Monday, March 31, 2014

Run! It is a Salesman!


I want a new couch; a reclining new couch. In the last 2.5 years I have had 4 couches. Excess you say? “Test driving” I say. The problem is exactly that – you cannot test drive a couch. Is it comfortable for more than 5 minutes? Does it really fit where I want to put it? Can the dog jump up on it? Do the cats wish to destroy it? If a flock of seagulls invaded your house and nested on it, could it be cleaned? (Yes, that can happen) And most importantly – can you and your husband rub each other’s feet comfortably on it. Oh, you may think those questions can be answered easily – but they cannot by just looking at the couches in the store, my friend, they cannot. Thus the 4 couches.

Couch #4, while looking nice, is the most uncomfortable of all and can only be compared to cavemen using rocks as seating implements. So last Saturday my kids (who were home visiting and constantly reminding me of just how uncomfortable this rock – I mean couch - was) and I went to the furniture store and we found a couch. A couch that completely reclined! The entire couch! It was great! But I wanted my husband to sit on it. So off to the furniture store he & I went this Saturday. This is how it played out.

Opening Scene:

Husband & Wife enter furniture store stage left. Wife steers husband to couch of her dreams. Husband seats himself on couch. Salesman enters stage right.

Salesman: Hello! My name is Overzealous, Much too talky, Too excited, (why doesn’t he just shut up) Salesman! Welcome to Turnaround Furniture! And you are…

Husband: Husband and this is my wife, Wife.

Salesman: What have you come to Turnaround Furniture to look for today?

Wife: I came to show my husband this couch. My kids & I came last week and sat on it and I wanted my husband to see it before I bought it.

Salesman: So living room furniture?

Wife: No, THIS couch. (Wife repeats prior statement)

Salesman: This is an Ashey couch. It isn’t very well made. You don’t want this couch.

Wife: Well, actually I do.

Salesman: Let me show you how this couch is made. Ashey couches are made of particle board and elastic bands. Let me show you another brand that is better constructed.

Salesman walks off stage right to find his “better construction” visual aid.

Husband & Wife turn and walk off stage left and out the door headed to their well-constructed car.

End Scene

I really did want that couch….but I cannot abide stupid.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Do It For Denmark?

I don't normally like to post anything but my own thoughts. Today I am posting this. I have no thoughts, I have no words...

Sit Back and watch:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/03/27/295245957/do-it-for-denmark-video-urges-danes-to-go-all-the-way

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Anagram Again!


Help me!! I can’t stop myself…

WWildly

EEnjoying

DDoing

NNothing.

EEssentially

S Starting to

D Daydream

A About

Y You!

You are being mind-stalked. You have been warned.

OR……………….

WWhen

EEveryone

DDances

NNaked

E Every

S Strange

D Dip

A Alleviates

Y Yawning

Don’t believe me?? Try it. I wouldn’t lie to you....…or would I...

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Tuesday


This is my Tuesday:

T – THOROUGHLY

U – UNINTERESTING & an

E – ENDLESS         

S – STREAM of

D – DEBILITATING 

A – A-HOLES         

Y – YAMMERING

Oh, how wish they had just been Yodeling…

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Psycho - or - PSYCHO


My morning routine is pretty standard. I awake before anyone else (only my husband now) in the house to enjoy relative peace and quiet for a few blissful moments before the rest of the day buts in. But, don’t picture the serene awakening that comes from having no babies, or sirens, or roosters, or ear piercing beeping from an alarm clock. I have none of those anymore, so the initial opening of my eyes should be as peaceful as a clear mountain morning. But it is not. I have this. Picture if you will, 3 cats and a dog, pawing, jumping, purring, scratching, playing, snoring, or just plain old bringing their latest kill on the bed for you to marvel at, awakening. Yes, there have been live & dead mice and lizards on my bed, in my face at 5:30 a.m. When one of those morning “presents” is a snake, then we may have to talk “outside living” for my lovelies. But I am getting off track.

After coffee and giving morning treats to those wild beasts, it is time for a shower. Aside from a cat or 2 always staring at me when I get out of the shower it is usually uneventful. This morning, it took a turn toward the dark side. The - OMG - a serial killer or escaped convict is in my house and I am doomed - turn. Why you ask? Oh goody, I hoped you would ask.

I turned off the water and grabbed my towel and heard a small tinkling sound. The song was London Bridge. Just a few notes of it, but definitely London Bridge. A small chime sound. But we have no chimes! It sounded like the background music a slasher film has just before the slasher kills his next victim. I peer through the shower door. No cats. OMG! He has already killed my babies!!!

Then I heard another noise coming from the kitchen. Mother of God! The chime sound WASN’T my imagination. It is official, I am a dead woman. What will my children say? What will they do when they receive the news that their mother was found dead in the bathroom and their father was found murdered in his bed? Oh the carnage! The loss of human life!!

I need to sneak out of this shower trap and close & lock the bathroom door!! I wonder if the kids will know where to find the life insurance information. I wonder about the grandchildren I will miss. I wonder if the children will fight over the train lamp. Which one will have to tell my aging mother??!! I wonder why I lived this long, only to go out in such a brutal and senseless manner. Why didn’t I buy that FJ Cruiser when I had the chance???!! Why don’t I keep my cell phone in the bedroom?

More noise snaps me from my thoughts. What will I do, what will I do…

Grabbing my only weapon – a large, heavy bottle of shampoo, I sneak toward the door. I know you are asking why I am sneaking when obviously the killer knows I was in the shower – but just go with me here. You never think rationally when you are clearly almost murdered.

