If you missed my earlier post about this week’s Featured Bloggers?
Go read it and then come back.
I will wait.
I’ll just talk about nothing in particular while you are gone.
Something boring . . . like errands.
We are at the grocery store.
The girls want ice cream.
We have two trick-or-treating pillowcases filled with Halloween candy at home, so no way do we need another treat. No ice cream.
I tell the girls we are not getting ice cream, but they ignore me.
They stand in the frozen food section and discuss the kind of ice cream they would like to buy.
Maj and Kallan are generally able to work together quite cooperatively in a situation like this. They know that if there is to be any chance that I will change my mind and agree to buy ice cream? They are going to have to present a united front of loving sister treat-greed.
So they huddle together and discuss the various ice cream possibilities in hushed voices.
I ignore them. We are not getting ice cream. I move down the aisle and away from them.
Which is how I come to be the woman whose children are running through the grocery store yelling . . . .
“We want beaver tracks! Please? Beaver tracks would be yummy! We want beaver tracks!”
What the fuck, right?
It turns out there is a flavor of ice cream that celebrates the Oregon State Beavers.
Beaver Tracks, it’s called.
Snort!
I’m sorry, but when I ponder the possible implications of the phrase beaver tracks?
I do not actually envision a scoop of yummy ice cream.
I may never be mature enough to live in the Beaver State.
Because just those words . . . Beaver State . . . and I am giggling.
OK, so I am looking at this ice cream and I am giggling, and the girls want to know why I am giggling. So I try to explain, “OK, well . . . I just don’t think that an ice cream named after the trail a beaver leaves behind sounds very appetizing. Plus? Look at this picture! This is a scary vicious beaver!”
This beaver? Fucking scary.
And then I snort and giggle some more as my daughters stare at me blankly.
Sigh.
Kallan is puzzled, but she really wants this ice cream, so she agrees with me, “Yeah . . . they should call it something better. Like Beaver Love. Or Delicious Beaver. And the beaver should look friendly.”
Sometimes? I laugh so hard I am unable to breathe.
My daughters are all annoyed at me, and Maj speaks for the two of them, “It’s not that funny, Mother. It really isn’t. So can we buy this ice cream or not?”
I am trying to catch my breath, and during this pause in the conversation, Kallan has been reading the ingredients.
She turns to Maj, “Wait, Maj! This ice cream is peanut-butter flavored! I hate peanut butter. Let’s go see if there are other Beaver flavors.”
Other beaver flavors?
Oh . . . my . . . god.
I call after them, “We are not getting ice cream! Put it back!”
Kallan yells back, “But what if they have Vanilla Beaver? You like vanilla.”
Seriously?
I call back, “No, babe . . . no vanilla beaver. No beaver flavor. No ice cream. No beavers. No.”
How great is my life?
Hee hee!
And if you ignored me at the beginning of this beaver-loving post and did NOT go check out my earlier post about this week’s Featured Bloggers?
You are annoying me.
Go and do that now. Click here.
I’ll wait.
I’ll be right here.
It is my understanding that beavers do come in a variety of flavors. Or so I have been told.
Also? The ones that leave trails behind? Should probably be avoided.
Exactly.
A beaver who leaves a trail?
That bitch is coming nowhere near my ice cream cone.
Seriously.
I thought that was called a “snail trail?”
Not according to the Umpqua Ice Cream company.
I just moved to Portland, OR a few months ago from NYC. I too have found it difficult not to snicker at our ‘fighting Beavers’. But I’m all for trying that icecream!
when i was in college, my future husband had spent the night with me at my parents’ house for the holidays. behind my bed was a bookcase that helped to house my books and stuffed animals. my three-year-old nephew came in the room to wake us up, saw a squirrel beanie baby on my bookcase, and asked, “aunt jenny, can i pet your beaver?” we both died laughing!
That?
Is so lovely.
Plus also?
I am never going to be mature.
Apparently.
Awesome! you have the best grocery store tales!
Hee hee!
Tales follow me around wherever I go.
But not beaver tails.
Tales.
Ahem.
Oh. My. God.
Still laughing.
Typing with tears in my eyes.
Seriously.
Whew.
My daughters have threatened to never go shopping with me again.
I am an embarrassment.
Snort!
You and me both, never mature enough to live in the Beaver State. After all, I’m the person that can’t resist pointing out to non-Michigan natives that exit 169 on I-75 is Big Beaver Rd.
This post has me laughing so hard. I needed a good laugh today. Thank you!
I have taken that exit and giggled hysterically.
Happy sighs at that memory.
Oregon is filled with beaver references.
I am all giddy here.
At least it wasn’t Chunky Beaver!
Hee hee!
Or as @TheDDoR just said on Twitter?
Good thing it was not Rocky Road.
Hee hee!
Hehe… Beavers… hehehehe!
I feel like Beavis and Butthead reading this blog!
I am often perfectly appropriate and sensible.
But then often?
Not so much.
Happy sighs at being contradictory.
Which is itself a funny word.
What with dick in the middle.
Gotta love that.
Ahem.
Just so you know, I can never decide whether I love your posts or your tags more. It’s like a double scoop of Beaver awesomeness.
I do love my tags.
As I love the readers who take the time to notice them.
Happy sighs.
