Something to Think About

Scarlet mentioned on a post the other day that a friend told her something she had read in a book. Wow. That sounded kinda like "my sister's nephew's babysitter's aunt" or something. Anyway, the quote on Scarlet's post was, "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with." I'd like to think the quote may have been, "You are the average of the five people you choose to spend the most time with." Because let's face it, most people spend more time with their coworkers than their friends and that is usually not by choice. Ditto their children and spouses. Which in the first case is also choice-free. The spouse thing is different for everybody. Anyway, I found it to be a fascinating and thought provoking quote. Let it simmer in your brain for a while.

All My Homes

To be fair to you readers, this is one of those posts you may find boring. It's one of my posts I'm doing as a personal record. You may want to move on to something more interesting. Plus it will be really long.
~
On Saturday My Sweetie remarked that he had now lived in this house longer than any other house, and I realized that I, too have lived here longer than any other house. That got me thinking about all my homes. I had to call Mom to try to get some dates straight but with the exception of my very first home, I was actually informing her. She really doesn't think at all like I do.
~
Birth to either 1 or 2:
This is the only house I have no memory of, but my brother pointed it out to me several times. I will call this house: The house near Granny's old house on hwy. 117 near the old feed store. Although I have no memory of this house there is a funny family story from this house. When my brother was 4, he woke up very early one Saturday morning and took a nickle or dime to the feed store. When my parents woke up, they found my brother standing in front of the TV (one of the old boxy ones with feet) playing with a baby chick on top of the TV. Apparently the feed store owner thought it was perfectly fine to sell a baby chick to a 4-year-old at sunrise on a Saturday morning. Dad took it back.
~
1 or 2 to 4:
This is the house on the corner in a neighborhood Mom calls Pine Valley and she never watched "All My Children" so maybe she is not making this up. I call this house, "the house behind the Downtowner Motor Inn" because that was what was on hwy. 70 in front of the neighborhood. This is the house of my awakenings as a human being and I have a lot of memories from this house. This was the house where I spent a Christmas eve fervently praying for a magic wand for Christmas. I didn't get one and was very disappointed. This was also the neighborhood that I wandered all over and once got run over by my brother on a bicycle. It's also the neighborhood where I learned my first important thing. My brother and I found a big green plastic dinosaur in a ditch near our house and thought it was the best thing ever. When Dad got home from work he told us a tale of a kid leaving their dinosaur in the ditch while playing and going back the next day to retieve it and not finding it and how sad they would be. It was my very first lesson in empathy and it stayed with me forever.
~
4 to 9:
This was my childhood coming of age house where I had so many adventures (and pictured above). This is also the first house that I could actually draw a floor plan of. Our address on our mailbox was: Route 7 Box 279. Our dirt road did not have a street name but there was a sign up on hwy. 117 that said "dead end road" so I think of this as "the house on dead end road." This was the house with the hog pen in the back and woods all around. The woods had all sorts of great things. There was a whole section of mounds with perfectly dug out round craters which my brother always told me were foxholes from the civil war. I have no idea if this was true, but it makes as much sense as anything else. This is also where we played all the yard games. Our yard was the neighborhood site for hide-and-seek, ain't no bears out tonight, one-two-three redlight, mother may I?, kickball, football, and freezetag. This was also the house in which my brother discovered the box of Playboy magazines and I read the word "lesbian" in a true crime magazine I found in my parents' room. I also remember reading something like "her body was found in the woods by the lake" in one of those magazines and I thought the woman's head, legs and arms had been cut off because for some reason I thought "body" meant "torso." And we had lots of frogs in the summer as well as fireflies, which we called "lightning bugs." We were always out catching lightning bugs on summer nights. I also remember being home sick from school by myself one day and there was to be a solar eclipse and I was told over and over not to open the curtains or look outside that day. So I did.
~
9 to 12:
I really loved this house and thought it was a palace! It had an extra bathroom, or I should say toilet room because it was just a commode and a sink, but wow! I also got my first very own bedroom and it had two living areas. But what I mostly loved was the location and the brick. We had always had to walk to school and to walk to the store. This house was right across the street from the store and what seemed like a hundred times closer to the school. And it had multicolored brick which I thought was very fancy after living in a plain red brick house. Oh and the storage shed in the corner of the backyard. Our parents let us have that as our "clubhouse" and although we initially fought over it, my brother was getting older and quickly moved on to things and places not related to our house. I had a blast in that place. This is also the house where I met the funnest best friend I ever had. This was also the house from which we left town.
~
Dad worked at the tobacco company downtown, and one of his former co-workers had gone to work selling insurance and was doing very well. He talked Dad into going in for an interview. Dad was working nights at the time so we got to see a lot of each other in the summer of 1973. This was the same year that we had had the great family trip to Dominican Republic in April because of his job, so I can imagine now that all sorts of things were going on in his head. I remember walking into the living room one morning and asking, "So do you think you're going to get that new job?" He was bent over polishing his boots. He wore those 70's zippered boots back then and was always polishing them, and he said in a very dejected voice, a voice I had never heard come out of this man, a man I always thought was Superman, "I doubt it. I'm too old." He was 37. I guess you have to be born in 1936 to think you are too old for something at 37. Anyway, a month or so and a few more interviews later, he found out he got the job, but that there were no spots open in our town. He was given a few choices and I forgot to ask Mom what they were (which is fine because she probably wouldn't remember) but he picked Durham.
~
12 to 15:
