I haven’t any good stories for you, or even bad stories. Thus I haven’t written a new post in quite a while. I hope you enjoy the short thoughts and events in this post.
I’m not the world’s best businesswoman. Having not yet owned my own business makes it more difficult. I’ve seen and experienced several things that make me wonder how could I know this and they do not. I was behind a business van in traffic. On the back of the van it had the business slogan and phone number, great graphics, but not the name of the business. Seriously, why make it hard to know what business you’re promoting? Along the same vein, there was a Facebook ad touting that a bar was under new ownership, come on out!, great drink specials, etc. No where anywhere was the address. Seriously? Why make it hard to find you? Several times I have had occasion to purchase a glass of wine at an establishment. The wine was $9. I usually pay cash (yes, people still use cash) and usually with a $20. The bartenders each gave me a $10 and a $1 back. Seriously? You’re just begging for a $1 tip. Give a $5 and 6 ones. You’ll definitely get a better tip.
Shout out to Clear Blue pregnancy tests. It’s the first ads to show females waiting for a pregnancy test result hoping it’s negative.
Also shout out to the “feminine hygiene” product company showing pads with red liquid instead of blue. Heaven forbid if we see actual pads and tampons with red liquid. I heard a story about a girl who was shocked when she got her period for the first time and it was red not blue.
I’ve mentioned before that I love sports, and I like football more than any other sport. I have a love/dislike (hate is a very strong word) relationship with the Super Bowl. I love the game. I dislike that it means no football for 7 months. I dislike that it means soon it will start getting hotter and hotter in Tucson. I do not like summers here. If I could spend mid- June til mid-September in the northeast with family and friends or traveling I would be so much happier.
Speaking of the northeast, I happened to be in Boston when hurricane Sandy hit. It wasn’t too bad in Boston, but we didn’t know that when we went for supplies. By supplies I mean we hit the liquor store before it closed up. Did we get any food or water? Nope. Batteries, candles, fill the car with gas? Nuh uh. Just liquor and beer. As it turns out we wouldn’t have needed those other things anyway. Heck, we only lost DirectTV for a few seconds.
Do we really need a butt crack deodorant?
I used to have a husky mix dog, and I usually walked her at night because it wasn’t so hot. Also because I used to be a night owl and didn’t get up early enough to walk her 1st thing in the morning. I saw things at night many people don’t see. One that stands out was a night during Christmas time. We lived in a townhouse on the west side in the foothills of the Tucson Mountains. We were walking in a part of the neighborhood where the houses were a little far apart, maybe 2-3 houses per acre. All of a sudden I hear people running. It’s like 11pm. Who the hell is running that late? Then 2 teenage boys came into view. Each one had a reindeer under their arm, the end of the light cord bouncing on the ground behind them. I don’t know if it was just a prank, but they had stolen 2 of the light up yard reindeer that had been decorating a neighbor’s front yard. They disappeared into the night.
We had other adventures in that neighborhood. There were some close encounters with two different herds of Javelina, a guy playing guitar in his driveway during a power outage, I stepped on a large scorpion in my kitchen. Thank goodness I always wear shoes for just that reason. There are too many critters in the desert that can hurt you: scorpions, black widow and brown recluse spiders, goats head thorns, countless cacti with painful thirns. I digress… And then there was the night of rattlesnakes. The townhouse in which I was living was situated between two washes. One evening I was walking on the end of the complex closest to the smaller of the two washes. I heard a rattling noise. At first I thought an animal was rustling the very dry brush that lined the wash. When I looked closer it was a very large rattlesnake sounding the alarm with his tail at a cat that emerged from the brush. Oof. Later that night I was walking my dog when we came upon a large rattlesnake that had been killed by a vehicle. Oof, but okay it’s a dead one. We walked down into a different part of the neighborhood and came across several brand new baby rattlesnakes. Oh hell no. I was done. I ended our walk early and we went home.
For dogs, barking at people who walk by almost always works.
Speaking of barking dogs, one of my favorite things is dogs in cars with their heads out of the window. I like it even more when they bark at other dogs as they pass by. On my drive to work one day I was behind a car with a dog in the back seat on the driver’s side. It had it’s head out of the window, but was pretty calm. Then the dog moved to the back passenger window and started barking. I looked around for another dog maybe being walked but there was none. There weren’t any cars on that side. Then I realized it was barking at it’s own reflection in the passenger side mirror! I laughed the rest of the way to work and chuckled about it periodically throughout the morning.
I love the Spring Mix salad, but I swear someone at a restaurant was running out of salad fixins so they went and pulled weeds and added them to red leaf lettuce. Viola! Salad.
It’s been more than a year since my brother died. I’m still working on wrapping up his estate. I sold the townhouse he shared with my dad. Before it was sold I of course had to get everything out of there. One day I was looking through stuff and found an old round cookie tin. By this time I was so tired of going through my dad and brother’s stuff that I almost just tossed it without looking in it. I’m so glad I didn’t do that. Inside was a few things my dad had saved: a picture of my mom who died in 1982, her whistle she used when she was an elementary school teacher, and he saved the hair from her hairbrush in a plastic baggie. The hair still smelled like her. I was stunned that he saved it, and so incredibly grateful. I’ve missed my mother every single day for 41 years and that’s the closest I’ve been to her in all that time. What an incredible gift.
One of the things I lost when I sold the townhouse was my dad’s washer and dryer. When I bought my house it had the washer/dryer hookups outside. Since I spent so much time at my dad’s, it was easy to do laundry there and I didn’t need my own. Once I sold the townhouse I finally had to get a washer and dryer. The problem, and one reason I didn’t do it until now, was that although they have hookups, there was no drain installed for the washer. The water was supposed to just drain onto the ground. Uh, no. I had a plumber at my house for something else so I asked him about it. He said it would be cost prohibitive and they’d have to cut into my existing pipes. Uh no. So I did some research (as I am wont to do) and learned that the best thing to do is run the drain hose to a rain barrel and run a hose from the barrel to water my trees and such. You can’t just attach a garden hose to the drain which was my first thought. A standard hose can’t handle the volume of water that drains from the washer. The drain hose that comes with the washer install was about 4 feet too short. Of course it was. So I thought I’ll just put in a longer hose. Nope, it would have to be done inside the washing machine and I wasn’t going to do that. Okay, so I’m thinking there has to be a way to extend the existing hose. More research and yes! I got a drain hose extender, installed it myself and connected it to the rain barrel I got. It already had a spigot so I attached a garden hose and Viola! As long as I use a natural detergent, which I had already switched to anyway, I can water my trees with the washing machine. It worked perfectly except for one thing: the spigot that came with the barrel was too high up the barrel for the water to completely drain. So I got another spigot made specifically for barrels, drilled the necessary lower hole and installed it myself. Now it works perfectly. I was very pleased with myself. Thank you dad for raising a handy daughter