Christmas Returns

This is just an fyi for my readers.  Apparently, Christmas scratcher tickets have a zero-return policy.  I had a couple of losers I got as presents and took them back for a refund and the 14-year-old behind the counter rolled her eyes and I then I guess I sort of reacted and complained a little but then, long story short, the Sheriff explained it to me.  So anyway, yeah, you can’t return them if you don’t win, so really, don’t even try it.  So, even though it’s totally bullshit, just throw them away or whatever, I guess.

Geneology

So I sent a cheek swab to MYDNA.com about a month ago.  I got a response from them today that said my ancestry is 100% English and Scottish, which I figured would be true.  It also said that the U.K. is appealing the results, which I didn’t even know they could do.

Holiday Attire

Here’s a holiday tip.  Before you compliment someone on the “ugly Christmas sweater” he or she is wearing, try to make certain that it’s not a “regular Christmas sweater” he or she is wearing.

Looking Ahead

When you enter a traffic roundabout, NEVER look to your left or right or behind you.  Those people are SO freakin’ judgmental.  Just keep looking straight ahead; that’s where the future is.

Falling Stuff

I can handle most of life’s challenges, but lately I’m noticing that one of my biggest problems is having stuff fall to the floor.  Sometimes it drops from my hands as if it’s the result of a mysterious muscle spasm, or without explanation from a solidly stacked tower of storage that could not in any way have been described as poorly planned or teetering.   Sometimes the stuff drops and bounces and rolls annoyingly under a piece of furniture.  Sometimes, after serious searching and straining and stooping and grunting and sweating and cursing, I find the annoying roll away thing behind a chair or under the sofa.  Other times I accept that it’s become part of an alternate universe and now exists outside of the view of my bifocals and poor dim light vision.  Some other times the stuff drops and smashes loudly and shatters and causes a cleanup that requires the canceling of previous plans for the day.  And don’t even bother screaming “NOOOO”, because I tried it plenty, and to no avail.  Some call it gravity, and I don’t know about all that scientific doublespeak, but I hear so much about nonsensical experiments to send a man to the moon and cooling the arctic, so how about a little attention to stop stuff from falling to the floor?  I’m not sure how to ignite a movement to fix this, but maybe you kids could set up a go fund me page or whatever the hell you do when you get a bug up your ass to save the world.

Facebook and Robot Vetting

Sometimes Facebook makes me type in a crazy scrambled code to reply to or “like” a post.  It helps Facebook confirm that I’m not a robot, which I guess is very important.   Sometimes I have trouble reading and understanding what the letters or symbols are, which fills me with anxiety and self-doubt about my robot status.  Anyway, I hope the government doesn’t track my attempt failures; I’m just trying to “like” a frigging cat video or picture of someone’s birthday bash.

Fall Deception

Freaking squirrels all over town.  Trying to fool us with their cute gathering and adorable scurrying.  I’m telling you, I’m not buying it, the little bastards are up to something.

Book Learning

Tonight, as I crossed the parking lot at the gym, I noticed a somewhat frail looking young boy walking down the sidewalk. He was wearing glasses and carrying several books under one arm. Two somewhat older and bigger boys closely followed him. It was obvious that the older boys were picking on the younger kid, who kept looking forward with his head down as he walked silently. One of the older boys then flicked the younger kid's ear. In a flash, the young bespectacled boy spun around with a hard copy book in his free hand and clocked the bully in the face, stopping him in his tracks. No words were spoken, but the now bruised bully and his jerky friend walked away as the kid with glasses collected his stuff and continued on. Cheers to you, little bad-ass book-wielding dude. Don’t take any shit from anyone.

Football, Kneeling Worries

I feel badly for my football loving friends, what with all the turmoil I’ve heard discussed lately over whether to kneel or not.  (How does one even attempt to safely kneel in a recliner, I wonder?).  I’m so glad that (at least for now) my favorite televised sport (on SPIKE), Inline Underwater Blindfolded Extremely Limited-Contact MMA, hasn’t been similarly compromised by the reckless political antics of those who would seek to arbitrarily dictate our viewing positions.

Perfectly Clear

The phrase, “let me make this perfectly clear” is usually followed by incoherent blather.

