Lunchtime Episode

November 3, 2009 · Filed under Strange and Unusual · Tagged , ,

I just had an enlightening experience.  I was sitting in my car in the church parking lot, eating, reading my book, had already had a nap and sat back up and was reading some more when this car pulls up in front of me with a black dude in it.  He parks right in front of me not five feet away.  A whole large parking lot and you stop there, I think.  He gets out of his car with a plastic bag.  Shuts his door.  Walks towards me.  I reach over and double check my locks and hear them click into place.  He heard it too.  I give him this, “What-you-think-you-gonna-do-Darkie?” look as he walks towards me.  He says, “How you doing ma’am, I’m just here to pick up pecans” and bends over and starts doing just that. 

I am immediately embarrassed.  I open my door, look up, and sure enough, that explained all the thumps and thuds that kept hitting my car as I sat there.  I’d looked up once earlier and saw the round looking things up there and thought I was under one of those trees – Sycamore? – that has those little burry things that fall.  But I never did bother to look to see exactly what they were.  So I got out and started picking up a few, knowing there were people living right across the street that were home so I felt safe enough. 

 I admitted to him that he’d scared me getting out of his car with his bag.  He didn’t laugh, he just said, “Oh yeah?” in a tone of voice that I could tell he didn’t think that I was funny at all.  I know he was thinking it was because he was black, but seriously, had he been a white man, getting out of the car, holding a plastic bag which I at first thought might have a gun or some bludgeon tool in it, could he blame me for being a bit wary?   It was an old beat up car at that, and he wasn’t exactly dressed for success either -  but who is on their day off? 

 We got to talking about pecan pies and cakes, and folks in his family up north whom he sends them to, and come to find out, he works at the PCA mill on the northside– for 28 years – and I used to work there also when it was GP.   I tell him where I work now.  We share names and he laughs and says, “Which ‘M” boy are you married to?” and I said Tim.  He knows both the brothers.  Graduated from high school with Tim’s sister, Deb, he tells me.  A little short girl, yup. 

The thing is, the whole time we’re standing there, I kept thinking about how I thought he was somebody he obviously was not.  I feel ashamed of myself for giving him my “bad-ass look” as my brothers call it.  I know it’s better to be safe than sorry and I’d lock those doors again in the same situation.  This is what the world has come to though.  Broad daylight, right in public, and a person can’t sit in their car reading without some sort of fear; or another person can’t get out of their car holding a harmless plastic bag, without someone else thinking wrongly of them.

 When I think back to how safe I always felt in our neighborhood growing up, it saddens me that things have gotten so bad now.  We played all over the streets at night and our parents only called us in when it was time to go to bed.  We walked everywhere we went and we didn’t have phones.  We rode our bikes without helmets.  You get the picture…

 He is a nice man, he grew up in my era, and I immediately distrusted him.  He grew up in this town and I did not.  I hope if we meet again, we can smile this time and say a friendly hello. 

It’s hard not to ‘judge a book by its cover’ …but unfortunately…sometimes you just do.

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Stuck on Halloween

November 3, 2009 · Filed under Family, My Grandkids · Tagged , , , ,

You want to know how to end a great Halloween night?  Take your grandkids, pile them in the back of the car with blankets and pillows and snacks and ride them down a long dirt road around midnight, during a full moon, just for the heck of it.  Then get the car stuck in the sand.  They’ll love it. 

We started off with a hayride through the neighborhood.  My niece, her two boys, and our three grandkids.  We had a blast!  Tim loaded a big trailer with hay, hooked it to the tractor, and off we went.  The kids loaded up with candy and wore themselves out climbing in and out of the trailer.  Halloween could not have come on a better night.  It was warm and beautiful and the moon was full and the people were generous with their candy.  My brother and his wife joined us, only they stopped at a friend’s house and stayed there to watch the Florida-Georgia game.  Go GATORS!!!  They said they have a better time watching the football games with them than they do with us.  Imagine that…LOL!!!! 

We all get back to the house, put on the music and dance around the pool and howl at the moon for a while.  Dana played the mouth harp, Tim played his guitar, the rest of us danced like fools.  Eventually, everyone leaves and the kids have taken a bath and Tim says, “Let’s go for a ride down the dirt road!”  You only have to tell me once, I’m always ready for dirt road rides on a full moon.

