One out of One Hundred Twenty Five

The other day at my new job, I was handed a three-ring binder that contained 125 pages. I was told to read it. It was for my own good. I know it’s important because it looks very official and the title is “MAWSS Safety Rules Handbook”. I have to admit that it doesn’t seem much like a HANDBOOK. To me, a handbook speaks of a much smaller thing. You know? Something a little less bulky. Something you might be able to carry in your pocket or stuff into your purse. At any rate, I opened the tome and began reading the letter in the front that told me that I was important enough that they wanted to keep me safe. Just like a mama might do. Then on the 2nd page, also like a mama, there was a little lecture about there being no such thing as fate and that accidents were avoidable. There were some general safety rules on pages 3 through 7, but after that I got pretty confused. I trudged on though, since it was my very safety at stake! I’m happy to say that I’m sure I’ll be safe if I ever find myself welding, using an axe, a hatchet or a concrete mixer. I now know the standard hand signals for overhead, crawler, locomotive and truck boom cranes. The only thing I can’t figure out is what any of those things are. But, no fear! If I can figure out which is which, I can signal them properly and avoid danger!

When I got to page 114, the title made me smile. “Office Safety” is what it said. Now, THAT was something that seemed familiar. And I must say that number 7 made me shake my head in agreement. “Do not lick envelopes; their edges may cut your tongue.”

I knooooow, right?

We HATES them

I try pretty hard to be a nice person. Well, at least I try pretty hard NOT to be a mean person. But right now I'm am thinking along the lines of murder. Let me explain.

I planted a pretend garden this year, all in pots. I started with tomatoes and have since added some squash and zucchini and even some beans! It's fun. I'm feeling my green thumbs and I like it. I love going out every morning and seeing the progress. I get so excited to see my tomatoes getting bigger and a few days ago, to see the first one getting a little pink. I could easily imagine the day I would be able to pick it and make a tomato sandwich with my first home grown tomato. I could almost taste it.

BUT...and you KNEW there was going to be a BUT in here, I went out yesterday to check on my precious tomato's progress and guess where it was? In the mouth of my dog, being chewed in a very irreverent manner. After squirting him with the water hose and telling him off, nearly through tears, I inspected the plants and found a slightly chewed green tomato still hanging on the plant, intact with teeth marks. Squirrels. It's squirrels. There are droves of them here and I feel very outnumbered. The dog was probably not the one who swiped it, but he sure took pleasure in finishing off the job begun by the giant rats with bushy tails. We hates them.

And today, we hates them even more. Two more tomatoes GONE. I'm so sad. I'm so injured. They have robbed me of the joy of the harvest and I will have to kill them all. I don't really want them to suffer, but I do want them dead. And, after their demise I plan to hang them up along the fence by their evil fuzzy tails, one after the other, as a warning to their neighbors and friends that this is not the yard they want to hang around. And what about this "dog" of mine? What kind of dog allows such behavior right under his nose in his very own backyard? My dog. That's who. I realize that he's getting old, but I just can't feel like making excuses for him. I will allow him to live, but buddy, he has been TOLD. He better step up the guard dog duties and quit taking bribes or I'm sending him to a place where they won't let him sleep inside in a cool laundry room at night.

We hates them.

This is the dog I have. A dog of leisure.



The is the dog I need. Squirrel killer extraordinaire.

Bats in the Belfry

I was flipping through a Plow and Hearth catalogue and came across a Bat House. This catalogue is just chock-full of interesting and mostly useless information. According to them, a single bat consumes up to 3,000 insects every night. Now in LA (Lower Alabama) I’ve seen mosquitoes grow to be 5” long and weigh up to half a pound. I’m sure you don’t believe that, but I know it to be true. I'm also pretty sure that my backyard is the playground for at least 3,000 of these monsters and probably more. Anyway, this bat house will hold approximately 20 bats, so for $39.95 plus shipping and handling, I feel sure my back yard mosquito problem could be solved. The only draw back is that I just don't love bats. There doesn't seem to be anything even remotely appealing about them. They are leathery, toothy, hairy and scary. I’m terrified of a bat flying too close to my head because when I was about 8 or so, my friend told me that I better watch out, because she heard they had been known to swoop down pretty low and could accidentally get caught in a person's hair. Unfortunately, she told me this on the night we were standing outside at dusk, watching a group of bats catching their dinner and even more unfortunately, I had a lot of long hair. I was afraid. I wasn’t paralyzed with fear however, because I took immediate action by zigzagging my way back to the house with my head bent down and my arms covering my hair. Everybody knows a moving target is harder to hit. My target was the front door. I imagined sitting at the kitchen table while my Mom used the "good hair cutting scissors" to extricate this writhing bat from my long hair as it dug its claws into my scalp. Maybe I’ll just stick with the Citronella candles.


p.s. Please don't ask me why I have a Plow and Hearth catalogue because I have no idea. Also, it is of interest that I found out that chock-full is a hyphenated word and that the word "catalogue" can also be spelled "catalog", but apparently only within the confines of the borders of the USA. You learn something new every day.

