I'm Off Work The Rest of This Week

Wow, I've been really busy lately!  

I keep forgetting to mention that Lilly was in a Spelling Bee several weeks ago, and the group of kids that were in the Bee got their picture put in the paper.  You can see Lilly pretty easily because she always wears the warm knit hat that I got her this past Christmas:

Lilly didn't win, and she never would tell me any details at all about the spelling bee, so I have no idea exactly how she did, or even what words that she had to spell (or which word she misspelled that caused her to be "out").  But of course I'm proud that she even made it this far.  And after the spelling bee, they took all the kids out to eat at Downtown Pizza, which was nice.

It reminded me of when I was in the same kind of spelling bee (countywide) when I was in 5th grade (Lilly's in the 4th grade).  I did OK, but I didn't win either.  And they took us to a steakhouse in town to eat lunch afterwards.  That was totally awesome!  But I'll never forget one spelling bee I was in as a little kid where I totally spelled a word correctly, but they counted me "out".  And of course I was too shy to try to correct them.  The word was "bizarre".  The rules were that if the word had more than one meaning; as long as you spelled it correctly, then it would still be all right.  Well, they wouldn't give me the definition of the word.  So I spelled it "bazaar", which is totally a word, and they counted me "out".  I'll never forget that.  It sucked.  >:{

Anyway, today I'm just sitting around the house waiting for the heat pump repairman to come fix our heat pump.  It won't turn on at all to heat the house.  And that sucks, because it's allegedly supposed to snow a little tomorrow.  We looked inside the electrical panel of the heat pump this past weekend to see if it was something simple that we could fix ourselves, and discovered that a mouse had nibbled on a blue wire, thereby accidentally electrocuting itself (its skeleton was still in there).  Dad taped that chewed wire up with electrical tape, but it still didn't fix the problem.  And heat pumps are one of the very few things that Dad doesn't have a whole lot of experience fixing, so I'm having to call in the repairman.  The trouble may even be with the thermostat on the wall in the hallway, because when I woke up Saturday morning, all the numbers were lit up (which shouldn't be that way), and all of them said "88".  So that was wrong.  Anyway, I'm sure the repairman will figure out what the problem is quickly and get it all fixed up.  He's fixed our heat pump before, and he's really awesome.

This past weekend was really nice and warm.  I'm so glad that spring is just around the corner.  The daffodils are coming up, and the crocuses are blooming.  I like to be outside as much as possible, especially when it's warm.  Lilly has been enjoying playing outside lately, too.  We walked down to the lake bottom a weekend or two ago to look around and see what "treasures" we could find, and I snapped a couple of pictures of Lilly:

In the picture above, Lilly actually found a halfway decent (but slightly rusty) pair of scissors near where she was kneeling.  I guess they might've fallen out of somebody's fishing tacklebox or something, who knows.  We kept them, because who knows when you might need a pair of cruddy scissors to handle some yucky chore, and don't want to ruin your good scissors doing it!

Lilly has also finally begun to enjoy exploring in the woods around our house.  I'm glad, because that's one of the most fun things I enjoyed doing when I was a kid, too.  And it's safe in the woods around our house, because nobody else lives around us for a long way around.

Anyway, over the weekend, Lilly made an astonishing discovery in the woods just behind our house (well within seeing-distance of the house).  Lilly found her piggy bank that someone stole after breaking into our house about 4 or 5 years ago.  The piggy bank was busted into several pieces, and of course all of the money was gone, but Lilly was so thrilled to find out what became of it, and at least recover parts of it.  The robber obviously took the piggy bank up into the woods maybe about 40 feet away from the house and busted it open with a rock or something.  Lilly hasn't found all of the parts of it yet (she still looks when she has time), but she has most of it.  If she finds all of the parts, I told her we could glue it back together, and that maybe she could even re-paint it if she wanted to.  We're even going to borrow Dad's metal detector to use to sweep the ground in the area of the woods where Lilly found the pieces of her piggy bank, just to see if we can retrieve any of the coins at all.  There was a total of around $225 in the piggy bank, mostly in cash (paper money), but of course there were a lot of coins too (including a lot of $1 gold coins that the tooth fairy had given Lilly).  So if we can recover even a few cents, then it will be neat.

Here's a picture of the broken pieces of the piggy bank that Lilly found:

It's still completely unfathomable to me that someone would break into a house and steal a child's piggy bank.  The bank had the words "Baby Bank" painted on it, and you can see in the picture above of the busted pieces that it had a blue diaper painted on it as well.  I mean, really?  An innocent little baby's piggy bank that even looks like a baby itself?  Only a true evil monster with no heart could possibly do such a thing.  They never even unplugged the stopper to see what money was in it before hauling off with it.  The stopper is still firmly in place on the piggy bank.  They just took it, ran up in the woods with it, and busted it open.  What if it was just crammed full of nothing but pennies?  I wish it had been.  I'll always regret that the thief/thieves got away with over $200 that belonged to my baby.  :{  Oh, well.  Karma's a b*tch, is all I can say!

Last week in the lunchroom was really rough.  As I think I wrote in my previous post, one of the main ladies was out on vacation all last week taking a cruise, so they got another sub to come in to help.  But the girl turned out to be not much help.  And what was even worse was that her attitude stunk, and she seemed to be lazy.  It was pretty dramatic all week with all the dirty looks, whispering, and complaints.  I just kept my nose to the grindstone and tried to do the best I could.  I don't get involved in drama or politics.  I almost began to wonder if all the other ladies thought that I sucked too, but in the end, they all showered me with super-nice compliments about what a hard worker I am and what a good job I do, and how they've put in words to the "big" boss that they want me to be hired on full-time.  And they weren't just blowing smoke up my rear-end; they really meant it.  So that made me feel good.

Friday in the lunchroom was extra-rough because we had to fix and serve the fancy Valentine's Day lunch that we were supposed to have had back on Valentine's Day, but school was cancelled because of the snow.  So among other things, we had 2 different types of pasta (rotini and penne), marinara (with meat) sauce or alfredo sauce, and a fancy romaine lettuce salad with olives, red onions, banana peppers, pepperoncini, and croutons, with a yummy homemade olive oil dressing that had garlic in it, among other neat stuff.  I think it was even topped with parmesan cheese.  For dessert was a super-yummy homemade brownie with homemade pink frosting.  (Surprisingly, they make quite a few things from scratch in the lunchroom).

