No Drinking Age

Recently it has been in the news that some groups are pushing to lower the drinking age in the U.S. from 21 to 18. There are two sets of arguments, for it: One by some college association about students going wild in their senior year or something and one by the people that say military people should be able to drink.
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I have a better idea. I say there should not be a drinking age at all. Now don't get your britches in a bunch, let me finish. I say regardless of age, you can drink once you get a high school diploma. No diploma, no drinking, even when you reach 50 or 75. I would grandfather the law, though. I would have it apply to anyone born after 30 years prior to the year the law is passed. That would give all those 20-somethings some incentive to go get that GED. I imagine the high school drop-out rate would become miniscule. That also covers all military personnel, because you have to have a high school diploma to join the military.
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Your driver's license or photo I.D. (if you don't drive) would simply be stamped "GRAD." Non-grad drinkers and servers/suppliers to non-grad drinkers would be subject to the same laws that are currently in place for underage drinkers/servers. And what about the geniuses that graduate at 12 or 16? Well, they can legally drink, but since they are still minors, I imagine their parents would have to sign a permission waiver or something. Besides, if they are so smart, I doubt they would be abusing alcohol anyway. And if being able to drink gives kids the incentive to work hard in high school, that's good right? I think so.

Congratulations! Now go have a beer!

No Pill, No Limo, No Sense

Saturday we were taking a giant load of Mom's old clothes and shoes to the Women's Haven resale store. The women staying in the shelter get first pick of the clothes and then the rest are sold with the profits going to the Women's Haven. As we were driving down one street, My Sweetie suddenly pulled over and stopped. It took a second for me to realize we were being met by a funeral procession. I hadn't seen a funeral procession in years, so I had even forgotten that you are supposed to stop. I was proud of his manners. This morning on my way to the church to pick up my Meals on Wheels food, I saw a motorcycle with a line of cars behind it coming towards me and got flustered because I was on the inside lane of a 7 lane road. My brain is going, "What should I do? I can't pull over, should I just slow down?" Then the motorcylce gets closer and it's just a guy in shorts on a blue and white motorcycle and those just happen to be modern cars that always have lights on and they just happened to all be tailgating each other (I guess they had all just come off of a light). Man did I feel stupid. Next time, I will look for a limousine.
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I had even more new people on my MOW list. I'm surprised they fit on one page. Not only that, but we were giving out the "shelf stable" holiday meals for Monday (Labor Day in the U.S.) and as always when we have the extras we don't have the breakfasts. So at every stop I had to go through my schpiel: Hi! There's no breakfast today, but this is a shelf stable meal for Monday because we will be closed on Monday for the Labor Day holiday. Fortunately, I didn't have the deaf lady today. But I do have a sort of new lady that I've never seen. Her meal is always taken by a man that is obviously disabled on some level. He's really hard to describe in print, but he's kinda scary and weird looking and sort of hops and makes odd sounds. Well, I realize there are people with physical disabilites that make them seem like they have mental disabilities, so I decided to do my normal line about the special meal with him just as if he were mentally all there. Yeah, now I'm thinking "not so much." He responded with a vacant look and a weird Uuuuuh type of sound and a little hop and went inside. Hopefully the lady inside is okay and can read because there were instructions printed on the box. I had to go to the Gyna Colleges* at 4:00, so I thought I'd have lunch at Friday's because that's a cozy place to camp out and do the USA Today crossword puzzle. I pulled up and it was gone. GONE! Not the building, but Friday's was gone. I couldn't believe it. I remember when they were building it. I was sitting across the way at Bennigan's and the bartender said, "They're going to put us out of business." Well that was like 12 years ago and Bennigan's just went out of business about 3 months ago. But it was their entire corporation, not that store. So now with no competition, Friday's closes? Huh? The bartender at Chili's said they were renting the spot and didn't want to renew their lease. Sheeeesh!
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*And now a short break for this joke courtesy of Carole:

Husband's note on refrigerator for wife:

Someone from the Gyna Colleges called.

They said the Pabst beer is normal.

I didn't know you liked beer.

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So as I'm pulling into the medical complex, I notice this whole long row of empty parking spaces between the complex and the hospital:

( Pardon the poor quality: these were drive-by shootings)

How funny is that? I laughed and laughed. What on earth can you do at a medical plaza or hospital in less than an hour? Deliver a pizza? Run a toothbrush up to someone? No wonder the spaces were all vacant. Talk about poor planning.

