Kool-Aid

After seven years of marraige you run out of things to talk about to your spouse and end up debating the minutia of pop-culture in effort keep the lines of communication open. In my relationship Vh1's "I Love The 70's and 80's" series have been a godsend for this reason.

Last night we got on the subject of Kool-Aid. Some families live and die by Kool-Aid. You open their kitchen cabinets and the little packets spill out from overflow. They are seldom without a fresh pitcher in the 'fridge. The children's upper-lips are always decorated with a Kool-Aid mustache. We are not one of those families--12 packs of pepsi to the point of overflow but never Kool-Aid.

I grew up on Kool-Aid. So did my friends. Each family had their favourite flavour. My buddy Casey always had lime. My sister's friend Laquina always had what was referred to as simply "red" as if the colour indicated the flavor like my least favorite, "orange." At our house it was usually lemonade.

So why no Kool-Aid now? I can think of two things that make me cringe dealing with Kool-Aid. Bad memories that provide a critical Kool-Aid impasse. First, the ghetto girls in grade school that used to carry around baggies of Kool-Aid powder and sugar and spend the day dipping their immortally stained fingers therein and sucking them with an unnerving slurping sound. Disgusting.

The other event was when I was out in field service once. This lady invites us in by yelling from her living room bed. It is a basically a "Gilbert Grape" scenario with this chronically obese, bed ridden woman in a thread bare nightgown that revealed too much laying and watching Soaps. She looked like a puddle, a pancake, a flounder. Her fat son walks into the room and interupts, "Mama. Look I found a packet of Kool-Aid!" He waves it about gleefully. "Now I can dye my hair!" The mother proceeds to tell (yell at) him that they need to save it to drink and the son is protesting that he needs to dye his hair Kool-Aid green. Disgusting.

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Rebekah helped me work on our new song last night. It's turning out to be a catchy pop-rock song like the later Lush albums. We even got the rad two-part vocal harmonies in there. I'm really happy with this one I can't wait to share it.

I had an epithany with my book. Yesterday I woke at 5:00am and the ending that I was struggling to weave together from various plot threads had materialised in my brain somehow overnight. The book is done. I just have to finish getting it down on paper.