It was then I heard it. The pop, sploosh of a coke can open. Really?? The murderer is so brazen that he takes time to drink a coke? My poor, sweet husband must already been dispatched. No one to help me now. Ok, let’s get this over with. I bravely walk into the hall and there he is. MY HUSBAND!!

He got up early to take the motorcycle to the shop. Did he bother to tell me? Nope.

Clearly, my life will have to flash before my eyes another day – but he – my husband – better watch his back tonight…


Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Ten Statements or Questions Someone Never Questions You Further About


Ten Statements or Questions Someone Never Questions You Further About:
 

1.       I won’t be joining you today; I am having “bathroom issues.”
 

2.       You overpaid us! We are issuing you a refund today!
 

3.       If I tell you a lie, but then tell you I am telling you a lie, but then tell you I was only kidding that the original lie was the truth, would you know if I was lying or not?
 

4.       You don’t look a day over 18!
 

5.       No, we don’t mind if you nap at work, but please refrain from sending pictures of yourself napping naked to other employees. If you do it again, we will have to write you up. Read your policy manual please.
 

6.       If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. All I want to know is why he would do that?
 

7.       Extra Credit Question: Describe the universe. Give 2 examples.
 

8.       No seriously, the vomit was projectile! I have a picture!
 

9.       Are you really as stupid as your question indicates you are?
 

10.   If a chicken and a ½ lays an egg and a ½ in a day and a ½, how long will it take a centipede with a wooden leg to kick the seeds out of a dill pickle. None, because peanut butter doesn’t come in spray cans.
 
Please feel free to add your own. :)

Friday, March 14, 2014

Memories! - AND Memories? Part Deux

This is an addendum to my previous blog :

It is 10:30 pm on a Friday night. I had cleaned out the refrigerator of old home cooked meals from last week when my son was home. One meal was meatloaf and scalloped potatoes; one of my favorites. The Corelle casserole dish I used to make the scalloped potatoes was one I was given as a present at my original wedding. It was a present from Uncle Doyle. I met the man exactly once in my whole life. He was my sister's uncle by marriage, so no real relation to me. But from that one meeting and the stories I had heard - I loved the man, and he gave me a present just because I was related to his niece-in-law. I didn't even get presents from REAL relatives at my original wedding. But HE came and gave me one - no reason, no invitation. I think he was just that nice. I smile even when I just think of his name. He is long gone, but his memory is not.

When my original marriage imploded, I got rid of everything – with the exception of the casserole dish from Uncle Doyle. I could not part with it. I loved this man I did not know. I don’t know why I am so attached to him. It just is one of those things you accept as a part of you.

So, I was washing the dish tonight thinking of Uncle Doyle. Wondering if I would be able to get to know him in heaven; wondering if my sister’s family even knew I had this attachment.  Did it matter?

No, indeed it doesn't, because this is MY memory and I revel in it every time I use this dish.


Thank you Uncle Doyle. Love you! I can’t wait to get to know you sometime!

Memories! - And - Memories?


I always find it interesting how siblings can grow up in the same home, with the same parents, doing mostly the same things, at the same time and yet not have the same memories! Sure, sure, there are the things EVERYONE in the family remembers because whatever happened was monumental or life changing, but the little day to day things, that possibly happened repeatedly, are sometimes not remembered by all and maybe even only by one.

Take the insurance man. Apparently he came to our house every month to collect his blood money and I don’t remember a thing about him. I am not saying that I just don’t remember his face, (so if I was ever asked to pick him out of a line up in the event that he had become a criminal and I was the only person on the planet that could identify him, he would be able to continue on his felony rampage unstopped because of my less than stellar memory), I mean I don’t remember that he existed! He could be the Invisible Man for all I know. YET, my sister has a story about him, his repeated visits, and our cap gun (a metal, very real looking fake gun) that made me laugh out loud. But until she blogged it, I had no idea it happened or that he existed. (http://gracefulgrandma.blogspot.com)
I remember the milk man – the goat milk, milk man. Oh my gag. My mother thought I was the scrawny one and forced (she loved to impose her will on the weaker humans she made) me to drink the nastiest milk ever milked into existence. That nasty elixir tasted like I was downing the goat in its entirety! Hair, hooves, insides, outsides, and upsides down! I still roll my eyes and literally cringe when I think of having to drink that. Mom’s sage advice for drinking? Hold your nose. Negative. Make chocolate goats milk. Negative #2. That just tasted like you dipped the poor beast in Hershey syrup before you tried to ingest his/her essence – even if you held your nose. Or crossed your eyes, or twisted your legs, or bent in half. NOTHING helped trying to swill down the most vile liquid known to man.

Then there is the Charles Chip man. Oh how I loved seeing that truck stop outside our house. If you have never eaten potato chips from a can of Charles Chips, you have not lived. Seriously. I believe God himself invented and ate those chips and wanted humans to know the pure joy of crunching His heavenly creation.
 That is it. That is all I remember in the parade of salesman visiting our humble abode. I am sure there was the occasional vacuum cleaner sales man, or Watkins man, or Avon representative. But I don’t remember them. I know they existed at the time and that is where my memory banks end. My sister – remembers them all.
I wonder if she remembers when I stole her – never mind. No sense bringing THAT up!!! And if you talk to her, don’t mention the knife either…


P.S. Read about the insurance man in her blog: http://gracefulgrandma.blogspot.com/. It is well worth your time!!