So that meal was hard enough to prepare and serve as it was, but everything also had to be top-notch, because the School Board members and GEMA (Georgia Emergency Management Agency) also came (they had a meeting in the lunchroom and partook of our fancy Valentine lunch too -- before any of the students came in, of course).  The lunchroom manager ended up personally serving the Board members and the people from GEMA in the first serving line (because it's the line that has the sweet and unsweet tea located at the end of it).  That's the lunch line that the lazy/bad attitude substitute girl had been serving in all week prior.  When she found out that the manager was serving the "fancy" people, she hollered out "Oh, so I'm not GOOD enough to serve them?!?"  So that was totally unprofessional and crappy.  Earlier in the week, a student found a hair in one of the cookies that me and that girl had panned up and baked the day before (God, I hope it wasn't one of my hairs, but I always take extra-super-careful precautions every single morning to not have any stray hairs about my person, and I wear a cap and secure my hair back in a covered bun).  So I think everyone immediately assumed that the hair was off that lazy girl (which, truth be told, it probably was, because her hair net kept flying off and she was kind of sloppy in general).  Also, speaking of cookies, they noticed that the sloppy girl ate one of the warm cookies off of the pan after we had taken them out of the oven.  One of the other ladies saw it, approached her, and explained that she would need to pay 75 cents for it, since it's extra, and not included with the free food that the lunch ladies are allowed to eat each day.  So I don't know what happened with that, but it didn't go over too well.  Needless to say, that girl won't be coming back.  Not only by her own choice (because she turned out to not like being a lunch lady anyway), but because she won't be asked to come back (at least not to the high school cafeteria).  Whew.  What a mess.

I worked in the lunchroom yesterday, and without the lazy/bad attitude/hair-in-the-cookie girl, everything went quite a bit smoother.  They brought in one of the other more experienced substitutes to help (since the lady that had been on vacation to take a cruise was still out, and wasn't supposed to return 'til the next day).  The sub yesterday was the one that I think rolled her eyes at the way I was making and packaging the deli wrap trays the last time she was there (a little too slowly for her Speedy Gonzales tastes).  But she was OK.  I can get along with anybody.  I don't care if anybody rolls their eyes at me or not; I can just ignore it, and focus on what I'm doing.  I don't give a crap what anybody thinks or does; I'm there to do my job.  I still think I go a little too slow when it comes to cleaning up at the end of the day, but I don't know what to do about it.  I go as fast as I can.  Nobody has complained to me, so I'm not going to worry about it.  And I don't think that I'm cleaning too deeply (I know I have that perfectionist tendency to go a little overboard because I want to make sure that everything is perfect).  But I really don't think I'm going overboard.  So I guess I'd rather make sure that everything is clean, than not clean enough.  All I can do is try to go as fast as I can.

Anyway, yesterday was the only day that I had to work this week, and I'm secretly kind of glad.  I'm pretty worn out after the rough week in the lunchroom we had last week.  And there's some stuff around the house that needs my attention.  For one, I've got to wait for the heat pump repairman to come today (so I'll have to stay home and be ready for when he comes), and I need to finish doing some painting and waterproofing in anticipation for the insurance inspector to arrive (I still don't know when that will be).  I hope it's within the next week or so, because Lilly really wants for her trampoline to be put back up (we had to temporarily disassemble and hide it so the insurance inspector wouldn't know we had it)!

I sure hope the insurance inspector doesn't tell us that Lilly's playset is dangerous (and refuse to insure us unless we get rid of it).  We've got one of those wooden, tower-type playsets in the yard with two slides (one tall and twisty) and a tire-swing.  The bottom level is a sandbox.  I mean, if we absolutely have to get rid of it, then I guess we'll just have to get rid of it.  But that would suck.

The only other thing I could see that the insurance inspector might frown upon is the fact that we have a retaining wall with no railing.  I mean, we've had an inspector with a different insurance company come to our house once before in the past, and we passed that inspection with flying colors.  Jamie happened to be at home when the man came, and he said that the man didn't even walk all the way around the house.  He was only there for maybe a minute or two, and then left.  You never know what to expect.  Inspectors can either be 1) House-Hitlers, or 2) Not give a crap.  Well, I've already had one inspector that didn't give a crap...I hope I'm not due for a House-Hitler!  :/

LOL!

Anyway, in the middle of writing this post, the heat pump repairman has come, fixed the problem, and left.  The problem was just what I had suspected -- the thermostat on the wall in the hallway was torn up for some reason.  So the repairman replaced it with a better thermostat, and $233 later, we're back in business.  So yay, no being cold for us when it's supposed to snow tomorrow!  :D

Slightly embarrassingly, however, when the repairman showed up this morning, I was still in my t-shirt (no bra), hoodie, and Spongebob pajama pants (that the rear-end is so worn out of that I think you can see my pink underwear showing through).  And I haven't even brushed my hair or teeth yet, and I'm sure I have a horrible mixture of morning/coffee breath.  Oh, well.  At least it's morning (which I suppose it's slightly more acceptable to have your jammies on at 9:30 AM, and I'm not still dressed that way at like, 3:00 in the afternoon).  (Which, I probably secretly will be, but nobody has to know that)!  It's like; why bother getting dressed if you're just hanging around at home?

Speaking of physical embarrassments, I discovered a 2-inch-long chest hair on myself a couple of days ago.  I just so happened to be standing next to a window in a sunbeam, and the bright light caught the hair just right, and caused me to notice it.  It was very light blonde (not white or gray; I promise I'd tell you if it was), and it was so ultra-thin; way thinner than a normal hair.  I thought it was just a little strand of fuzz or something, but when I pulled at it (thinking I could flick it off), IT WAS ATTACHED.  TO MY CHEST.  AND I'M A GIRL.  I easily plucked it free with my fingertips, and held it up in the sunlight for inspection.  2 inches long.  Freaky, weird, and gross!  That kind of thing happens to me (and everybody else, I'm sure) from time to time.  I've come across freakishly long, extremely thin, light-colored hairs on different parts of my body several times in the past.  Usually I'll find one (never more than one) above my right eyebrow, on my right shoulder, or on the upper part of my right arm.  Hmm.  And the chest hair was on the right side, too.  Maybe the right side of my body has some kind of defective genetics for freakish hair or something.  Weird!  I'm just glad it only happens once in a blue moon!  (Which makes me wonder if I was a werewolf in a past life)...DUN DUN DUNNNNN!

And along the same lines as embarrassing personal bodily afflictions, I am evidently allergic to something, because my eyelids have been swollen, itchy, and flaky lately.  They're nowhere near as bad as they were, and I've been trying to figure out what's doing it to me, but I haven't figured out exactly what it is yet.  First I thought maybe it was some makeup I was using (even though I don't use any on my eyes).  Then I wondered if it was my bath soap.  Jamie reinforced this theory because he revealed to me that the soap I bought had "alligatored" his skin in a certain area that I won't mention.  :P  That soap wasn't a cheapo off-brand, so that was a little unexpected.  So I bought some new, mild soap.  That seems to have helped, but I still think that my makeup might have something to do with it.  I got rid of the old powder-puff and temporarily substituted a cotton ball as an experiment, and it's nowhere near as bad as it was, but it's still affected.  So I don't know.

