Cosumne Gal

The tree job was finished by early afternoon. The fog had burned off, and it was a sunnier day than it would have been with the big tree in the way.

I guess I need to host a splitting contest now, there are a lot of big chunks out there to work on. Bob brought in a little "pie" slice of the Monterey pine to count the rings. He didn't need to do that, I planted the tree the year he was born, so I know how old it is. Whatever. Each ring is about 1 inch thick. I wonder why the rings have a definite edge between them? It must show the beginning of a new growing season? I've never thought about the Montereys having a growing season, it seems like they grow all year.

On my list of projects to do this year is move the horse shed so it doesn't block my view of the Sierras. I'm not going to reveal all my "To Do" projects on this blog. Bob might see it and decide to move out with his dad, up to the trailer park where life is easy and old ladies bake you cookies instead of ask you to do chores all the time.

The tree guys are here this morning. There are 8 of them, each with a chain saw, ready to hack at everything. I didn't get many pictures, it's foggy outside, and it's hard to stand on crutches (I discovered) and take pictures. I'm having a huge hybrid Monterey pine removed. Montereys are notorious for only living about 20 years. This one lived about 25 years and grew twice as tall before it croaked. Except for the fact that it produced more wood before it died, I don't think the hybrid is worth growing.

The reason I have a few Monterey pines is because there were some left over when they first planted Christmas trees on this property. I felt sorry for them and poked them into the ground.

A mulberry is coming down. I have two, and one is enough for the robins, jays and orioles. The one that's being removed is crowding other trees. Two medium-sized Live (evergreen) Oaks are on the list. I love oaks. We have planted lots of deciduous Valley Oaks here. I thought the Live Oaks might be interesting, the ones that grow in the dry foothills near here are often twisted and gnarled. Well, those baby trees hit our 80 feet of prime topsoil and grew like weeds. Sergio was trimming them twice a year, and they were still growing out of control. Now they're Dead Oaks, also known as firewood.

A Honey Locust is getting the mistletoe trimmed out of it. An Albizzia is having the branches trimmed back that hang over the house, and the Zelkova out by the chicken pens is having the lower branches removed so they won't damage the tops of the pens.

At least this is what I've asked to have done. I can only hope that's what happens. If they happen to chop into the wrong tree, it won't be a disaster, trees grow so fast here. Gardening is entirely different than in most places. You plant things you'd like to grow, then you spend the rest of the year pulling out the excess, along with 3 different crops of weeds. You only plant dwarf fruit trees, the regular sized ones get so tall you can't reach the fruit. You never plant anything that's invasive - no bamboo, no pampas grass, no ivy. I am constantly pulling out mulberries and privet the birds have planted. A hoe and a saw are my two most valuable gardening tools.

My mom was very good at gardening here, she enjoyed the destructive aspects of keeping out the bad stuff. I prefer to plant things. We were a good gardening team.

When the trees are out and the mess is cleaned up, I'm going to plant 3 little Amelanchiers. I was inspired by pictures of Kath's tree in England, it was a mass of white flowers in the spring. I also have a couple of variegated holly bushes to plant, since there will be a bit more sun in the yard.

I'm not outside today. I'm sitting with my foot elevated on the desk, watching out the window, hoping nothing gets mashed (the fence, the horse shed, the house).

Nothing from this entire operation will be wasted. All the wood will end up in the wood shed to heat the house. The trimmings are being chipped, and the chips will be dumped into the horse pen. After a couple of years there won't be a trace of them left. The ashes from our woodstove are composted and spread around the yard.

To Linda in Colorado, the estimate for today's work was $2000.

Tonight I'm on the couch, planted for the rest of the evening. Main goal – elevate foot. The appointment went well today, after a couple of rough spots. When I drove up to the valet area at 9:30 for my 10:30 appointment, the fellow came bounding toward my car. I opened the door and wrestled my booted foot out. He paled, backed up, and said, "I remember YOU." He wasn't wanting another round with the velcro octopus boot. At least I hope that was the reason. I had brushed my teeth.