Old Farm. Carriage House Apartments. I'll never forget that first drive to Durham to see our new "house." We were actually going to live in an apartment, and people on TV and in the movies lived in apartments. I was so excited. Mary Tyler Moore lived in an apartment! The trip started out dull because we were taking the same roads we had taken a million times to visit my grandmother, aunt and cousins in Raleigh but when we finally went past that turn off and were heading into unknown territory, I got really excited and started looking around. This was just a day trip to see the place, but I couldn't wait. The apratment was brand new and not quite finished but it was TWO STORIES! HAD CARPET! CENTRAL AIR! I thought I was a fairy tale princess. No more hardwood floors for me or hot summers. And it had TWO and a half bathrooms. WOW.
~
We moved in at the very beginning of December 1973. 10 days later I started my period. It was all a sign of BIG CHANGE. It was weird being at such a huge school, and it was also two stories tall. I loved everything. Our family started doing all sorts of new stuff like camping, river-rafting and we even bought a boat. Then my parents split up. But that was good.
~
Transition at 15:
I lived with my boyfriend's family for about two weeks. Mom had left and Dad was getting moved out and stuff and Mrs. Y. who was very momly took me in. It saved her a long drive to go pick me up for bowling and play rehearsals which she had been doing anyway.
~
15 to almost 18:
Barcelona Apartments with Dad. In the less than three years that I lived there permanently it went from a quasi-family apartment to party bar central. I mean the age was 15 to 18 and it was 1976 to 1979. I really don't want to say much else. Use your imagination and fill in the blanks.
~
Almost 18 to HS Graduation:
I moved to Texas to live with Mom and Stepdad and I already posted about it.
~
Summer of 18:
Dad's apartment. Took lots of beach trips.
~
18 (September) to 19 (June):
UNC-G colllege dorm room of fun and crazy.
~
19 (summer to September):
Back at Mom's working as groundskeeper at country club.
~
19 (September) to 20 (May):
Lived with Dad and stepmom.
~
20 (May to early July):
Lived with Duke student boyfriend while he finished classes in apartments I forgot the name of. Spent most of my time at the pool.
~
20 to 21:
Lived with Mom again, went back to school.
~
21 to 22:
My first apartment on Campus Drive. I really loved that apartment. Probably because it was my first apartment, even though I shared it with Randy. I had landed a plum job doing "local production" for a cable company. I had to run educational tapes from the office and fill out FCC forms as well as do local productions ranging from filming (taping actually) community football and baseball games, city council and chamber of commerce meetings and other random stuff. Randy was a cable guy. We dated a few times, both lived with our parents and both had long drives to work. It seemed a good match for sharing an apartment and living closer to work and that worked for me me but he was all "in love." When my brother left his first wife in California and came to stay with us we all decided to move to a bigger apartment when the lease was up, and then I met my future first husband, and my brother and I had to tell Randy to get his own place.
~
22- (not quite) 23:
My brother and I get an apartment in Arlington. My high school friend J. is the manager. We are on the second floor with a balcony over the pool. Everything seems hunky-dory. But it is not. Future first husband pretty much moves in. He and my brother clash and clash. I get pregnant. Brother sneak moves out, FFH gets a job that is quite a distance away.
~
(not quite) 23, about 6 months:
The lovely Carrollton apartment. The laws back then were different and there were a lot of "Adults Only" apartments in Dallas and it took me FOREVER to find an apartment. But I got lucky and this was a second story apartment over a creek that had ducks. It was a nice place to be pregnant. And that's all I was there because First Husband decided he really wanted to be in a house and got an opportunity to rent a house from his cousin and moved us into the house while I was in the hospital having a baby. If you think it's maybe stress ful having your first baby, try leaving the hospital and going to a new place where most of your stuff is in boxes. The good part of that, because that's how I view life, was Mom stepped up in a BIG WAY. She was awesome.
~
23 to 24 1/2:
This house that we rented from my first husband's cousin was a post-war bungalow by Love Field in Dallas but was in pristine shape. The cousin was a fireman that bought and refinished houses to rent, but this house he had refinished for his mother to live in. They decided she was unable to live unassisted and that's how we got the house. Although the house was old and tiny, the bathroom and kitchen were brand new. And the backyard was HUGE. Then of course, th husband realized paying rent was stupid and wanted to buy a house.
~
24 1/2 to 27:
We bought a strange little house in a strange little neighborhood. It had hardwood floors, so it was like a return to my roots in some ways. That's the house I painted the Bambi wall on. (Okay I was going to link to that but I can't find it.) Anyway, I became pretty depressed there and found happiness with future husband #2.
~
27 to not quite 28:
In June of my 27th year, I moved in with future second husband in his rental home in Summerfields which is the area where I now deliver MOW. We got married in November and bought a house in February.
~
Almost 28 to 34:
This was an old 1950's house with hardwood floors and a pool. It was nice and big and the rooms were spacious and the yard was huge. We had lots of dinner parties and pool parties and I was so busy taking my dance classes, going to school and working and then finally found a fun dream job and met My Sweetie. And I had set my first record here for lngest place lived.
~
34:
I lived in almost 5 places this year. When I first left my husband, I moved into a friend's apartment until her friend came down from Minnesota to sublease and then I moved in with a guy friend from work for a few weeks until my apartment was ready and then My Sweetie and I rented the cracked house. I moved out of the apartment because I was checking my mail one day and gunshots were fired near me. That's not good.
~
Almost 35 to 37:
The Cracked House. People always think we are saying "The Crack House" but we are saying "The Cracked House" because this rental house had the worst foundation problems ever. It had rolling hills. Inside. And there had been a lot of "work done." By drunk monkeys on crack. But it was right across the street from my daughter's school and it had three bathrooms. And it was cheap.
~
37 to 40:
The tiny apartment. After living in the giant sprawling cracked house, the tiny apartment was a blessing and a curse. The blessing part was it was all brand spanking new and nice and fresh and straight and even. The curse was it was tiny. It was all so new the row behind me was still under construction and I'd be watching TV during the day trying not to notice all the construction guys way up in the air and freaking out that I'd see one fall to his death. Plus that's where I lived when Dad died. Enough said.
~
40 to hopefully forever or until we can retire at the beach:
My Sweetie and I got married after living together for 5 years and decided to go house-hunting. We had found one house on this street and liked it a lot but were too late with our offer. A few weeks later when this house became available, we saw it and made an offer. I like it here and am still happy after almost 8 years. This is my record. And this is my record.

