I don’t know about you, but I get a lot of deals in my in-boxes. All these ads where you buy 2 for 1 whatevers, or spend $10 and get $30 worth of food, and so on, and so forth.

And most of them are totally things I’d buy, or do.

My favorites are the Living Social Escapes and Adventures. There’s a Parisian trip where you get a 3 or 5 night stay in an M-type room (whatever M type is); daily breakfast for 2; 30- minute ice bar experience for 2 with Grey Goose vodka cocktails (whatever an ice bar is, but it SOUNDS SO EXCITING!) for $519 or $779 (regular for the short stay is $1077).

Under ADVENTURES, they’ve got a Snowshoe, Fondue and Wine experience in Colorado for $122 (doesn’t say what the regular price is). Doesn’t it sound like fun?

If I had unlimited resources I’d be buying everything. On second thought, maybe not. Has anyone else found that sometimes the deals are hard to execute? I mean, sometimes the deals work out smoothly, but other times I have found the business gets sooo busy that they have trouble booking you, or they give you less than great service because you bought it for cheap. Or you let the coupon expire because you never get around to going.

But there’s always that hope.

Anyway, I decided to list all the deals in my inbox today. There are more in my spam folders, but I was too lazy to confirm their legitimacy.

Goldstar

Reader City

Groupon

Amazon Local Deals

Living Social

Living Social Families

Groupalicious

My mother used to say bad things happened in threes. I guess she wasn’t the only one to say that; everyone says, for example, celebrities die in threes. But if a few bad things happened in one day, she took it as a sign to stay home.*

I don’t really think that’s real, but I do notice patterns. Maybe the better term is coincidences.

For example, today I had to run several errands at several stores. No matter how I tried, I picked the slowest register plagued by technical issues. While I was in line at one of these places, glancing at the other lines and trying to figure out if I should line jump (answer: every time you line jump, the line you were in will start moving at lightspeed), the ladies in front of me were talking about El Nino.

“I’d take this weather over an El Nino,” the customer said.

“It’s too dry. The rain’s better than a fire. Those can be scary,” the cashier said.

“Yes, fire is scary,” the customer agreed.

Cue foreshadowing music.

After lunch, a haze settled over my area and I smelled brush smoke. Helicopters are currently flying back and forth. A fire. It hasn’t been on the news, and it’s now clearing.

At Target, there was a woman who always seemed to be in the same aisle as I was. She talked into a headset on what seemed like a work call. “I’ll be there soon,” she said. “And by soon, I mean eventually. Not in fifteen minutes.” Then she cackled, and I wondered how long the people waiting for her would have to wait, and how I would never purposely make people wait because I’d be too knotted up with anxiety.

Anyway, we arrived at the registers at the same time, naturally, and this store has two rows of registers. To get to the row further back, you have to walk around the people waiting in line at the front, which I tried to do, but was cart-blocked by a woman. While I moved the cart, headset woman cut in front of me.

Then I wondered: if I keep seeing the same people, the same strangers, over and over again, is it a sign we should talk? Or be enemies? Or does it not matter? At the register she still had her headset in her ears, so I couldn’t talk anyway.

Have you ever noticed coincidences like this? Or patterns?

*The day of the county spelling bee, for example, was plagued with miscues and wrong directions. When my mom and I arrived, we found out I hadn’t been registered (and therefore didn’t even have the study book they gave to everyone else), and she said we should have paid attention to all the signs telling us it would go wrong. A Hollywood ending would have me winning the bee in spite of this. I lost the second round, on pancreas.

I just love this cover!

I contributed an essay to this book, which is all about the first year of marriage. The essays (I’m told, I haven’t seen it yet) range from funny to serious.

Mine’s all about my first year with Cadillac. He was an Army Airborne Ranger in the 2d of 75th Ranger Regiment at Fort Lewis, Washington.

Most of my spam falls into the garden-variety category, the requests for help from foreign emissaries and such. But the other day, I received this email instead.

Ms. Dilloway,

First off, this is not spam. Well, not in the traditional sense.

