Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2002-08-27 - 7:24 p.m.

Dippin' Dots & Urinal Cakes - Google THAT.

I got fast food today. Don't tell the kids; they weren't with me.

I had to go to the dump (the story of why contains entirely too much wailing and gnashing of teeth to include here, just take my word for it that I had to go and that it wasn't my trash) and I was hot and sweaty and furious because one of the trash bags broke open on the seat of my car, and all of them stank and leaked dump juice. Also, the dump was filthy stinky and the recycling bins were NOT clearly marked and I spilled old dead beer down my arm while hoisting a box of bottles up into the glass-recycling dumpster. Am I painting a clear picture here? Now don't you think this woman deserves a soda pop? That's what I thought.

But there was nowhere to wash up at the dump, so I drove my stinky dirty car using my stinky dumpy hands back into town, thinking I would stop at the McD's and get a tall sody AND wash my hands and arms and face in the restroom before going on to my next job. All was going as planned, and I went into the restroom and scrubbed up, and halfway through the scrubbing I noticed that I was scrubbing myself with liquid soap that smelled unmistakably like urinal cakes. Urinal cakes in liquid form, and I am now covered with Foaming Urinal Cake, and no amount of rinsing in lukewarm McD's bathroom sink water will remove this incredible new scent. Now I smell like a dump that's been hit by a Boraid Bomber full of Pine-Sol. So I get my Coke and take it out to the car, and I sip it through a long straw with my hands at the absolute bottom of the cup, and it doesn't matter - every time I move my arm, I get a waft of Union 76 Men's Room. Gahhh.

All this has me thinking very unkind thoughts about fast food joints in general. I mean, the dump smells like the dump - no false advertising there. You don't expect to eat your lunch there. But a fast food joint ought to at least make an effort to be appetizing, no? That soap smells so bad you KNOW the employees aren't washing their hands; you'd smell them if they were.

They could put a lttle more money into decent soap and a little less into the big banners they hung all over the side of the place telling you they now have Dippin' Dots. There's a fad that I don't get. Ice cream rolled into tiny bb's! Gimme some of that! They have only two or three flavors and they nick the hell out of you for it. Twice the price of getting the kids a cone somewhere. Why so much? Is it the cost of those elves that have to hand-roll the bb's? Who came UP with this marketing concept?

But at least McD's, with their stinky soap and their gold-plated Dippin' Dots, usually does give you what you order. Taco Bell never does. Taco Bell takes down the order, and then hits the mute button and has a hasty conference - "What shall we short her? How about the burrito with no onions, that's GOT to be for a kid!" It's a formula - no matter what you order, you will arrive home with (n-1) items. And the missing item will be what one of the kids wanted, of course, because a kid cannot be consoled. Kids will not take your food instead, because YOUR food has been contaminated with lettuce and tomato. About every third visit, the clerks sense that you are going to count the items carefully, even if it means unpacking each bag while the people behind you fume. THAT visit, they will give you the correct order. But they'll get you again the next time. You can never let your guard down at Taco Bell.

But Taco Bell does have one advantage; nothing they offer requires catsup, so I don't have to do my Demented Catsup Woman routine. You see, Younger Daughter really likes catsup. Really likes it. So when they ask me, "Do you want sauce with those nuggets and fries?" I used to say, "No thank you, just catsup is fine." And they'd give us one package of catsup. Then I tried saying, "No thank you, just a whole LOT of catsup." And they would give us TWO packages. Now I lean way out of the car window and look the drive-up clerk right in the eye and say in my best creepy lunatic voice, "I want catsup. LOTS of catsup. I want buckets of catsup. I want a LAKE, no an OCEAN, of catsup. Do you HEAR ME?" and I like to open my eyes really wide while I say it. Do you know how much catsup this gets us? Four packages. Four. "Hey! Tight-ass! You're making a bundle on those Dippin' Dots, don't lie to me! Loosen up with the catsup there!"

You don't have to ask Taco Bell for sauce. You can even ask them NOT to give you any. You can beg. They still put in fourteen packages of the stuff. "Here! YOU have it! We can't GIVE the stuff away!" I keep it. Why? I have no idea. We don't use it when they give it to us, so I keep it around so we can not use it for even longer. That way, when we run out of catsup (which we do far more than any normal family should, see above explanation) I can feel hopeful and root around in the container with all that Taco Bell Mild Sauce; there MUST be a catsup in here somewhere. But there won't be, because they never GIVE us extra catsups, only extra Taco Bell sauces which nobody uses. They ought to have a trade-in program at the Taco Bell - bring back 50 little sauce packages, get an item free. Maybe they could use all those items people paid for but never got.

So I had a soda today, and when I got home I went in and refilled the cup of ice with water, and it's in the fridge. I ought to be smart and go toss it before the kids notice it. "Mom! You went to McDonald's??!!" Yeah - but I went to the dump, too. It all evens out.

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