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I got pretty mad at the doctor's office when they handed me a clipboard with 4 or 5 forms to fill out. I said, "Why? Nothing's changed!" The girl insisted my insurance company made them do it. So I called my insurance company. The guy said they didn't need anything and then I made him talk to them. Writing really hurts my thumb and I had just filled out a bunch of forms at the ultrasound place on Monday. So they argued for a bit and then the claim was it was THE LAW. By then I was really mad (I figured out later I had forgotten to take my 11:00 am crazy pill and was in the fight aspect of "fight or flight." I rarely forget a pill and I surely will not be forgetting again anytime soon). I grabbed the forms and wrote "on file" over and over again on almost every line. I still think it's ridiculous. My regular doctor's office just hands you a form to sign to say that nothing has changed.

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Anyway, I get into the room and strip down and put on my snazzy paper vest and "skirt" and without even pulling out the extender thing to make the "bed" longer, I just went flat on my back and went to sleep. I've mentioned many times that I have waiting narcolepsy, so I knew I was going to go to sleep. I don't know how much time had passed but apparently I started snoring and made a loud "SNORK!!!" sound and it woke me up and I realized my lower leg pieces, which were just hanging down off the end of the examining table, were going to sleep. I readjusted all my paper parts and curled up on my side and was just dozing off when they finally came in. The doctor did two odd things. He kept tugging at my papers while he was talking to me, like "AW hell no, I don't want to see that!" or something. I thought it was weird. I'm never modest around medical people. If it were up to me I wouldn't even put the paper stuff on. The other odd thing was at the end, he said, "Do you need any prescriptions?" I still don't get that. He's not even my regular doctor. Why would he say that? I went in for a PAP smear and he asks me if I need any prescriptions? What? I should have said, "Like what?" Maybe his doctor sense knew I was short one crazy pill.

Something We Can All Agree On

When I was over at The House the other day, I found something called moleskin, it's a Dr. Scholl's product. It apparently is not actually made from the skin of a mole because it says it is cotton flannel. I'm not going to google the word moleskin, because my blog is not meant to be informational. It's not meant to be anything really. Anyway, on the back of the box, it says, "...protects feet from painful shoe friction." I've never had the words "painful shoe friction" together in my brain before, but I really like them. All my life I've always wondered if there was anything, ANYTHING, in the world that everyone could agree on, because let's face it, there's not a lot. I mean, I know people who don't like the beach! How could people not like the beach!!!!? And there are trillions of subjects that cause people to take sides. And often in a very strident manner. But after reading "painful shoe friction" I am thinking that surely, surely, no one likes that. At least I hope not. If they do, I hope they have it every day. That seems right. Surely we can all agree on that?

Not Like Other People

I've noticed that most people like a song because of the lyrics. The words say something to them or remind them of something. I do have a lot of songs that I like that remind me of something but not because of the words. It's because of what was going on when the song was out or the song was playing in a certain place. I actually feel pretty stupid sometimes when I realize I don't know any of the words to some of my favorite songs. I'm not like that with all of my favorite songs. I know every word to "Daniel" and know what it's all about and many others, but I'd say half of my favorite songs, I just like the way they sound. One of my favorite songs is "C'mon Eileen" by Dexy's Midnight Runners. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the song but don't have a clue what the words are or what it's about. I guess I go more for the sound of a song or something. Anyway, the other day, I thought maybe I should print out the lyrics and play it over and over and try to learn what it's all about. Well I have played it, but I haven't printed out the lyrics yet. Or maybe I'll just keep enjoying it as it is. It just makes me happy. Do you like it?

