I make my own ranch dressing. As a ranch dressing or dip connoisseur, I have tried multiple brands, have my favorite “restaurant ranches” for each food I use it on, and have experimented with some different homemade recipes. A simple mix of Greek yogurt, Hidden Valley ranch mix, and milk is what I finally have decided is the best homemade version. Though it’s good, I can’t say it’s better than Outback’s ranch dressing—what can really beat that?
So, I dump the ingredients into a little squeeze bottle about once a week and shake it up until it has the right consistency. The little red cap on the bottle is held down by my finger nowadays because I may have learned the hard way that it doesn’t stay on great otherwise. Quite the mess—ranch on my cutting board, my microwave, and, while opening a the designated “food cabinet” a few days later, it was discovered that the ranch had infiltrated the upper cabinet door as well. I rarely have kitchen explosions, but when I do, I go all in.
Today, I made a turkey burger for lunch. I grabbed the homemade ranch—don’t judge me for this, we all have our food quirks—and squeezed the bottle for it to come out onto my slice of bread. I’m not one to use exact measurements very often, so I’m guessing when I say maybe a half teaspoon spattered from the bottle before nothing else came out. Confused, I tilted it upright, gave it another good shake, and repeated the process. Nothing came out, even though I kept squeezing instead of looking for the problem.
Earlier this week, I’d sat down at my computer and tried to put some thoughts onto paper. I hadn’t actually succeeded at putting anything on paper, though, since at least six months ago, maybe more. Being a first semester master’s student took its toll on me. I let it go for a while. But, like the toxic boyfriend that it is, I always attempt to go back to writing, even though I’m still in grad school and still should be doing academic work rather than talking about ranch dressing.
There were plenty of words in my head that I wanted to put on this Word document—the very one that I’m talking about ranch dressing on—but it stayed blank. I kept writing a title over and over. I would write it out, delete it, and then write the exact same thing again. I think I repeated this about three times before I finally stood up and made myself go be busy somewhere else. Those bolded words at the top of the page, “Bus Conversations,” was supposed to signify just that—some conversations I’ve had on the buses at my university.
I wanted to talk about a man who I’ll call David, the bus driver from Los Angeles who talks a lot about his wife and his childhood going back and forth from Mexico. We talk about what I do at the university, the work part at least, and we talk about cars. I wanted to write the question he asked me when I boarded the bus a few weeks ago. What kind of car is that? I answered that it was a Nissan Rogue before he asked if I liked it. Oh yeah, it’s been a good car, I replied, even though I had just spewed lots of words about the battery dying the week before that. We talked about his Toyota Tundra and how he really loves that make of vehicle. He told me about his little Nissan truck that he had bought at an auction when he was in high school and how he and his buddies fixed it so that it ran right. It was still a great truck when I sold it a few years later to my buddy. He got drunk and ran it into a tree though. He’s lucky he’s still alive because the motor had shifted back into the cab—that little truck protected him somehow.
Somewhere in that conversation, I brought up that I still love the first truck I had—the vehicle I got when I turned sixteen—and that my dad always said these new cars like my Nissan were hard to work on. While I am a ranch dressing connoisseur, Dad was kind of a mechanical and woodworking connoisseur, but if the car had the newer computer stuff he wouldn’t even touch it.
I wanted to talk about all of that, and how I had to say that my dad passed away a few years back after David had innocently spoken about him in present tense, like I could just go back home, and Dad be working on my truck. Oh, he said, I’m sorry to hear that. How old was he? I pulled the sunglasses back over my eyes from the top of my head, He was fifty-eight. He slowed the bus down for the next stop, Oh wow, he was young. Yes, David, he was. Covid, I said. And after that moment, I found someone who knew what I’d gone through. He answered, Oh, Covid got my mom, too.
I got off the bus that day knowing I had a friend in David. The next time I saw him, he said, I know we were talking about your dad the other day, and I just wanted you to know that any time you need some car help just let me know. I rebuild cars still in my free time. A good and also unexpected friend in David, indeed.
Before I had written the words Bus Conversations on that otherwise blank Word doc, I had tried other ramblings. I wanted to talk about my Mamaw and the time we accidentally exploded candy all over her kitchen—remember I said I go all in—and it hardened on the ceiling, fridge, floor, and everywhere else before we could clean it all up. I wanted to say how that became one of my favorite Christmas-time memories, along with all the Christmas Eves I spent on an airbed somewhere in her house with her many brothers, sisters, and all their kids and grandkids. Like Bus Conversations, I ended with a blank piece of paper.
Back to today, though—enough rambling about my past failures while continuing to go back to that toxic boyfriend I call writing. Today, when I kept squeezing the ranch bottle—and squeezing and squeezing—a large chunk of ranch seasoning dislodged from the spout. Before, there was maybe a half teaspoon of ranch dressing on my slice of bread. Now, there was about a tablespoon, all in one glommed-up spot. I just took the slice of cheese I had set on the other slice of bread and smoothed the ranch dressing out until it was a nice, even layer.
Sometimes the process is a mess. Always, though, you have to keep squeezing.
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