What are tags for anyways? I have yet to fill in one once.
There is a difference of opinion in our household about the proper use of tags.
Mark claims that tags should be used to guide the reader to the posts that might best explain a particular topic. He wants me to label more posts as “parenting,” for example. Some sort of SEO magic is supposed to then occur, through which more people are driven to my blog through the magic of the internet.
But for me?
I just use my tags to make people laugh.
Correction . . . to make me laugh.
Love my tags.
How do these things happen to you everyday?
These things do not happen to me every day.
Beavers go about their business here in Oregon and I do not even notice them.
And then my daughters ask to eat their tracks.
And then I have a story.
Hee hee!
I can’t wait till the girls are old enough to understand and come back to read all these amazing childhood memories.
I wish that someone had Maj’s camera ready right about then.
The girls’ school?
All about the beavers.
I have mentioned before that they had a visit from the Beaver mascot.
Lucky the Beaver.
Not even fucking kidding.
Lucky the Beaver taught the kids beaver cheers.
I do not make this shit up, people.
This is my life.
I am so lucky.
Hee hee!
I just read this to my hubby. He is laughing hysterically. He says I have to tell you when I found out what that meant.
Short short version. I was 20, been married 3 yrs. A bunch of his buddies were over. They kept talkin about goin beaver huntin. I thought they were crazy. I asked them what they did with them. Were they trophies or did they eat them.
One of them solemnly told me, “Sometimes, both.” All the guys couldn’t contain their mirth. My hubby took me by the hand and led me to the next room and shattered my innocence. *sniff sniff I’ll never be the same.
Oh . . . my . . . god.
That is the best beaver story ever.
That is on your blog somewhere, right?
Please tell me it is.
Oh lord no!!! My daddy is a preacher, I constantly have others in the church looking at my blog. Not to mention my hubby’s good friend who is a preacher has talked about it from the pulpit. My mother would die of embarrassment.
But it’s one of my hubby’s favorite stories to tell, and tease me about. Along with the guys there that day, and my in-laws. They love to tell dirty jokes and wait for me to get them.
ps. Getting them can take hours or even days till I finally break down and ask my hubby to explain.
Seriously?
Silly innocent you.
This blog is a corrupting influence, then.
Yay!
Yes, yes you are. But I think that’s why I love it.
Like I said I need lessons in interesting. hehehehe
Then again my hubby says that my naive way is what caused him to be so attracted to me. That and big boobs.
Your husband is all kinds of smart.
Naive and big boobs?
An excellent combination.
Yay!
That is too damn bad.
That is a good story and it deserves a wider audience!
As for the dirty jokes?
Why do they give you trouble?
I am always right there when there is inappropriateness of any sort.
Right . . . fucking . . . there.
Snort!
I agree. I guess it’s been long enough I am no longer mortified. Aside from the embarrassment it could cause my mama I would.
As for why I don’t get it. …Genetics, is my only answer. Mama is the same way. But her and I sometimes giggle over something one of us has said that is completely inappropriate.
See?
You have interesting stories to tell.
Lots of them.
Not my stories.
Yours.
Go write them down!
hahahah I got a way to do it now. But its a secret so I can’t tell you how. hehehehhehehhehe
All kinds of ecstatic. Yay.
Beaver flavor? Oh. My. Gosh. I’m dying over here!!
Happy sighs.
OH
MY
GAWD
I would still be lying on the floor laughing my ass off in the middle of the grocery store’s ice cream aisle.
M
ps – they have these in Halifax, on the waterfront. Beaver Tails.
http://www.beavertailsinc.com/
Never had one… can’t get past the name.
pss- much better than peeling potatoes – thanks!!
Killing myself laughing here too…
Snort!
I love that you were unable to resist the lure of the beaver!
Yay!
And those beavertail treats?
Oh my god . . .I would not be able to stop giggling long enough to eat one of those things.
Snort!
DO NOT explain why beavers make you laugh. That would so deprive us of many more laughters.
Cause, once explained? They will no longer utter the words that make the immaturity well up and flow over to these pages! And that has to be some felony or something. That deprivation.
A secret?
That is exactly why I haven’t explained.
The girls and their friends discuss their beaver enthusiasm constantly.
And I cannot BEAR the thought of losing all of these giggling opportunities.
So shhhhhh.
I am not going to explain.
Not yet.
Hee hee!
(whispering..,oh goodie)
Oh, I wish I had a vanilla beaver. This is so awesome. Your poor girls. When they finally find out what beaver means, you have to remind them about this.
Snicker.
That will be a lovely day.
I was so not prepared for that…I shot Red Bull out of my nose and all over my computer screen when I got to Beaver Love or Delicous Beaver part. I’m pretty sure if I were you, they would have been calling for a cleanup in Aisle 3.
If I had been drinking a Red Bull at the time?
You can be assured that clean-up would have required.
Oh my god.
Definitely.
AHhahahahahaha
Beaver ice cream. Love it.
If they had vanilla beaver. You could make beaver floats. Snort.
Beaver floats?
I am giggling hysterically.
Beaver floats?!?
It just keeps getting better! This is the most awesome place in the world!
Like Disneyland, except? No rides.
Of course beaver floats!
Duh.
It is all kinds of buoyant.