I guess as long as I don't look as bad as Bob Costas did covering the Olympics with pinkeye, then I'll be all right!

LOL!!!

Today's Happenings

Today was a better day in the lunchroom than it was yesterday.  I had a minor mishap this morning -- I accidentally dropped one of the "fruit bowls" that I had made onto the floor (which is served in one of those clear plastic to-go type boxes), and when it hit the floor, it came open and sprinkled orange slices, grapes, and pieces of cantaloupe and honeydew all over the floor.  Thank goodness it was only one fruit bowl, and not more!  I just laughed it off and swept it up.  Oh yeah, and later that afternoon, I dropped one of those large stainless steel mixing bowls, which made a pretty good racket!  (I had just grabbed it off the shelf, so thankfully it was empty).  But everybody in the lunchroom drops stuff like that frequently enough to not be too startled by it, so it was all right.

It was a little bit of a rough serving day, in that the choices were either macaroni & cheese or meatloaf.  The mac & cheese had to be scooped into bowls using a giant ice-cream kind of scoop with the lever you press with your thumb to get the food to come out of the scoop.  We couldn't just plop the mac & cheese directly onto the tray.  Why, I don't know.  I guess so the cashier would be able to tell at a glance who got 2 servings of mac & cheese (if she saw 2 bowls of it on their tray), so she would know to charge them extra for it.  So that slowed things down a little.  It's always a whole lot easier to serve stuff like pizza or cheeseburgers, where all you have to do is grab it with your (gloved) hand and plop it on the tray (there's no serving utensil involved).  It doesn't really bother me too much; it's just a little more hectic and takes a little longer when you have to dish stuff onto the trays using spoons or scoops.

For some reason, I just can't clean the serving lines up as fast as the other ladies, and I can't figure out why.  I feel like I'm going really fast, but they can clean circles around me.  Maybe it's a mixture of 1) they've been there and done that much longer than me, so maybe they're just more used to it and are able to go faster, and 2) maybe I'm spending a little too much time trying to make sure that everything is truly clean -- in other words, maybe I'm cleaning a little more deeply than the other ladies; maybe they're just giving everything a quick swipe and running away (but then again, maybe that's what you're supposed to do; I don't know).

At any rate, the other sub that's working with us this week (who seemed to me to have a little bit of a bad attitude yesterday) and I had a lot better day today, and we at least were able to get more cleaned than we did yesterday, and go a little faster.  And we both made it a point to really try to learn things and get them down-pat, so we wouldn't feel like dummies and keep having to ask everybody everything like morons all the time.  So that's going good.  Every day, things get a little better as I learn more and more.

When it was getting close to time to leave for the day, the lunchroom manager got a phone call, and asked me if I had ever signed an Employee Packet when I was hired, and I said no.  So she explained that before they would be able to pay me, I would need to go down to the Board of Education office and sign all that stuff.  So right at quitting time, I rushed down to the Board of Education to do just that.  I had to hurry, because I have to make it home in time to meet Lilly at the school bus stop.

So I hurriedly filled out all the proper paperwork, and before I left, they asked me if I had time to get my picture made for my ID badge.  They said it would only take a couple of minutes.  So I said sure; that it would save me a trip back there.  The picture turned out HORRIBLE, and on the way home, I realized that I suppose that one of the requirements of being a lunch lady is looking like a complete hag -- at least on your ID badge.  Sheesh, I really hope I look at least a little better than that in person...!  :/

Check it out:

Aww, geez!!!  D:

Oh, well...at least nobody in the lunchroom ever has to actually wear their badges.  It's just for security purposes, so thank goodness we don't have to display them prominently.  I'll just keep mine crammed deep inside the pits of my pocketbook where all the candy wrappers, lint, and old wadded-up store receipts reside, so hopefully nobody will ever see it.  Bleh!

Anyway, since I had to fill out all those forms (including one to have my paychecks Direct Deposited into my account), and since the timesheet for the pay period (which is about a month long) has been submitted, I can only assume it means that my very first lunchroom payday must be just around the corner!  That will be cool!  :D

Changing the subject on to Maddie now, today was the day that we had to begin cleaning her wound, and we decided it would be best to put her in my bathtub and rinse it out with my hand-held shower spray nozzle.  Even though Maddie has never been in one of our bathrooms (much less our bathtubs) thankfully, it went just fine.  Lilly manned the video camera and documented the entire process.  Don't worry, we don't show a picture of the gross wound at all.  Maddie was pretty cute in the bathtub!  So I guess we'll be doing this every evening until the wound gets better.  (And don't worry, I Clorox'ed the heck out of the tub after Maddie got out, and will do so after each time she's in it!:

So while I'm sitting here waiting for that video of Maddie above to upload, I can tell you about how right now, Jamie is asleep in Lilly's bed (and Lilly's in there next to him asleep too), and I can hear Jamie's awful sleep-snore-wheezing all the way back from Lilly's bedroom, to where I am sitting on the loveseat in the living room, and it's driving me crazy.  This is why I can't share a bedroom with him.  He makes the most awful, weird rackets when he's sleeping, and many times, he never makes the same noise twice.  It's so bizarre.  So I grabbed my video camera and tried to film him wheezing for your viewing pleasure (and to try to get some sympathy from everyone).  Well, I went to turn the bedside lamp on (which is hooked up to The Clapper), but I couldn't get the ^%$# lamp to turn on without waking Jamie up, so my clumsy attempts at trying to quietly *clap clap* the lamp on ended up waking him up.  (I was flipping the headboard of the bed with my finger to try to get the lamp to turn on, which usually works).  So I was miffed.  But at least you get to hear several of the horrendous wheezes before I accidentally woke him up with all the stupid flipping.  Meh.

And here's Attempt #2 a little while later after he had fallen back to sleep.  This time, I didn't try to turn on the lamp.  I just shoved the camera in his face to record his gurgling in the darkness.  Ugh.

