Judy Spooner: Holidays, surgery and spatulas

Talk about it

I’ve had many comments about my column elaborating how my family blames me for throwing their “precious” (emphasis added by me) belongings away.

Apparently, I have many fellow travelers including a woman who has the same undeserved reputation.

She volunteered to help her spouse, who, through some miracle, decided to clean out a desk at home. She offered to carry the box of no-longer-wanteds to the trash.

Even though her spouse had sealed the box with packing tape, he re-opened the box just as she was carrying it to the trash to see if she had snuck something of his into the box that he wanted to keep.

“I live in that world,” I told her.

We had a great holiday in spite of the fact that husband Gary was recovering from surgery and daughter Margie and I came down with awful colds.

Niece Shannon came to stay with us for the holiday, but her luggage went somewhere else for eight days because a ticketing agent put the wrong tag on her bag.

On top of the cold, I had stomach flu and Shannon caught it too.

Stick a Post-it in my missive while I give an update on Gary, because many of you have shown concern.

After artery bypass surgery in his right leg, he came home just before Christmas with a walker and very limited mobility. He is on the mend now and walking on his own.

Our family exchanged many candy gifts this year. We gave Shannon a tower of boxes of chocolate and the family got a big box of chocolate treats from niece Karen in North Carolina that included truffles from our favorite store in Chapel Hill. They’re family favorites.

I put some of the candy, including the truffles, on the kitchen counter.

“You’re not going to throw those away, are you?” Margie asked.

“Now why would I do that?” I said.

“Because you have that look,” she said. “We all know that look.”

I let that slide and turned to clean up the kitchen.

“Is Eric (son-in-law) going to eat the rest of the garlic bread from Christmas dinner?” I asked Margie.

“He’s eating it as fast as he can before you throw it away,” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “The birds are looking pretty hungry.”

In the kitchen, I opened my new hand-mixer that I got from Margie and Eric.

My old mixer had lapsed to one speed, really fast, so I left notes to everyone that I needed a new one.

“This is great!” I said, noting that the beater-eject button was under the handle, a safety feature I had asked for.

“There should be a spatula included, but it isn’t in the box,” I said, starting to prepare the box for recycling.

“Check the side of the box,” said Gary from the family room.

I looked again and found the spatula on the side away from my gaze.

Then, I knew with certainty what I had done.

Oh, I found the spatula, but I cemented my reputation into eternity.

I always throw things away.

Tags: judy spooner, opinion