About 20 minutes later, I finally crutched my way to the Orthopedics desk. The lady at the desk swiped my Kaiser card through the reader and said, "Do you know that your appointment isn't until 2:00?" Before I could cry, she checked with Heleta, my doctor's nurse, and said they'd fit me in. So I sat in the waiting room for a while.

It was crowded this morning, many had brought another person along, and there were small, quiet conversations happening. Suddenly there was a blood-curdling scream from onen of the examining rooms, followed by several short, desperate screams. You  might expect this from the blood drawing department, but Ortho is usually peaceful. The people in the waiting room were disturbed.

The lady behind the desk spoke up: "It's ok, they're just removing a kid's toenail." An older gentleman asked, "can't they give him anesthesia for that?" She replied, "that's what they're doing, it's very painful."

Some of the people in the waiting room turned green.

The good news for me was that the swelling had gone down a lot. The big boot thing, however, was not working at all. It just didn't fit my foot. So now I have a cast to keep the swelling down, which is not removable, and another big black boot over it to immobilize the foot. I made a secret deal with the cast fellow. I told him I needed something narrower than 6 inches so my foot would fit on the accelerator. It took him a while, but he scrounged up the parts and it works! I'm an almost happy camper.

So here I sit tonight, with my foot elevated. I have my ski jacket on, and a thick quilt over me. The ashes need to be cleared from the stove before I can build a nice fire like I had last night. I can't handle the ash can. Bob will be home from his ski trip later tonight. In the meantime, I'm cozy.

I have 2 phones in my pocket. My friend Nancy K. from North Carolina called a couple of days ago. I hadn't heard from her for 5 years, so I was excited to get a message from her. She forgot to leave her phone number, though. I'm keeping the house phone in my pocket in case she calls again. The iPhone is always there, it's my buddy.

I have my laptop computer on my lap, and 3 books. The first is a Kindle book, The Orange Eats Creeps, by Grace Krilanovich. I'd read a recommendation that the subject of the book was disturbing, but the writing was brilliant. They were right about the subject. I have read about 150 pages and haven't figured out yet what the point is, it's just about a group of young people who wander around and shoplift and take drugs and fornicate. Rarely do I fail to finish a book. It will be hard, though, to pick this one up again.

The second book is Rest for the Wicked, the final book in Naida West's trilogy. These books are about the history of the area where I live – mentions Cosumne by name several times. I enjoyed the first two, so I was looking forward to the third. Naida has an extensive knowledge of California history, but way too much of it got crammed into this book. Even knowing the people and places like I do, I was getting lost trying to keep the characters straight. The main character was fictional. She spent a lot of time wandering around and socializing with people who had actually existed, including most of the famous people who were alive at the time. It was literary name-dropping. The heroine met Butch Cassidy, Gertrude Stein, and Hiram Johnson (just to drop a few names myself).

My brother said he stuck it out and read the whole book. Now I know why. I stuck it out, too Jerry. People who were introduced in this book as children were the elder generation when my brother and I were born.

I saved the best for last. Last spring when I was in Texas, Merlene loaned me North Spirit, by Paulette Jiles. It's a true recounting of time she spent in the extreme north of Canada living with Ojibwa Indians. It was a big learning curve for her. She thought, having helped haul wood into her grandparents' home as a child, she knew enough to survive with nothing but a wood stove, a little bit of dry kindling, and a bunch of wet wood. I'm only on page 60, and I'm having a fine time reading this book. I love stories about people who are as ignorant as I am, but have a good attitude about their hard times. So far I've enjoyed the insight into lives of people who eke out a living in a place where you would never catch the rest of us. Well, maybe we'd pass through the place on a fine summer day, on our way to somewhere else, but we don't own enough clothes to be there in the winter.

Bye for now.