Anyway, at this point in time, Lilly has woken up and joined me in the living room.  So I think we'll leave noisy ol' Daddy in Lilly's bed, and me and Lilly will go crawl in my bed in just a little while.  Stupid Jamie's wheezing and gurgling!  It drives me insane!  >:{

Maddie Is All Doctored Up Now! :)

Jamie took Maddie to the vet today to get her wound all checked out and doctored up.  It only cost about $100 total (for medication and everything), which is a lot less than I figured it would cost, so that was good.  Jamie said that Maddie was absolutely wonderful the whole time.  So thankfully, there weren't any mishaps whatsoever.  Maddie weighs 60 pounds!  The vet cleaned her wound, but it wasn't the kind of wound that needed to be stitched or stapled up.  The vet prescribed Maddie 10 days' worth of antibiotic pills, and 5 days' worth of pain medication; each to be taken twice a day with her food.  Jamie gave Maddie the pills as soon as he fed her after they got home, and she gobbled the medication up with a tidbit of canned dog food; no problem.  The vet also said we needed to clean Maddie's wound every day (a thought which made me cringe, until Jamie explained that all we would need to do would be to basically rinse it off with a waterhose), so we've decided to get her in my bathtub each evening, since it has a hand-held shower sprayer.  That way, we can use warm water (which the vet said would actually be ideal), and it won't be bad at all.  We need to do that every day until the wound starts getting a lot better.  That will be interesting.  We've never had Maddie in the bathtub before.  Interestingly (and strangely) enough, though, the people who gave Maddie to us told us that they used to let Maddie take showers with them all the time, and that she absolutely loved it, so at least we know the idea won't be foreign to her.  It's probably gonna be funny, and hopefully we won't have any disasters!  Don't worry...I'm totally gonna film it, just in case we have an AFV $10,000 moment!  But since the vet already cleaned Maddie's wound today, we're going to wait 'til tomorrow to try putting her in the bathtub, and do it each evening after that 'til it's all better.  I sure do hope that goes good!

I had a so-so day in the lunchroom today.  One of the ladies is out on vacation all this week (taking a cruise), so it was extremely wild and hectic.  They called in another sub, but she wasn't really a whole lot of help.  I mean, she was, but she was kind of like me.  We both don't know a whole lot yet.  So it was sort of like the blind leading the blind.  At least she didn't intimidate me like that other sub they brought in last week.  But the worst part was that she didn't really have a very good attitude, so that kind of brought me down a little bit.  Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.  Every day I learn something new, but I sort of can't wait for the time to come where I know almost everything, and don't have to feel like a dummy, and feel like I'm having to ask too many questions.  I feel most confident when I pretty much know what I'm doing and can go busily about my day without wondering too much what to do about stuff.  I know that day will come, though, and it's just a matter of time.

Anyway, I guess I better go get my bath now...I'm pretty tired after a hectic workday, worrying about Maddie, taking Lilly to dance class, and running errands!

On The Roof Again

Well, since our house insurance company notified us back in December that they wouldn't be renewing our policy (because they would no longer be insuring homes in our rural area), we've known that at some point, an inspector with our new insurance company will have to come by and look at our house to make sure everything is hunky-dory so they'll know it's an OK thing for them to insure.  Like, if you had piles of garbage laying around your house and tree limbs laying all over your roof, that would be a bad thing, and they wouldn't insure your house until you got all that crap cleaned up.  Thankfully, they don't look inside your house, so at least you don't have to worry about picking your dirty underwear up off the floor or making sure the massive dump you took didn't leave "writing on the wall" on its way down (whew)!  LOL!

Well, anyway, wouldn't you just know that last year we were lazy in the house maintenance department and never got around to pressure-washing the house, or anything.  So our house got pretty grungy.  And since we live in the edge of the woods, one side of our garage tends to get moss growing on the shingles, which has to be scraped off periodically.

Anyway, Good Ol' Dad to the rescue!  Of course it would have to be in the middle of stupid winter when we're having to bust our butts to clean up the exterior of our house, but that just seems to be our luck.  Last weekend we spent forever pressure-washing, sweeping, raking, and cleaning the exterior of the house.  It was so bad that we didn't have enough time to get it completely done.  So we had to put the project on hold.  Today Dad had me and Jamie climb up on the garage roof and scrub off all that stupid moss.

It was the very first time that I'd ever been up on the roof of my own house.  I wasn't scared to get up on the roof of Dad's store building in town, but that roof is flat.  My house roof is angled.  So it feels like a giant slide that you're just gonna slide off of and crash onto the ground and die.  I managed to climb the ladder and get up there with some coaxing, but once I got up there, I refused to even attempt to stand up.  So I spent the entire time up on the roof, sitting on my rear end, which ended up ripping the entire @$$ out of my jeans, but I wasn't aware of that fact until I finally climbed down.  I ended up getting those little tiny rock-like particles from the shingles all in my underwear!  It was itchy, but still pretty funny.

I took the camera up on the roof with me to document the episode.  I had Jamie take this picture of me after I had just climbed up there:

Well, moments after this picture was taken, Jamie handed the camera back to me, and I somehow dropped it, causing the camera to take off skidding down the roof.  To my absolute horror, Jamie took of running full bore down the steep roof after the damn camera, and I just knew he was gonna fall off the damn roof going so hard after the stupid camera.  So I started screaming "NO!  NO!  NO!"  Dad was on the other side of the roof where he couldn't see us, so it scared the crap out of him.  Jamie finally stopped running, and the camera went *bloop* off of the roof, onto the ground below.  Dad told Jamie not to scare me.  Eventually, Dad picked the camera up off the ground for us, and I got him to take these pictures of me and Jamie up on the roof:

I wasn't much help since I was timid about being up on the steep roof and I'm afraid of heights, but at least I tried, and I did manage to get some of the stupid moss scrubbed off with that wire brush of Dad's that I was holding in the picture.

Dad mixed us up a solution of stuff that really slows down the growth of the stupid moss, so hopefully we won't have to get back up on the roof to do that particular chore again for 2 or 3 more years.  We're also gonna cut down one of the stupid trees next to the garage that is one of the contributing factors causing the moss to grow up there in the first place.  That's a chore for another day, though.  Right now we just need for the house to be able to pass an insurance inspection.  Fingers crossed.  And Good Ol' Dad will come back to the house again tomorrow by himself to finish up the pressure-washing while me and Jamie are at work, and Lilly's in school.  So the awful house chore will be done.  

In other news, while Dad was here at the house helping us with our awful house chore, I decided to take a look at the wound on the inside of our boxer Maddie's leg (near her crotch) that she got 3 days ago.  I hadn't looked at it since it happened.  I took one quick glance at it and knew instantly that something was horribly wrong.  What at first looked like just a little scratch is now, disgustingly, a giant, badly infected, gaping hole that smells like death.  I got Dad to take a look at it before he left my house, and even he said "oh my God"!  So we've decided that when Jamie gets off work tomorrow, he's going to take Maddie to the vet to get doctored up.  Yuck.  I had originally figured that I would take Maddie to the vet by myself, but I've got to work in the lunchroom all this week, and after only working on Monday last week, I know I'll be really tired and probably sore after I get off work.  And Lilly will have to be taken to dance class.  I thought about it and realized that it would probably be better if Jamie took Maddie to the vet.  Jamie's bigger and stronger than me, so he would hopefully be able to handle Maddie better if she happened to get unruly at the vet's office anyway (or if some other dogs at the vet's office caused a skirmish in the waiting room or something).  So Jamie's going to handle taking Maddie.  I just hope it goes OK.  Dad said that Maddie's wound needed stitches or staples, but we'll just have to wait and see.  I'm anxious to see what the outcome is.