We took the pooch for good measure of course.  We crank up the music and we are all singing at the top of our lungs and we girls are taking turns sticking our heads out the moon roof and letting the wind blow thru our hair and acting like clowns.  At one point, I even climb up to the top of the car and sit with my legs dangling inside and pull my littlest granddaughter up with me.  She loved it as much as me.  Tim pulls over to step outside for a moment and that was when we got stuck. 

We all push and the tires spin and the car sinks right down to the frame in the front.  There is no moving this baby.  Luckily though, we see coming down the road a trailer full of people who are doing the same thing we are so they pull over and there are about 20 of them.  Everyone pushes.  The car won’t move.  It is down in wet sand and not budging.  It took a truck with a rope to haul us out of there.  I think the kids were getting worried.  They climbed back into that car pretty quickly once it got moving again.  Could have had something to do with the wild bear stories I was telling them, I don’t know…

We get home, pile up on the floor in front of the TV under blankets and I think we were all out within 15 minutes.  We sure had a good time. 

Kids make Halloween so much fun…I almost wish it came more than once a year.  Almost.

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Who Wants To Go Hunting?

October 26, 2009 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged , , , ,

Someone please tell me what is so great about sitting in a deer stand all day waiting on a deer to come out so you can blow him away. I understand the being in the woods side of it, I love being in the woods myself. But to sit and wait for a deer to come out all day long is beyond me.

We are members of a hunting club in COUNCIL, Georgia. Look that place up in your Funk and Wagnalls. You probably won’t  find it. Right outside of Fargo. There is no phone signal up there. There is absolutely nothing up there but woods and more woods.

I’ve been up there once when the members were  planting 23 – count’em -TWENTY-THREE  food plots. What a show. It was kind of fun. Thought that day would never end. Last week we were on vacation and sitting out back having a few drinks and Tim was telling me about the stars up there at night. How beautiful they are, how you can see gajillions of them. So we loaded up the car with our drinks and food and the pooch and headed the 50 some odd miles up there to see the stars. We could have stopped in St. George to view them, but we kept going. They were indeed beautiful. We stopped at the gate of the club, unloaded our food, ate it with our fingers, poured ourselves another drink and gazed at stars. Then we came home.  We stopped several times along that long, lonely two lane highway to get out and look at the stars. 

Today he went up there again by himself. Left here at 6:00 this morning. At 7:00 pm I’m getting a little antsy, I can’t help it. He’s been gone all day!  I can’t pour myself a drink, I’m trying to dry out from last week. What if I need to drive?  What if I need to go to a hospital?  I don’t need to be drinking.  Besides, it’s Monday, for pete’s sake.  Get a grip Smith!!!  So I pace, I look at the clock, I try and figure out how long it would take if you did kill a deer, had to get it back to the camp, load it in your truck, and bring it home. I do a little praying asking God to give me a sign. Should I be worried? Well, I thought I heard Him say YES.  Who am I to ignore God?  So I call Tim’s friend who is also a club member and ask him. He says give Tim until 9:00 and if he still hasn’t shown up, let him know. I call my friend Cheryl and talk to her. Got her worried. She always gets diarrhea when she gets worried. Hated to do that to her but misery does indeed, love company. We hang up and I scrub the kitchen counters. I scrub them until they’re RAW. I have nothing better to do.  Supper is all cooked and wilting miserably in the pot.  Cabbage and hot dogs, he loves that stuff.  I’d even made pretty little cornbread sticks. 

Meanwhile, I’ve downed three bottles of water trying to pretend it’s a cold beer and I have to pee. Now I have hauled the frigging phone around with me all evening and I stupidly left it on the counter to go to the bathroom. I’m in the middle of a good stream and the phone rings. I cussed, pushed harder trying to get to the end and it’s no good. I’m too old now to stop my pee mid-stream, especially after all that water. So I leap off the toilet and run to the kitchen and peed all over my half-pulled up shorts. It’s my father in law. I explain the situation to him (not the peeing of course) and then ma-in-law gets on the phone and we both have a good worry session. Hang up with them, and decide if I do need to go up to the club, I should probably put on some long pants. I get everything ready, look at the clock, it’s 20 til 9, and as I’m picking up the phone to call Bill, Tim pulls into the yard.