Freestyle 101

I like the fact that blogging is not Engish Composition. We don't have to have the opening paragraph with our three points, then our three paragraphs wrapped up with our concluding paragraph. I don't have any problem with that type of writing. It just doesn't seem to be what blogging is all about. And this post would definitely get an F in Eng. Comp.
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I was such a doofus on Wednesday. I had one of those crazy long Meals On Wheels days. Not only did I have a full sheet of people, I had a new person that was way off the route. And then there were little things along the way making everything take longer. I have this newish guy, about 4 weeks now, that the route sheet says to: "Knock on door, yell, MOW and then go in." Well that has never happened. The door was always locked. Then the man always shows up and says, "The door wasn't locked." It's been really getting on my nerves and Wednesday when he said it again, I said, "The door was locked." So he steps outside and pulls it closed and he can't open it. So now we're both on his front porch and he says. "Well the back door is open." And just as I'm saying, "I'll go around" he shoulders it open. He probably can't move his arm now. So after he got it open, I inspect it and the problem is the fancy push button handle outside door knob leaves about 1/8" of that springy thing that goes in and out but when I turned the inside knob it goes all the way in. Anyway I was glad he saw the problem because it was getting very tiresome. He said he'd have his son fix it.
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The new lady that was way out of the way had a really cute dog. I haven't had a dog in a while, and by "had" I mean, one of my MOW people. His name was Jake and he was a crazy speed dog going 90 MPH. I think it was a toy poodle, but I don't know anything about dogs, but I know it wasn't a great dane. Oh, so anyway everything was taking forever and when I finally finished my route I was on my way to my bar to get my post-MOW beers and hoping that annoying old man wasn't there. Seriously this guy is like 56 years old and plays Ozzie Osbourne. It's gross. And loud. And annoying. I was looking at the clock and thinking, "Man, I finished late. I'm glad this isn't one of the last two Wednesdays of the month when I have those two doctor appointments." Mmm Hmmm. yep.
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I bet you were thinking, "This IS one of the last two Wednesdays of the month." Well turn around and pat yourself on the back, because you would be right! Well, what happened was, I made these appointments so long ago that they were stored in my brain as "the last two Wednesdays of August." Just that and nothing else. Not which doctor was which Wednesday or what time or anything. I always write my regular doctor's number on the back of my insurance card with a Sharpie, so I had that number and called it first. I felt so "special" when I called and said, "Do I have an appointment today?" I was really hoping I did because it was a discussion appointment whereas my other appointment was the "other" doctor with the dreaded woman stirrupy thing and an hour and a half is not enough time to mentally prepare for that.
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I got lucky and it was the easy appointment but it was for 2:30 and it was almost 1:00. I had one quick beer and was lucky that it wasn't too hot because I had to drink it on the patio since that annoying man was there blasting his Ozzie Osbourne. Then I grabbed chips and salsa and queso at a Mexican restaurant near my doctor's office. I made it there in time and gave him my long story about my possibly having gall bladder problems. I was going to do a link to my post about that but after doing a blog search, I realize I never mentioned it before.
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Anyway since that would add way too many alphabet pieces to this post, I'll do that later. So he made an appointment for me to go to another place for a gall bladder sonogram on Monday. I either have gallstones or a bad gall bladder. My doctor was talking about fatty foods and "alkee-hall" being a factor and he pronounced it like that every time. Alkee-hall. I should have said, "Dude! Just say BEER!"
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I left there and went to THE HOUSE and the garage had been cleaned out by my parents' gardener and he did a great job. I didn't even realize there was a wall back there. That was a great relief seeing that done. I was still overwhelmed by all the work left to be done but I have made it a point to set tasks and focus on those. My tasks for Wednesday were to get all of the women's clothes and shoes into my truck to take to the women's shelter store for donation, to bring home my my mother-in-law's two rolling clothes racks I had borrowed for the estate sale, and to fill the garbage bin and set it out.
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The weird weather we've been having has given me sinus problems. Monday I told my husband it felt like I had a gummy worm lodged behind my left eyeball. So Wednesday I was getting that again AND being overwhelmed about the house and then my daughter called. So I'm out at the house working my butt off and she calls and her birthday is Saturday and the call is about her dad and the birthday and my head already hurt before she called, but then it was compounded. I very rarely get headaches (I just searched my blog for "headache" and got only two posts that just had the word "ache" in them) so I always get flummoxed by headaches. I think I had a double whammy on Wednesday and had a sinus headache and then topped it off with a stress headache. Anyway, I went to bed at 11:00 pm and if you knew me well, you would freak out because my normal bedtime is between 2:00 and 4:00 am. I woke up 12 hours later and I was fine.
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In conclusion, I really like that bunny in the picture

But It's Still Good

That's a picture of Regina Brett. Here's her mini-biography:

For over 7 years, Regina Brett was a columnist at The Beacon Journal in Akron , Ohio . During that time, she was diagnosed and successfully treated for breast cancer. Regina is now a columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland , Ohio . Her column runs on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday.

