Sorry Eric, but I have to blog about you. In my son-in-law’s quest to cook for Christmas dinner, he called to ask me about several recipes that he wanted to make. When he informed me that he couldn’t find my recipe for chocolate cream pie that he loved, on the blog, I promised I would post it and I did, immediately. In my haste to post it, apparently, I didn’t use the word, “cook” in it. I just simply gave instructions to use a medium saucepan, and whisk until mixture thickens and bubbles.

I get a frantic phone call yesterday from him. Before answering it, just glancing to see who was calling, I began to think, “hum…this is so cool that my son-in-law (SIL) misses me so much that he is calling again today. This is just the best Christmas ever. Not only do the kids call, but here I’m getting calls from SIL. But the voice at the other end of the line didn’t sound very loving. All I heard when I answered “merry Christmas Eric” was “MIL (mother-in-law), what texture should the liquid be in before pouring it into the pie shell?” When I told him it should be thick and pudding like consistency, he yells, “just a minute” throws down the phone and I sit there wondering what is going on. In a minute he comes back on the line to tell me that he had run to pour the mixture back in the saucepan from the pie shell. Since he didn’t read the word “cook”, he assumed that he just mixed the ingredients in a saucepan and whisked them until all lumps disappeared then poured it in the pie shell. But when it was still just thin like water, he panicked. I told him to cook it this time before pouring it into the pie shell. He did and they had a wonderful chocolate cream pie for dessert.

I thought I was going to make it through the whole Christmas season without a blog story of one of my “oopsies” but on Christmas Eve, when the grocery stores are jammed, I happened to run into Kroger to buy a few things. After I couldn’t find the French Fried Onion Rings, and finally found a young man to help me find them (and yes I made sure he worked there before asking his help), I followed him to aisle 6 where he pointed them out to me. The look he gave me as he was walking off told me that he had lost his Christmas cheer a while ago. As he walked off probably groaning to himself that old people are just so blind and can’t find anything, there was a loud crash. I looked down to realize that it came from my basket. For some unknown reason, instead of putting the blackberry perserves  in the basket where they belong, I had put them in the seat part of the basket and they rolled out and crashed onto the floor of aisle 6. Blackberry preserves and glass were now splattered all over the floor. Let’s just say that the other last minute shoppers didn’t give me a look of Christmas cheer either. They were too busy picking up their baskets to get the wheels out of the glass and stickiness and guess who was sent back to clean up? Yep, the precious young stock boy who led me to that aisle a few minutes before. I just kept apologizing and led my basket away as fast as possible. From  there you could tract my steps from the glass and preserves that the wheels were leaving. I really thought that when we moved back from California, I would get a fresh start and not be banned from as many places, but it looks like my clumsiness followed me and I’m well on my way to having just a handful of places that I will be welcome. Apparently, after the chocolate pie fiasco, my son-in-law’s house is now on the “not welcome here” list, as well as Kroger.