I am writing to you because of a comment you made years ago on a site called ‘dealspl.us‘ for an item sold on redenvelope.com.

I am on a quest to locate a replacement blanket that has served my young son as an attachment item for the last four years. His original and much-loved blanket, through a series of unfortunate events, ended up in a landfill 70 miles and one state away. I was one beat behind it every step of the way, and arrived at the landfill just hours after the truck carrying the blanket did, but alas, I was too late. This thing that my son loved and held for so many years, is now destined to rot slowly in the mud, buried deep beneath the earth among diapers and mud. This pains me more than the loss of an inanimate object should.

My son is healthy and happy, and I am thankful that our biggest problem is that of a missing blanket. That said, I am trying very hard to replace this blanket, and I am now directing my energies toward finding a replacement for it, which has long since been discontinued. My search led me to a comment you made for the very same blanket when it was newly offered and still readily available. My only hope now is to find someone who purchased one approximately the same time and hope to acquire it from them, assuming it doesn’t hold as much sentimental value to them as our lost binky did to us. So that brings me to the writing of this (non-spam!)email.

Did you purchase one of these blankets, or do you know any one  who did who might be willing to part with it?

I have attached a picture from the original link upon which you commented, as well as my Sam, using his in his usual way.

Any response is appreciated, and thank you if you read this far.

Swinging wildly in the dark now,
Sam Heaton’s Dad, Bill.

P.s. Your comment, and the original link:

“Babies need swaddling, so why not give this and have their baby look extra super duper cute? It’d also be a fine Halloween costume. For an extra $10, get it personalized.” -posted July 19, 2008

So my first thought was, I knew DealsPlus would haunt me forever! Ha. It’s a bargain-hunting website, and when it first opened (I haven’t visited forever, I hear it’s doing well) you’d get rewarded for going online and finding deals. I happened to find this blanket on sale so I posted it. I never owned it.

I responded to Bill, I looked at his website, I’m reasonable sure he’s not a spambot out to bilk us all out of our Redenvelope lamb blankets. Therefore:

DOES ANYONE OWN THIS BLANKET? More specifically, if you own this blanket, will you part with it?

See how adorable it is?

Now, replacing a lost blanket is not something I’d undertake myself, though I rather admire the love and commitment shown by Bill. To reassure the dad,  I replied that my son used to have a blanket-binky that he got over having, and so did I. I remember I had this picture book called Jane’s Blanket, about a girl giving up her blanket, that I adored. It’s the only children’s book Arthur Miller ever wrote, and a cursory search tells me it’s out of print and selling for $100 and up now. I should have kept it! They really should reprint it. Anyway, the book is all about the cycles of life, of growing up, of letting go.

And of course my ponderous brain started thinking about loss and how it shapes us. Always dangerous, my thinking! Everyone put on your protective gear in case some splatter occurs. I’m not trying to say he shouldn’t look for the blanket (come on, it is a really cute blanket!); I’m only sharing the thoughts this whole thing triggered.

Loss is part of life. We lose beloved objects, homes, jobs, pets, loved ones.  In the parenting book, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, the author tells us that small setbacks prepare kids for larger setbacks everyone will face. It makes them resilient.

I wondered if losing a binky might sort of prepare you for greater losses ahead. We all hope that our children won’t have to face a lot of pain before they’re adults, but these times cannot be chosen by you. In my life, just before Christmas, we had to re-home our beloved puppy due to my youngest’s severe allergy. A few days later, their aunt, whom they saw almost daily, died. It was, and is, the most difficult time I’ve ever experienced as a parent. We’re going to counseling, actually; and while they show signs of grief, they also show signs they’re dealing well with that which cannot be changed.

Of course, losing an object is not like losing a person. But the experience of moving on is somewhat similar. Before this big loss, we’d had many smaller losses that seemed big at the time. For example, in 2009, we had to sell everything and move for a job, involving changing of schools and friends and states, across an ocean. Starting over with nothing. It was huge, mountainous, overwhelming, depressing, but we got through it.