I Have a Stupid Question

If I wear my reading glasses outside, won't my face catch on fire?

My Brain is Always Working

(((Disclaimer for The Queasy: The picture way down below is not an actual photo of my thumb injury. I actually took a picture of my other thumb, flipped it and did a Photoshop artistic rendering of my thumb injury. The green pain lines are also not real.)))

I got a nice early start for Meals on Wheels today. Probably my earliest since I've been trying to get there earlier. I left 6 minutes earlier than last week even though I got up an hour earlier last week. Go figure.
~
I saw this biker broad just after I left the church. It's pretty unusual around here to see a lone woman on a motorcycle. Taking pictures while driving is probably as bad as texting while driving because I ran over some already dead animal just after I snapped this:
My new MOW route is pretty easy. I had 9 people today with two doubles, so only 7 stops. I don't see how that is the helping the lady that had 16 people. I think I actually have fewer people than before. The only part I don't like is the trailer park because they have speed bumps. Nasty ones. I'm not in the old bad section that was flooded a few years ago (sorry I'm too lazy to link to that) but these are right next to that area. The other bad thing is that after I made all the fuss to get Mrs. V back, they took off the sweet lady that Carole made the great hat for.
~
After lunch, on my way to the grocery store I was driving down the road that I've driven down about 18 hundred million times when I noticed these utility poles. It really surprises me that there are still utility poles. It seems so 1940's or something:

When I got to the grocery store, just as I was heading to the meat section, the butcher came out and said hello. The Food Network chefs are always telling me to ask the butcher if I need a special cut, yet I rarely think to do it, so when I saw him I asked, "Are there any chicken leg quarters? I can never seem to find them." He told me that if I bought a whole chicken he would quarter it for me. He was so helpful that when he brought me the chicken I asked, "Is that 6 1/2 pork shoulder roast the only one you have? I wanted something smaller." Then he said he could cut me a fresh one at any size. When he came out with that I asked if I could take a picture of him for my blog:

He was funny. He said, "I don't know. I'm in the witness protection program." I said "Don't worry. Only 9 people read my blog. I think you're safe." (That's my pork roast.)

