But Wait! There’s More!

As most of y’all know, the word “gullible” doesn’t exist in my dictionary. I am prone to be trusting. Sometimes that’s a good thing, and sometimes it’s not. This can be a bad thing with people, so I try to be on my guard as best as I can manage. But it is especially bad when it comes to….. commercials.

Cindy Crawford with some new skin care? I want to rush out to get it.

New ceramic cookware? Sign me up!

A new shampoo made from the tears of alpacas?? GOTTA HAVE IT!!!

I do draw the line at the Jockey™ custom bra dealio, though.

Seriously, I am very susceptible to that crap. Luckily there’s the Internet. I have to force myself to look up information on every blingy thing that catches my eyes. And yes, I do mean “force”. Sometimes the Internet is a huge time suck and the next thing I know it’s dinnertime and the kitchen still has the morning dishes in the sink. So I try to limit my time on the laptop. Shut it, I typed “try”. Advertising has com a heck of a long way since the Tootsie Pop™. And the fact that computer graphics are used willy nilly doesn’t help much, either. Seriously, Slim Jim™ jerky sticks do NOT make for a good rope. Trust me on this.

I was hoping that the older I got, the less gullible I became. Sigh…. fending off ageing makes one far more vulnerable to this crap. I should give up and let Nature finish the furrows on my face. But not until I try that new stuff from Neutrogena™ 😀

Crash and Burn

Last night, Eldest requested a favor from me. She asked me to have the oil changed in her vehicle because A) the check engine oil light came on, and 2) she was working through the holiday weekend and would have no chance to do so. Being a wonderful mom, I took the van in and had the oil and brake fluid changed.

I go the extra mile. Sometimes.

Anyway, I am in the waiting area, minding my own business as I play Words with Friends (looking at you, Mitchell), when a young gentleman decided to strike up a conversation. He was very well-mannered, with a nice drawl and looked to be about 26 or so. I am a horrible judge of age, but he was definitely way younger than I am. And I was way unavailable, apparently to his chagrin. It was a nice if odd stroke to the ego, I must admit. But no matter how high the feeling, eventually you crash back down. And so it came to pass after I got home.

Me: So, this young man was hitting on me at the Pennzoil place.

Hubby: Really?

Me: Yep, even dressed like this (sweatpants and shirt) and with no make up on. I haven’t even shaved my face yet.

Hubby: Did it make you feel good?

Me: Well, I was wigged out more than anything, to tell you the truth.

Hubby: Guess I shouldn’t have spent the money, then…

Me:…………………………………………………………..

Ego suitably deflated while laughing hysterically. If you can’t poke fun at yourself, you aren’t living right. As an aside, his little barb gave me the impetus to go to the outlet mall.

Who’s laughing now? THIS GAL 😉

What I Learned at Awards Night

Last evening Little One’s school held their annual Honors Night. Usually this means giving out the best-students-in-this-class awards, athletic awards, organization awards, perfect attendance, and honor roll. I will not disparage any award given, but I do question why perfect attendance is so over-rated. Any kid that misses a day has to make up the classes anyway. And those who come to school ill because they don’t want a miss a day tend to spread disease so others get to miss school. Seems like a viscous cycle to me.

Anyway, as tedious as these things are, we always manage to entertain ourselves the Simon and Garfunkel way. How’s that, you may ask? Well, here are the lyrics to their song, America:

Laughing on the bus
Playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said “Be careful his bow tie is really a camera”

That’s correct: we make a game trying to guess who people are and what they do. It’s fun and keeps us busy during the breaks. But playing that game makes us pretty aware of what other people are doing. So here’s a list of things I learned not to do in large crowded areas.

1. Don’t take a selfie if you are sitting in front of my husband. He is very good at photobombing, and he is even better at embarrassing you.
2. If you and your friends are going to cheer for an honoree, make sure you synchronize yourselves. Otherwise it sounds completely garbled and the honoree will think you hate them, causing a major drama to unfold after the ceremony.
3. If you and your friends are going to boo someone as a joke, be prepared for a certain mom to come speak to you about it. Also, be prepared to have that certain mom make sure to embarrass you in front of the rest of your group by pointing out your ridiculous underwear sticking out of your dropped pants.
4. When going up to accept an award, do not jockey for position. It makes you look like a photo hound at best, and a rude kid at worst.
5. When taking photos of your awards student, please be considerate of the rest of humanity in that auditorium and do not place your late model iPad15™ in front of others. Get up and go up to the stage to take the photo.

So, that is some of the fun stuff I learned last evening. I also learned that some gal was going out with some guy who thought another gal was crushing on him, but since he wasn’t sure, he decided to stay with the first gal because it was good for his school standing and he didn’t want to risk losing the street cred in case the other gal wasn’t really crushing on him.

Man, am I glad I’m not in school 😀

There Are Days….

