here’s the short version: the checker at the grocery store charged husband of mine $41.66 for an onion and now i’m looking for real estate in texas.

time for the middle of the story? to give some meaning to the ominous “and”?

see. a while ago husband of mine applied to more school. (i know. i felt that collective shudder. haven’t we been in school post-baccalaureate for about five years now? yes. we have. and i say “we” because there isn’t any “just my husband feels the pain of this education thing” in “team”.) and as of yesterday we’ve been accepted to a program in texas.

i agreed to this whole thing because it seemed so distant and impossible and unreal and, i don’t know, it’s halloween and i have paper bats hanging in my windows and it doesn’t seem like anything serious should happen when you have paper bats hanging in your windows. but acceptance makes things a little more tangible. i really did sign on for at least another three years of student living. student living with two kiddos. i guess this little vacation in my little mitten of michigan really does have to end. (have you ever been to michigan? you take one look at these trees raining golden yellow leaves and you think, “yes. i could live here forever.”)

and as i’m ridiculously looking through pages and pages of little electronic pictures of houses in texas even though i don’t have money for a house or rent or private yacht or anything really, i’m realizing that it is quite affordable to live along galveston road. and maybe i should just stick all of us in a cardboard box with stilts. (currently flashing back to “return to oz” and the flood and dorothy on the wooden roof of the coop with chicken belina. did dorothy live in texas? no. kansas. right. but do all floods look the same?)

in any case, if you’re still wondering about the onion. husband of mine went to get the fixings for soup late at night because i’ve been sick and baby’s sick and all kind of crazy ickinesses seem to working their way through our end of michigan. and the code for “onion” is 4166 on the little beeper/weigher grocery store thinger. so the clerk mistyped in a moment of late night grocery store college kids getting beer rush panic. so remember that code. you might need to know it someday during a hurricane.