Regrouping With The Dog

A couple of weeks later, the dog returned for a few days’ visit. Truth be told, after our last challenging time together, initially the tension was palpable. Then she, being the bigger of us two, stuck her quite wet nose in my ear. A weight was then lifted, and we returned to our normal selves, getting on most famously.

Failure to Communicate with a Dog

I know that the dog I’m watching misses her parents, so I asked her, “do you miss Mommy?”, and she perked up and looked at the door and started wiggling and whining.  So I said, “it’s ok baby, she’ll come get you tomorrow” and the dog looked at me with this vacant expression, like she had no idea what I was talking about.  I call bullshit.  I mean, do you understand English or not?  Jeez.

My Elementary School Nurse, Thelma

When you’re 8 years old and mommy-clingy, sometimes you don’t really want to be at school. Somehow, you learn through the grapevine that, if you let the teacher know you feel like you have to throw up, there’s a nurse’s office where you can go to lie down on a green naugahyde “bed” for a while.  The thought is that if you rest for a bit, you’ll recuperate enough to return to the rigors of third grade studies.  Even at 8, you’ll take what you can get.  If you’re lucky, the school has a nurse who really loves kids and she seems almost like a mommy away from home.  48 years later, I had the extreme pleasure to bump into my elementary school nurse, who had been so kind to me back then.  In her 90s now, and sharp as a tack, she was as lovely as I remembered, and as kind.  And when I told her about my memories of her, and thanked her for being so nice to me, and confessed that I’d mostly faked it, she smiled a pretty smile I remembered vividly.  Though I’m sure I was one of thousands she’d cared for, she said, “I knew when you were faking it.”  Rest in peace, Thelma, and God Bless You.

Exchange Issues

I mostly use self-checkout at stores to avoid interacting with humans.  It just took me a month to get rid of 3 Canadian dimes.

Dog Snacks and The End of Innocence

For as long as I’d known her, the dog had excitedly accepted ice cubes from me as an exotic and decadent treat.  But when she visited me this time, something had changed.  Yes, it was clear that someone had gotten to her, and the magic of this simple frozen snack had been stolen from us.  As the cube melted on the floor where she had, with uncharacteristic disdain, dropped it, we sat in awkward silence, avoiding each other’s glances.

Babies Don't Know What's Right

At the supermarket today, an adorable toddler approached me as I walked down the aisle.  A guy who I assumed was her dad walked behind her.  I’m not a good judge of baby ages, but she was probably still in the “goo goo” chewing-on-the fingers stage.  As they got closer to me, the dad said, “head to the left”.  At that moment, the baby looked up at me and immediately headed to her right.   The dad said, “I said head to the left” and took her by the shoulders and corrected her direction.   The dad then looked at me and sort of grinned in what I hoped was embarrassment, hopefully realizing  then the silliness and futility of his complicated command to this non-verbal goo-goo human.   I smiled and shrugged and said, “maybe she thought you meant my left.”

More Info, Please

Sometimes when I need more information before I act, I’ll ask someone who has a stake in the outcome an “either/or” type question.  Sometimes that person will answer, “Yes”, which makes it abundantly clear to me that the question wasn’t very important to him or her.  Man, that really summons my creative inner douchebag.

Nice Try, Chickens

Not too long ago I saw a news report about a problem with sick chickens.  I’m not sure what kind of illness chickens were supposed to be experiencing then, but whatever it was promised to cause a scarcity of eggs, and thereby inflate their cost to a price we couldn’t even fathom.  I also seem to remember a short period of time when the price of chicken and eggs actually increased a bit.  Anyway, this week I bought 18 eggs at Walmart for .76 cents.  I think they’re Chinese eggs, so it remains to be seen if the quality stands up to Walmart’s normally high bar, but I think just maybe, a few months ago we were all the victims of a vast, albeit failed, poultry price gouge conspiracy.  I know I’m prone to naivete, and it’s well known that the chicken has the least integrity of any bird, wild or domestic, but I feel duped.   I’m still eating the shit out of these eggs, don’t get me wrong, but now it’s more out of vengeance than anything.

Be An Encourager

I’m pretty crochety and cynical, but I think when you witness an act of kindness, it’s a good idea to take a moment and acknowledge the good deed doer with a nod and a smile or even a thumb’s up. Nice begets nice. 

Broken Morning Promises

The evening me rarely honors the fervent promises made by morning me when it comes to bedtime. I hope these two never meet; it will be ugly.

