I like raisin bran. As a regular consumer of it for some years now, it has been impossible to fail to notice the inexorable rise in the percentage of raisins. Every few years, some fool cereal company announces “Now with More Raisins!”, and every other manufacturer follows suit. No company ever dares lower the raisin percentage, and we’re rapidly approaching the point where we’ll all be buying boxes of fruit with some grain sprinkled in. It got particularly bad in 2005, when the raisin percentage increased alarmingly. One day, about six months ago, I poured myself a bowl of cereal and found, to my alarm, that my bowl was almost entirely full of raisins. As is my habit, I disposed of the excess of raisins, finding myself left with perhaps an eighth of a cup of flakes. So I poured more. Repeat. And so on.
When my lovely bride returned home that evening, I could not help lamenting the tyranny of the raisin majority. She shifted uncomfortably.
“What? What did you do?”
“Well. I eat raisin bran, too. But there are always too many raisins.”
“Yes?”
“So, I pick them out. And I put them back in the box.”
“You put them back in the box?”
She stifled a giggle.
“Yes.”
When folks talk about adjusting to married life, I always figured it was some kind of a euphemism for sex or schedules or newfound responsibility. Not so much. They’re talking about raisins, real and metaphorical.
We’ve got a system worked out now: bran flakes and a bag of raisins.
No one told me about the raisins before I got married either, Waldo.
Marriage has proven so much more surreal bizarre than anyone ever warned me. Fortunately, it is also so much *better* than I was ever led to expect, too. :)
Hadn’t thought about that raisin count thing. Now that I have, you may have something. Since I buy the Ukrops house-brand version of raisin bran, I had figured it was just them. My usual way to get the proper balance is to fill the bowl halfway with Cheerios. For whatever reason, I like to mix my breakfast cereals.
regular raisins are hard to mix with bran flakes because they stick together. why not a box of bran flakes and a box of raisin bran? (My mom always used to make us mix our honey nut cheerios with regular ones, she gets all the credit for this idea.)
Woe is life Waldo. Would a fruit by any other name taste just as scrumptious? I think not.
I’m celebrating 22 years of marital bliss this Friday. Woo-hoo… yeah, right. Raisins, smaisins. Just wait till you have kids. Actually just wait until you have little kids. There’s your real reality check. Mine are 9.75, 12 and 14 now. My husband and I are in a calm before the re-storm mode right now. We are battening down the hatches for 14, 16 and 18 when all hell breaks lose again. I say “again” coz it was HARD with a >1, >3, and a >5 year old. The stories I could tell. And I don’t miss that time one little bit. Married WITHOUT kids was SOOOO sweet. It’s hard to even remember there was a time when we would even stop and smell the roses and/or notice the number of raisins in the cereal. These days I’m greatful if there is even a smidgeon of milk to add to my morning coffee.
Amber points out that, in fact, she already keeps bran flakes on hand for mixing purposes, as she has for months now.
She just didn’t tell me.
“inexorable rise in the of raisins”
The of? Methinks you need some copy editing.
At least you are in the early stage of marriage where you can feel comfortable that those are indeed raisins…
The Tramp
Waldo, I love you!!! You have just proven to me that my marriage is absolutely normal and we may actually last a whole life time. Some days my husband does things like what you have just described and depending on a number of factors I can respond like your wife or I can wonder how I ended up in the land on man. I am blog rolling you as we speak and I will refer my hubby to this blog mecca! Glad I found Waldo fo’ sho!
Waldo,
It is posts like this—even if not political in nature—that prove that you are probably the best blogger in Virginia. This is excellent writing.
Agreed with Josh. That’s hysterical, Waldo.
That’s very kind of y’all to say. I’ve had a reaction to this one blog entry — links, e-mails, comments from friends — unlike any other blog entry I think I’ve ever written. The funny thing is that I enjoy writing this kind of thing significantly more than the majority of my blog entries about politics. If people enjoy reading this more, and I enjoy writing this more, then I’m not sure why I spend so much time writing about politics.
Waldo,
You are a splendid writer. I loved your piece on the parrot that sounded like a car alarm. I also followed your coverage of the General Assembly during the winter. I liked it and recommended it to others. But I can’t say I remember much of it, except in a general sense.
The parrot story still makes me laugh.
Beyond your writing, in my book, more bloggers who see themselves as “political bloggers” should consider that adding some diversity to their subject matter would broaden the appeal of their web sites beyond the “echo chamber.” It might even develop them into better writers, too. And, of course, sometimes to reach a general audience with a political idea, one should wrap it in a story that plays more as a slice of life than transparent propaganda.
Alas, it seems a lot of the busiest blogging political activists aren’t really dealing with ideas, so much as they are personalities. They see elected officials as celebrities. They want to see their favorite politicians, even their paid staffers, as “rock stars.” They don’t seem to be bothered by the implication that follows — doesn’t that make most of them groupies, and little else?
I’m looking forward to the Blog Summit. It should be lively.
— Terry
You have just taken the disorganized, unformed thoughts that have been bubbling up in my head during the past few months and given them form and logic. Yes, you’re absolutely right. I’ve seen myself writing in this same manner, and I look back on it and realize how utterly worthless such blog entries are, how little that I’ve added to the world by writing such banalities.
Thank you for your kind words, Terry.