Oh nuts!

Once I had a mushroom cookie jar.

It wasn't much--just a clear glass jar with a stem shape tapering up to a mushroom cap.

My old roommate Sarwa accidentally broke it one day. She's the kind of person to be horrified and take immediate steps to fix her mistake, especially if it involves someone else's things.

I think she had recently accidentally broke another possession of mine (I don't recall what) and despite all my protests that it was fine, she insisted on replacing my 'shroom cookie jar.

I think her guilty conscience caused her to go a bit overboard with the replacement however.

This jar was a hundred times better than the previous one. She was worried I wouldn't like it because it wasn't the same as the other one.

Who was she kidding? How could I not love it?

As the years have gone by, I've found a couple of things that complement it well.

The lids are my favorite part.

The story didn't end with the jar, however.

You see, this lovely specimen of porcelain fungi art came in a large box filled with those plastic packing peanuts.

You know the ones. The kind that get all staticky and sticky and jump around like Mexican jumping beans if you try to pick up large handfuls at a time.

I had placed the box in the backseat of my car meaning to put it in the dumpster on my way out of the parking lot one day and forgot about it.

Until a packing peanut flew by my face, that is.

At the time I had a car that came complete with fully functional sunroof. It was a beautiful day and I was driving home with all the windows down and the sunroof open.

I remember distinctly thinking to myself, "Of all the nerve! Someone is littering plastic peanuts! How dare they..." and as I was wrestling with figuring out how such littered peanuts could have possibly made their way into the footwell of my passenger side, it suddenly dawned on me.

I was the litterer! Or about to be.

Sure enough as I frantically twisted around to confirm my horrifying suspicion, there it was--a veritable mini cyclone of squeaky plastic peanuts was twisting up out of the cookie jar package box and flying around the car.

I groped for the window controls with one hand while the other flashed up to shut the sunroof, even as my knee steadied the steering wheel and my eyes guitily looked into the rearview mirror to survey the peanut carnage behind me.

Luck was with me, for it appeared that I had managed to halt the stream of packing material before it could escape the confines of the car.

As I continued to drive, I felt my face heat up, and I remember hoping that no one had seen my peanut tornado.