A Glute Bridge of Honey that Totally Whams

Here’s the point in these stories where the snake begins to eat its tail or in other words where we revisit various story lines for updates. You may recall this photo from a few weeks ago.

The girls in the family had a totally different take on it from what you all might have expected. Lauren said something about Dobby giving her kisses during her “glute bridge,” and Lu replied with something like, “No idea that was a glute bridge,” and Lindsay added, “Very little bridge going on there.”

“I had Dobby right in my face,” Lauren said.

“Not sure what that has to do with your glutes,” Lu said.

So the glute non-bridge has been a running joke for weeks now, and finally Lauren had had enough. We were at a dramatic moment in The Wire (see how serious Colvin is!) when Lauren said, “I’m getting down right now to do a glute bridge, and you’ll see that I can really do one.” So that gave us this.

“Take a picture!” Lauren called.

When she got back to her spot on the couch, Lauren said, “Send the picture to everyone,” so one of the girls obliged, even while brilliant dialogue was taking place on screen.

“That’s waaaay better,” Lauren said.

“I don’t know,” said Lu.

“It’s not that great,” said Lindsay.

“Gordon, send the earlier picture around, please.”

I paused the show. “So should we just turn this off so we can fart around with glute bridges?”

“No!” said Lauren. “I just want to compare the two. That’s all.”

Grudgingly, I dug out the photo from a few weeks ago and sent it around. That got us this direct comparison.

“Definitely better,” Lauren said.

“I guess,” said Lu.

But that wasn’t the only thing coming back at us. You may recall my recounting of the ghosts that haunt our house. They don’t seem to appreciate the publicity. A few nights ago, I rolled over in bed, heard some kind of click, and then the low hum of a fan—it was 1 am, and the ghost had turned on the space heater below the vanity again. I went to the bathroom and switched on the light.

“This is totally unnecessary,” I said to the ghost and got on my hands and knees to switch off the fan.

But the ghost wasn’t done. This morning, we were all in the kitchen visiting and making breakfast, and Lindsay suddenly started pointing and exclaiming, “Um, look! Um, hey!” The water dispenser had turned on, and water was pouring down the front of the refrigerator.

I whirled and began pushing buttons. The water stopped, but I couldn’t get the refrigerator to switch to ice dispensing. I pushed the button over and over and over to no avail. Finally, I exclaimed, “Hey, Mr. Ghost, could you ease up a bit?”

Lauren stepped over, jiggled another button, I tried again, and the setting finally switched to ice. This morning, Lauren’s Uncle David called to tell her that her Uncle Cliff was in a rehab facility and doing poorly—Cliff is her father Leon’s 95-year-old brother.

“Why is the ghost messing with us?” Lindsay said.

“It’s my dad showing Cliff how to haunt people,” Lauren said.

Shortly after that, I got this text from Grant who, in the offseason, has been working at the gas station Sheetz (kind of like Cumberland Farms for you Massachusetts folks or like Maverick for y’all out west).

Grant: Work was terrible yesterday.
Me: Really? Why?
Grant: I heard no fewer than eight different versions of that terrible song last Christmas I gave you my heart.

Sorry, bud. Like me, you got whammed.

Part of what brought us all together to the kitchen was that Lauren had had to take Graham to an ortho appointment early in the morning. After the appointment, she drove him through Chick-Fil-A for breakfast, and she brought home a box of chicken minis.

“Look what Mom brought,” said Lu as she pulled a chicken mini from the box and cracked open a Chick-Fil-A sauce. She made her valley girl accent. “Are you soooo excited? A big chance for you to put honey on chicken minis!”

I sighed and rolled my eyes. “I don’t love honey that much. But it’s a way better choice on chicken minis than Chick-Fil-A sauce.” As I said that, I opened the tops of the last three chicken minis and drizzled honey on them. Then I ate them one-by-one, enjoying the mix of flavors (not just the honey, girls). I was a sweaty mess from my workout, so I was headed upstairs to the shower when I heard Lauren say, “Well, I didn’t get a chicken mini at all, but I guess it’s fine since I live here and can get them whenever.”

“Shade thrown, Dad,” said Lu.

“Hold on,” I said, pausing on the stairs. “You stood in the kitchen and watched me put honey on the chicken minis, then eat them one by one. If you really wanted one, you could have stopped me at any time, said you hadn’t had one, and I would have given you one.”

“Well, Graham had like five,” Lauren said.

“That has nothing to do with anything. There were four left in the box. Lu took one. And you watched me eat the other three.”

“Well, I didn’t want to stop you once you put the honey on the others.”

“Oh, I see. It was better for you to watch me take them, little by little, act like you’re taking one for the team, then get to play the martyr after,” I said.

“That’s not what I am doing.”

“That’s exactly what you’re doing.”

“No, it’s not. I just didn’t want to stop you. I wanted you to have it.”

“So instead of just letting me have it, you had to make a big deal out of not getting one. Because it was way better to have a passive aggressive opportunity than to just give me one. If you were gonna be like that, I’d rather have had a fight before I ate the damn thing, so you could have your one and not get to play the martyr card.”

“I’m not trying to play the martyr card.”

“If you weren’t, you wouldn’t say anything.”

“Just go get in the shower.”

What can I say, folks. You know what the Bible says, right? The love of honey is the root of all evil.