Cows are not my friend

So, my long lost friend at the magic website posted a picture of a cow today (*shudder*). It reminded me of a fishing trip long, long ago, when my Daddy took me to a catfish pond at feeding time, handed me a cane pole and let me throw in my line. Immediate success is what happened, and it happened over and over again. That ruined me for fishing from that day forward. Any time I had to sit and wait more than a minute or so for the little cork to get pulled under, I was underwhelmed. It wasn't fun sitting in the hot sun, getting nibbled by bugs, if you couldn't pull in a fish every minute or so. Although this picture is not me, but my daughter, it is a dadgum close duplicate of that day including Daddy in the background.

Anyway, the cow. The cow picture reminded me of how much I dislike cows. On my way through the pasture, going to that pond, I had to watch my step. What I witnessed that day was simply horrific. I figured that those huge piles of manure could only come from a monstrous sized beast and sure enough when I got close enough to one, all I could think about was getting away from it. I'm not sure what I thought it might do to me. Bite me? Step on me? Fall on me? I had heard the words "cow tipping" at some point in my young life. Could they actually tip over and FALL on you? They were HUGE. You would surely perish. Cows were obviously a menace.


Although I do love a steak or a really good hamburger, I simply haven't liked the live-type cows since that day. If we are driving and pass a pasture full of cows, I just try not to look. My friend at the magic website assures me that cows are friendly and she even feeds them by hand. I think that's ludicrous. I told her I was pretty sure that cows eat people. She denied it. I'm personally not getting close enough to find out.

Fez, Fedora, Sombrero, Chapeau

Today at lunch, my mama told my children that when I was a toddler I loved to put stuff on my head. Milk, for example. I don't remember this being the case, but they got a big kick out of the revelation. I'm sure the pouring of the milk over my head was VERY early on. I'm also certain that I would have learned after the first time not to do it again, but mama says I did it more than once. But milk was not really what she was talking about. It was hat-type objects. I am impressed indeed by the number of pictures in the old albums where I actually AM sporting something on my head. A pot. A colander. A bonnet. She could be telling the truth. And even now, I have the deep desire to be a hat wearer. I always, always want to try on the fancy hats at Dillard's, but my mama told me long ago that you just never have any idea WHO might have put that on their head before you and I'm just too scared. In my weakest moments, when I give in and do it anyway, I'm always very disappointed because it turns out that I just don't look good in a hat. Maybe when I'm old and feeble and don't care what anybody thinks anymore, I'll just go around wearing a hat all the time. Like those ladies in the red hat society. Now THAT is just....not right. First of all purple and red don't go together. I don't care how old you are, they just don't. Secondly, some of those get-ups...don't get me started. My mama joined this little club at some point last year and after I heard some of the stories about the official rules concerning the wearing of flowers versus hats and some of the nit picky yuck that they were spouting, I told my mama that life was too precious to be hanging around such evil old women and gave her my blessing to quit it post haste. No, I won't be a red hat society lady in my old age, but I think I will wear hats. Just because. I won't be the cat lady. I'll be the hat lady.

But then again, my mother could have been talking about my sister. She did introduce me the other day as her daughter "sister's name". And she called me that same name today when we were together. I don't care. I'm still wearing hats.



Disclaimer: No members of the red hat society were harmed during the writing of this blog post. If you are offended in any way by the writer's blatant dislike of the red hat society, she apologizes profusely and indicates here that she harbors no ill will toward those wearing red and purple together, but would never do it herself. Please keep your arms, legs, hands, feet and head inside the blog at all times and exit to the right when the blog is over. Thank you.

New House!

I discovered something horrible this morning as I was straightening up the den. I leaned down to pick up a CD that was on the floor in front of the entertainment center and this is what I saw:


In my defense, I have to say that this particular area is one that I spend NO time in. I don't watch TV or play video games and I can't even work the danged DVD player. The only reason I even SAW this message was because I was CLEANING UP. But, I admit that I have become immune to dust. I can't even SEE it anymore unless somebody writes me a message in it. I guess as the kids got big enough not to relieve their teething pain by chewing the furniture and understood that eating things off the floor wasn't a great idea, I slowly starting putting on my blinders. Now that my work load has decreased drastically, I'm seeing things all over this house that need my desperate attention. My floors are kind of gross. My walls need repainting. And just recently, Dirty Larry bought a new piece of luggage big enough to house two small people and I have no where to put it. It doesn't fit anywhere but right in the center of any given room, and that's where it has been for the last week or so.

So, I guess what I'm saying is... This house is dirty and needs work, plus we have new luggage so logically, we need a new house....you know....to house the luggage. A clean house to house the luggage.

Right.

Also. Not really.