~
My thumb has been a real bitch. In my efforts to keep my injury dry and "out of the way," I have really inflamed the joint that has the osteoarthritis. Here is my version of my thumb:

I also noticed that it almost gave me brain damage in the shower to wash my left foot with my left hand. Everything else has been okay I guess, although it takes a lot longer to rinse my hair. And I have to use a cup to rinse my mouth after I brush my teeth.

~

An hour or so ago I decided my wound needed some air since it had been bandaged for probably 32 hours or more. I didn't trust myself to not bang it on something so I made a thumb cone out of one of those little plastic medicine cups that come with cough syrup:

It is working well, so I will keep it on until I'm ready to go to bed. I bet you never thought of a thumb cone before. I got the idea from when Barney had to wear his head funnel thing. My brain is always working.

Clumsy and Clutter

It's funny how bloggers can inspire each other. After reading Jazz's post, instead of tossing all my gift bags and tissue paper into the guest room closet, I actually neatly folded all the tissue paper and gift bags and put them away neatly in there in their appropriate gifty spots.
~
My daughter had given me these pretty wine glasses:
The only place I could think to put them was in this cabinet in here:

But where they are in that picture was where the old Coca-Cola glasses were that someone gave us 13 or 14 years ago. So I moved the coke glasses into the kitchen:

But to do that, I had to box up a bunch of my duck glasses. Yes, I said Duck Glasses. They look like this:

You can add to a very long list this other reason why I am not like other women: I do not have "place settings" or special glassware (except wine and champagne glasses). I suppose I used to have that stuff, because when I was married to my second husband, we used to have dinner parties. But now? Not so much. About five or six years ago, my MIL asked if I needed anything and I said, "We don't really have any glasses." So she gave me a giant box of different sized duck glasses. I was all, hee, hee, what? But we've been using these for years. To me they are so kitschy they are kinda cute. But enough is enough and I boxed them up. Not that Coca-Cola glasses are that much better, but it was time for a change. As for my dinner plates, I use clear glass ones that I either got at Target or a thrift store. I love clear glass plates. It's a childhood memory thing from a friend's house.

~

The funny thing is that most of the women that I know that actually have nice china do not use it but keep it stored away. I have all sorts of nice wine glasses and we use them. I also have good pots and pans and cooking implements, but the basics like plates and water glasses? Nope. Just random stuff.

~

But getting back to Jazz's post: They are decluttering to paint their apartment and I was swept up I guess, because besides putting away my gift stuff and reorganizing some cabinets, I also cleaned out my entryway closet, put away my sewing machine, "Miracle-Groed" my flowers and fixed a yard light in the backyard as well as some other general decluttering.

~

And speaking of fixing that light: I knocked a gross bunch of skin in a traingle shape off of my thumb while I was doing that. I also knocked some skin off of another finger on a different hand as well as clocked both elbows on things and almost broke two dinner plates today. I'm guessing being 48 is going to be the year of being clumsy. Okay, clumsier.

My Birthday Weekend

I had a really great birthday weekend! Friday evening when My Sweetie got home, he never came in the house, so I walked through the garage and found him in the front yard and asked, "What are you doing?" He answered in a very hushed voice, "There's a bunny." I ran in to get the camera and finally after all these years got a good picture of one of our yard bunnies:
We had originally planned to go to Main Street Arts Festival on Saturday, so my daughter could go, because she works from 3:00 p.m. to midnight every day except Saturday and Wednesday, but Saturday was drizzly and overcast so I came up with a plan B. I asked her to take me on a shop and hop. The original plan was to go to Marshall's then to Chili's for a beer then to Target, then to Papa G's for a beer, but we found everything we needed at Marshall's so we just hopped over to Chili's. I was in desperate need of summer tops and picked 7 to try on and liked 6 of the 7. I think that's a record. Also all 6 tops totaled $98. Two were Polo, one was a Calvin Klein and one was a New York and Company. What a deal! You gotta love Marshall's. My Sweetie took this picture just as we were heading out:

Today (Sunday) My Sweetie and I headed to the Main Street Arts Festival along with about twelve billion other people. It was a really nice day - perfect for being outside. I made a little movie to give you some sights and sounds of it. The video is two minutes long, which is an eon in this day and age of twitter and short attention spans, but if you have time, I hope you can watch it and get a sense of the fun of Main Street:

Oh, and instead of thinking that today I am two years away from 50, I've decided to celebrate my birthday as The 30th Anniversary Of The Day I Turned 18.

