Netflix - The Menu That Keeps on Giving

Christmas holiday time. It's the time when everybody on television takes a vacation except for the people who do those crappy Christmas shows. Saturday night, the twenty ninth of December, I started scrolling through the television guide hoping to find something I'd like. Nothing, nothing, nothing, oh wait.... nothing. After a full cycle through the guide, I decided to switch over to Netflix. I am always hearing about the great shows on Netflix. There's House of Cards which I stopped watching, Stranger Things, that show about Kimmie, so many shows on Netflix that people have raved about. There are many that I have started watching only to abandon after a few episodes. I began scrolling through the Netflix menu. Plenty of comedians that I'd never heard of were represented. There were series, both comedy and drama. And the movies, plenty of movies. Many of the things I saw on the menu looked sort of interesting, but I kept on going. I was curious to see just what else was on Netflix. I started scrolling through it around seven in the evening. Before I knew it, it was nearly nine in the evening and I still hadn't settled on one show. So I went back to the search section and typed in 'Breaking Bad'. Yes, I watched the first episode of Breaking Bad again. Then I watched the last episode. No sense binge watching the full series again. After three binge watchings I think I can fill in everything that happened between the first and last episodes.

December 27, 2018. Can I have just one f**king day without drama?

Yesterday morning, around ten thirty, I leave the house to go buy some gloves to replace the ones I left in the shopping cart at the grocery store on Sunday. In the rain I drive over to Kohl's and find that everything is on sale. So I buy myself a pair of gloves, I buy Mark a pair of gloves, and I buy myself some underpants with "barn doors". I then stop by the Lebanese restaurant to pick up the gift card my sister bought me. All the time it is pouring rain, but I don't care. It isn't snow. A little rain isn't going to ruin what is supposed to be my day. When I got home, I pulled into the garage, walked up the back stairs and opened the back door. No dogs. Usually they are at the door ready to pounce on me. Instead Mark is leaning over the kitchen counter wheezing and crying

"I can't breathe, I can't breathe... What did you do with my scale? Waaaa..... "

Beyond the kitchen, in the dining room, the dogs are hiding under the table. Obviously there had been some kind of drama before I got home.

"I can't.... I just can't.... "

"Can't what?" I asked...   I shouldn't have.

"You hid my scale. I can't find my damn scale!!" Mark screamed at me.

I looked around. All the cabinet doors were wide open and on the floor, a raw egg was splattered across the tile.

"What happened there?" I asked...   I shouldn't have.

"I hate you." Mark yelled as he stormed out of the kitchen.

So I went over to the cabinet where Mark's scale was stored and pulled it out for him. Then I got on my hands and knees and cleaned up the egg he had dropped on the floor. When I had finished that, I went into the dining room and calmed the dogs who should be used to skinny daddy going nuts by now. As I talked to the dogs I let Mark know that the kitchen was now ready for him.

"I'm sorry." He said, "I was trying to bake you a birthday cake and it all went to shit."

It wasn't even twelve noon yet.

Grub Hub-Bub

There is a pizza place down in my home town that everybody in the southern end of Cook County go goofy over. I'll call it Pizza Place 'A'. My youngest sister orders pizza from there when she visits my mom. Sister number four, I believe, also orders from Pizza Place 'A'. Over the last forty years all I ever hear when visiting Tinley Park is how much everybody loves 'A' pizzas. So everybody calls 'A' to get a pizza delivered. When Mark and I were visiting Tinley Park one afternoon, we decided to try 'A' pizza place. But instead of ordering one delivered, we went to the actual pizza restaurant. Big mistake. The interior was dark and foreboding, and I imagined all kinds of dirty things in the dark corners of the dining room.  We were seated by the 'hostess' who I think doubled as a bus boy. As I sat down I ran my fingers over the top of the table. It was tacky, almost gooey. In fact every surface in the place was like that. Everything in the place seemed dirty and old. The salad bar was nasty looking, and the pizza did not live up to what I had expected. I'm pretty sure all those people raving about Pizza Place 'A' only have it delivered and never have set foot in the place.

