Word of the day: No

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Andrew and I had an interesting experience about ten days ago.

He had come to Columbia with the children to celebrate Labor Day, and I’d asked him to take me to Costco.

I needed a pork loin to use for the barbecue pork sandwiches I was serving, and also a birthday cake.

In my memory, Costco used to sell pre-made plain sheet cakes that you could get them to decorate.

Well, they don’t do that anymore; now if you want a sheet cake, you have to order it in advance.

Which I had not done.

Three-year-old angst

At any rate, their half sheet cake (there is no one-fourth sheet cake, which I also thought I remembered being a thing) serves forty-eight people, which is approximately thirty more pieces of cake than we needed.

So, as I have done before, I opted to buy their excellent cheesecake.

We picked one up and got the attention of a lady working behind the scenes, in the bakery.

I asked if she could pipe a greeting onto our cheesecake and she said of course, and gave me a piece of paper to write on. 

I wrote:

Happy Birthday

Stephanie and Guy

Andrew suggested that we ask for both pink and blue icing on the sentiment and the names.

Elliot a/k/a Skippy: almost three, in church

Because we were killing two birds with one stone.

Our Stephanie always has a birthday in the week of Labor Day, so our tradition for many years has been to combine the definitive end-of-summer celebration with her birthday party.

But our little Guy had turned three on August twenty-fourth, and we had not been with him at his party in East Tennessee on that day.

So we decided to make the birthday party for both of them.

OK now here’s where we got into the weeds. Apparently.

I wrote on the paper and handed it back to the nice lady, who got to work with tubes of pink and blue icing.

Impromptu name change

In no time, she had handed our cheesecake back to us. We thanked her and walked away.

And then I looked at the cheesecake.

It bore these words:

Happy Birthday

Stephanie and Gruy

You read that correctly: GRUY.

No.

I stopped in my tracks and told Andrew to look at the cake and he burst out laughing. What in the world??? He said.

Gruy, paying attention in church

It took me awhile (but not too long) to figure out what had happened. Of course it was my fault.

When I write a capital G, the way I do it is, I make the big C and then I make a line OUT and DOWN to form a G.

The lady with the pink and blue icing tubes interpreted the OUT and DOWN part of the G as a lower case R.

But, Andrew spluttered. Who thinks Gruy is a name???

Well I mean, have you seen the names floating around these days? You can’t even pronounce them, much less have any hope of spelling them.

But, I reasoned, what I would have done is clarified. I mean, we were standing right there. I would have read what the customer wrote, and then just to be sure, I would have asked — is this name Gruy? G-R-U-Y?

Rhett and Ember: Rhember in September

At least I like to think that’s what I would have done, were I behind the glass cases at Costco, being asked to pipe names onto cakes.

But I don’t think she even read what I wrote beforehand; I think she just picked up the icing tubes and started piping, and wrote what she thought she saw.

I’m not mad at her, because she wrote it real nice and so forth, and that is more than I could have done. 

But still.

OK so as you know, none of this matters. We all laughed at the cake and called Guy “Gruy” for much of the day. Which he had no prayer of comprehending. 

But since he was busy swimming and pouting and napping and eating and opening presents, there was no reaction.

And when we consumed the cheesecake, with the berry compote I’d made still warm on top, whomever got the icing R that should not have been there, did not taste it.

No one knew why Gruy was out of sorts

However.

Sometimes words, and what they mean, do matter. They do make a difference. Like for instance.

About three weeks ago, our Rizzo had a brief health crisis.

I had to drop everything and tend to it, which included TG taking him to the vet early one morning and leaving him, and my going back later that afternoon after another appointment, to pick him up.

He’d had a procedure and was in some pain, and I babied him for the rest of the evening and everything turned out all right because we have a great vet, who has been taking care of Rizzo since I got him for thirty-five dollars at the rescue shelter nearly ten years ago.

The next day, I received a text from the vet’s office.

Whatever his name is, he's all boy

It said: We just wanted to reach out and see how Rizzo is doing after their appointment yesterday.

? ? ? ? ?

Now, maybe you read that without noticing what they did there.

But to me, it hit like a note so discordant, it pierced the virtual ear. It screeched like the proverbial fingernails on a chalkboard, if there is even anyone left who knows what THAT means.

I could have let it go. But I didn’t. Sometimes you’ve just had enough, and you have to speak up. This was one of those times.

Maybe you would not have engaged. But I did.

I answered: Rizzo is a male, and there is only one of him, so it was HIS appointment and not their appointment, haha 🤗. 

Then I updated them on how Rizzo was feeling and thanked them for inquiring as to his wellbeing.

He perked up for presents

Because, dear reader, I had no desire to be mean but this craziness needs to stop. It is OKAY to refer to people by their correct gender — of which there are exactly TWO.

You are either a male or a female, period, and as such you’re not a they, a them, or a their. You are either a he or a she.

Oh I know: No one is supposed to say that anymore. The plain unvarnished truth is anathema to the left, so the rest of us have to shut up.

No. 

I will not shut up. It’s ridiculous and it’s offensive to refer to my pet with a gender-neutral personal pronoun. Don’t start that nonsense with my DOG.

Brudders

As far as I know, no one has ever confused me with a male. May it ever be so (and trust me; you will never catch me appearing to be physically ambiguous in that respect), but the day someone refers to me with a gender-neutral pronoun, I will correct them in no uncertain terms.

Enough of that.

A few more things, and you’ll probably be saying, but those are yeses and this post is about no.

Well, I wanted to end on a positive note.

Dagny and Rhett are home schooled — she in seventh grade and he in Kindergarten — and classes have begun.

Erica moved the boys into what had been Rhett's bedroom alone, because there are bunk beds, and turned Elliot’s nursery into a classroom which is a firm affirmative to education.

They are having a ball and I’m pretty sure that Elliot a/k/a Skippy will soak up lots of knowledge just by hanging around during lessons.

Rhett says yes to academia

The day before Labor Day, we all said yes to church, as we do every Sunday. It was such a treat having five of our eight grandchildren in services with us. 

It was after lunch at Waffle House (a tradition for TG and me most Sundays) that we put Guy down for his nap, and Andrew and I made the aforementioned trip to Costco for cake and other supplies.

Stephanie and Joel arrived on Monday morning with Melanie and Little Andrew (who is not exactly little anymore, being a freshman in high school).

Allissa is away at Bible college and could not be with us, and it’s hard to believe that she is that grown up, but there you have it.

We had the pulled pork barbecue sandwiches along with smoky baked beans and tangy slaw and freshly deviled eggs and a wide assortment of chips and soft drinks. It was a delectable repast.

Followed by the cheesecake and warm berry compote, and some Costco cupcakes, which were a big hit.

Rhelliot wrung every drop out of a sparkling summer

Then Guy opened his gifts (I think he was bewildered because I could almost hear him thinking, but didn’t we already do this a few days ago?) and said yes to all of his new toys. 

Stephanie opened her gifts and seemed pleased with them, and we visited for a while longer, but all too soon, everyone had to start heading for home.

Speaking of home, in my next post I’m going to tell you something special and new about mine.

I hope you are making the most of your September, which is already half gone.

But we will savor it — and the months to follow — until the day break, and the shadows flee away!

And that is all for now.

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Happy Wednesday