Concentrating on asphalt

In my present situation, I find myself on the verge of tears nearly all the time. I've always been one to cry easily, just because it feels good, but lately, I'm having an even harder time controlling it than usual. I've never felt the effects of a big change so deeply before. A blog friend, JFZ, wrote a note at the magic website yesterday. Go read it here. It speaks to me of looking on the bright side. Being happy for the little things even when the big things are looming. Taking what could be a bad thing and turning it into something good. Then at church this morning, I heard the guest speaker talk to me about happiness. He used an illustration about teaching his daughter to ride a bike. She had a huge parking lot to practice on. Smooth acres of asphalt. He told her that she was so lucky to have this smooth surface and that when he was learning, he had nothing but gravel. But she pointed to the edge of the parking lot and brought to his attention, a pole. He told her not to worry about that pole, that she had this whole huge parking lot to ride in! She was insistent that the pole was a problem and he was insistent that it wasn't. Long story short, she ran into the pole. She said, "I TOLD you I was going to hit it!" He said, "That's because you were FOCUSING on the pole!" I'm here to tell you that your friend Beej is a pole hitter. I desperately want to be more diligently focused on the asphalt. God is so good to me, especially when I consider how very undeserving I am. I need to try harder to find the joy.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

The Beej suddenly finds herself with lots of time on her hands. How quickly things can change. My normally secure and totally fulfilling (cough...hack) job seems to be not so secure at the moment. Change happens. I'm pretty certain that I still have a job, it's just less of the same job, which means less money and less ability for me to continue unless I supplement my income elsewhere. In my line of work, it should be relatively easy to just go out and find another account to replace what will be missing, but the bottom line truth is that I just don't want to. I'm very tired of this corner where I have been sitting for 11 years, smashed against the closet door, typing away and letting the government take a whopping chunk of my profit because I am self employed. This job served a noble purpose. I have been able to stay home with my kids. I am thankful...and so ready to move on. So, I will search the highways and byways and I will seek the next thing (while holding on to this thing I still have as long as possible). This could be exciting or scary. I'm hoping that exciting wins that contest.

Luckily, I can do anything.

Seriously.

Foul! Foul! I call FOUL!!

I just need to talk about Scrabble. What better audience than this one? (probably literally one)

So there is this person. I will not name any names but their initials are T.H.E.D.E.V.I.L. We have played Scrabble together for quite some time. We had a little hiatus when this person was away from the desk for a couple of months, but when they returned, I started a fresh list, showing who won and who lost each and every game. It was important to me because I am insane and I needed to win more than I lost and the obsessive/compulsive portion of my brain needed desperately to keep a record separate from my other Scrabble opponents. I'm posting a picture here of my little list, started on an Amitiza note pad, which, by the way was free, given to me by a friendly drug rep.
When the first page got full, I taped another page to it. If you can tell at all, down at about the 16th game, when the score was 12 to 4 in my favor, T.H.E.D.E.V.I.L. started naming the games with the score, but started at 7 to 0. Beej 7 and T.H.E.D.E.V.I.L. 0. What the what?? No, no, no. I don't think so. I told this person that was incorrect. They did not care about my thoughts in the least. I was mortified and still am.

All of this was to say that I need to add a new page to my list, but the more I think about it, the more I think I should just bow out gracefully. It's making me mean and angry. I don't think I'm normally a mean and angry person. On the other hand, maybe it's building character. But hey, I feel like I have plenty of character without being called a heifer or being forced to look at a score that I know in my heart of hearts is just baloney. Madness!

"What to do? What to do?" she said as she taped another page to the bottom of the list and started drawing lines. I'll guess I'll just go ahead and fill in this next line with the name of the new game T.H.E.D.E.V.I.L. just started. "Gonna Catch Up 15-11" (my big fat hiney! it's 21-14!).

(Click the pic for a big version. I did erase some stuff to keep the identity of T.H.E.D.E.V.I.L. a secret.)

February Miracles in the Deep Deep South

The south was laughed at this week. People looked to us and snickered about how pathetic it is to shut down everything for a little snow. I'm aware that nearly every state north of me (there are none south of me) sees snow on occasion and may even find it annoying or mundane. I get it. But realize that we don't even own winter coats down here. There is just no need. How do you drive when there is ice on the road? We have no idea. Why? Because it NEVER gets cold enough for any ice to form on our roads. Again, there is just no need for snow chains or lessons about wintry road conditions.


But let me tell you MY side. Friday morning I got to see my children's faces light up as they saw the very first snow they have ever seen in their lives. I got to walk out in it with them and experience it with them. It was nothing less than pure magic. We got nearly NO accumulation. There were no snowmen, no snow angels and no snow ice cream. It didn't last but a few hours, but those few hours were miraculous and beautiful and memorable. I have experienced snow only two other times in my 43 years. Once in high school in Pearl, Mississippi and once before I had kids in Meridian, Mississippi. Seeing it fall with my kids was like introducing them to an old friend. Point and laugh if you must, but also be aware that something mysterious and otherworldly happened here on Friday. No, they can't take that away from me.