I confess I have had a rough time finding topics for this blog. It’s not that there isn’t stuff out there on which I can bloviate. It’s just that sometimes I don’t have the motivation to write about pithy crap. This isn’t a serious blog, and I try to keep it light and full of fluff. There are days when that is sorely tested.

I see friends on social media come to cyberspace blows due to differences in opinion.

I see family over-react when they see a nebulous comment from a member.

I see tin foil and all-seeing eyes while people leave Occam’s awesome razor to rust.

I see hypocrisy thinly veiled as superiority.

But the thing I see most is people DEMANDING their right to be offended.

Last I checked, that wasn’t on the Bill of Rights, and it sure as Hades not endowed by our Creator. If you are offended by something, first take a minute to ask yourself why. Figure out the cause of the offense before you go off on someone who may not have the same grade of skin thickness that you do. If you don’t like what someone has posted, let your fingers do the walking and scroll right by. If you feel that someone’s opinion is making the delicate walls of your echo chamber quiver like Jell-O™, then by all means use that finger of yours and hide or delete the offending character. Getting into a CAPS LOCK match wastes everyone’s time, and you could possibly break a nail when pounding out your sensibilities.

Remember: social media isn’t a one way street.

Whirling Dervish Alert

Well, not really. I’m not a mystic. But I have been going around in circles trying to get things done around here.

The past few days I have been working around the yard. Yes, the cacti are still alive. So are the petunias. So far. Anyway, I decided to redo the backyard area a bit. I have this really neat ironwork pot holder that I brought back from Germany and had been standing against the back wall unused and forlorn. I moved it out from under the loquat tree and placed it against a sunny area along the fence, then planted petunias (Hello! Have you met me??) to display on it. It looks so nice and makes a great backdrop for my dog, who thinks I beautified the area for her. She’s funny like that.

I discovered to my chagrin that one of my three beautiful hostas did not survive the last freeze, so now I have another planter to fill with….something. I love hostas, but they don’t fare as well down here as they do up north. I may get a hydrangea and take a chance that I won’t end up murdering it it will do well under the tree along the other hostas. I just know I have to put something in the planter. It’s a jones of mine. I see an empty planter or pot and I have to put a soon-to-be-in-hospice plant in it. Currently I have four planters to fill. Which means a trip to the nursery in search of more victims flowers with which to beautify the backyard. Or the front yard.

That’s how I feel when I garden. At least until the plants begin their transition from hospice to flora heaven. Then not so much.

But until then, I shall enjoy the pretty flowers and make plans to go to Hobby Lobby and buy fake ones when they go on sale so I can replace them after mourning the passing of the current crop. It makes sense to me, and that’s all that counts 🙂

Raginess Cranked Up to Eleven

Ever have one of those days when you are driving to a certain locale, having left with time to spare, only to find yourself driving behind someone doing ten miles below the speed limit, weaving in his lane because they are consulting their smartphone, then find themselves slowing down further because they are no longer watching the road but instead seem to be dialing said smartphone, and while dialing, the driver hits the curb and over-corrects into the oncoming traffic lane, over-correcting again, and then stopping on the train tracks and panicking because here comes a train and he needs to reverse his vehicle because the caution arm was coming down any second, so I had to swerve into the left turn only lane so he would have more room to avoid becoming a statistic, thus forcing me to turn in the opposite direction of where I wanted to go, making me do a legal U-turn a few streets down, and finally catching up to the same driver, who was still talking on his phone, and who screeched to a halt in the middle of an intersection because he just noticed that was his turn?

Anyone have one of those days?

I can’t be the only one.

Normally I am a very patient person. I don’t care if someone has more than ten items in the express check-out. I don’t care if someone is taking their time adjusting their seat while I await their parking space. I don’t care if someone blocks an entrance because they stopped to answer a text.

But acting irresponsibly while operating a vehicle? You have now crossed the Rubicon, jackass. I did what any worried mother would have done: applied copious pressure on the horn, followed him as he turned right, sidled next to him, rolled down my window and yelled, “HEY, YOU MAY WANT TO PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR DRIVING, AND PERHAPS THE TRAIN’S DRIVING WHILE YOU’RE AT IT!!”

The look he gave me was worth it. He was so stunned he missed his turn at the light. After that my rage began to subside and I became my normal, happy self again. I managed to run my errands in time and get home in time to begin making dinner.

And no one questioned me when I had a second glass of wine 😀

Thursday Never List

The other day I was grocery shopping when a gent asked my opinion on wine.

I was in the baking section.

I simply shrugged it off as just a passing thing, until he asked me what I  prefer to drink when on a date. I told him that HUBBY AND I prefer to drink whisky. He scooted off with a murmured “thank you ma’am”. Later, while at the check-out line, another gent asked if I was making Caprese salad for dinner (I had tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella cheese), to which I replied in the affirmative. He then goes on to exclaim how much he LOVES it and how he prepares it, and then offers to teach me his method of Caprese salad making. I seriously thought I was in the Twilight Zone. No one but acquaintances and friends and the cashier ever speak to me, and here were two men who were giving me grocery pick up lines?? And then I figured out why:

Yep, THAT is the shirt I was wearing. Men are simple, I guess. But that got me to thinking about truly horrible pick up lines. And honestly I drew a major blank, so I had to ask Hubby and other male friends. And the results were awesome!

