before you, right?  

Wrong!  It doesn't.  Your head just fills up with questions.  It's like suddenly all the absurdities of life come sharply into focus.  

I started thinking about things like the mysterious package my thirteen-year-old received in the mail from The Penguin Group with nothing inside but a book called SLOB.  

Why would a group of penguins send MY son such a insinuating book? Penguins aren't that tidy either, from what I hear! 

I'm just sayin'. 

Other questions were running through my head too, like why does my hub always wash the dishes with ice cold water, for GAD'S SAKE!?  And why don't birds suddenly appear every time he is near?

And why couldn't I find April in St. George so I could give her a homemade apple pie?  

Okay, I didn't really think about April at all while I was gagging to death, but it's a nice segway into my whole nother story that I didn't get to yesterday. 

I really did go to St. George for the weekend with my hub, my kids and my IL's.  

And I really did find fresh, dirty, sweet vegetables on the side of the road in cute little baskets.

And I really did make a pot of vegetable soup because my IL's LUB LUB LUB soup.

They also LUB LUB LUB apple pie so I really did bake and bake and bake all the way through conference.  

I didn't realize conference was so long but after they said the closing prayer I had baked three apple pies.  

We ate one, and I really did intend to give the other two to Shelle and April after I finished swimming and playing tennis and going to the movies and reading Flannery O'Conner and watching Cash Cab and curling up in a ball on the couch and dozing off. 

By the time I loaded the two pies into the car and drove to the ACE Hardware parking lot to borrow some free Wi-Fi and google map Shelle's house it was kinda late in the evening. I won't tell you exactly where Shelle lives, but I will tell you she lives close to the full moon.  In fact, if you turn left at the full moon, and then right again, and then left, then right, then left, it's just across the street.  

My visit wasn't without incident.  I had to roam around the neighborhood a bit trying to pinpoint the exact location of Shelle's place of residency and I happened to knock on a wrong door or two in the process.  Shelle has very nice neighbors, btw.  As it turns out her house is the pitch black one with no house number among all the other pitch black houses on the street.  

Just as I was about to tap on the front door I noticed a figure in black with a flashlight peering into Shelle's window.  I threw up a quick prayer of gratitude into the universe for putting ME, of all dummies, in a position to protect Shelle from harm or accident, and for giving me five brothers to prepare me for what I was about to do.  

Once I had the intruder body slammed to the ground with his legs securely bent behind him and his feet neatly tucked into his shirt, I shined the flashlight into his face for proper identification purposes.  

"You look familiar," I said.  

Then it hit me.  

It was Mountain Sport Man.

Mountain Sport Man is Shelle's hub who likes to play pranks on Shelle, or "mess" with her, as he put it to me while I was apologizing profusely for accidentally pulling a Nacho Libre on him.

Mountain Sport Man is exactly as Shelle describes him to be. Exactly! Except his name isn't really Mountain Sport Man, if you can believe it!  And her son's name isn't really D-Car and her daughter's name isn't really Peeps. She totally lied about all that.  But I forgave her and we talked and talked and talked until I had to call April and tell her I would have to drop the pie off at her place of occupation the next day on my way out of town.  

HOWEVER, the next day I got a really strong prompting that I should eat that pie myself. I ignored it, but every time I looked at that pie I got the exact same prompting.  Sooooo, I decided to listen to that still small voice and make a batch of chocolate chip cookies for April instead.

HOWEVER, after I made the cookies, every single person in my family got a really strong prompting that they should eat those cookies instead of giving them to April, which left me no other alternative but to fall back on my original plan to give April the pie.

LONG STORY SHORT:  I really did intend to give April that pie. I even sacrificed lunch at In-and-Out Burgers so I could drive around and around and around trying to find April's place of occupation.  But it's a lot harder to find things in the daytime when there is no full moon to guide you.

And it's even harder when your hub calls from In-and-Out Burgers and says, "WHAT? YOU HAVEN'T FOUND IT YET?" And your kids say, "COME PICK US UP!  We're done eating and anyway, it's only a blog friend." 

And so I drove home with my tail between my legs and my pie between the seats as just another good intention paving my road to helk.  

The End 

(P.S. For the record, I didn't even eat the pie.  I gave it to my gigi.)