The Accidental Theme

I'm not a member of any of those blogging communities that have theme days and tell you what to write about or take a picture of, but as I was thinking about some little pictures and stories I wanted to tell, I realized they actually have a theme. They are all Red . . . and Stupid.

~

I potted some geraniums today and as I was looking at them I got this poem in my head. It was almost a fully formed poem, so I figured I must have read it somewhere, but I did a google search and didn't see anything like it:

My Geranium Poem

~

To find a rhyme for geranium
has really stretched my cranium
and I'm afraid I've put a drainium
on my tiny little brainium.

~

~

Two years ago, after the BIG hailstorm, My Sweetie took my truck to the insurance claims place to get an estimate for the hail damage and had a little tiny wreck there in the insurance parking lot. He hit the insurance company's security guard's truck. My Sweetie felt really bad, but my truck was already pockmarked by hail at this point so I didn't really care. Now I use the dent to hold my shopping cart in place while I unload groceries:

~

I keep what I call "junk towels" on a shelf in my laundry room for spills and things and the other day I spilled some beer in the hallway and grabbed the one on top and it was some goofy fancy tassled little towel that I "inherited" when I emptied out Mom's house last year. Today I washed it:

Apparently it was not meant to be washed, which is pretty stupid for a towel, and this is what happened to the missing tassles:

The rest are in the dryer.

~

Have a great weekend. I hope it is neither red, nor stupid.

The Merge Post: Bulldog and Hair

I had been planning a follow-up post on the cute haircut I talked about getting in February and also planning a post on The Bulldog Effect and today I realized that I could just merge them into one post.
~
When I was growing up, I noticed that women reached a certain age and started looking sort of like bulldogs. Except when I was little I called them "JoAnns" because of a certain woman in our neighborhood. This woman also wore bright red double-knit polyester pantsuits, which you might try to blame on it being the 70's, but that's whimping out because my Mom never dressed like that.
~
North Carolina women all start out looking gorgeous. Our most famous one is Ava Gardner:
Her IMDB site says she was born in "Grabtown" North Carolina and I thought it was some sort of weird joke because I knew she was born in Brogden, but Wikipedia says it's the same place. I'm guessing Brogden was just an area name and not an official town. The reason I know she was born in Brogden was because my grandmother was there at her birth. Back then babies were born at home and all the neighbor ladies came to help. Grandma was ten, but I guess she was there with her mom.
~
Where was I? Oh yeah, North Carolina women all start out gorgeous. This is my Mom at 16:
And yes that's my Dad, the guy that grew up to look like Papa Hemingway, who by the way always called the above photo "Beauty and The Beast." Dad I mean, not Hemingway. He probably never saw it. Hemingway I meant that time.
~
I should have done an outline or something, this is getting ridiculous. Okay, so North Carolina women start out gorgeous then at middle age, they start getting quite jowly - what I call The Bulldog Effect. This is Ava Gardner at just 44:

I always thought that because Mom didn't get jowly that I was somehow immune, but I was wrong. And that was silly because I don't really look like Mom except for about 3 square inches around my nose. I think I first noticed my bulldog head about 2 years ago or so. It's mostly a profile thing. That's one of the reasons I like a shorter stylish haircut - it gives you something else to look at from the side besides my bulldog jowls. But as I've said ad nauseam: It gets really hot here in Texas. So that night that I posted about getting that cute haircut, I was going to stop by the next afternoon after MOW and show the pics to my hairdresser and make an appointment. But that day, it got hot. My neck got all hot, and it was only in the 80's and I thought, "Are you insane? You can't get your hair cut."

~

So of course I did not get it cut, as you could plainly see if you saw the last post. And what you could also plainly see was I have no hairstyle whatsoever. It's just growing out willy nilly, so that I can wear it up. But here's the thing: If I just pull it all straight back into a ponytail, then I really really look like a bulldog in profile. Hell, maybe from every direction.

~

So this morning (Wednesday) I was all, "What am I gonna do with this hair?" I discovered a way to wear it up with this big two sided curved hair comb thing and I thought it looked pretty cute. And sort of Old School:

And I looked better from the side, which you will not see because then you would all nod and say, "Oh, okay, I get the whole bulldog thing now."

(Note to Carole: Do not comment "I've seen you from every angle and you do not look like a bulldog." You are the nicest person on earth so I know you want to say that. No, Carole, no. Stay! Good girl!)