I spend the next 5 minutes calling everyone back to let them know he’s home. Tim pulls down to the barn, and is busy down there. I go to the back fence and try to see if there are antlers hanging out the back of the truck and see none. But that is okay, I’m just so relieved that he’s home, I am almost dizzy.

I didn’t get mad, I didn’t even say much except to tell him what all went on. He gives me this incredulous look and laughs at me. He said he only saw one deer all day and it was too far away to risk shooting and missing.

And for this, we’re paying major hunting club dues, a $300 Georgia license and extra money for the food plots…so I can worry and he can laugh at me. 

In my next life, I want to be a bear.

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Princess Tashi Olivia 1990-2007

October 8, 2009 · Filed under Home Life

This morning I woke up from a dream where I was on an airplane about to crash.  It never did, luckily, because I woke up from fright.  I got up and went and poured myself a coffee.  I’m listening to the news and I’m thinking, “It seems to me they should be saying something about eight years ago today the Twin Towers burned to the ground.”  Or something about that day anyway!

Tim walks out, pours his coffee, sits down and I said, “Today is 9/11, you’d think they’d say something about it on TV.”  He looks at me, pretends to smack me upside the head as if to clear it, and says, “It’s October.  October 8th.”  

I was really befuddled.  I KNEW something had happened on this date!  What, I wondered?  Then I said, “I know!  Mom died on this day!  Uh…no…wait, she died on the 8th, was buried on the 11th”  Then I remembered that happened in September also, the year AFTER 9/11.  So that wasn’t it.

 We sit there and slowly wake up, we don’t say a whole lot, just drink our coffee and drive our coughing nails.  I’m being quiet because I don’t want to say something else stupid.  Then it hits me!  It was Libbey! Libbey died on this date!  I shouted that out causing Tim to slosh his coffee and give me a close look.   I know he is thinking I’m obsessed with death or something. 

 Yet it was.  This morning, two years ago, we sat up with that dog for hours watching her die.  It was so sad.  She woke me up thrashing in the bed about 3:00 am and I at first thought she was just trying to get up to move elsewhere in the bed.  I quickly realized that wasn’t the case.  She would convulse for a few minutes, and thrash, and I held her down on the bed while she did, and when she would stop, we’d lie face to face on the pillow looking at each other.  I cried and I cried. 

 At 7:00 am we took her to the vets and they put her to sleep.  Just like that.  17 years of dog gone with one push of the needle.  Tim and I fell into each others arms and cried like babies.  Even the attendant cried. We took her home and buried her right where I can see her grave every time I sit down under the patio.  Tim engraved her name on one of the bricks lining the gravesite.

 Everyone agrees that was one mean dog.  Man, was she mean.  She bit every kid that came into the house that tried to touch her.  She was notorious for her meanness.  It was a family joke!  However, we loved that silly dog and she was a good dog in her own way.  God knows she was fearless.

 The next day I picked up her bed to wash it, and I held it to my face and smelled it.  I could smell that stinking old dog and it made my eyes well up.  I breathed in the last of her scent and thrust it into the washer.  Wished later I hadn’t done that.  It took me to Christmas to have one more final, good cry.  I was unwrapping the Christmas lights to put on the tree and every year for almost 17 years I’d have to keep picking her up and moving her because she’d insist on walking all over them.  Even when she got old and frail, she walked on the lights.  She always got one squeaky toy for Christmas and she’d unwrap it herself and she was such a joy to watch because she’d be so excited.

 I remembered all that, and much more, and I leaned against the wall right there and I cried.  I mean it.  I wept.  Then I felt better.  Then I went on about my business.

 I hope when we all get to Heaven that those dogs that meant so much to us will be right there at the Gate, chewing on their celestial bones,  waiting for us.

 Dog is, after all, God spelled backwards.

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5 ByPasses?

