Tuesday, March 31, 2009

I Was WAAAY Too Cute!


C'mon now, was I a cutie patootie, or what??

This is me (on the RIGHT) and one of the two dogs we had briefly while I was growing up. This one is Rags. Rags was half sheep dog and half poodle. Hey, somehow it worked. What I remember most about Rags is that when it was time to walk him, he took the rest of the kids for a walk! Seriously, he would drag them from here to there and back again. It was not easy to walk this dog. Well, for me it was! For some reason, he knew there was no way I could keep up with him, so he'd walk like a little old man with me. I could hold the leash with one finger and he'd never get away from me. Dang. How could I go from dog tamer to being so terrified of them now? Go figure!

Anyway, I was going through some old junk the other night and I came across this picture. I remember my t-shirt! This was a hand me down from my sister, Cathie. The front said over and over "sock it to me" from the old Laugh In show. I loved that shirt!

Now here's a segue from this picture to what happened to me today!

I'm not a big breakfast eater, but I do enjoy an Eat 'n Park breakfast buffet now and again. I've been having a hankering for their buffet. I don't know if it's at all Eat 'n Parks, but the one by us only has the buffet on Tuesday and Saturday and then a brunch on Sunday.

So I talked to Ron and Phil and even got them to agree to go to Eat 'n Park for the breakfast buffet this morning. Not much, other than food, would get the three of us out of the house at 7:30 in the morning!

So far, so good. We were all up, dressed and out the door. We even had a great breakfast. And then, the horrible event occurred. The server brought us the bill. She charged us for THREE senior breakfasts! HELLO????

Ok, Phil I can see. (Sorry, brother.) But Ron doesn't exactly look like he's a senior citizen and I sure as heck don't!! In spite of the picture above being taken in 1968 when I was five years old!

Looking back, I guess I wasn't too offended. I did take the discount!

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Neighborhood Watch

One thing about not working, you need to find other things to do to occupy your day.

My crocheting is coming along nicely, thank you very much! I'm over half way done with the whole thing and I'm impressed with myself.

So now I've also taken on the job of watching the neighbors. Hey, I can't help it. My crocheting chair looks out of the window so it's not my fault that I happen to take notice of the goings on.

Like the other day for instance. I was sitting in my chair, and what do I see? Across the street, a man is sort of walking down the road. When I say sort of, it was more like stumbling rather than actual walking.

This is an old neighborhood. There are alleyways through almost all of these blocks. The alleyway that goes across the block across the street is used a lot. I see cars coming and going through there all the time. This poor guy fell right at the end of the alleyway.

At first I almost thought he tripped. I waited for him to get himself up, but no, he seemed to be down there for the count. By the time I rallied the guys to go and check on him, he was working himself to a sitting position. Finally he did get himself up and continued stumbling his way back down the street. Yeah, you could miss good fun like that if you weren't watching!

The next bit of fun happened to be caught by Phil. It was after dark, and he went downstairs for something. Once downstairs, he saw the police activity right on our corner. Of course, we all went running!

On the ground on the corner was a guy and a bicycle. In the street were two police cars and one ambulance. Our first thought was that he was hit by a car. But, there were no other vehicles in the immediate vicinity. For all I could tell, it was the same drunk I saw earlier laid across the alleyway. It was dark, so it was hard to tell. The end of that story was the ambulance left without him and the two police cars also pulled away without him. I know, I know. If I'm telling a story, I should have more details than this.

Lastly, we have one of the trouble houses in the neighborhood. This house was filled with teenagers who did love to point their stereo speakers outside and dance on the porch to the volume at full blast. Yeah, we all love that, don't we? I guess if that was the worst that they ever did, I should consider myself lucky.

Well, last weekend, it seems that they have moved out. On Sunday I believe it was, there was about five or so bags of garbage outside. Then, every day, the pile has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. Keep in mind, garbage around here doesn't get picked up until early Friday mornings. Well, we've been looking at this all week. And, of course, the never ending line of lookie-loos that come routing through the garbage looking to take away anything they can. Bags are torn, crap is blowing loose all over. What an eyesore.