The owner of the tree service, a nice fellow who seems about my age, called late last night after he'd checked his messages. He was upset with himself. When he got back in his truck, after giving me my estimate, he had forgotten to write me on the calendar. He had actually sent his crew home yesterday because he thought he had no work for them.

So now my question is, am I just a singularly forgettable person? Or are people my age experiencing mental failure en masse?

I seem to be an easy customer to forget. Recall that my truck was at a garage (a good garage, known for fixing things fast and well) for 4 years without being worked on. Maybe longer, I forget. Why would you keep an old truck in your parking lot that long instead of just fixing it and getting some nice cash for the job?

I should have been a CIA agent, perhaps. I could walk into a place and do my spy stuff right out in the open, then people would just forget they ever saw me. Unfortunately I'd probably forget all the secret info before I got back to my car, just like the tree guy.

Which makes me wonder about mass mental failure. Some Monday morning are they going to find a field full of dead, retirement age people who started out for work and forgot where they were going? Like they've found flocks of dead birds? Maybe the magnetic pole IS switching. It shows up in birds who lose their way and older people who can't remember where they're supposed to be or what they're supposed to be doing. And if they could, they couldn't find their keys to get there.

Before I launch into another topic, I have an update. Thanks to the ACE bandage and sitting with my foot on my desk all day Friday, this morning the foot is back to normal size. It still hurts like heck, though, and I'm bumbling around on the crutches.
.................

How old were you when you finally felt like an "adult"? I've heard a lot of people my age say, "I still don't feel like I've grown up, like I'm a real adult."

I guess we all have an internal measure for these things. My own involves being able to deal with the everyday stuff it takes to run a household. Or in my case, a small farmhold. I pay the taxes, I buy insurance, I keep up the maintenance. These are things adults routinely do.

Paying the taxes is the only one of those things I can manage well enough to feel successful. Buying insurance involves so many options, and none of the combinations is ever what I really think I need. But I've managed OK so far. Maybe because I haven't had to actually use the insurance very often (she knocks on wood).

Maintenance is simply beyond me. When I was younger I could tackle a lot of things. I had as strong a back as anyone. These days I have to hire other people to do almost everything. But hey! Isn't that what adults do? Shop around, make arrangements, get it done?

I've been making my 2011 list of things to do. There are a few things Bob is going to do (clean the dryer vent), and quite a lot I'll have to hire out. The first big job I decided to tackle is having the trees trimmed.

So I called a company I've used before. The estimator came out a couple of weeks ago and we walked around the yard. I want to get this taken care of before the trees start to leaf out. He gave me a price and said the crew would be here at 8 a.m. on January 15, ready to get to work.

This is January 15. I checked the written estimate twice, Katherine, it says 1/15/11. I had one of the boys who stayed overnight check it before he left, too. (I have been known to show up at events a week early.)

The paper clearly says 8 A.M. It's now 1:01 P.M. What would an adult do? I called the company and left a message. I didn't use the F word, I merely inquired if there might be a problem. I don't dare leave today, they could show up and cut down the wrong trees. This doesn't seem like the sort of situation a true, responsible adult would get herself into. Is there a rule book somewhere that tells people how to grow up to become an official member of that harmonious adult world where everything is done properly and on time, and things just WORK???

I can have an AARP card, but I don't get to be an adult yet?

At one point this morning, alone in an examination room at Kaiser, I looked up at the ceiling and asked my own personal Jesus, who looks like Fonzie and has a wicked sense of humor, "Are we filming some kind of screwball reality show here?"

The early morning had been a Keystone Kops routine. I dropped the crutches every time I put them down. The phone rang as I was in the back of the house. On a good day I can barely get to the phone to answer it before the answering machine kicks in. This morning I missed it. The message was from a nurse in podiatry at Kaiser, wanting to tell me about my x-ray results. I picked up one of the 3 digital house phones to call her back. I couldn't read the numbers. Couldn't even tell what main button to push to have it function as a phone instead of an intercom.

