POV: You are an egg and I have just washed you. (I just wanted...

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POV: You are an egg and I have just washed you. (I just wanted to see if the video uploader works here.)

(soundtrack: I am attempting to learn a very old folk song https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Randall because i can’t listen well enough to listen to audiobooks like everyone else does during egg-washing.) (Your picture was not posted)

Okay so the "takes kidneys" punchline was ringing a bell for me, I could like, picture my dad delive

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I saw that exact joke somewhere!!

There seem to be kinda two branches of responses– one where there’s a joke or comedian or stage routine or something with the joke being some sort of not-smart person mistaking brains for kidneys, and the other where there’s a phrase of nebulous origin that equates “kidneys” with “guts” as a stand-in for strength/fortitude/determination with a side implication of more brawn than sense. (Your picture was not posted)

wacky family story part 2

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so Thursday Farmsister and I went out with Mom, and picked her up and dropped her off at home, so here’s the second wacky thing from that evening.

We arrived at Mom’s at like… a bit before dusk. Maybe 7:30 or 8pm. The sun was beautiful and golden and illuminating the foliage in glorious ways. We all got out of the car and Mom went inside to get money to repay me for buying dinner. (I tried to decline, but. Moms.)

Farmsister went and took down the flag. Dad put up and took down a flag every day, on the flagpole out front, took the flag down in the rain, etc. Very conscientious. Mom’s keeping it up, because why not.

I took a photo, so I’ll cut. Golden hour, sister taking flag down, very artsy. The weird thing is afterward. Not much more punchline than the other, but I’m telling it for posterity’s sake.

(Mom’s front yard is full of semi-shade-loving flowers but it looks like a field here, LOL.)

Anyway. We were just getting into the car to leave, and suddenly a beeping noise started.

“Your smoke alarm is going off,” I said, and we all ran inside to check the different smoke detectors. It wasn’t the one in the back staircase. it wasn’t the one in the basement staircase. It wasn’t the one in the front staircase. It stopped, and we all stood in the middle of the house, conferring.

“Well,” mom said, “clearly the house is not on fire, so–”

It started going off again. It really sounded like the back staircase one, but I went and stood right under it. It wasn’t.

“Oh,” FS said, “It’s in the office. It’s somewhere in this room. It’s here.” I came down from the staircase and had enough time to realize it was quite a bit louder just the other side of the wall, into the office, and then it stopped again.

“We know it’s in this room,” I said. “And in fact probably on this piece of furniture.” There’s a low filing cabinet against the south wall of the office, and the top of it has several baskets containing an assortment of random things.

I peered down the back of the cabinet and found a single six-sided die and a photograph of my late paternal grandmother. Farmsister pawed through one of the baskets and came up with–

“That’s the smoke detector that used to be in the front hallway,” Mom said, astonished. “It kept going off and I made Dad take it down, and he was mad because it was one of those ones that was supposed to last ten years but can’t be removed without deactivating it.”

Dad had hearing loss, and couldn’t hear smoke detectors really at all, so he hadn’t found it that distressing– or useful– to have the smoke detector go off at all hours.

FS turned it over. The switch had been clicked from active to deactivated, but wasn’t fully seated in the inactive position. “Why is it still here?” Mom asked.

“He was probably waiting for whatever materials it is to have a special disposal day,” FS pointed out charitably, but really, Dad was just not great at throwing things away. Mom has been discovering that the barn is full of very neatly sorted things that are indeed tidied by category, but had not been removed.

“Can we throw it out now?” Mom asked.

“Yes,” FS said, and went and put it into the garbage can. If it goes off again out there, it won’t be audible in the house, or to the neighbors for that matter. (Your picture was not posted)