Is it bigger than a breadbox?

"Why do you put your bread in the microwave?" my grandchildren ask, looking for signs of dementia.

"Because I don't have a breadbox," I answer.

They stare blankly, then ask, "What's a breadbox?"

I can't help but smile at the obvious answer, "It's a box you bread into."

They think I must be crazy or from another planet. "But why?"

Frankly, I don't know. "That's how my grandmother kept her bread."

I suppose I could just keep it on the counter but that would look messy. Breadboxes, if they exist at all, are rare and would make my kitchen counters appear cluttered. (Keep in mind, I keep my coffee maker in the laundry room for this very reason.) Other people keep bread in the refrigerator but aficionados argue that dries the bread out while keeping it in the pantry can potentially promote mold (if there is enough heat and humidity).

Meanwhile, the microwave is a cool, dark, and airtight place to store bread and recommended by King Arthur Baking Company in "The Best Way to Store Yeast Bread." In fact, that's all I use my microwave for: storing bread. Ditto for the oven in my RV back when I used to own one. I never used the oven for cooking and it made the perfect place to store bulkier items like bags of chips in a kitchen without much storage space.

So that, dear children, is the reason I put my bread in the microwave.

It just makes sense.

By the way, "Is it bigger than a breadbox?" was a standard question in the game 20 Questions back in my day. Which is to say, we are old enough to know what breadboxes are. (Also, the game of 20 Questions.)

April cannot come soon enough.

If your husband is like mine, he has trouble remembering what day it is. Usually, all he has to do is take a look at his pill box but if he's forgotten to take his meds, then he's thrown off and he has to ask me.

That's why I recommend Day of the Week Boxer Shorts. Of course there is a downside. You may find your husband occasionally looking down the front of his pants to figure out the day of the week. I can think of more than one circumstance when that might be awkward if not inappropriate. Think about dinner with your mother. Or passing by a schoolyard.

But there is an upside. You can mix up his underwear drawer for April Fool's Day. 

That will really mix him up.

Summer out West

 

I never paid much attention to “fire season” except to whatever was in the news. But it turns out there are far more fires than I ever heard about. It’s wild and a little bit scary how much of the country is on fire although nearly all of it is west of the Rockies.

In the fall of 2020, we were moving from the Portland area to Southern California and we were driving our one car plus a van with everything we hadn’t sold. There was a fire raging just south of Portland at the time and, unbelievably, we were allowed to drive right through it. The smoke and flames were so dense that visibility was near zero. It’s as close to what I can only imagine that entering the Gates of Hell is like. 

Imagine driving into flames that are so dense there are no flames, only color. The sky and the air all around us was orange mixed with smoke that was all encompassing like a dark cloud. I don’t know how it’s possible that I-5 remained open and people were allowed to travel through the area. Nevertheless, we emerged on the other side, and made it safely to our destination.

Not everyone was as lucky, however. When we stopped for the night, the hotel was full of people who’d had to evacuate, many who lost literally everything but their lives.

More recently - just a few weeks ago - there was a 50-acre fire just four miles from our home. As neighbors started noticing the smoke, text chains were set up to share information. Many of us downloaded the Watch Duty app for updates, which included evacuation notices. While we were never put on notice, the neighborhood just across the street from us had been ordered to immediately evacuate. It was scary to think about the possibility of losing our homes and made the devastating loss of life and property due to previous fires all too real.

Stay safe out there, especially if you live out West. And be diligent not to start any fires. 

Consider this:

The number one cause of residential fire is unattended cooking. 

The number one cause of woodland fire is humans.