I tried to memorize the number as I dragged myself to the kitchen to try the phone there. I evidently jumbled the number in my mind during the trip because I got a "...this number has been disconnected" message. OK, I thought. Forget the phone, I'll talk to the nurse when I get there.

Then I noticed there was already a message on the phone. When I played it, I could barely hear a very faint voice at the other end. As if someone was being smothered by pillows. I turned it up full volume and put the speaker directly to my ear. I could catch my foot doctor's name, but couldn't discern what he was saying. The next message on the queue, an old one, blasted so loud it made the rocks in my head jumble around.

I decided it wasn't worth trying to hear the doctor's message, either, because I could talk to HIM when I got to my appointment, too.

It's always a challenge to figure out what to wear to an appointment. Is there going to be a blood test? If so, you don't want to wear long sleeves. I ended up wearing a loose sweater and some jeans with straight legs. I wore the huge boot the doctor had given me last time I saw him, which had been added to my collection of 6 or 7. Every time the foot doctor does anything to my foot, he wraps it and puts it in a boot. Each time the boot is bigger, heavier, and wider than the last. And it has more velcro. The doc likes gadgets. It was a challenge to drive, with the boot on my right foot. The velcro kept sticking to the carpet in the car. I have hand-operated brakes, though, so I just kept the boot on the accelerator and my hand on the brake handle.

Got to Kaiser in plenty of time. Did valet parking. The valet pushed me in a wheelchair to the opposite end of the building to the ortho dept. and I was taken in early to see the doctor.

He looked at my foot. It was still very swollen. He poked it a couple of times and asked if it hurt. It did. He asked if it had gotten better since last Friday, or worse. Better, I said. OK, he said, the x-rays don't show any broken bones. There are 2 things it could be - an infection or Charcot. An infection wouldn't get better by itself, so it must be Charcot.

Eeeny - meenie - miny - Charcot.

Instant diagnosis, no tests.

Now, at least a year ago I told this doctor that I thought something was wrong inside my feet, and asked if I might have Charcot. My cousin Nancy has it, and I've read a bit about it. He sneered at me then, like I'd asked him one of the 3 stupidest questions on the face of the earth.

So, on one hand, a diagnosis of Charcot was sweet revenge, and I have to admit I enjoy that sort of thing.

On the other hand, this diagnosis is not something you want to hear. It's a nasty, difficult disease that hangs over your head - well, no actually over your feet. Sometimes your feet are almost OK, and other times when the disease is active, you have to stay off the affected foot for long periods of time. Months even.

The doctor started listing the paraphernalia I'd have to accumulate. I already had most of it: a wheelchair, a walker.

Doc told his nurse to order me a Bledsoe Conformer Diabetic Boot. He said it would compress the foot to take down swelling, and keep the bones from moving around. He looked at my clothes and said to his nurse, "She'll have to go home and change her pants." This Bledsoe thing would evidently not work with the straight legs on my jeans. The nurse (I don't know what he'd do without her) suggested she could get me a pair of scrubs to put on. So she did.

A while later, the cast tech came in with something that looked like a Hydroboot. That's something they used to sell for race horses. You fill it with water and put the horse's entire leg in it, then turn it on and it blows massaging bubbles. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was beyond Frankenstein and Darth Vader. It went all the way to my knee. It was huge.

This boot has 6 velcro straps and 2 other velcro closures. It took both the tech guy and I to get it closed. The velcro straps kept sticking to each other, to my sweater, to the tech's clothes, to everything they touched. It was like an octopus with velcro arms.

We didn't get the straps very tight. I asked the tech guy if that was right...isn't this supposed to be a compression device? He didn't know, he'd never installed one before. He suggested the doc would tell me everything I needed to know, and left.

Sitting there in the baggy, ugly pants, with a totally bizarre device on my leg - that's when I looked to the ceiling for confirmation this day was a bad joke.

But no. The doc said I could take the boot off at night, if I thought I needed to. (Yes, I needed to. Even if I could sleep with that thing on, the cats would stick to all the velcro parts.)

