I’m noticing much irony in the world around me lately.
First of al, I have to admit with some embarrassment my sweet peas still aren’t in the garden.
My fabulous brother-in-law tilled it a couple days ago and I was ready to soak the sweet pea seeds immediately to get them in the garden, and hopefully growing, post haste.
I immediately sought out the special containers I use to soak pea seeds in, a couple yogurt containers and one margarine dish.
I couldn’t find them. For you non-gardeners, soaking the peas inspires them to grow more quickly once they are planted.
Anyway, I knew I had put those containers somewhere safe.
Insert ominous music here.
True to a recent column, somewhere safe equals no idea where those exclusive bowls might be.
Sure I could find some other containers, but that isn’t the point. I know I have several.
I may even have double the amount needed due to a previous spring when I couldn’t locate the originals and used new ones, only to find the others sometime later.
If I were smarter than I actually suspect I am, I would store these two sets in two separate safe places thereby greatly increasing the odds I would find some. Maybe next year.
It turns out I just had to look a little harder and found them.
This is another great irony. I had to look with my hands.
I suspect this is a phrase only uttered by frustrated mothers when faced with distraught children who can’t find something.
Look with your hands is actually short form for “you incompetent fools, you have to move things around lest the desired item be behind, under or otherwise camouflaged by the rest of your junk.” Or something like that.
This is ironic for several reasons. The first is that you technically can’t look with your hands. They are merely assisting the eyes with the actual visual part of finding a lost or misplaced item.
It’s also ironic because other times people (mothers) utter a phrase along the lines of “look with your eyes, not your hands.”
It should be noted that this applies to completely different situations than the first example, generally when children are gawking at something is in plain sight, frequently followed by manhandling of said object/critter/person. The manhandling is generally either unwelcome, unsafe or just plain inappropriate.
Hmm. There’s a good example of the irony of our blessed English language.
You put un- in front of welcome and safe to make them negative, but in- in front of appropriate.
That is unless you are our middle child who commonly shrieks about the brother doing things that are unappropriate. The last irony relates to the bedroom. Our house was built when we were younger and had limited funds, as opposed to now when we have no more money, but much more debt to demonstrate the passage of time.
We chose a sensible floor plan with little wasted space and a modest square footage.
What this really means is that we can’t fit a king-size bed in our room and still have any other furniture.
This leaves us with an irresolvable (note this also does not start with un-) situation regarding sharing of the bed.
We argue over a 50/50 split a 1/3 to 2/3 share as Hubby argues he deserves being is larger than I am.
Ironically, I’ve observed recently that when I go to bed later than Hubby, which is 99 per cent of the time, he is way past the centre line when I arrive.
Fortunately it’s nothing a little elbow won’t fix, and maybe some renovations down the road when the kids exit the domicile.
Ironically, that may help to discourage them from returning home if they find their bedrooms have been removed. Hmmm.
Krista Waters is a freelance writer from the Caroline area. Her observations about life appear weekly in LIFE.