![\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5157628520306803506\"](\"http:\/\/bp0.blogger.com\/_8YuevXJXjqg\/R5OT0BxPgzI\/AAAAAAAAAnA\/Ci6eg3QeDS0\/s1600-h\/orangeflipflops.jpg\")
<\/a>These sandals belong to Lauren. I think they make a statement all their own and need no editorializing on my part. They were given to her by Steve’s Grandma a couple years ago. I should take pains to assure you that Lauren is very fond of Steve’s Grandma. And further, I should tell you that the last two years, Steve’s Grandma has sent us a generous supply of very good oranges she picked herself. She’s a nice person with many fine qualities but a rather curious sense of style and questionable taste in both footwear and home decor.<\/p>\nBut even given her previous experience, Lauren was somewhat mystified upon seeing this label when opening her Christmas gift from her Grandma-in-law the year before last. Closer inspection revealed that it is a bowl, not necessarily for holding bananas We have this thing we do sometimes in our family, with items that have become iconic to us. Once, when we were visiting Louise and Scott, my sister and brother in law, Larry discovered that he had neglected to bring his hat with him. Since we were planning to spend the day in Boston and it promised to be hot and sunny, he ran up to a variety store a few blocks from their house to remedy the situation. He came back with the absolute worst hat any of the rest of us had ever seen. A ball cap of a sickly greenish color, oddly shaped, with a particularly ugly fish embroidered on the front. By unanimous vote, he was forbidden to wear this eyesore if he planned to go into the city with any of us. Even given men’s tendency to stick together in matters such as this, Scott could not bring himself to be seen in the company of this monstrosity. The hat stayed home and sat around the house for the entire week of our visit and when we left, I tucked it under the pillow in our room.<\/p>\n After Louise and Scott’s visit at Thanksgiving time it appeared in the cabinet under the bathroom sink. It made it’s way into their box of Christmas presents that year and for several years it whizzed back and forth between NY and Massachusetts with clocklike regularity. At some point I forgot about it, until 6 years ago when we were packing to move into the new house and it turned up in a drawer I obviously had not looked through in awhile. <\/p>\n So, Lauren brought the lovely Banana Bowl for all of us to admire when we got together for Christmas and when she and Steve went home, she stashed in the spare room closet at Ellyn’s house. Unfortunately, she left something at Ellyn & Jason’s that she needed so when Ellyn mailed it to her, the Banana Bowl went back to Georgia. I am pretty sure there are international laws about shipping really really ugly glassware into a war zone, where they have enough to deal with already, so I can’t get it back to Lauren until she is home from Iraq. Since I am stuck with it, I thought I should see if I can make use of it. Not liking bananas, we don’t have any around, so I tried oranges. I am not a well woman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I understand. You are puzzled and a bit confused. What, pray tell, is a Banana Bowl? If you know me personally, it would puzzle you even more, since you know that I do not like bananas. So why would I … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
This year, when Lauren and Steve were here, a couple days before we all went back down to Virginia, I was checking to make sure that there was enough toilet paper in the guest bathroom and there the darned thing was, in the cabinet! I made sure that it made it to the van before we left, but unfortunately, Lauren and Steve were driving a smallish car and though I tried, I was not able to successfully hide it in there. [I can’t prove anything, but I am pretty sure that Steve told Lauren that he saw it in our van, even though I threatened to withhold his Christmas presents if he told her, so I expect she was looking for it. He will<\/strong> be dealt with at another time] They left before we did and as expected, the bowl was sitting on the seat of the van when we went to leave.<\/p>\n<\/a>
They just don’t look right in there though. The worst thing is that the more I look at these pictures, the more I actually ……………… like<\/em> the Banana Bowl. <\/a><\/p>\n