A jiggly mystery
If I’m not missing anything, this is the 12th time I’ve moved from one home to another, and that’s not counting all those in-and-out college shuffles. This move wins the “worst ever” prize because I’ve done it mostly by myself.
I’ve lived in this little house in the woods for going on four years, and I’m just now realizing it might be haunted. I would clear a closet of hanging clothes and miscellaneous stuff on the floor and pronounce it done, and when I return the next day the floor is filled with more stuff. Does junk grow up out of my floors like weeds? Are there ghosts messing with me?
Among the most challenging clear-outs was the kitchen pantry, a handy place to toss things I would deal with later. This is how a person amasses a collection of 14,000 blue grocery bags. That person also apparently was fearful her brand of vacuum cleaner bags would go out of production because: four boxes. Also, three mops. I may not be a clean freak, but my intentions are good.
So I’m clearing the shelves of canned soup and pickles (so many pickles!) and I am met with something truly shocking. There at the back of the top shelf was a Jenga wall of jello – boxes and boxes of jello: the small boxes and the larger boxes, the oranges and reds and some blues, all stacked in an orderly, fruity wall.
“What the???” I said as I stared up at it.
Four years I’ve been here, at times with my daughter and the farmer, and I have no memory of ever making or serving jello, a disdain for the food resulting from a childhood when a small dish of jello was part of every dinner. My mother would spike it with apples or carrots – her sneaky way to get the healthier stuff into our diets. The day she said the jello was our dessert we revolted, insisting that jello is merely the pre-dessert, and should be followed by cake.
And now I was the owner of 52 boxes of jello. Fifty-two. How did they get into my house? In the days since this disturbing discovery, I’ve developed several theories.
1) A housemate brought them in. Unlikely, since nobody here would have stacked them so neatly.
2) I have that condition where people get up at night and shop without actually waking up. Have I been on Amazon and didn’t know it? But wouldn’t I have noticed the jello shipments arriving on my doorstep?
3) And this is the most likely. Someone has been breaking into my house at night to put jello in my pantry. It’s a harmless enough prank, I suppose, but geez. I would prefer they pranked me with canned peaches, because I eat a lot of that. Or peanut butter. Fifty-two jars of peanut butter would be good.
The only way I eat jello these days is when it’s made into pretzel jello salad. I tried making it once, and it didn’t turn out. It’s a pain to make, and takes all day.
That describes moving, too. If I ever sell my new condo, I will have to marry the man who buys it, because I’m never moving again. I mean it this time.
By the time you read this, I’ll be in the new place. Me and my tower of little square boxes. Jello shots for everyone!
Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.