~To celebrate growing older, she wrote "The 45 lessons life taught me." I really like nearly all of them a lot. Today I will focus on #40: If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back. This really appealed to me. It's one of those things that's so obvious, but maybe we've never heard it put quite that way. I mean, sure, we all grew up with our parents forcing us to clean our plates by telling us about the starving children in (insert country here). And I'm sure we've all known someone with problems we considered way worse than our own, but I really love the way this is worded. And really if we traded your problems with someone else, wouldn't we be giving away our lives? I don't want someone else's life. Sure, I'd like this person's looks, or that person's talents, but I don't want to BE that person. I'm thinking of printing this on a card and tossing it in my purse. I'm forever looking for something in my purse and I'd be sure to see it from time to time. And it would make me relax and calm about whatever I was frantically looking for. It might even make me laugh.

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Oddly enough, her #42 is Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful. I wonder if that was my inspiration for all of my cleaning, as had I read this list on August 5th. I think that's a great life lesson. I'll be talking about more of her life lessons in later posts and I'll leave you with her #1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.

Condensation

Lately I have been doing a lot of decluttering all over the place and one of the main things I was working on was making space in the garage for Mom's Christmas stuff. See, I decided that June was not a great time to sell Christmas stuff and so I didn't put that out at the estate sale. Also my mother-in-law has a lot of extra Christmas stuff she'd like to sell, so we decided we would have a yard sale of Christmas stuff at her place in November. As good as I have been about not being a pack rat since 1998, I still had 3 boxes of stuff that I have been carting around for + or - 25 years. Friday night between midnight and 4:00 a.m. I went through the 3 boxes on the right of this picture. The box on the left was just for trash.

The funny part was I had been wanting to do this for quite some time and had asked My Sweetie to buy me one of those clear container bins to condense this stuff into. He bought a giant bin the size of a large rolling suitcase. Well actually he bought 3 of them. I laughed when he came home with 3 of them and thought for sure I could fit everything that I wanted to keep into just one of them. Well that was just silly. I had the thing out and there wasn't really much to put into it as you will see at the end of this post. All the stuff in the picture above is trash. I did find some really cool stuff in my stuff, though. Like these dorm message slips:

My freshman year in college, was very 1950's like in that anyone wanting to visit you in the dorm had to go to the front desk. You were then paged and if you didn't come down, your guest could leave a message. The same with phone calls. There were a couple of phones at the end of each hall and you would be paged for a phone call and if you didn't go pick up, they could leave a message. Being a pack rat, I saved all my message slips. I get a kick out of reading them now even though I don't remember some of the guys, although I DO remember John Shell. I also found an envelope with a bunch of concert ticket stubs. The one that surprised me the most was the one from the Who concert when I was in 9th grade. And I don't even remember seeing Foreigner. I wonder what happened to my Styx, Moody Blues and Tommy Tutone stubs? Not to mention my Aerosmith concert, although I did see them again at Champagne Jam:

Also the stubs above verify my story about seeing The Stones twice in a row which I've either posted about or left on comments. I'm too lazy to look it up. My favorite find in the ticket envelope was my Madison Square Garden ticket to the Holiday Doubleheader college basketball game in 1978. In 1977, Dad and I had gone together, but in '78 it was Dad, my brother, his friend Jay, my high school boyfriend and me. That was also the year we stayed for the Times Square New Year's Eve thing. That was one memorable trip. I had always wondered which hotel we had stayed at, but in one of the boxes I found a little hotel soap for Hotel Edison, which I was VERY surprised to find still exists. I remember that if we pressed the left side of our face against the window we could see the giant Coca-Cola sign on Times Square. I also remember a lot of other stuff that I'm not going to mention here although I think Dad wouldn't mind me telling that story now that he is no longer "here." And besides today is his birthday (Happy Birthday Dad!). I'll save it for a few days.

So going back to my condensing of my momentos from those three boxes, I first started putting stuff in the giant bin. I put two notebooks and my Snoopy lunchbox in and then I realized the rest of the stuff could fit into a tiny box. That's when I realized I could just fit it all into my bedside table which had never been organized anyway. Well, here it all is and as a matter of fact, the stuff I kept is only in the bottom storage box, the notebooks on the left and the Snoopy lunchbox on top of the other storage box:

So how stupid was I to cart around those big cardboard boxes all of these years? A quarter of a century! Maybe it took me that long to be able to throw the rest away. I also discovered that I used to be a Herman addict. I must have found 30 or 40 Herman clippings. And I was meticulous, too. They were all cut out the same way. I don't even remember doing that. I do feel better about getting this done. It was nice to condense it down to the fun and important stuff. And now it's right there by my bed instead of mixed in with a bunch of trash in three different large boxes taking up space in my garage. What took me so long?