October 6, 2009 · Filed under Family · Tagged

Les and Marti

Les and Marti

Here is the most current news in the family…Lester had to have bypass surgery last week.  His blood pressure shot so far up that he admitted himself to the hospital and after a weeks worth of testing, found out he had three blockages.  When they performed the surgery, he actually needed five by passes.  Lester is 46 years old.  He is on the road to recovery and he’s feeling pretty good.  In pain, but good.  Back home waiting to go back to work.

I sat at St. Vincents the day of his surgery with his wife Marti during his surgery.  This was the first time I’ve had a chance to just sit and talk with her since she and Les got married!  Lester has married a wonderful woman and he is so lucky…she thinks of him as her best friend!  I don’t know if he knows that or not, but she does.  It was just really nice to get to know her a little better.   We don’t get to see enough of them and we need to change that.

The other day on our way to the hunting club, we passed their house and for the first time saw them both in the yard and stopped in to say hello.  Lester showed us his scar and it is just a thin line down the middle of his chest.  He says he’s going to have a zipper tattoed over it, LOL!   That evening when we passed by again on our way home, we saw them out in the yard and I realize how lucky we are to still have him here.  That he didn’t die.  That he made it through the surgery and is still our Festus.  We blew the horn and we all waved and grinned at each other. 

Way to go Fess!  Love you so much!  Thank you God for my family.

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Keeping Diaries

September 23, 2009 · Filed under Books · Tagged , , , , ,

Written memories
Written memories

 

I realize that keeping a blog is like keeping a diary.  The big difference is there could be many people reading your blog so you want to be careful of what you say. 

I’ve kept a diary since I was 10.  I can remember my mom opening one of her dresser drawers and there sat a little black book with the year 1965 printed on it.  I opened it and saw where it was dated daily – but with blank pages.  I looked at my mother and asked her, “Where are the words?”  She explained that it was a book in which you write about your thoughts, feelings or happenings every day.  I immediately fell in love with it.  

To read back over my first diary is a comic event all by itself.  I not only used words, I drew pictures to describe the day.  I have pictures of me in pigtails climbing trees.  Pictures of birds I’d seen that day.  Mostly in pencil and slowly fading away, but you can still read it.  There is two weeks worth of writing and lamenting over a dead dog lying on the side of the road that my brother and I had to pass every morning walking to school.  We couldn’t figure out why no one came and got it and buried it.  I have a drawing of it eventually rotting and worms crawling on it.  A pretty good drawing at that!  Left no doubt as to what it was.  

Then when you get into the years where I start noticing boys, the diaries become very strange.  One day it’s this boy, the next day it’s that boy.  I was in love with a different boy every week.  The page of my first kiss is very touching.  It was a boy in Miami and we were both too scared to kiss.  We needed courage.  My little brother (who is watching all of this with contempt because God knows he’d already kissed a dozen girls by this time and I’m still trying to kiss my first boy) says, “I know what you need!!  You need bread!  Bread gives you courage!”  Off he ran to the house to get two pieces of white bread which Gordy and I both ate and sure enough, it gave us courage!  We were in the swimming pool, we both slid under water and pressed our lips together!  Our first kiss!

Needless to say, it became a whole lot easier after that.  Uh huh.

Those teenage years.  Now who wouldn’t want to remember those years?  I have them all written out in sometimes, vivid, detail.  My first EVERYTHING.  I read back and think, “Why in heck did I write all that?!”  It’s no wonder I spent every waking moment trying to find a place to hide the darned things!  Oh, that was so much fun.  NOT.  It seemed no matter where I hid them, one of my older brothers would find them.  And then not only find them, but run to the bathroom and start shouting out to everyone what I’d written!   I would be so mortified and upset and I would stand on the other side of the door and scream and shout and finally be reduced to tears and begging.  I have to say my Gram wasn’t a lot of help.  She’d stand there a few minutes and listen to all of it and after a bit she would lay down the law and make whoever it was give me my diary back.  It didn’t matter if the diary came with a lock, one year my brother  just snipped the leather clasp with scissors and rendered the key useless.  I don’t think he really WANTED to be mean, he just could be sometimes. 

 My little brother wasn’t quite so bad.  He would discover where they were and instead of teasing me, he’d just share them with his friends when they came over and I was gone somewhere.  Then when I’d see them again I’d get all these looks and giggles behind my back.  Oh yeah, finding a place to keep these babies became a real art, I have to tell you.