Anyway, I'll be working in the lunchroom again all this week from 6:30 AM to 3:00 PM, so it's gonna be a full, busy week.  I sure hope everything goes good.  I'm gonna try to make it my best week yet, and not mess anything up if I can help it (just a personal goal I like to try for so I can feel really extra-good about myself).

I better go for now so I can take my nice, hot bath and get ready for the day tomorrow!

I'll let you know tomorrow what happened at Maddie's vet appointment...!  Let's hope it turns out OK!

Happee Valentimes Day!

Yeah, I know it's "Valentines" and not "Valentimes", but that's the way most kids said it when I was little because they didn't know any better, so I still like to call it "Valentimes" just for fun!

And with the way I usually get "Old People" mail, this should be my Valentine...LOL:

Snowmageddon

Well, the snow and ice storm didn't turn out to be as bad for us as they said it was going to be (at least it doesn't seem like it, anyway).  We haven't lost power once or anything.  Jamie's about to go in to work; his boss texted him and said that the roads are fine.

The snow is super-pretty, and here's a few pictures I took of it through the living room window and off the front porch this morning (I'm not about to go outside for long in that cold stuff)!:

Winter Wonderland!

We've had the dogs in the house for the past couple of days since it's so yucky outside.  They always stink up the house and take up the entire couch.  We put old quilts down on the couch for them to lay on.  Whenever we let the dogs in, we always move the bunny to either my bathroom or Jamie's bathroom, because we figure the dogs would probably bother her.  The dogs don't even know that we have a bunny.

Well, yesterday, I had the dumb idea to see just what would happen if I showed the bunny to Lucky.  (Lucky is completely obsessed with trying to catch a glimpse of our cat, Domino, and loves to watch her down the hallway past the baby gate, even though Domino won't come anywhere near Lucky).

So I picked up the bunny, and slowly moved her closer to Lucky's face, while introducing them in a sweet, gentle voice.  Lucky was of course completely enthralled.  And the bunny surprisingly didn't even seem to mind.  So I continued on carrying the bunny into the living room, to sit with her wrapped up in a blanket on the recliner to pet and snuggle her like I normally do.  Of course Lucky wanted to keep checking out the bunny, so we carefully allowed it.  It was so sweet!  Lucky began attempting to wash the bunny, but a split-second later, Lucky got a wild look in her eye, snapped, and tore off a little bit of the bunny's fur with her mouth!!!  Of course the bunny went absolutely nuts trying to run away, kicked a small gash into the palm of my hand with the long claws of her back foot, and scratched my other arm really bad, all the way down it, bringing the blood on both places.  Jamie grabbed Lucky by the collar and held her back from trying to get the bunny any more.  I managed to grab the bunny, and cuddle her up tightly in my arms.  No real damage done, but I guess I learned my lesson!  Sometimes I'm not known for making the best decisions in the world!  :/  So I put the bunny back in her pen in Jamie's bathroom, and I won't be letting Lucky sniff her anymore!  (Maddie doesn't seem to even be very interested in the cat, so I won't even try to show her the bunny).  It was funny one day this past Fall; Maddie came sauntering up to the garage of the house gingerly holding a live possum in her gaping maw!  It was hysterical!  She was making a face like "Lookee whut I fownd"!  :P  LOL!

We've had a few more mild disasters so far while being snowbound.  Late yesterday, I decided to take a nice, hot bath to get myself warmed up really good.  I didn't find out about it 'til this morning, but while I was back in my bathroom, Lilly was riding around the living room on Jamie's old skateboard (which she had done all ^%$# day long).  She didn't stop in time, and ended up crashing into a table, knocking several cups and glasses down onto the hardwood floor.  It's unclear if my laptop got knocked down on the floor, or if it was already down there, but my guess is that it did get knocked down on the floor, judging from the damage it sustained.  And Lilly won't admit what happened (just like always when something goes wrong and she's involved), so it remains a mystery.  Anyway, when I went to get on my laptop this morning and check the news and weather, I discovered that the power plug had gotten rammed up pretty far inside the laptop haphazardly and busted the plastic around the port.  I was extremely unhappy.  Lilly ran away and hid in her room.  And that's when Jamie told me what happened.  He allegedly wasn't aware that my computer had been damaged when the incident occurred the night before.  I was really upset.  I can't seem to have anything nice that doesn't end up getting either damaged horribly or destroyed.  Sometimes it's my own fault (like when I accidentally dropped my cell phone in the toilet, and when I accidentally put my other cell phone in the washing machine), but my Kindle Fire also got completely destroyed because it had a defective charge port and wouldn't charge anymore (apparently that's an extremely common defect with the Kindle Fires that I wasn't aware of before purchasing one), and me and my brother attempted to fix it with a soldering iron late last Summer (because after all, it was already messed up, and if we messed it up more, then oh well).  Well, we did end up messing it up more, so I ended up just throwing my whole Kindle Fire away.  And now Lilly wrecked my laptop.

Jamie suggested that I not try to pull out the jammed-in power plug, but like I said before, I'm not always known for making the best decisions, so I yanked it out.  Well, then I couldn't get the plug back in, so my computer wouldn't be able to charge.  That's not good, because my laptop's kind of old, so its battery doesn't last very long.  I was upset, and got frustrated, and handed the laptop over to Jamie to try to fix.  I know that could have been a huge mistake in itself (to let Jamie try to fix it), but I was desperate.  Somehow, Jamie managed to ram the power plug back deep inside its socket, so now my laptop can charge.  And I'll just have to keep the power cord attached to it at all times, since its rammed so far deep inside and busted.  But as long as it works, then I guess it's all right.  It just pisses me off that every single thing I have gets messed up, and I either have to throw it away because it's too far destroyed to be repaired, or limp along with it because it's damaged.  Grr!!!

Another cruddy thing happened this morning too.  Jamie let the dogs out of the house so they could go pee, and there just so happened to be a random pack of dogs roaming around down right below the house, so of course Maddie and Lucky joined them and ran off for a while.  They came back a lot sooner than we expected them to.  I eventually noticed a faint streak of blood on Lucky's white fur, but didn't think anything of it.  Then later we noticed a streak of blood on Maddie's fur.  A few moments later, I just so happened to catch a glimpse of Maddie's underside as she was standing up on the couch, and thought I saw a bloody patch on her lower belly, close to her crotch.  We looked, and sure enough, she has a wound there.  It's not super-bad, but it's a bloody wound probably about the size of a 50-cent piece.  We don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that one of the pack of strange dogs must have been trying to sniff Maddie's butt, and Maddie didn't like it, and then the strange dog chomped down and injured her.  But Jamie said that Maddie and Lucky had a little skirmish over their food this morning like they sometimes do, so Jamie said that Lucky might have done it to Maddie earlier.  Jamie says that Lucky always bites Maddie around her rear end.  So who knows.