I got pushed out to the front of the building in a wheelchair and the valet brought me my car. I knew I wouldn't actually be able to drive with the thing on, it covered the accelerator and 3/4 of the brake at the same time. I figured I'd use the hand controls. But there wasn't even room for the foot with the boot on it on the floor of the driver's side. I had to take it off. The valet and I both worked to get the boot off. It took at least 10 minutes. In the car, the velcro not only stuck to our clothes, it stuck to the carpet and the seat covers too.

I got to work. I put the boot back on. I wore my baggy pants and monster boot the rest of the afternoon. Then 2 friends helped take it off so I could drive home.


Left to right: regular foot, previously huge boot, new and improved Monster Boot.

I've decided what my purpose in life is. I'm here to be the designated person who accumulates medical doo doo. Misdiagnosis? Wrong prescription? Doctors from the funny farm? It's my job to live with these so the rest of you don't have to. That's OK, I can handle that, as long as it's not serious stuff and doesn't involve needles or cutting things off. I really think, though, that someone else should be the designated accumulator of cat poo. I shouldn't have to do everything.

Cousin Nancy, I'll be talking to you. It's interesting that this disease we both have isn't genetic. Maybe it's just the Pisces factor, we take it in the feet.

I'm still dragging myself around with sore feet, and not a clue what's wrong with them. Called the doc Monday a.m., talked to the nurse. She put in an order for x-rays. I did that Monday afternoon. This is Wednesday a.m. and I haven't heard from the doc. I've called the nurse twice and she says he'll call as soon as he has a chance.

Now here's the thing. I do NOT enjoy dealing with doctors, foot doctors even less. So when there's anything wrong, I wait until there's clearly a problem because I don't want to waste their time and get the "snooty" look.

But when you're diabetic you're told over and over again to "call us as soon as you think there's a problem." Don't put it off, get in right away to see your doctor.

That's great rhetoric. I haven't figured out yet how a person accomplishes that. I've been to emergency a couple of times with infections that popped up at strange times when the doctor's office was closed. New Year's Eve a couple of years ago was one of those times. The people in emergency are so nice, but they really don't want to deal with a foot. Maybe if there were bones poking out of it, a problem they could easily diagnose. Otherwise they slap a bandaid on it and tell you to see your doctor as soon as you can.

I've tried making an emergency appointment. That got me in to see a new doctor who had no idea why what I was trying to show him was important. I could have seen my own doctor for 30 seconds and it would have been taken care of.

Once I just showed up at the office on a Monday morning. When they opened, I was there with my problem. They said, "you can't just show up here, you need to make an appointment." I said, all I need is to have my regular nurse look at this toe for 10 seconds and she can make a decision what I need to do. My regular nurse wasn't in that day. My regular doctor wouldn't be in until the afternoon. Even the sub doctor was not available. I asked what I should do. "You could go to emergency," they said. Finally, after an hour, someone managed to squeeze me in to see a doctor, another new one. He took one look at the toe and prescribed antibiotics. He said I was wise to come in. No one else thought so, I got lectures from every nurse and desk person I had contact with, they all had to tell me I couldn't just walk into that office without an appointment.

So now I've tried another way - have the x-rays taken, let the doctor look at them when he can, and have him call me. It's supposedly done all the time. Not in Janland, where no contact with a doctor can ever be simple. Where nothing involving feet ever makes sense.

...and that's not a reference to farm equipment.

A lot of the work I produce is written by committee. You know what that means? If a project needs to be printed within a month, 3 weeks and 3 days of that time will be used by the writers. And on day 18 of the 20 they'll decide they aren't happy with the art work, photos, or whatever they've been looking at for the entire month and is just a decoration on the page.

It's an unwritten rule that if you're part of a writing committee and you can't find something to rewrite every time you see a proof, you must not be doing your job.