Last night Mark and I ordered Chinese food from a restaurant about a mile away. We've ordered from there before and the food is good, and the portions enormous. However, the last time we ordered there was a snag. It took us two hours to get our food delivered. So I drove over there and picked it up myself this time. When I got there, I walked up to the front window and looked in. There were about eight tables with nobody seated at any of them, except for the one against the wall. A homeless man was sleeping at that table. The windows were filthy, the floor hadn't been mopped in years, and the lighting was that harsh fluorescent that makes everybody look dangerous. I went in and picked up our food. It was just as good as when we had it delivered to our door. However, I'm not sure if I can order from there again. I'll be thinking of that homeless guy, the dirty windows and floors, and the general disturbing ambiance of the place while I wolf down my sweet and sour pork. So there is a lesson that I learned from these two incidents. No, not check out a place before you order food to be delivered. The lesson is, don't ever go snooping around the place you order your food from if you want to keep getting food from that place.

The True Cost of Cookies

"What happened to all the milk?"

Mark wanted to know how a gallon of milk could disappear in just a few days. It all started when I mentioned his black and white cookies. Delicious black and white cookies that Mark makes every once in awhile. I was debating with him whether or not it was worth it considering the mess he made baking them. The conclusion was that yes, it is worth the mess. But Mark was not in the mood for baking cookies, he had just baked a batch of brownies the day before. So he bought a small box of them at Trader Joe's. Ten little black and white cookies in a box. And, they were almost as good as the ones Mark bakes. Anyway, if you are going to leave cookies and brownies laying around the house, you have to expect the milk to disappear. The Trader Joe cookies only cost $2.99, but is that the full cost of cookies? No, it is not.

• ·       Cookies -                                                                                                      -  $2.99
• ·       Gallon of milk -                                                                                            -   $3.00
• ·       Dog treats (for dogs who expect a cookie for every cookie you eat) -         -   $0.10
• ·       You eat 10 cookies, 2 dogs, 20 dog treats -                                                 -   $2.00
• ·       Crestor co-pay for your increased cholesterol -                                           -  $15.00
• ·       New pair of stretchy, Dockers fat man pants -                                              -  $40.00

So you can see, those cookies cost me much more than two dollars and ninety nine cents. And if you think that is bad, you should see the total when Mark makes ribs with mac and cheese along with collard greens and ham hocks. That price includes a six pack of Corona beer and another pair of stretchy, Dockers fat man pants.

The Gift of the Nagi

Baby Mark, Mom, Sister Rhea

Mark has given me his instructions as to what he wants for his birthday/Christmas. I have already failed. He wanted a new smart phone, so I got him one. His request was for a Samsung, which I got him. Unfortunately I did not get him the model he wanted, I got him the next one below. Mark threw a tantrum, squawking and squealing about how he couldn't use this cheaper model and how he specifically told me he wanted the better model. So I explained how the less expensive model operated exactly the same as the more costly one. All Mark does is text and talk on the phone. He doesn't need all the bells and whistles.

"But it has less memory..."

"It has more memory than you will ever use."

"But, but....waaaaaa "

I realized early on, like when I was around nine years old, that I will never get exactly what I wanted unless I got it for myself. Back then I saw the Deluxe Playmobile Dashboard on television. I lusted after that toy. It was a reproduction of a real automobile dashboard with working lights, windshield wipers, turn signals, and a shifter that shifted. I dropped every kind of hint I could that I wanted one. On Christmas morning I jumped out of bed with anticipation. That Christmas my big toy present was a microscope with glass slides that had tiny bugs on them. No Deluxe Playmoble Dashboard, only a stupid educational toy. Down the street my friend, Arthur Bernhardt, gleefully played with his brand new Deluxe Playmobile Dashboard along with a few other deluxe toys. I was very jealous until Arthur allowed me to play with his new toy. Within three minutes I was bored. It was not a real car, and just how long can a nine year old kid pretend that he's driving a chunk of plastic. But it all turned out just fine. The next year I got a slot car set. Well, I kind of got a slot car set. It wasn't all mine, I had to share it with my brother.