Fun Saturday Night Out

Saturday night was really fun even with my broken toe:

On Friday My Sweetie worked on that patch of ground to get it ready for the new sod while I did a much needed cleaning on the garage. We have a long table in there that was completely covered about two feet high with stuff. It was ridiculous. There were even two boxes from Mom's house from last year. Carole and her husband stopped by to check on the sod work and just after they left, I headed back into the house from the garage. The house sits higher than the garage floor by 8 inches and my brain knows this. We've lived here almost eight years and I keep my beer in the garage so I go out there all the time. For some reason on Friday, even though my brain knows about that 8 inches, my right leg somehow forgot and SMACK!! And that poor toe, it always catches hell, it's the longest toe on my longest foot so if contact is made, it is always that toe. You can even see in the pictures a healing slice just to the left of the nail from an injury a couple of weeks ago:

Anyway, I kept working in the garage and just hobbled a bit, but hours later after I took my shower, I could really feel it throbbing, so I just taped it to the next toe. Saturday morning when I got up, I tried on every single pair of black shoes I owned just to see what I would be able to wear and finally found a pair of shoes I bought when my grandmother died but decided they didn't really go with the dress I had bought for the funeral, so I had never worn them. Maybe I was subconsciously planning for years later when I would injure my toe.

~

We went to 8.0 for an early dinner and drinks and as we were leaving, there was a man in the entry with a cockatoo. I asked if we could take a picture with it. I thought I was just going to stand next to the man but without warning he put that bird on my shoulder so this is how I photograph when I am having a mild heart attack:

Just for comparison, here is how I look without someone scaring the bejeezus out of me by putting a giant scary bird on my body:

After that we walked over to Bass Performance Hall and saw Bob Newhart. I had imagined his show would be somewhat like Carol Burnett's show but it was nothing like it. He didn't really talk too much about his old TV shows, he actually did mostly stand-up comedy and it was even a bit edgy, which was a fun surprise. And I had "My Movie Moment." In every movie that I see, there is always one thing that makes me burst out with a loud guffaw all by myself. And it happened there. It was strange hearing my lone loud laugh echoing all over Bass Hall, but I'm pretty used to it by now.

~

After we left there we walked across the street to City Lights. My toe was feeling okay and I very "smartly" said, "Hey, I'm a trained dancer. I can dance flat footed." So we danced and danced and had lots of fun. On Sunday when I woke up, my toe felt okay, but my right calf was completely shot. From dancing flat-footed.

~

So I am still limping around, not because of my toe, but because of my calf. But I had a great night and would do it all over again in an instant.

Mad and Chewy

I was SPITTIN' MAD on Wednesday. I walked into the church and set down my stuff and a seemingly disembodied voice asked, "How are you today?" I looked around and she said "I'm over here." Sitting in the corner behind a large fake plant was the poor volunteer from last week that had a million people. I had gotten a bad feeling last week when she had so many people and I only had 7. But it was worse than I imagined. She was complaining that she had all sorts of new and different people and was sitting there looking them up on the mapsco. I snatched my route sheet up and sure enough, not only did I have 5 new people but was missing several people AND Mrs.V. was GONE. Something like this happened almost two years ago and I raised hell, so why did they do it again? I was feeling a little berserk and went out to my car to grab my phone and call in. Apparently the MOW people are dimmer than glow worms, because they told me the reason they had to change everything was because one lady had 16 people and her route took 2 hours.
~
Okay, now see if you can follow me here: My new route had 10 people, which was about what I normally have, but I had 5 new people. When I went back inside, I asked the lady that had 16 people before how many she had now. She said FOURTEEN. Yes, 14. Okay so she had only two fewer people but had all different people and had to spend 20 minutes finding them on the map. I had about my usual average amount but also had to spend the extra time mapping them as I imagine all the other volunteers had to do.
~
There are 5 (FIVE) routes out of that spot. Why didn't they just take 6 people from that lady and spread them amongst the other 4 routes? Then she would have 10 and the rest of us would have had 10 or 11. What is so complicated about that? Man I was SO irritated.
~
Same as the last time, I told them, "If I'm not going to have Mrs. V, find a replacement for me and put me on a waiting list to volunteer in 'my city'. The only reason I drive all the way over here is because of her." I even had dirt and flowers to take to her house which I did anyway. Well they called me back and said she is back on my route. She was very happy to hear that, because she missed all her people. And speaking of that, one of my "new" guys said to me (in a crotchety old man voice), "You tell your bosses for me that I miss my little buddy!" I did.
~
It's bad enough we had to find all these new addresses, which were not new, but these old folks are also used to their regular delivery people. I felt bad for that old man, he didn't know me, he wanted his regular lady and her cute little daughter. And if you are soft-hearted like My Sweetie and were thinking, "Hey, it's a volunteer organization." I will tell you what I told him - the office people are salaried employees. But I've vented enough about that and they put Mrs. V. back on my route.
~
My Sweetie took today (Thursday) and Friday off. So we ran some errands. We went to the liquor store and I bought some pretty colored bottles:
We also got some more Fruit Stripe gum:

The Fruit Stripe gum story: I am an odd creature of habit. Well, okay, I'm just an odd creature, but here's where the habit part comes in: Every night after dinner, I make a glass of iced tea, go out for a smoke, come back in and take a Super B vitamin formula capsule, a flaxseed oil capsule and a fish oil capsule. Then I floss, and chew one stick of Fruit Stripe gum. Every night.

~

The only place I can find Fruit Stripe gum is at the CVS Pharmacy. Well a few days back I noticed a sign on the gum box that said: CLEARANCE! Get them while they last! I found that very disturbing. Now I stop at every CVS and grab 4 or 6 packs. I'm going to keep buying them until they are gone and then I will be sad. I know the saying is "All good things come to an end." But why? WHY?

~

The booby trap is gone. I installed a keylock deadbolt on the garage door.

~

Today we are going to put sod down on a bare part of our yard. My in-laws gave us their old tiller (that was another errand we ran) and we are going to wear ourselves out I imagine. Then on Saturday we are going downtown to see Bob Newhart. Woot woot! And maybe some dancing afterwards.

~~

~~

Filed under:

I don't know what dat is:

But it was parked across the street. Have a great weekend!

Laughing WITH and AT Me

Laugh WITH me:
I'll start this story by telling you I will no longer get to sleep in the teeny tiny cabin:
My parents bought a place near the beach:

But here is the funny part. After Mom called and told me, I found the place on the internet and it had all sorts of pictures and here is a picture of one of the rooms:

Now here is the really funny part. It comes pretty much as is. That means they will have to deal with all that junk! I've been walking around for TWO DAYS laughing maniacally and shouting "PAYBACKS ARE HELL!!" (If you are new here, I spent the better part of last year going through and cleaning out my parents' house here after they pretty much abandoned it to retire to N.C.) heh heh heh heh HA HA HA HA.

~

Now Laugh AT me:

Two weeks ago we installed a pet door that goes from a door in our garage to our side yard. I placed it as far away from the doorknob as possible, but after we put it in, we tested it and you CAN reach through and open the door. So I did a temporary thing until I could replace it with a key only deadbolt:

And what is that stuff on the door, you ask? That's my homemade boobytrap:

But that's not the funny part. Monday morning, Mrs.V, my meals on wheels lady, called to tell me she had "found" some pots that a neighbor had put out for trash. She asked if I could bring her some potting soil. I said, sure and when My Sweetie got home from work I said, "Tomorrow I'm going to go get some dirt and a keylock deadbolt for the garage." He asked if I needed any money and I laughed and said, "You just gave me $60 and I'm only getting a deadbolt and some dirt!" Well I am stoopid and have no idea how much stuff costs. I bought the deadbolt, two extra keys, the dirt and a few flowers and it was $70!! I imagined everything would cost about $40. Hell, the deadbolt was $45! How stupid am I?

But I thought my booby trap was pretty cool.

I Made Beach Glass!

Last Sunday I finally got around to my project of making beach glass in my rock tumbler. I first thought about it a month or two ago and then thought it was maybe a crazy idea but I checked the internet and sure enough, people had done it. It's nice to know my crazy ideas have already been thought of. Then I don't feel as crazy. Except on the internet, the people just put sand in the water. But I'm thinking, "Yeah, the ocean's all sand and water, but there's also quite a bit of salt." So I also added salt. I don't have sea salt, I have kosher salt, so I guess I made Jewish beach glass.