Studs

It’s a pretty good bet that if you’re still rocking studded snow tires on June 5th, you have every intention of riding it out until next winter.  #thinkingahead.

Dream Alarm

Sometimes I’ll have a dream that I’m sleeping.  Sometimes in that dream, my dream-state alarm rings, waking me in my dream and in real life.  At that point, sometimes I’ll realize that my real alarm hasn’t really gone off yet, and in fact I still have another five minutes left before it’s actually time to wake up.   I usually spend the next five minutes complaining with groggy bitterness to myself about the lousy morning handoff, and about how the two alarms could do a much better job at synchronizing.  On the bright side, I’m guessing that the five minute lead the sleeping alarm provides ensures that my slumber-state self is always on time to my dream job.

Canine Psych, 101

So the morning show today had a veterinarian on to talk about how dogs suffer from separation anxiety.  The vet said that some dogs get it so bad that they act out, even to the point of destroying stuff.  Then the host asked what dog owners can do to address the problem.  The Doctor, in an earnest tone, suggested that the dog owner “could try not to be away from the dog very much, and when it is necessary, to give the dog a toy to occupy him until the owner gets home.”  I bet the producers were glad they called an expert for that segment.

Generational Meal Planning

Sometimes when I'm really hungry, I'll check my food stores and find that I mostly only have chicken and chicken eggs.  I usually find a way to create a pretty yummy meal out of the two anyway, but I must admit that it makes me feel a bit uneasy.  

#fearofpoultrykarma

Lincoln's Birthday

Today we celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.  Had President Lincoln not met his untimely death at the hand of the assassin John Wilkes Booth, he would have turned 208 today.

It's a Nasal Thing

In silence except for pathetic muted sniffles, the wretched sinus sufferers shuffled, drivers licenses in hand, toward the keeper of the Sudafed.  Ear-clogged and raw-nosed, a day of unsolicited but well-intentioned netti-pot and emergenC suggestions behind them, one more dignity-destroying task awaited:  the dreaded meth lab denial signature.

Political Hats

After months of predictions from leading economists about market volatility in the wake of the election of Donald Trump, this weekend witnessed sales in the Uterus Hats industry suddenly soar and then abruptly crash in an unprecedented twenty-four hour event.

No More Mondays

Some people worry about the evolution of automation, but as a person who really likes to sleep-in, I’m looking forward to the day when my driverless car makes the morning commute to the employeeless job I used to have.

When The Meter Breaks

The power company simply loves its external meters.  Their “meter readers” can just drive by and catch your numbers from their trucks, or maybe they just send a drone over your house, who knows?  It’s really awesome.  Until the external meter breaks.  Then you get a letter advising you in BOLD PRINT that YOUR external meter, which you’ve never had anything to do with and aren’t really sure where it is or how or when it was even installed, isn’t working, and please call the office as soon as possible.  And so you call.  “Um…”, you ask, “is there something I need to do?”   “Oh, no sir…” the guy in the India (or wherever he is) call center (his name is Spencer) assures you, “but your readings for the last two months have been estimated, so it’s very important that it is repaired as soon as possible….”. 

Interestingly, you’ve been receiving congratulatory monthly notices from your power company comparing your usage to that of your neighbors.  Apparently, your estimated usage has fallen within a favorable percentage lower than the estimated usage of your neighbors, assuming that their meters are in similar states of disrepair.  Or maybe your estimated usage has compared well to the actual usage taken from your neighbors’ working external meters.  Either way, atta boy!

And so, anyway, you ask, “ok, do I have to be home for you to fix YOUR meter?”  And the Indian (it may be Burmese or Thai) call center guy, Spencer, says “oh no sir, we’ll be out next Monday.”  And so, with no further contact from Spencer or any of his team in Manila or Bangladesh or wherever they are, or any obvious visits to your home from a local power company person, YOUR meter is “fixed”.  And, also without further contact from Spencer and his team in Guam or wherever, your next bill arrives with mystery “adjustments” that add a back-billed $64 to your amount owed and no mention of a meter repair.  Of course, you are SHOCKED that the actual reading with the fixed meter didn’t result in an adjustment in your favor, and hope that it hasn’t resulted in your stellar standing in the heated neighborhood utility usage contest being in any way diminished.