My Kitchen: The Final Frontier

You know how you stumble into the kitchen in the mornings, bleary-eyed and sleepy and desperately needing that first cup of coffee? Well, here’s what greeted me from the coffee cabinet this morning:

If you can't tell what it is from the picture, it is a coffee mug of Data, the android from Star Trek...certainly NOT something one wants to see staring out from a shelf at the crack of dawn...and certainly NOT before one has completely joined the Land of the Awake. As I reached in for the La Vida Dulce coffee from Central Market, my half-opened peepers saw A FACE staring back at me!

I nearly “pulled a May Bee” on the kitchen floor (our puppy May Bee is a bit of a slow learner on the housetraining front), and I certainly didn’t need any caffeine after that early-morning jolt of pure adrenaline!!

What is the *most* creepy thing about the new coffee mug Russell hid before leaving for N.C.? Is it the startling hairline? The alarmingly-pasty pale skin? The pinpoint black-dot eyes? All I know is that together, they are TERRIFYING at dawn.

(Famous last words: “Hey, y'all! This Data mug is just *screaming* to be hidden in Margaret’s china cabinet!”)

P.S. Did I mention that my family plays a fun game where we leave tacky knick-knacks hidden in each others' homes? It started when Mom & I found hilarious custom-photo mugs at a Goodwill store in Chatham, Virginia. One was of a hairy-chested and bespectacled man (black horn rims, of course!) in a sea of bubbles in a heart-shaped tub (which found a new home in my sister's glass china cabinet) and another was of a shirtless man sitting on his dilapidated front porch near a rugrat in a sagging diaper (soon hidden among Margaret's tasteful and attractive coffee mugs). Someone had actually taken these photos to a kiosk in the mall and had these atrocious snapshots turned into coffee cups! Mom and I could not stop giggling as we hid these cast-off beauties in the homes of their new owners; one was discovered right away, the other went unnoticed for months.

Over the years, the game has included bumper stickers ("FREE TIBET!"), macrame owls, feathered "dream catchers," naughty ashtrays, frightening figurines, tacky neckties, and other unusual thrift store gems. (My family is so much fun. I feel bad for people splashing around in crabby or boring gene pools...) :-)