Random Friday Goof Gab

Tuesday I was over at the house doing some packing and whatnot and I couldn't find the scissors so I imagined I could find some other scissors that most likely didn't exist and was going through the few drawers left that still have stuff in them and I found THAT.
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I found it inordinately amusing. First I just laughed without really knowing why, and then I thought, well if this isn't the perfect illustration of poor planning, I don't know what is. I tossed it in my purse because it amuses the hell out of me. I think I'll get one of those deep frames for medals or whatever and frame it. I really like it.
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Every night between 11:00 and midnight I go out to water the poor struggling dry crisps flowers on the deck. I can't believe they haven't all burst into flames by now. It's generally not too hot at that time of night, but I have to deal with spider webs and mosquitoes. I usually spray my legs with this lemon body splash I have, and that helps with the mosquitoes, but tonight I got a bite on each arm. Then about an hour ago a giant storm blew up and now it is pouring rain. So I got those bites for nothing! It’s like when I kept having contractions after they told me I had to have a C-section. What was the point?
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So just as I was typing that last paragraph, the cable went out. Now no TV or internet, but I did have the presence of mind to copy and paste this into Word on my computer. I better quit while I’m ahead in case the power goes out.
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Okay, the storm is gone, I'm back on the worldwide.
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XUP did a post about hands so of course I've been looking at my hands a lot. And I mean A LOT. I think my right hand is bigger than my left hand. I mean I knew my ring sizes were different, but I attributed that to use. Like finger muscles I guess. But now I think my right hand is just bigger, like my right foot is bigger than my left. Also something else was bigger on the right, but I had that taken care of when I did that thing I did. I'm just lopsided. Pretty much like this post. TGIF!

It Floats

I just realized something today. My mess and clutter are like a floating seaweed clump in the ocean. With the ocean being my house. My friend/neighbor Carole came over on Tuesday to bring me some delicious homemade Italian Orange Ice and I was happy to show her my clean library. My library has been so cluttered and messy for so long that Carole thought that green chair was new. That chair has always been there, but she could never see it because of the mess. I should be embarrassed, but it was just funny to me. I told my husband when he got home and he thought it was funny too. Now every time I look in there I picture Carole saying, "Is that chair new?" and it cracks me up.
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So I'm all proud of my clean library and then I bring Carole through (to this room) to show her the window view of the new wall that my neighbor put up between our yards, and then I realize that the seaweed clump has drifted in here. This room is horribly cluttered and messy and I never really noticed until I brought Carole in here. How is that? Is all my junk invisible unless someone else is in the room? Am I just moving it around the house without realizing it? My goal this weekend is to declutter every room in the house (except the guest room, hey! I know, don't even say it!). I have to somehow rid my ocean of this clump of seaweed. And since my mess seems to become somewhat invisible to me over time, I should have Carole come over more often so I can see it.

Let the Games Begin

BEIJING - AUGUST 11: (L-R) Cullen Jones, Jason Lezak, Michael Phelps, Garrett Weber-Gale of the United States pose with the gold medal during the medal ceremony for the Men's 4 x 100m Freestyle Relay held at the National Aquatics Center on Day 3 of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on August 11, 2008 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images) From Yahoo

I probably will not have much to say in the next two weeks because I will be glued to the TV watching the Olympics. It was a family tradition when I was a kid and fortunately I married a man that loves the games like I do. He is even taking three days off this week just to be able to see MORE Olympics! Woot woot! And for all of my Canadian friends, I have been pulling for some of your athletes this weekend. The Olympics is all about sportsmanship over nationality and we have found ourselves rooting for various underdogs over our own athletes. I have really enjoyed this weekend and can't wait to enjoy the rest. If you have never been a fan, please check it out. It's really wonderful.

I Have Questions

I see this sign every time I go to the convenience store near my house. What the heck does it mean? Does it mean you can drop off unwanted babies there? Does it mean no one will come up behind you and grab your chest? I guess I could ask the employees in the store, but I bet they don't know either.

Why do I get so much joy from the grocery store self check-out? I really hate going to the grocery store but I love the self check-out. I always feel like a happy little kid playing with toys. You might think it's just the fact that I'm happy that I am finished shopping, but that's not it. I never feel that way with a cashier. I love how the little beep happens when I pass something over the glass scanner thing. I always wish I had more things to scan. I have no idea why it makes me so joyful.
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Where did this rogue celosia come from and why is it and the plant it is robbing doing so well? This pot is new from last year and has only previously housed cherry tomatoes. This year I planted that shrubby viney thing with the white flowers (I don't know what it is) and this giant rogue celosia showed up one day. I've grown celosia before and it has NEVER looked like that.