I worked in the private printing business for 25 years or so, and things were different there. Writers turn in a product that is ready to go. They don't like to make post-production changes because they have to pay for them as AAs (author's alterations). If it's getting too close to the deadline and there are lots of AAs, they'll have to pay overtime charges too.

But not in government work.

I've been working on a project that has been fun at times, and I really like the people I've met and worked with. But one part of it was written by a committee that was no longer in existence. It had to be revised by a NEW committee. It was understandably messy. I carefully made notes on my new pdf proof wherever there was a problem that needed to be resolved, and emailed it to the writers.

I got an email back: we'll call you at 4 for a phone conference about the changes.

Nooooooooooo! No no no. I replied that it would be better if they'd take the weekend to review the changes, write them on the pages, and fax them back next week. "Phone edits don't work well for me," I said.

This is how a phone conference goes:

There are a minimum of 3 people on the other end of the line. None of them has even glanced at the material until they get on the phone. The committee "discusses" back and forth about every change, they talk about theory and training practices and usually cover at least 6 possible resolutions. I do not write any of this down, it would be 6 pages I'd have to throw away after the conference. Then one of them will say, "well, OK, let's go with that, then."

Huh? Go with what? Did they end up on the 6th plan, or go back to the 3rd one? I was trying to do actual work during the 20 stinking minutes it took them to get to this point. I might say, "so can you summarize what you want to say on this page?" The answer will be, "oh, just write something you think will work." In other words, they don't know either, and they're pushing it off on me. If they were marking their changes on paper copies, they'd have to pay more attention to what they're doing and less attention to trying to perform a brilliant role in a phone conference.

So, I was expecting to get proofs back early next week and had started to work on making new last-minute graphics to replace the ones they didn't like anymore. Let me digress. When someone asks me to do a graphic for them, I have a stock set of questions I ask to try to narrow down what the image is in their mind. There is usually no image there, and they start their sentence with, "Oh, I don't know, something...." Which means, read my mind, give me 50 choices, and maybe I'll see something I like. The other thing I often get is a piece of MS Word clip art in an email. The entire presentation has graphics that are a consistent style and color scheme (so it will appear to be professionally-produced) and now the writer wants to throw in a cartoon of a kid throwing a ball to a dog. And it's a low-resolution piece of dren from MS Word.

Back to the story. I was redrawing a graphic in Illustrator, which I despise (Freehand, I loved ye so well...). And precisely at 4 p.m. I got a call from the writing committee. They had my proofs, they hadn't read them yet (big surprise), so why didn't we go over them on the phone, page by page? (Why don't I spend the afternoon having 5 or 6 teeth pulled without anesthesia, why don't you pull out my hair a handfull at a time...)

I pantomimed to Melanie, who shares my office, that I was shooting myself in the head with my finger. "I don't have a paper copy of that document," I told the people on the phone. "This will work much better if you'll just discuss the changes yourselves and write what you would like me to do. I can't make changes from a phone discussion."

Well, that's OK, they decided. They'd write down the changes as they talked, but I should probably listen in case they had a question. An hour. It took an hour. I considered ending my life with an X-Acto knife. It doesn't puncture deep enough for a mortal wound. It was too dull (haven't changed the blade in 3 years) to slash a vein, I could probably chew through a vein quicker. I considered that.

Because we have the technology, phone conferences are a big deal these days. As are video conferences (which are 3 times worse because you can't pantomime choking yourself as you listen). People in management positions are expected to know how to conduct themselves on both. That probably works in the idea stage of a project, but not so well with production issues.

Aside from work this week, I had to survive a 1-day cold. I scarcely ever get a cold, never get the flu and stuff like that. After I coughed and sneezed and went through a few Kleenex, I decided I actually did have a cold. It was no big deal, just annoying and gone as quickly as it blew in. Tuesday I woke up with a swollen left foot, and it actually hurt. I have neuropathy, nothing ever hurts. The next day it was gone. Thursday, however, I woke up with a stiff ankle and very painful right foot. I don't have a clue why. If there's still a problem next week I'll try to get an appointment. But you know how that is, it's like taking your car in when it's making a "noise." When you get to the mechanic it's not doing that anymore.

