Guess what I found?

My mother, who has been immortalized in the Mr. Mom post, came over this morning straight from work. I was washing dishes when she came in. She had something tucked under her sweater.

Who, she wanted to know, is the science teacher at the kids' school? And is he in class now?

I confess since the older kids graduated I don't know who the science teacher is, but as they have Hebrew studies in the morning, I am pretty sure he isn't there now. This is when I noticed she was holding a jar under her sweater.

I implored her to get that (whatever it was) out of my house! "Put it in the car!"

My mother refused on the basis that "He'll freeze in the car."

I did not want to know what "he" was, because I have certain phobias and neurosis, which I can't imagine where they come from. By this time the kids were assembling in the kitchen to find out what I was screaming about. Finally, my mother settled at the kitchen table and opened her sweater (she never wears a coat over 10 degrees).

She had a beaker from the hospital, covered with gauze, taped around the sides with Millipore tape. Inside was some water, some leaves, and a tree frog - no bigger than my thumb.

Where, you may ask, did my mother catch a tree frog in Milwaukee? Well, it turns out she didn't have to go far. She was working nights at the hospital, watching the telemetry monitors, when she noticed the little fella hopping down the hallway. The hospital has recently undergone some remodeling, and the new furnishings include a lot of "foliage" of the living variety. Of course, I think most of the green stuff was supposed to be part of the Vegetable Kingdom, not Animal. But I digress...

My mother was looking for a nice warm place for Mr. Frog to live where he would be happy and have food. After several colorful suggestions, I got my mother to agree to give him to the kindergarten teacher at the kids' school, who promised to look after the frog.

You may read this and think I have a dubious future as a case manager, but I say -

"What did you accomplish before 8:30 this morning ? Huh?

Tuna Fish for Lunch

I want to start this post with a little background information about my life with tuna fish.

As my husband has already stated many times, there isn't a place in the 'verse I can go without packing a tuna sandwich in a cooler. You multiply that out by my age, and it adds up to a whole world of mayonaisse.

Having said that, I am always on the lookout for new, interesting ways to eat tuna. I came across a "fancy restaurant" recipe for tunasalad that was printed in the paper some years back. It has tuna, eggs, onions, pickle relish, chopped tomatos, olives (if desired) and Miracle Whip. I made this several times and since there was so much stuff in it, we decided to call it "funky tuna".

Of course, I have a daughter who thinks Miracle Whip is the scourage of humanity and won't touch it. So I had to use Hellman's.

And my husband doesn't like to eat onions when he has to see patients, so I had to leave out the onions.

Another son doesn't really care for the pickle relish in there (green, eww), and the PT doesn't like the white stuff, which when I told her they were eggs, she assumed I meant egg-shells.

So basically, we were back to tuna and mayonaisse. Well, Friday I decided to make myself a little funky tuna so I would have something to eat for lunch next week. I made two cans of tuna, hardboiled eggs, everything I needed, the works, and filled a quart container with tuna salad and stuck it in the fridge.

This morning, I am all that having-a-plan-together-for-my-lunch-today, and I take out the quart container and there is just almost 'bout enough left for one sandwich.

Wondering to myself what happened to all my funky tunafish, I happened serendipiously on the Theory of Spontaneous Consumption, otherwise known as If You Make it, They Will Come.

I'll be in my bunk.