Pick Up Lines to Never Use

#5– You’re so hot, you’re melting the elastic in my underwear.

After hearing that, I would pray for spontaneous combustion.

#4– Do you believe in love at first sight?

In a smoky bar with a disco ball and lasers and spotlights? If you do, you may need LSD to make things normal.

#3– You are beautiful. I am ugly. Let’s have average children.

I give this one marks for honesty.

#2– Did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?

If an angel falls from Heaven, they are now serving in Hell. So you basically called her Satan’s minion.

#1- If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?

It only works for the Bellamy Brothers.

So that’s the list for this week. Hope y’all never have to hear any of these at the grocery store 😉

Musings on Being Nostalgic

There are so many things I miss.

I never seem to give them any thought, though. Sometimes one or two things will quietly slip into my mind and remind me of good times long past. It may sound maudlin, but I am sure I’m not the only one that has a thought spring up like that.

I miss running after the ice cream truck. It was a challenge to see who could get to it first. Saving nickels and dimes every week just so you could get a Drumstick™ was fun, but eating it all before it melted into a sticky mess was an achievement.

I miss being able to slam down a phone. There was a satisfaction of hearing that BAM!! and knowing you had really made your *ahem* dissatisfaction known to the person on the other end.

I miss the card catalog. I loved, LOVED running my fingers down the index cards, reading the books’ information, pretending to be a detective trying to figure out the cryptic synopsis. It’s not as fun to look it up on the computer and have the whole plot outlined already.

I miss roller skates. Not roller blades, mind you. But the metal, scrappy, key-to-adjust kind that you put over your sneakers. That screech the wheels made as you tried to glide gracefully on the sidewalk was like music to my ears.

I miss Polaroids™. It was fun to wait for the film to develop right before your eyes, and yes, I shook the heck out of them. Before Photoshop™, before Instagram™, all you had to do was wait a few years and the film would antique itself quite nicely.

Anyway, I have been sentimental long enough. Time for me to take advantage of current technology and do some laundry in my high efficiency washing machine 🙂

Getting Dirty

Heh, fooled you with that title, didn’t I? Well, I am clearing the garden today, and relocating those white rocks in the flower beds, and whacking major shrubbery.

But not with a herring.

As low maintenance as our backyard is, the dogs tend to wreak their own special kind of havoc by running in the flower beds while barking at the dogs on the other side of the fences. Consequently, all the gravel and pretty pebbles get displaced. If it were up to me, I would have all that taken out and replaced with MOAR DURT!! But it’s too costly of a project to undertake at this time, so we stick to maintaining it. Hopefully one day we will set up a hammock for nice summer evenings. Along with fifteen bug zappers.

Can’t take chances with insects around here. Not when they can carry you off 😀

Rats With Better PR

Yesterday afternoon, I went outside to water the flowers, praying that I wouldn’t end up murdering them yet again it would rain, since it was overcast and that would save me from having to roll out the sprinkler. I…..don’t have the best luck with plants. Except my hostas, which weirdly are freakishly huge under the tree.

I guess they thrive on ignorance and neglect.

Anyway, I go get the garden hose, and turn to talk to my calla lily. She hasn’t deserted me, either. Again, ignorance and neglect. I give her a good drink of water, and then turn to the marigolds in the bright teacup style pot, only to find broken leaves, snapped heads, and a mess of dirt. Why? Because some squirrel decided that was where he had hidden his treasure trove of acorns.

Seems legit.

Normally I am not one to get upset over something so small. But they had done it to the newly planted petunias out front, which were BRAND FREAKING NEW AND HAD NO ACORNS IN THE DIRT!! So of course, I snapped.

Me: STAY OUT OF MY POTTED PLANTS, YOU INSIPID BAG OF MANGY FUR!!

Squirrel: *looks at me from the fence edge*

Me: YES, YOU!! I CATCH YOU AROUND MY PLANTS AGAIN, AND I WILL MAKE STEW OUT OF YOUR HIDE!!

Neighbor: Hey Aggie*. How’s…. your day?

Me: Uh, Hey! Just…fine… watering plants.

Neighbor: Need a shotgun?

Me: I’m on it.

Neighbor: I didn’t hear a thing.

Me: I owe you.

I don’t like squirrels, as you can probably surmise. I don’t care that they have bushy tails, or cute little hands (which have nasty claws), or cheeky pouches. Screw that. I think they are nasty little birdseed thieves who conspire to wreak havoc on the roads and make your plants wither and die.

It’s a good thing I was defrosting chicken, because stew sounded pretty good right then 😉