Now you can see our yard. Crap from across the street has blown all across our yard shown here. This is putting it lightly. I took this picture a few days ago. Today I went out to pick up all of the crap and you'd be surprised at what I found!

Now, we police our yard often. The street we live on is relatively busy, and people seem to love to drive up and down throwing crap out of their windows. Common items in our yard are cigarette packs, beer bottles, liquor bottles, candy wrappers. I've also found condom wrappers, condoms (I don't want to know), homework, utility bills that aren't mine, among other things. Keep in mind, I do put protective gloves on when I clean up the yard. Part of my germ phobia!

Today's bounty had new items. I can't be sure they were all blown over from the garbage heap next door or if they were items thrown from passing cars. Today, I found a dip stick. You know, that thing in your car that you pull out to see how much oil is in your car! I also found two sets of wiper blades, in their package. Too bad they were too small to fit any of our vehicles. I also found a wheel that looks like it came from a coffee table or something of the sort. That I'm guessing was chucked from across the street. All in all, I had one garbage bag full of crap.

Tomorrow morning the garbage men come. It will be interesting to see how much is left on the ground and how much is actually picked up.

Yeah, watching in this neighborhood is definitely an interesting experience!

Thursday, March 19, 2009

WTF??

C'mon now, if this had been the rule 20 some odd years ago, none of us would have graduated! This is ridiculous!

Monday, March 16, 2009

Not Fair

Sunday night, I was tired. I was yawning by 7:00 and it didn't get any better as the night wore on.

Finally at about 10:00, I headed to bed. I read for awhile, (Robin Cook's Vector in case you're curious) and was asleep probably between 10:30 and 10:45.

Then came 12:30 am and I was awake. Not just a little awake like I need to pee and then I'm going back to bed. No, the kind of awake that you know it's going to be awhile until your head hits the damn pillow again.

Basically, I had a two hour nap. It's now 2:24 am and I'm bored. There are two other people fast asleep in this house so I'm trying to stay relatively quiet. There is only crap on tv and none of my favorite informercials are playing.

As a side note, c'mon now, there are a couple of informercials that are really good! Not good as in I'd like to buy that, but good as in they are definitely entertaining. One that comes to mind is that Magic Bullet. This informercial takes place in someone's kitchen supposedly, with bunch of their friends sitting around at the counter.

There is a British guy and a blonde girl. This Magic Bullet is supposed to replace your food processor and a bunch of other kitchen appliances. They make an omelette, frozen drinks, grind coffee beans, make pesto sauce among other things. I think the best part of this infomercial is one of the "guests" of this couple demonstrating this appliance. She is just like my Aunt Aggie! Right down to the house dress and cigarette hanging out of her mouth! Yeah, that's why I like that one.

Another goodie that I love to watch but do not want to buy is the GT Express 101. I think what I like about this is the hostess, Cathy Mitchell. I'm not sure what makes her the "kitchen expert" that she is reported to be, but I'm telling you, I could watch her demonstrate this dang contraption until the cows come home. My favorite is the chocolate cake she makes and puts a small candy bar inside for a "surprise". The only thing that's a surprise is that the candy bar somehow doesn't melt and just ends up a lump inside of the cake. Classic!

My last favorite informercial is the spray on make-up. No longer just for Tammy Faye Baker, now we can ALL apply it with a spray hose! I can't find a link to it now, but I'm sure most of you have seen it. Again, I could watch this stupid thing over and over.

So, if I gotta be up all night long, the least they could do is play my favorite informercials. I know, I have digressed off topic. What do you expect from me? It's almost three in the freakin' morning!

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Beat That

This is a new record!

With gas prices what they are, I at least stretched my dollar as far as it would go.

I had filled up my gas tank on the morning of my car accident, 9/19/08, at over $4 a gallon I might add. That tank of gas lasted me until 3/10/09! Can you believe it? As an added bonus, I only spent $1.79 a gallon on the fill up!

Now that's making my money last.

Of course, getting lugged around by Ron and Phil has also helped in my cause. I am not going to ask them how much more gas they've used carting me around!

Friday, March 06, 2009

If You Hear Me Scream, Come Running

Yesterday was laundry day.