Anyway, both dogs are laying on the couch right now, and Lilly's right there with them, getting her clothes all stunk up like Dog.

Lilly's gymnastics class is supposed to be today, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see if they'll be open or not.  I think they probably will be open.  They were open the last time we had a snow and school was closed.  Basically, as long as the roads are OK enough for everyone to get there safely, then they will probably have class I think.  So it will be good to get out of the house for a while if they're open later today.

Jamie texted me a few minutes ago to let me know that he made it to work just fine.  He said the roads are not that bad.  He's been able to make it to work every day during this snow.  They haven't worked full days, but it's better than not working at all.  So that's good.

I bet school will probably be closed again tomorrow, but I don't know for sure.  It's funny that I was only scheduled to work on Monday this week in the lunchroom, and it turned out that school was closed for the rest of the week anyway.  All the snow should be gone by Monday, and I'm scheduled to work all next week from 6:30 AM to 3:00 PM each day.  So yay!

I think payday should be coming up sometime soon.  I believe that school employees only get paid once a month.  We have timesheets to fill out in the lunchroom, and it has several weeks listed on there all together in a row.  It will be awesome to finally get my first paycheck!  :D  I can't wait!

Another Round of "Old People" Mail

Here's the latest batch of "Old People" mail that I've received recently.

Another one of these stupid things -- an invitation to join them for "complimentary fine dining" while they hold you hostage and force you to listen to them yap about some kind of retirement junk, which causes you to develop indigestion, thereby ruining your 'fine dining' experience:

Another one of these stupid life insurance things (but this time on pink paper, in a feeble attempt to better attract your attention)...

Holy Moly!  I think their Caps Lock key got stuck!  :/

...not to mention their new attention-grabbing offer of a free memorial guide that they'll send you after you fill out the card and mail it back in:

A "free memorial guide"?  Is that what I think it is?  Is it like, some kind of brochure showing you all the different lovely tombstones you have to choose from just in the nick of time before you kick the bucket?  Well, that's not morbid at all...  O__o

And I also got this:

Oh goody! An AARP membership offer!  And when I join, they'll send me this free awesome mini day bag to put all my "old people" accoutrements in (such as prescription pill bottles, wadded-up kleenexes, plastic rain bonnets, half-opened sticky and covered-in-lint rolls of Certs from 1963, a tiny change purse filled with nothing but pennies, nickels, and dimes, and last but not least, one of those little tiny black Rolodex books with the names, addresses, and birthdays of every single person you've ever met scribbled down with what looked like a quill dipped in pokeberry ink from 1735).

Hooray!!!  :D

LOL!

The Lunchroom Week In Review

Well, this past week has been my very first full week working in the lunchroom.  And since Lilly has been hogging my computer all week, using it to play a game (and I've been too tired after work each day to mess with blogging anyway) I decided to wait 'til today and just give one big update all at once.

Also, I've got Lilly's old laptop working again, so I'm using it to blog on today, because she's still hogging my laptop to play her computer game.  This laptop is smaller, and the Shift keys don't work for some reason (maybe they got something spilled in them in the past; who knows), but I can limp along with it by using the On-Screen Keyboard, which is fine.  I might try cleaning the keyboard soon to see if it will help.

Anyway, let me try to think back and recap my week for you.  Monday the thing that was most memorable was that one student had evidently stepped in a pile of dog crap before coming to school, because when the kids were in the lunch line, it totally smelled like somebody had stepped in crap, and the smell went away as soon as that batch of kids went away.

Tuesday I think I sucked somehow.  I'd been confused as to how to determine the 'Use By' dates on lunch meat, and it made me feel a little sad and inept.  So I asked a couple of different super-ultra-nice ladies to explain it to me, and I finally got it figured out.  So that boosted my confidence back up.

Wednesday was a disaster.  One of the ladies had to be out, so they got another substitute to come in.  She was nice and friendly enough, but she sort of overwhelmed me.  At one point, she began helping me make and package my deli wrap plates, and she just came in like a cyclone, slopping and slinging, and I'd never seen anybody working that fast in all my life.  It made me feel like a totally inadequate schmo.  I have a method, and I like to go at a steady pace; not ape-sh*t crazy.  When it came time to box up the wraps with the raisins, brownies, and chips, the girl just dumped giant loads of raisins, brownies, and chips all over the work table and commenced to packing up the boxes so fast that her hands were just a blur.  It kind of freaked me out, and her going so dang fast made me nervous, and I'm pretty sure that she rolled her eyes and muttered something under her breath at my slower method.  So that made me feel a little intimidated, inept, and sad.  On top of that, when it came time to serve the Frito Pancho in the serving line at lunchtime (which is basically a little pile of Frito chips with a little pile of chili on top of it), I messed up and plopped out what I thought was the chili, but it turned out to be the refried beans, but I didn't know it.  I did that on about 10 to 14 plates before another lunch lady noticed it and corrected me.  Of course she was nice about it, and told me not to worry about it (just to fix it by plopping the chili on top of the refried beans).  So I continued on with my serving.  It was Mexican Food day, so the other choice was Chicken Fajitas.  I thought that the Manager had told me that to serve the fajitas, all I had to do was just lay down a tortilla flat on the tray and plop the chicken mixture on top of it.  So I went through almost the entire serving time doing just that.  It wasn't 'til we were about to serve the last batch of kids, that the lunch lady that had told me that I had messed up on the Frito Pancho, told me that I had been messing up on the Chicken Fajitas.  Apparently, instead of putting down a tortilla and plopping the chicken mixture on top of it, I should have been just plopping down the chicken mixture, and placing a couple of folded-in-half tortillas on the side, next to the meat.  So that made me feel bad.  Of course she was nice about it, and told me again not to worry about it, but naturally it made me feel like crap.  Whenever I do something, I always want for it to be done just right, and I feel bad if I mess up.  That's just my nature.  Finally, the serving time was over; all the kids were gone, and it was time for us lunch ladies to take our afternoon break.  I was utterly exhausted and still feeling a little down on myself for messing up.  After lunch, we clean up the kitchen (and I have to first focus on cleaning up my own serving line), but I was so tired and feeling not as confident, so it took me forever to get everything done.  The other substitute lunch lady, however, was still going ultra-fast and strong, which made me feel even worse about my own abilities.  I did notice the next day, however, that the other ultra-fast lunch lady's cleaning  job seemed a little messy and slightly sub-par to me.  I mean, I know I'm a perfectionist, which tends to cause me to go a little slower to make sure everything is done well, but what use is it to go ultra-fast, if your cleaning job looks like you took a soggy rag and just threw it at all the stainless steel?  So that made me secretly feel just a little bit better about myself.

