please donate your canned goods...to me.

My dad drove me back to my apartment yesterday morning. I don't have a car because having a car in the city of Boston is ridiculous, would cost me at least $150 extra a month to park, and would rarely get used. Luckily I have the best parents ever and they never complain about coming to pick me up from the city. And really, even if I have to take the train home, I don't even mind. It's easy to get to and drops me off a 5 minute drive from my parents' house. And I can just sit and read a book for the hour it takes to get me there. I consider myself very lucky. But they rarely ever make me take the train. Usually what happens if I want to go home is that my mom will come pick me up and we'll spend the day out. For instance, on Saturday we went to the Met Club (my favorite place ever) and had lunch and then went to various stores all the way home. And since I have, as Sara has now termed it, an "alternative work schedule," I can stay home until Monday morning when my dad will drive me back to the city (He has an "alternative work schedule" too, also known as being retired. My mom, she works full time. And interesting change from when I was growing up).

My dad likes to joke with me because for whatever reason, every single time he drives me back, I have about 50 bags all weighing approximately 50 pounds each. I honestly don't know how it happens, but I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that I often bring laundry home and that my parents love to give me stuff to bring back. They insist loading me up with paper towels and toilet paper. I know. I often feel like a total schmuck being a 25-year-old woman and taking paper towels and toilet paper from my parents, but I do it anyway. I think they just really respect that I totally work my butt off, but that my career takes time to make money in (story of my life). So they help me where they can. And I am very thankful for this.

Anyway, this time was no different. My dad and I had to lug all the bags up to my apartment, which is luckily only up one flight of stairs. I had laundry, my Easter gifts, and lots of random heavy stuff. My mom had also bought me a 5-lb bag of flour and a 5-lb bag of sugar, equalling 10 lbs of baking ingredients. There was one particularly heavy Demoulas bag and I had no idea what was in it. "Oh," my dad said. "We had some extra canned goods in the pantry, so I figured I'd give you some." OK, who can't use canned goods, right? After he left, I opened the bag and found the following:

2 cans of tuna fish
1 can of chick peas
1 can of kidney beans
1 can of cannelloni beans
1 can of black beans
1 jar of pasta sauce

What. I seriously couldn't stop laughing. I know I'm not rich, but do my parents now think I belong in some sort of soup kitchen? Please bring me canned goods. Specifically of the bean variety. Remember in elementary school when you'd have to bring canned goods to school over the holidays and you'd always bring the most random stuff in? Like all the random beans and stuff you knew your family wasn't going to be eating any time soon? Yup. So now I have a random selection of canned beans and am thinking I need to find a recipe that will combine them all.

Ohh if only I could count all the ways I love my parents.