~

I gathered my stuff which was a bright blue bottle, a green bottle and a clear bottle, safety goggles, a box, gloves, a hammer and an old t-shirt:

If you think about all the times you've broken glass, you probably think it's pretty easy to break glass. But it is not easy if you want to do it on purpose. I put the bottles inside the t-shirt and put on my safety goggles. Raised the hammer and PING!! That's all that happened. A giant loud ping. And it was really loud. I thought about getting my earplugs, but I was a little impatient and did it again and, again, just a really loud ping. Now I was getting irritated and looked around and saw my little stack of bricks. So I picked up a brick and dropped it and it only broke the little clear bottle. The two wine bottles were being really stubborn. So now I was irritated and thought that would give me the impetus I needed and dropped that brick again and nothing. It was time to call in the big guns. My Sweetie was out there with me doing yardwork, so I asked for his help. It only took him two brick hits and then I had this:

With my gloves on, I picked out the best pieces and put them in my rock tumbler barrel:

I added water to cover the pieces and then poured in some sand:

Next, I added my kosher salt:

I got it started around 4:00 that afternoon and late this Saturday night, I thought I'd check the progress and they were done:

They were nice and frosty and smooth:

Now I want to go to the liquor store and get some red, aqua, and other colored bottles. I don't know if I want to make something with them or just use them in vases when I have fresh flowers, but I really like the ones I have so far. For now I just put some in a goblet:

We had a really nice weekend. Saturday we got lots of yardwork done. I made my backyard nice again. It was really bad (right, Carole?) Our patio was so bad with leaves and oak tree seed pods I actually had to rake it first! And every piece of furniture had a fine yellow pollen coat on it. And there was extraneous furniture that needed to go away. It was a lot of work, but it was nice when my daughter came by Saturday evening and we could sit on the patio. It was in the 80's all day and I felt like I burnt a million calories. Today (Sunday) was My Sweetie's birthday and we went to his mom's house. It was also to celebrate my birthday so she made me collard greens and they were so delicious I had three servings AND brought some home. Oh and a cold front came in Saturday night and the sky was SO BLUE on Sunday I had to take a picture:

And the picture doesn't even do it justice. It was CRAZY blue. And one last thing: tonight on HGTV a realtor used the word "functionable." That is still making me laugh. hee hee hee. Anyway I hope you all had a great and functionable weekend!

Friday Night In Our House

An April Fool (Or: Not Like Other People)

(In honor of April Fool's Day, I thought I'd do a random listing of some of my foolish things.)
I think it's appropriate that I was born in April. It's one thing to share a birthday with Hitler, but it's also the 3 numbers that represent weed (hooch, marijuana, pot, gonja) which I no longer smoke. And if you ask people my age why they stopped smoking pot they usually have all sorts of good reasons, like they grew out of it or because it's illegal and they are responsible adults now or something like that. I stopped smoking pot because I thought it made my eyes look weird. I never got the red eye which made all my high school friends jealous, but I just got weird looking eyes which bothered me in some inane vain way.
~
My Sweetie has a really cute way of pronouncing foolish. He'll say "That's just foolish." and he pronounces the "oo" part like if you were saying "futon." I don't know why that's so funny to me.
~
After seeing so many comics about how cats and dogs just hear their name when you speak to them as in "Blah,blah,blah,blah blah Barney,blah blah blah." Now when I talk to Barney I actually say that. It saves me from having to actually say anything and I reckon he likes it just as much. Sometimes I just say "Barney" over and over. He likes that too.
~
I love to type what I'm thinking, but I absolutely hate to type anything else. Sometimes Mom calls and wants me to e-mail her an old recipe out of one of my books and rather than just type it, I'll spend an hour looking for it on the internet so I can just C&P. I'm the same with looking anything up. I'll come up with the least amount of letters I can type. For instance, if I want to look up a guest star on an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, I'll go to IMDB and type in "Tim Russ", because it's only 7 letters. Then I just scroll and click around until I get there. I do that with everything on IMDB. It's my bizarre version of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." Which I was doing before anyone came up with it.
~
Before most people were even on the internet I had some sort of CD called Corel Movies or something like that and it was a lot like IMDB. My Sweetie would be playing a video game on his computer next to me and I'd ask him to give me 2 unrelated actors and see how few steps I could go to get from one to another. Okay, I just found it and it was called "Corel All Movie Guide" and I'd bet you dollars to donuts that was the basic program that IMDB used to get started.
~
(What the hell does "dollars to donuts" mean?)
~
If I drop any food that I am rinsing into the sink, be it a pea, a potato or a pork chop (or even something that begins with another letter of the alphabet) I throw it away.
~
I can only go so long after eating before I have to floss or I become physically agitated.
~
If I cook something and someone salts it before trying it or even after trying it, I can't really like them anymore.
~
My birthday is over two weeks away and I will be 48, but I've already planned my 50th birthday. Does everyone plan their 50th birthday two years out?
~
When I watch TV shows where the camera is always on one side, I like to imagine what's on the camera side - like what Mary and Murray were facing on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" or what was on that narrow wall in Monica's apartment on "Friends."
~
I always want to respond to simple pleasantries with "And also with you" but I never do. I always say "You too!" and then I think of this:


As My Sweetie would say: That's just foolish.