Cousin Ken, I remembered your bout with gout, and this seems similar, but I don't do alcohol of any kind, nor do I eat anything that might trigger it. I can sympathize now, however.

So today I'm stumbling around. The cane I keep next to my bed for self defense and killing raccoons is coming in handy. I need to be moving faster, though, to get all the chores done that I put off when I had to work longer hours this past week. I didn't take my Wednesday off. Most of the chores are outside things: feeding animals, talking to the tree guy about taking out trees. That isn't fun with a cane, it slips in the mud.

It's always some damn thing, isn't it?

I got up before dawn this morning to take two Ancona cockerels to the auction, which is 30 miles away. The three cockerels who had grown up together were just beginning to fight, and had to be separated. I don't have accommodations for single adult birds, nor do I need more than one Ancona cockerel, so the sale was the only logical recourse. I say this to myself, trying to justify the elimination of birds that I so carefully raised from their babyhood.

On the way home I stopped for breakfast at an iHop. This restaurant chain has had the "i" before its name since the days before the internet. I wonder if the younger generation thinks it has wifi? My omelet there wasn't very good. I remembered that iHop puts pancake batter in its omelets. They claim it's a marvelous improvement, but all it does is make the omelets cheaper to produce. It also makes them tasteless and dry. Blah. Even I can make a better omelet, and probably should have gone home and done so.

There aren't many stores open on Sunday at the crack of dawn. I found a Rite Aid pharmacy, though, and stopped to buy a Sunday paper so I'd have something to start the woodstove fire. Right inside the door there were boxes of firestarter blocks! I read the directions: just pile some wood over a block and light it. No need to use paper or old cereal boxes, like I do. So I bought a box of blocks for the fire and a paper to read. There were half-off sales on Christmas items, and some samples of lip balm to try. I smeared a sample on my lips, bought some decorations and a few more small items and I was ready to check out.

The fellow at the register was very kind, but looked down or away all the time I was talking to him. I guessed he must be shy and thought "he probably isn't a regular clerk, he probably works in the back and they only have him check at the crack of dawn on Sunday when there aren't many customers."

The house was cold when I got home. I immediately ripped open the firestarter box. I piled a few pieces of kindling on top of a block and used a wooden match to start it on fire. Three matches later, I still couldn't get the block to start, and had actually singed the end off my fingernail. Really, it got all crunchy and just crumbled away. Then I took some newspaper and an old cereal box, and forced them under the block. The fire from the paper worked its way past the block and lighted the kindling. The kindling burned for quite a while before the block under it caught on fire. They must have soaked that sawdust block in fire retardant.

What is the sense of selling crap that doesn't begin to work the way it's supposed to?

After the fire fiasco, John showed up to use the computer and check on his jury duty status. He was here for over an hour and we talked quite a bit. When he left, I took my other small drugstore purchases to the bathroom to put them away. As I glanced in the mirror, I was interested to see a huge pink smudge around my lips, like a 3 year old might get from sucking on a popsicle. The lip balm had melted my lipstick and spread it all over my face, halfway to my nose, onto both cheeks, and down my chin. The two guys I'd talked to who had seen it - John and the store clerk - hadn't said a word about it.

What is it with guys? Another female who you don't even know will tell you if there are a couple of molecules of spinach stuck to your teeth (why does spinach do that?) or if the tag to your shirt is hanging out. Guys seem to pride themselves on not saying anything. There is an exception: women sometimes hesitate to tell a fellow they don't know that his pants are unzipped, but that's understandable. Some ladies are exceedingly shy and some might be hoping for a peek.

Things That Do Work

I found an incredibly cheap cat bed at Rite Aid. It looks like George. Velcro loved it right away.


Charley was disappointed that it only sleeps one. He'll have to wait his turn. George hasn't seen it yet, he's asleep on my bed on top of the clean laundry.