The next day, the girl that had been absent the day before came back from being out, and she said that while she was off, she realized what kind of food we had to serve that day (Mexican), and she knew it was one of the hardest days that there is to have to do, and she said she felt so bad about having to be out.  I told her that yeah, it was rough, but that we made it.

So Thursday, I was determined to kick @$$.  I started off well enough, but quickly realized that I had already messed up before I had begun, because I only had enough deli meat to do maybe 12 wraps, but I needed to do 40.  I wasn't aware that I was supposed to be responsible for taking more deli meat out of the freezer enough days in advance to thaw out in the cooler, to be ready in time for when I needed more.  Nobody had told me (or I forgot if they had), so I just assumed that somebody else took care of it; I didn't know.

So I confided in another super-ultra-nice lunch lady about my dilemma, and she graciously explained everything to me and helped me quickly defrost enough deli meat for me to finish the number of wraps that I needed to get done that day.  The meat was still a little icy when I was assembling the wraps, but hopefully by the time they got served several hours later, they were OK.  I never heard a complaint.  That was the only snag that happened that day.  The rest of the day, I was determined not to mess anything else up, and it actually turned out to be the best day ever.  The other lunch lady that had been absent the day before usually serves along with me in the other, separate lunch line.  She explained to me that their goal is to have the "salad bar" and my serving line all fully cleaned up by the time we lunch ladies take our afternoon break, which starts at 1:30.  She said that we hardly ever meet that goal, and it's OK if we don't.  It's just a goal to strive for.  Well, somehow between her and mine hard work, we actually met that goal.  We managed to get the "salad bar" and my serving line totally cleaned up just as it became time for our break.  I was so proud, and it gave my confidence a boost, which is just what I needed after feeling like I was in adequate, mistake-ridden suckwad the day before.  It did help that all we had to serve that day was pizza and sloppy joes, and those things are super-easy to serve (most kids took the pizza, so all I had to do was just throw it on the tray, and throw the tray with pizza on it on top of the line for the kids to grab).  So by the end of the serving day, I still had lots of energy left to be able to clean up the lines quickly.  I was so happy!

The next day, Friday, I was even more determined not to screw anything up.  I know I'm really hard on myself when it comes to making mistakes, and I have a tendency to feel like it's the end of the world if anything goes wrong, no matter how minor.  But I'm working to get over that.  Also, I tend to feel like whenever I make a mistake, that I'm the only dumb@$$ in the world that ever makes mistakes.  Well, of course that's wrong, so if I ever notice or hear that someone else I'm working with makes a mistake, it secretly makes me feel better about myself.  It kind of sucks to be a perfectionist, because of course it's impossible for humans to be perfect, so it makes no sense whatsoever to beat myself up for not being perfect.  It's an impossible goal.  So just striving to be the best you can be, trying not to make any mistakes, learning from the mistakes that you do make, and just carrying on about your business without feeling like a dummy is what you need to do.  I finally just now learned that lesson after 37 years in the world!  Better late than never!  :)

Friday was another good day.  I don't think I messed anything up at all.  The only wild thing that happened was during serving time.  Thankfully, it was another easy serving day, because the choices were either a cheeseburger, or a hot dog.  Most of the kids wanted a cheeseburger, so all I had to do was just plop them on the trays.  If they wanted a hot dog, it was only slightly time-consuming, since I had to open up the bun and slap on the wiener.

Anyway, the line was moving swiftly.  All of a sudden, a girl that had just gotten one of the trays with a hot dog on it FELL DOWN ON THE FLOOR!  I didn't know what in the world was going on, so I stopped and watched for a moment, and heard the kids saying, "she just fell down"!  The girl got back up, and I asked her if she was OK.  She said "yeah", but then her eyes got all woozy and she fell down again!  And her friend that was beside her told me "No!  She's not OK!"  I had noticed that the girl had one of those bands holding a cotton ball in the crook of her arm, like she had blood drawn or something.

So I rushed over to the lunchroom manager, who just so happened to be standing in the other serving line next to mine, fixing a plate of lunch for one of her sons.  I told her something to the effect of "there's a girl over here who's fallen down...she needs help"!  And the manager rushed over to see what was wrong.  It was so scary!  The poor girl could not stand up to save her life, and just kept on passing out time and time again.  Someone brought a rolling office chair, and one of the coaches helped get her in the chair.  The manager had someone hand her over a sweet tea.  What happened is that the girl had given blood earlier that day, and evidently her blood sugar had crashed or something, causing her to pass out repeatedly and be too weak to stand.  It wasn't her first time giving blood, and she hadn't had any trouble giving blood in the past, but I guess something went a little wrong this time around, causing her to pass out.  Anyway, they wheeled her out into the lunchroom, where I guess she recovered.  But boy, that was sure scary!  It got us jangled for a while!

The rest of the day went really smooth.  We had all busted our butts harder than usual that day, so everything seemed to get done in record time.  

The only other mishap that happened wasn't anyone's fault, and couldn't be helped.  It was just a fluke.  Somehow, inexplicably, one of the lunch-sized bags of Doritos was all moldy inside!  The bag was in date.  And it had been all sealed up; it didn't have a hole in it.  It was weird.  Only one of the kids had gotten a bag like that, thankfully.  The manager opened up another bag of Doritos from the same box they had come from to test it, and it was fine.  So it was just a weird fluke with that one moldy bag.  It made me feel a little better about the couple of buns that were in date, but a little moldy on the bottom (where I wouldn't have seen), that I had ended up serving on the lunch line the week before!  I guess crap happens!

Before I left for the day, the manager had told me that they only needed me to work on Monday the following week, and she asked me if I could work the entire week of the 17th, and then just on the 28th.  Of course I said yes.  Then she said something which made me glad, which was "I wish you'd just tell Courtney (her manager) that you wanted to come on and work full time!"  Proud, I exclaimed "I would"!  So I'm thinking that at some point in the future, they will definitely hire me on full time.  There are a couple of ladies I know of that will be retiring for sure within about the next year, so that will probably be my opportunity.  I'm so glad!

And I estimated our Federal Taxes using TurboTax's TaxCaster last night, and according to it, we'll be getting about a $5,300 refund this year!  So I'm excited and relieved that things are finally starting to really look up.

Yay!  :D

"The Talk"

Well, I just had "The Talk" with Lilly.

It came up completely unexpectedly, but the time was right.  I knew I would be having to have this "Talk" with her for sure sometime this year.  I'd just been putting it off until my mommy instinct kicked in and let me know that it was definitely time.  My mommy instinct has also been telling me that Lilly has secretly been wondering about it lately, so I knew it was all just a matter of time.