As the kids get older, they will have more and more setbacks and losses. Grades will not always be perfect. Teams will lose badly. Teachers may not like you. Colleges may reject you. Break-ups will happen. Grandparents will pass away. I would like to think that my kids will remember the lessons from their early trials– that one day, the sun will shine bright again.

Adversity builds character, as my mother-in-law likes to say.

Anyway, enough with the Deep Thoughts.

For my birthday, which was the day after the Superbowl, Cadillac took me horseback riding. Totally planned and set up by him. He has been very good about birthdays ever since an early relationship birthday WTF moment when he took me to look for Bruce Lee’s grave in Seattle (don’t ask).

Anyway, he doesn’t like either of the teams that played (nobody in San Diego will ever really care for Eli Manning because of how he turned down the Chargers during the draft in a very entitled fashion), so we took advantage of the timing to go.

Not many people are out and about during a Super Bowl game, thus there was nobody at the horse ranch we went to. It’s way down south by the border; in fact, as you drive in to the Happy Trails ranch, you can see the hills of Tijuana beyond.

I asked for a lesson and he booked one, though he reported the ranch said they could just show us how to ride; I’ve never had a lesson. I’ve been horseback riding only a few other times. The first time was in 8th grade, with a friend who had been frequently. There was a girl not much older than us leading the ride, and she was very very bitter about having to take us out and kept yelling at me. My horse then was so fat and broad I actually got saddle sores, like actual broken skin.

The ranch is made to look like an Olde Western Town. There was a horse tied up outside who was not happy about it. I don’t know if he was in time out or what, but he got put away shortly after this photo.

We got on these two horses below (I was on the brown) and got our lessons. I was glad to finally get some instruction and could soon make the horse go around a series of poles. Cadillac was more advanced and they let him trot.

Then we went on our ride. I wanted to take photos but I was pretty sure I’d fall off the horse if I got the camera out of my backpack, so I didn’t. We could see the bullfighting arena across the border. The ranch is near a nature preserve; it used to be a cattle ranch. As we crossed a gully, the guide told us all the trash below us was washed there from Tijuana, and that all of it is maintained by volunteers. Up on the ridge there was a Border Patrol station. We saw an egret and hawks.

The guide began leading us across a weedy field, but then the horses kept stopping to grab bites, so we went back to the path.

My horse was somewhat of a diva, and she did not like to be in the back or in the front of our line. If she was in the front she kept looking behind her nervously. If she was in the middle, she didn’t like the back horse getting too close and got all miffed. When we were in the back she kept slowing down, and then running to catch up like she was afraid she was going to be stuck with me forever. The horse didn’t care that I hadn’t practiced trotting; she was giving me real world experience.

After that, we went to Phil’s BBQ, where the only customers were waiting for take-out for Super Bowl parties. Because I had burned thousands of calories and it was my birthday, I finally got to have all the sides I wanted: coleslaw, beans, and fries. And a house-made Whoopie pie. I didn’t really start hurting until I got home, though. I was actually all bruised up. Like purple and black and blue. Cadillac says I’m not cut out for such sports, though maybe I just have to toughen up a little.

So I made these recently from a recipe on Instructables

I was worried they wouldn’t turn out, like so many of the other nifty recipes I find on the Internets, but no need. (The sous vide salmon from that guy who wrote the really expensive cookbook, on the other hand, was a freaking DISASTER and I will write about that some other time).

Basically, you take two Oreos per cupcake cup (24 total), smear peanut butter in between, and then top them with brownie mix. I used Ghiradelli brownie mix and natural organic peanut butter, though I think the peanut butter was too dry; maybe use Jiff or one of the shelf-stable ones with added sugar (it’s softer)

I took the advice of a commenter and dipped the Oreos in melted butter first. Yes. A heart attack waiting to happen.

Then you bake for 20 minutes and it’s super easy and they look like this:

]See, even in unnatural light with a camera phone they look pretty darn good.

They only make 12. I took them to book club (where we were reading a book about natural eating, ha ha) and I was afraid there wouldn’t be enough, but I cut them in half because they’re very rich. They got demolished. I still had some left so the kids got them. Definitely not an everyday thing, and not something I would make unless sharing with a large group.