While Ron was humping the laundry downstairs for me, my job was to open doors and turn the lights on. As soon as we got downstairs, I thought I heard a noise. I am especially attuned to strange noises in and around this house. As you know, it's not unusual for a noise to be "strange" around here!

But I heard a noise, something like a scratching. Since it is my belief that unless it's paying rent, it doesn't live here, whatever was scratching I knew didn't belong. I put a death grip on Ron's arm and said "listen!" Sure enough, a scratching was coming from somewhere.

Ron hunted down the noise while I got in my ready-to-make-a-run-for-it stance. He finally followed the sound to the source. As best as he could figure, a bird was caught in vent from the hot water tank! Geez, that ain't good.

My first question of course was "could it get into the basement?" Ron thought the opening on our side was too small for a bird to get in. I remember when we had the bat in the basement. Reading up on bats I remembered that a bat needed a hole smaller than a dime to wiggle into. I was kinda worried this might be a bat!

Ron assured me that it was probably a bird and he was just trying to find his way back out, not into the basement. Sometimes, Ron can be very convincing. He offered to take the whole thing apart and get the bird out, but then I feared that it might not be a bird and whatever it was, could end up in the basement. What a dilemma!

So, Ron stayed with me in the basement while I sorted clothes and got the first load going. Shortly after that, he headed out for awhile. Holy crap, I was on my own to deal with the noises in the basement!

When it was time to go back downstairs, I told Phil the onus was on him to keep me safe. I told him, "If you hear me scream, you better get your butt down to the basement!" He did come and check on me during my first trip downstairs, but I'm happy to report that I hear no noises. After doing six loads of laundry, there were no scratching or banging noises in the basement. I am hoping that the bird or whatever did find its way out and it's not stuck in the vent. Yeah, that's it. It found its way outside again.

Just in case; if anyone hears me screaming down there, please come running!

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Itches And Stitches

You know, getting fired from your job, really plays havoc with a blog. Being cooped up all the time, it's hard to come up with a blog story!

Here's what I do have. A story about itching and a story about stitching. First the itching.

About a month ago, I got a new pair of blue jeans. Way cool, huh? Well, I wore these jeans for two days, before I washed them. I developed a terrible itch that I was blaming on the new jeans. It's right where the waist band hits, about an inch wide strip, but here's where it gets weird. I itch half way around my body along that line. From where my belly button is all the way around my left side back to where my spine is. I itch. I itch bad.

I really did blame it on the unwashed jeans. I thought maybe some fabric dye, or just the roughness of the new jeans was irritating me. Unfortunately, it's now a month later and I still freakin' itch! At times it's almost unbearable.

I've had Ron check me over pretty closely. He can see no rash, no bug bites, no irritation other than my scratch marks. I've work old and worn jeans, but I still itch. I've worn elastic waisted shorts and I still itch. I wear no pants, but where my shirt touches that half band area, causes me to itch. I've tried hand cream, Gold Bond powder and even Benedryl ointment. Nothing is making it better. It's bizarre.

Any itch remedies would be appreciated.

On to the stitches side of this story.

As most of you know by the towels you've received from me recently, I've taken up crocheting again while I've been laid up. The towels just weren't challenging enough any more plus I have more finished towels here than I have people I know. (If anyone needs more, let me know!)

I've eluded to a new project in my previous blog post. Here's the story.

I bought a few books of patterns for afghans. I picked probably the hardest one in there, but it is so the most beautiful of them! Here is a picture of a work in progress, to give you an idea.


Here is my workspace! The afghan is a bunch of squares with raised pansies. Then you sew the squares together and voila, an afghan is made!

I need 54 squares. In the middle I have a bag with all 54 centers. On the right is one completed square! Underneath all of that is my instructions.

Each square is done if four parts, as there are four colors in each square. The center, the pansie petals, the leaves and then the outer square.

This picture was taken a few days ago, so now I'm up to two completed squares, probably 20 or so completed with the pansie petals and a few more with the green leaves. It's like I'm on a mission with this thing.

If you gotta be laid up, it's good to have a hobby. I've read more books than I can count since I've been off, so this is a nice addition to occupy my time.

Anyone need an afghan? This is definitely one I will do again!