Anyway, how it all came up was because Lilly had to finish a little vocabulary Word Search puzzle for homework tonight.  Lilly was sitting at the coffee table working on it, and she turned to me and told me that one of her friends named Caitlyn (who's in a different class) told Lilly that she had found the "S" word in her word search today, and that it was "gross".  Knowingly, I played dumb, and asked "What 'S' word...sh*t?"  Lilly said "no", and tried to explain further by saying "You know, it's got 3 letters, and it's gross".  I asked Lilly what made it gross.  She eventually revealed that she didn't know, but Caitlyn had made an "eww, that's disgusting" kind of face when she told Lilly about it.  So that led Lilly to believe that the "S" word was gross.  I could tell that Lilly secretly probably knew just a little bit more than she was letting on.

At that point, I knew it was time to clarify and educate.

The whole ordeal went a lot better than I imagined it would.  Lilly was so eager to finally learn about it.  She was just bustin' at the seams to know, and asked some really good questions.  I guess in a way, I was secretly glad to let the cat out of the bag about it too.    Somehow, all the right words just flowed out of me, and I hadn't even thought about what I would tell Lilly whenever the time came.  I guess that's why I sort of dreaded it a little in a way; not knowing how to even start the conversation, much less keep it going.  But I guess when the time is right for stuff like that, then things roll smoothly.  Thank God!

And who knew...the simple diagrams of the 'sperm cell' and 'egg cell' in my old "Charlie Brown 'Cyclopedia" from the early '80s helped me in my talk to Lilly about the "S" word, too!  ;)

"Good Grief, Charlie Brown"...!

LOL!  ;D

Tales From The Grocery Store, Volume 11

This week, between the pizza casserole (and subsequent leftovers that lasted for days, and the buffalo ranch chicken wraps that I made a couple of days ago), I have had some of the most toxic-smelling farts ever.  And for those of you who used to work with me at the bank, you know that when my farts are bad, I mean, they're baaaaaaaaaaaad.  I'll never forget the time I almost killed Amy with one of my horrid farts (I'm still sorry about that)!  :/  LOL!

Anyway, I got to the grocery store, parked my car, grabbed my grocery list and purse, and happened to let a little fart as I was exiting the car.  I got out of the car, closed the door, locked it, and continued on, merrily walking up to the grocery store doors.

I got a buggy, and started my shopping.  The whole time I was shopping, I kept secretly laughing to myself about the silly dream I had lastnight about the taco party platter.

I was in the aisle that has all the International foods in it.  (I did stop to peruse the British section again, but decided not to get anything this time around.  There is another bag of cookies wafers *sticking pinky-finger up* I saw that looked really yummy that I'll probably get eventually, though).

Anyway, I continued on a few feet up and got to the Spaghetti-O section, where I needed to grab a few containers of microwaveable spaghetti & meatballs for Lilly.  There was a lady standing a couple of feet away from me.  She turned to me and asked me if I'd ever tried any of the bouillon granules that she was pointing to on the top shelf.  Assuming she was asking my opinion on whether or not I thought they were any good, I said "no", (I mean, I never cook anything that requires bouillon, for goodness' sake).  And then she proceeded to brag to me about how excellent that particular brand of bouillon is, and how she's been to tons of grocery stores with a much larger variety to choose from, and how she has 30 years of experience (so she's tried all different kinds of bouillon), and she has made it her mission to tell everybody she sees just how good this particular brand of bouillon is.  She pointed to the containers of chicken and beef stock on the shelf below her favorite jars of bouillon, and said that the bouillon was way better than using stock.

I was flabbergasted.  Of course I was polite, pretended to be interested, and replied, "And the bouillon would probably last a lot longer than the stock would".  And she sternly and matter-of-factly said "You have to refrigerate it" (like the bouillon that she loves is so awesome that it is required to be refrigerated, unlike all the other stupid, crappy, garbage brands of bouillon there are out there).

Then I realized that she was evidently some kind of bouillon/food snob, and I just thanked her for telling me, and thank goodness she walked away.  I grabbed Lilly's spaghetti & meatballs and got out of that aisle!  Freakin' bouillon weirdo!  Sheesh!

I finished up the rest of my shopping, went through the checkout, and headed outside with my buggy full of groceries.  On the way to my car, something caught my eye up in the sky.  A big bunch of like, 10 balloons, was tangled up and hung on the powerline.  I wondered if somebody had purchased them at the grocery store, and on their way to their car with them, they accidentally got loose and floated up, getting stuck on the powerline.  I thought to myself "I bet they were pissed".  Either that, or somebody had a birthday party or baby shower in the bank's community room next door, and either accidentally (or purposely) turned the balloons loose.  Either way, it would totally suck for your balloons to float away and immediately get hung on a powerline right in front of your face.

The bunch of stuck balloons was actually traveling up the powerline really quickly in the wind.  I watched them for a few moments.  Then I wondered if once the bunch of balloons got to the pole where the big scary-looking electric thing is, would it cause a big KABOOM and a shower of sparks?  I don't know anything about electricity, but I've seen enough TV shows to know where this might be going, so it was intriguing to me.  So I stood there with my buggy, watching and waiting, hoping to see a disaster unraveling before my very eyes.  Well, the balloons stopped for a while when the wind died down, so I decided to go ahead and start loading my groceries into the back of my car, while keeping an eye on the status of the balloons on the powerline.

I unlocked the back hatch of my car, flung open the glass, and BAM!  No, not the balloons popping, but THE FART.

The little fart that I had let as I was exiting my car maybe an hour before, stayed in the car festering for the whole time I was in the store.  The fart forcefully puffed out of the back hatch of the car when I opened it, and hit me right in the face, almost knocking me down.  My eyes got as big as saucers, and I said "SSSSHHHHHEEEEEEWWWWWW!!!" as I quickly began loading my groceries into the back of the car.

I looked up and noticed that the bunch of balloons had finally made its way to the pole of the powerline and was bouncing gleefully against the scary thing, but they didn't pop, or make any sparks or anything.  I was disappointed, and now I had this horrid fart to contend with.  I mean, it continued to stink even out in the open air.  That's how bad it was.

I finished loading up my groceries, took the buggy to the cart return, and reluctantly walked back to my fart-car.  Even after being open while I loaded my groceries, it still stunk like fart in the car the whole way home.

The fart was so horrid, it actually smelled more like a wild animal had somehow gotten trapped in the car, took a wretched dump, and then subsequently died, only to be discovered 3 days later.

I was ashamed.

When I finally arrived home, Jamie busted out of the back door of the house to unload the groceries like he always does, and as I met him at the door, I warned him about the fart.

When he came back in the house, carrying some bags of groceries, I asked him if he had smelled it, and he frowned and said "YES".  It was awful.

I bet it will still stink in the morning.

Geez!!!  :P

LOL!!!