living in men world

so for the first time in my life - i find myself the only female in a household of men - one husband, one son, and two insane dogs - dave, micah, stanley, and roger - respectively.

today, this was driven home (no pun intended) when i received a lesson on how real men carry in grocery bags - they don't use the handles. . . .

i know, this makes no sense to me either.

handles are so much easier - i can now set the bag down, and open the a) car door, b) car trunk, c) screen door and front door, and then pick it up with ease - by the handles. (this is especially useful if you are carrying more than one bag.)

gone are the days when i had to clutch the lumpy, heavy groceries bags to my chest- losing view of the area directly in front of my feet (dangerous when walking with small children - all of my kids learned the hard way to walk behind me so as not to get a "canned-goods" bruise up side the head).

hopefully, i remembered to get out my house KEY out before the clutching of the bags, because, God forbid i had to set those groceries down gracefully and without them pouring themselves out as some unsharp but protruding can caused a breach in the sturdy paper material, only to go digging around for my keys in the diaper bag i used as a purse for most of my married life. (ok, yes, i carried a diaper bag years past having any child in diapers - they were so much more practical. 1)they had so many useful pockets and compartments for all sorts of purse crappola (hence the digging - i never elected one pocket as the key pocket) and 2) i could throw the dang thing in the wash and have it come out looking like new - and you can't do that when your 6 old gets car sick and heaves directly into your fake leather-looking handbag.)

i can honestly say i have chased more than than my fair share of cambell's chicken noodle soup down my sloping driveway or lurched myself into the evergreens on either side of the front porch trying to locate the missing pie filling that went awol. (did eventually find it during the hard long winter when the grass under the evergreens died.)

so i for one happily said "PLASTIC" when asked and the choice was either a "handled" chemically created bag or a handle-less paper sack. and then - when paper grocery bag manufacturers figured they needed to add handles to keep up with their plastic competition, i saluted American ingenuity and proudly went back to "paper."

so this morning my son went to pick up a few things for me at two different grocery stores. he came back with both "handled" paper and plastic bags. and when i commented that he hadn't used the handles on the paper bag he shook his head. and when i started to say something about the plastic bags. . . he grabbed the top of the bag in his large man hand (like grabbing a chicken around the neck) and said "real men don't use them." and dave added "it's man law."

hmmmmmm, maybe it is time for a woman president. . .