 Sometimes reading them brings me sadness, sometimes joy, sometimes disbelief that I’d ever felt that way, been through that, done or said that thing.  There are births, deaths, marriages, divorces.  Maybe not everyone’s, but at least those I was closest to at the time of writing.  There are forty-five years of me in those books that I’m not so sure I want anyone to read when I’m gone.

 A friend told me once, after she’d lost her husband, “Don’t write anything that may hurt someone who reads it after you’re gone.”  I don’t know if that had happened to her, perhaps she’d read something her husband wrote that hurt her; I didn’t ask.  I knew it was too late anyway.  I have written when I’m angry, sad, depressed and happy as hell.  I’ve gone back and even torn out pages.  Now, when I write, I know I should write about the good things that are happening, not the bad.  I find my books extremely boring because they’re all about ME.  I mean, I already KNOW all that stuff in there.  A few family members or friends have said, “Leave them to me when you’re gone.”  I know they mean well, I do, but  I have selected someone to take them – someone who doesn’t live here in town, someone who may not judge me too harshly since she didn’t grow up around me, and someone I trust to take care of them.  Plus, she is family.   

I wish I could put them in a time capsule that no one could open for fifty years.  Wouldn’t that be cool?  Fifty years from now some great, great, great someone could open the capsule and wonder who in the heck I was!  Throw pictures in with the books of everyone I know and love.  It would take a cemetery plot to hold it all!

Hey!  I happen to have one of those!  Anyone up for some nighttime grave digging? You know how I love cemeteries…

 

 

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I miss my mom

September 1, 2009 · Filed under Family · Tagged , , , , ,

Mom-Graduation
Mom-Graduation

The other day I was sitting in the dermatologist’s office – being a Baby Boomer living in Florida, I get myself checked out once a year.   I’ve not only burned myself a million times, my mom burned me up very bad when we first moved to Florida from Maine.  There were all those Coppertone Baby highway posters of that little blonde girl with the doggy pulling down the back of her bathingsuit bottom that was just so cute!  Well, I was little and blonde and she wanted me to look like her.  All brown with a white butt.  She took us all to the beach and back then, sunscreen was not available on the CVS shelves like they are now.  Heck, no one was getting melanoma!  At least, it wasn’t being advertised!  I played in the sun all day and got burned and very sick; so much so that she had to take me to the doctor, who gave her grief about letting me get so sunburned.  Now…I go to the dermatologist religiously.   

Anyway, I’m sitting in the office and I’m waiting my turn along with these two other people.  They were older than me by far, probably in their seventies.  They’re sitting in their chairs discussing the magazine they are reading.  He gets up to go use the bathroom.  The assistant comes out and calls his name and the wife says, “He is using the bathroom.”  He eventually comes out and she tells him they are looking for him.  He goes to the counter and says he is back and they ask his last name and he looks at his wife and says, “What is our last name?”  She tells him, he tells the assistant, and back to the good doctor he goes. 

I’m sitting there absorbing this.  I realize that this is where we go when we get old, IF we’re lucky enough to stay together to get to this point.  

The thing I notice most is how the old woman smells.  She’s an attractive enough old woman, we should all be so lucky to look like her in our 70’s.  SHE SMELLS LIKE MY MOM.  She is wearing Estee Lauder’s ’Youth Dew’ and I badly want to get up and sit closer to her.  I want to hug this woman and tell her I love her.  This has happened to me so many times.  I can be in a grocery store and catch that scent and I will track it down to see who is wearing it.  Once it was an older black woman ahead of me in the aisle picking out meats.  I know that I stared at her enough to make her look at me and how can I explain that I smell my mom and you make me think of her?  Please may I hug you? 

At the doctor’s office though, I’m flipping thru my magazine…I’m breathing in deep so that I can smell my mom and I close my eyes and I think of her and it makes me feel really good…this scent.  I can feel my mom next to me and wonder if it is God’s way of letting me know that my mom is thinking of me.  My mom whose body is six feet under, but her spirit and her soul are with me. 

