I’m starting to hate that red-striped bowl

The wife has a red KitchenAid stand mixer that I think she loves almost as much as she does me. It’s okay, she uses it to produce cookies and cakes and goodies. Her mixer has a white ceramic bowl with red stripes to mix the good stuff in. If there is anything my wife likes it is stripes (she wears a striped shirt nearly every day) and red. It is her favorite color. The combination of red mixer and red striped bowl makes her happy. 

Flash backward to early December; way back last year. Yeah, I know it was just a month ago. Stick with me, I’m trying to gin up drama here. I was washing dishes and I bumped the mixer bowl on the side of the sink. There was a tremendous crash and ceramic pieces and shards were all that was left of the red striped bowl. “What was that?” she called from upstairs.

“You know what is was,” I replied. 

“Did you break my mixer bowl?” She tried to not show she was ticked. Her disappointment grew when she discovered the bowl was a limited offering from Crate and Barrel and no longer available. 

I scoured the interwebz and found the bowl on a kitchen ware website. Debit card in hand I placed my order. It was now December 15, so I paid extra for expedited delivery. Only when I paid and I got my confirmation email did it become clear I had ordered the bowl from China. The email assured me in polite Chinglish my order was on the way.

Then nothing. Finally two days before Christmas, I was emailed tracking information. They shipped it via the Chinese version of the post office. After moving around various terminals, I’m sure being dropped kicked onto trucks with poor suspension on pothole filled gravel roads, the box was loaded onto an airplane on December 30. Fifteen days to leave China. I’m glad I paid extra for fast delivery. 

It is now January fifth. Tracking says it is enroute. I suppose my bowl was loaded on a Piper Cub flown by a pilot with narcolepsy because they only way it could take more than six days to fly a box from China to the US is if the pilot stopped to take a nap on every island across the Pacific. Planes back in the 1930s made it across  the Pacific in a couple of days, including stops on Wake Island and Oahu. Did the pilot stop for a slice of Hula Pie at Dukes on Waikiki? 

Anyway, my wife may or may not get a replacement for her beloved red striped mixer bowl. I’m betting the odds are high it will be in pieces when it does arrive. Her birthday is in June. Maybe it will be here by then.