You'd think that since this random plant showed up and is growing like gangbusters, the original plant would be doing poorly, but this pot is the best of all of them for lushness. What the heck?
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Why is it that after a week of 105° to 108° that 98° feels pleasant? That doesn't make any sense to me. 98° is still 98°! Shouldn't it still feel hot?
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I'm sure I will have more questions in the future, but those are all of my questions for today. I hope.

Saturday and Friday (in that order)

Saturday I felt like getting up, taking a shower and going out to lunch and running errands. I know that doesn't sound like much to you normal people, but that's a big deal for me. I've been working on that a lot this year. Intellectually, I KNOW my medicine works, but anxiety has a way of playing with you, so my new motto is "just do it." And it has been working for me so far. We went to Ruby Tuesday's because I love their salad bar. After lunch we stopped by Cat's Unlimited so My Sweetie could meet Petey the naked Sphinx Cat. I bought a halter and leash because I've always wanted to try my cats on them to take a little walk outside. Barney just could not deal and kept flopping over, like the leash was some sort of quaalude. Lily, the really weird cat was just fine and walked all over the yard. Cats are weird. Barney is obviously smarter than Lily, yet leashwise, Lily was triumphant. I didn't try Maxie, the inherited cat, because I know he is leash trained already from when my parents were RVing him all over the country.
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There's a new shopping center just north of our house, and I wanted a new liner for My Sweetie's tub and a shower curtain for my shower. Last time, I accidentally bought a frosted one and I was really mad at myself. I like to look out the windows and see the clock when I shower. I also wanted some new hand towels for my bathroom. While I was perusing the shower section I saw a sweet beach shower curtain for a regular bathtub. (I have a shower stall with separate garden tub.) Well, My Sweetie's bathroom has a regular tub and a beach theme. I know. I did a post on decorating mistakes that I saw on HGTV, and inappropriate themes was one of them. Okay so I live in North Texas and have a beach bathroom and a forest bathroom. If you don't like it, you can P somewhere else. Anyway, I bought the old beach-themed shower curtain from the internet and the beach picture did not look as well as it did in a small pic on the net as you can see here:

I know! You can't even tell it's a beach from that picture. Well this is the one I bought on Saturday. This is obviously the beach and I love it. I just love how $19.99 can change a whole room. You can't really do that in any other room. Maybe a kitchen.

As we were walking between PetSmart (for cat grass) and Bed, Bath and Beyond, it was so hot we stopped in a shoe store that was already going out of business. Which was sad considering how new the shopping center was, but once we got inside, I could see why. It was like they had taken a Chinese store and transplanted it in North Texas. it was all these size 4 and 5 funky disco techno shoes. It took forever to find any real shoes. I did find a pair of navy sandals that claimed to be Italian, but who knows? I really needed a pair of navy shoes. They are not flattering at all but I have Fred Flintstone feet and it's just like chocolate icing is not going to be flattering on cabbage. But they will match my clothes.

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We stopped into the Chili's there and I fortified myself with several beers because I think all the doctors tell you that when it is 107 and you are sweating a lot you should drink as many beers as possible. Wait, did I say doctors? I meant the voices in my head. But that's okay because voice #6 surely has a doctorate degree. Anyway I went into the grocery store after that to get all the fixings for peel and eat shrimp and homemade cocktail sauce and seriously, if you like boiled shrimp, make your own cocktail sauce. It's only 4 ingredients and better than anything you can get in a bottle: Chili sauce, fresh squeezed lemon juice, horseradish and a splash of worcestershire sauce. Also while I was at the grocery store, I saw and bought the WORLD'S SMALLEST WATERMELON:

I don't know how they grow such tiny watermelons, but it's great for only two people. I guess since I mentioned my minor emergency from Friday in the comments section of my last post I should explain that. What happened was, I was moving a picture frame across the kitchen counter and caught a half-full bottle of tonic water. It slid off the counter and onto the floor and exploded sending several shards of glass into me. My first main concern was how to get out of there, because I was barefoot and sort of in a corner. Fortunately I was next to the kitchen table which had some magazines on it. I planned to set the magazines down as stepping stones. When I picked up my right foot there was blood all over the tile. Also I had stinging feelings in my left ankle. After I got out of the kitchen I made it to the bathroom and was able to rinse all the glass out of my feet and hands (i had small bits in my knuckles, somehow) in the tub, but the bleeding part of my right foot still had glass in it and it was a spot I could not get to. I have all the phone numbers to my neighbors on a small bulletin board, but it was right over the glass, so I just went outside. I knew Carole was out of town, but I was surprised to find that no one else was home either. Finally I noticed some people doing yard work and hobbled up the hill. I was carrying two types of tweezers and a magnifying glass. Hey, I was a Girl Scout Brownie when I was 7:Be Prepared! Anyway they were very nice and her husband got the glass out and it wasn't as big or long as we all thought it was and I hobbled back home. They were very nice people and I'm sure they thought I was weird as hell. How astute they are! Anyway, that's what that was. And this has gotten ridiculously long. So...

I was going to do a whole post about our long day out today (Saturday, I mean) and how it was so hot, 107 degrees, (no kidding) and I had pictures of my before and after shower curtains in my beach themed bathroom, but I just spent 2 hours working on photos and posting some of the collectibles from Mom's house on Craig's List, so I decided to delay that post and was also wondering how long I could make this sentence. It was pretty long. But I do really love the new shower curtain. I don't know why I don't like doing the Craig's List ads. I feel like I sound like a cheesy 4 am infomercial. But hey! They wouldn't be buying that air time if they weren't making money, right? Right? Who knows? Maybe it's a tax write off. Anyway here are my Craig's List ads if you are curious and any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
http://dallas.craigslist.org/mdf/clt/781012956.html
http://dallas.craigslist.org/mdf/clt/781010630.html
http://dallas.craigslist.org/mdf/clt/781007362.html
http://dallas.craigslist.org/mdf/clt/781003333.html
http://dallas.craigslist.org/mdf/clt/780993448.html

I introduced My Sweetie to Petey the naked Sphinx Cat today. That was fun. I'll tell all the rest later. I am very tired. Happy August everyone and now we are all burning to a crisp. I think it's supposed to be 109 today. Seriously, that's just not appropriate.

Spit Free

I remember in the 70's there was a lot of talk about acid rain. You don't hear much about it anymore, but after Wednesday morning, I'm starting to wonder. See, I park under a crape-myrtle tree and crape-myrtle's spit. I just glanced at the wikipedia entry and it did not mention the spitting, but they do. My doctor's office actually has a crape-myrtle lined sidewalk leading to the door and I hate it because they are spitting all over you. Well they are spitting some serious stuff because it gets all over my windshield.

And you can't get it off. Well unless you have tried everything and figured out what works. Last year, it got really bad and was starting to bother me in the middle of my Meals-on-wheels route. My windshield washer fluid had no effect whatsoever, so I asked one of my clients if she had any rubbing alcohol. I knew that would take it off, and being an old person she had the alcohol, but it did nothing. I was starting to get desperate and when I got home I tried different things and even was afraid that crape-myrtles were spitting out some sort of glass-etching acid or something. But no! Guess what took it right off? Scrub Free.

How weird is that? This stuff is made to clean soap scum in your shower. So I guess crape-myrtle spit is similar chemichaly (is that a word?) to soap scum. That doesn't even make sense. But what do I know? Maybe shampoo is made from crape-myrtle spit. Anyway, getting back to the acid rain thing that I started with (because that's what I was taught in school): Wednesday morning there was a thunderstorm with pouring rain before MOW, and I had it strongly in my head to spray the windshield with Scrub Free because I had gone out on Tuesday and forgot, and it was very annoying. Oh, and I forgot to say that if you drive in the dark with the crape-myrtle spittles all over your windshield, they act as prisms, so when a car is coming towards you, you see trillions of little rainbow circles in front of you. Instead of the important things. Like the ROAD. Oh yeah, back to acid rain. So I go out on Wednesday morning to start putting stuff in my truck (the rain had stopped) and am thinking "DON"T forget the Scrub Free!" and look at my windshield - which had been terrible the day before. AND IT IS PERFECTLY CLEAN.

~

The rain had cleaned the crape-myrtle spit off. I thought rain was just water. Apparently not. Now I want to buy a bunch of rain barrels and bottle and sell it as windshield cleaner. I will call it Texas Rain: particularly effective on crape-myrtle spit.