When Mom died and we all had to go through her belongings and dispose, share, give away all her things – the one thing I knew for sure that I was going to keep was her powder box of Youth Dew.  I still have it in my top drawer.  I took one of her blue silk blouses and put it in my cedar chest and I dusted the blouse with the powder and wrapped it in blue paper to preserve it. 

To this day, when I really am missing my Mom, I will open the chest, pull out the blouse and smell my Mom.  If the scent gets weak, I dust it more with the powder. 

My brother Lester is the same way.  He also thinks of her when he catches that fragrance on someone.  He said once, right after she’d died, that he was lying in bed and thought he heard her footsteps going down the hall  to the bathroom.  I don’t know what he wanted me to say, but I said, “Maybe she needed to pee?” and we both fell out laughing.  We chuckle about it in a sad way, but both of us make each other feel better talking about her. 

That is how God lets us know that Mom is still here, she is still our Mom, and I’ll bet you that she still carries that scent with her in Heaven. 

It is very, very hard to lose the one person who thought you hung the moon, could do no wrong, and believed you to be the best thing ever created.  She thought that of all her children. 

I miss you Mom.  WE miss you.  And we will see each other again.  Isn’t that just the most wonderful thing the Lord has given us??  WE WILL MEET AGAIN.

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I dropped off a Shidzoo and got back a Chee-hooa-hooa

August 13, 2009 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged , , , , ,

WTF?????!!!!!

WTF?????!!!!!

Our sweet little dog.  She was starting to look quite crummy so it was time for a furcut.  I took her to the local groomers- I’d used them before with my other Shih-tzu and they’d done great with her considering the fact that was one mean little sucker right to the end.  The groomers moved their digs a couple of years ago and I hadn’t been in their new place since.  Only the building has changed, the rest has remained the same.  They still have the shabby looking parrots that make so much noise no one wants them, they still have the same sad supplies that look like they’ve been on the shelf for 20 years and they still have those two little hellions they own, two small miniature collie looking things that bark, squeal, scream and jump whenever any one walks thru the door.  Continuously.  I don’t think they ever stop barking and it’s those loud, high-pitched barks that grate on your last nerve.

Poor Rocksey.  She immediately started shaking and quivering (she’s so tender, as my husband says) and I just hated to hand her over to the strange looking, strange acting man who stands behind the counter.  It just about breaks my heart to leave her there, even though I’m certain they do take good care of her.  Rocksey looks at me as I’m leaving with this “OH MY GOD ARE YOU LEAVING ME HERE??” look and I have to turn away and not look at her again as he takes her to some cage in the back where the two little screamers are.

I get back to work and watch the clock for three hours.  At noon, I speed up there to get her.  Walk thru the door and almost fall over a glass fish tank sitting on the floor near the door.  I mumble something about a safety hazard but say nothing else.  At the counter is this very large, and forgive me, very ugly woman and she has the old tattered parrot on her shoulder.  Standing next to her is an equally homely younger version of the woman who is missing most of her front teeth and they’re both talking to this parrot like it’s their baby.  Behind me is a little girl, also toothless,  who is gawping at a ferret in a cage on the floor and she is screaming, “Mommy, Mommy, I want this thing, I want this thing!”  over and over again in a pitch a tad higher than the dog standing in the window in the other room barking at everyone coming up the walkway.  I badly want to punch either her or the other yapping dog behind the counter.   While I’m waiting I become mesmerized by the back of the large woman and the bird’s butt hanging out over it and start wondering how big a turd that bird could plop there.  Not that it was going to ruin the faded, dingy housedress the woman had on…but…STOP…where am I going with this…now I’m getting mean.  The bird creaked it’s neck around and looked at me and I think it only has one good eye, but I could be wrong.  I didn’t want to make eye contact in case one of the youglies thought perhaps I wanted it to sit on MY shoulder.  Please. No.  The birds tail lifted slightly and I stepped back and it made a sort of chirpy noise…but nothing happened much to my relief.  I think it may have been reading my mind.  But, I digress…

A young fellow comes out and hands me Rocksey and I hesitate because at first I really thought it was a white chihuahua.  With big ears.  This furcut was different from her first.  The first one was at Petco and they gave a “Bichon Frise” style cut which was really cute on her.  Yet it is her, I can tell by the half-hearted wag of the tail and I take her and she seems glad to see me.  I pay the $30 and we head to the car and she gets into her pet carrier and immediately lies down.  She doesn’t move again until we get home.  She leaps out of the car and runs over to the cat, Peebs, who arches up and hisses.  Even the cat doesn’t recognize her!   But they touch noses and re-acquaint and Peebs snorts and I swear, smirks at Rocksey as if to say, “Look at your funny ass, homie” as she stalks off twitching her tail in mirth.  Rocksey runs inside, noses all her toys (the living room is now called Romper Room because of all the toys strewn about) she tosses around her favorite pink toy and plops down on her towelmat to resume chewing on last night’s chop bone.  I fix myself a lunch and turn on the noonday news.  All is right in our world again.

Now our pooch is done again for at least another three months and my mission for the day is accomplished.  Next time I’m thinking I may spend the extra money and take her back to Petco.  Maybe.

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Aaaaahhh…Earplugs

August 7, 2009 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged , , ,

Ear PlugsI don’t know who invented those spongy little tubes that you squeeze and roll and put in your ears, but I love them.  After insertion, you can  hear the background noises slowly disappearing, it’s sort of like being in the pool and  lowering your head until just your ears are under water, but you can still see what’s going on around you if you keep your eyes open.  You can hear your heart beating…you can hear yourself breathing, but it’s all muffled and pillowy. 

I have to do this quite frequently at work.  My bosses get loud when they get to discussing mill stuff.  I don’t really want to hear it.  I need to concentrate on my blog and they are disturbing me.  What is really disturbing is when I have to pull one out to answer the phone.  I’m trying to drown the clowns around here and they won’t stay down.  LOL  I must push harder…

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Raving Rabbids – What????

August 6, 2009 · Filed under My Grandkids

Raving RabbidsI’m going to learn one day.  Give the grandkiddies money for their birthdays.  I am going to smack myself repeatedly in the head until I remember this.  This past Tuesday after work I flew over to Walmart to buy my granddaughter what she’d told my husband she wanted for her birthday.  He wrote down, “Raising Rabbits – TV”.  A Wii game.  I drive the 15 miles to a mall in J’ville that also has a Bed Bath & Beyond in it so I can kill two birds with one stone.  In Walmart, I’m struggling at the Wii aisle looking for Raising Rabbits.  Discover that it’s really Raving Rabbids.  Oh!  Okay!  Whatever!  Grab the game.  Drive the 15 miles back home – did I say that this was all thru a raging, horrible thunderstorm??  I’m so proud of myself that I’m actually early this year with at least one of the grandkid’s presents.  So today, I use my lunch hour to deliver the gift to her, I’d also bought her some bath toiletries.  She’s 11 and I think maybe she’d like some grown up stuff for a change.  She calls me around 11:15 saying the other two grandkids, younger than her, are making her crazy wanting to know if I’m going to stop and get them Happy Meals.  Uh..okay, I say, thinking, alright, if I leave here at 11:30 and haul butt, I can get to Mickey D’s and drop off everything and maybe only be a few minutes late getting back.  I spend 20 minutes in the line at McDorks.  I get to the kid’s house and unload everything.  Taa opens her gift package.  I have the wrong Raving Rabbids.  What? What????!!!  It says right on the back, Bunnie’s Gone Bad, which had already given me a start when I read that, but it was rated “Everyone” so I figure it’s okay.  But it’s not okay.  It’s not Raving Rabbids-TV.  Well, shoot, I thought when I read the TV on hubby’s note that it just meant be sure you don’t buy a movie version or something, heck, I don’t know what I thought but I sure didn’t think there were different versions of Raving Freaking Rabbid!! 

Taa looks at me with abject sympathy in her eyes.  Poor old Mema, she’s so out there somewhere…I ask her, why would you want the same game your friend has?  Why wouldn’t you want a different game??  Well, DUH, Mema, so we can play it here at my house!  I’m still trying to make sense of it…but what does an old lady know about tekky stuff anyway.  So now, it’s back to Squall Mart, return the durned wrong one, then on to Target to find the right one because I already know Wart Mart does not have the “TV version” of these crazy rabbits.   Ahhh grandkids…you gotta love them.  Money from now on.  I keep saying this…

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