Grandmothers in Boots

I don't know about your grandmother, but mine is a TERRIBLE DECISION MAKER.
I am pretty sure I get it entirely from her.

For instance, yesterday evening Grandmother shows up at the front door covered in blood.
Her clothes have dried blood stains all over, she's bleeding from the face, and she explains that she tripped and fell down an escalator in the Seattle airport. The concerned onlookers called 911 and the paramedics came and bandaged her bleeding knees etc., and tried to get her to a hospital. She refused to go and insisted they let her on her plane. STILL BLEEDING FROM THE FACE.

They made her sign a waiver.

She made it all the way back to the house like this, luckily with no broken bones or internal bleeding. We're standing there, discussing her CONTINUED BLEEDING when she sees the new high heeled boots I've just bought myself.

My grandmother, STILL COVERED IN BLOOD FROM TRIPPING, tells me dead serious, "I am going shopping for high heeled boots just like those! And I will wear them with black tights! Because that is the fashion!"  When I stared at her with incredulity, she added, "But some women also wear those tight jeans...should I get tight jeans? Can't I just wear black tights? Do I need both? ....what size are YOUR shoes? Will I fit?"

I am hiding all of my shoes from my grandmother. She thinks she's getting her own this weekend. I may hide the keys to her car.

Tiny Purses

Terrible decision:

Went to masquerade ball Friday night. Brought very tiny purse.
7:30, parked car in Bethesda, Maryland.
8:30, asked friend to put my keys in her purse.
10:30, went to Eastern Market, DC to a house party. Friend went home to sleep in Virginia.
12:30, started home, realized friend took keys to Virginia.

Fucked.

Neighbors of Chaos

Everyone should check this out! Fabulous webcomic written by a friend in France who let me do the English translations.

http://www.lesvoisinsduchaos.com/en

Share with all your friends.

Amsterdam

This story deemed not fit for print.

Early Morning Sprinting

Many of you are aware of the ongoing morning bus saga because you get repeated text messages from me which state, "I MISSED THE BUS. FUCK." Sometimes I don't include the punctuation, which has led certain individuals to believe Maryland public transit permits orgies. This is why punctuation is important.

Basically, every single morning I leave the house late, and nearly ever single morning I reach a certain point down the block from the bus stop when I see the bus either stopped at the light, or about to go through it. It is a slight hill up to the bus stop, and I have never been a super fit person, and we all know I am certainly NOT a morning person. Despite this, or perhaps even because of it, when I reach this point and see the bus, I always have the same reaction--to yell "FUCK!" and sprint up the hill towards the bus as fast as skinny legs will take me. This is STUPID, because I NEVER make the bus. It is not physically possible, based on the speed of the bus, the distance I am from the bus, and my pathetic sprinting skills. Yet, 3-4 times a week, I find myself shrieking and running until I collapse at the top, weak heart pounding enough to nearly induce vomiting, while I watch the bus continue blithely down the road without me.

The saddest part of this story, though, is that right between my bus stop and the spot I always hit when I see the bus from afar is where the fifth grade safety patrol stands guard. Elementary school children on their way to school pass down that sidewalk every day at precisely the same time as I head for my own bus, and even if I hit the lull in between groups of children crossing the road, there are always 2-5 Safety Patrollers patrolling the area in the exact spot I am shouting obscenities.

In the beginning I think I caused them concern, but by now they are used to me and more or less ignore it. I hope to god they are not telling tales to their parents.

In any case, every morning I get up to the bus stop panting and ready to die and I swear I will never bother to run for the bus again. Obviously I never keep this vow.

THIS morning, I got to the spot and saw the bus was stopped because of the light. I thought to myself, THIS time I can probably make it! So I let out the usual war cry and took off at a dead run for the top of the hill, slamming into a third grader as I did so BUT I DID NOT STOP.

Well, I did not stop until I LOST MY SHOES. I ran right out of them. The light was still red, so, hollering all the way, I ran back and grabbed my shoes and continued running barefoot up the hill, running a fourth grader on a bike into a shrub and waving my shoes up to the bus stop.  It so happened that this time not only did I make the bus, two of my neighbors were also waiting for it and watched in surprise as I barreled towards them, shoes in the air shouting, "WAIT FOR MEEEEEE!!"

They let me on the bus first. Still barefoot. Which meant now the entire bus had reason to stare at me. I sat in the front and tried to discreetly put my shoes back on and smooth out my hair.

Ready to do it all again tomorrow.

Groundhogs

I am going to go ahead and do a post about ridiculous decisions made by someone not me--namely, my father. As many of you know, my father has had a vegetable garden every summer for approximately 25 years. He loves his vegetable garden. But when we moved to Pittsburgh, he discovered that our property was already inhabited by a family groundhogs, led by a dastardly cunning patriarch.  Each winter my father spends plotting in his study how to take down the groundhog, and each summer he carefully implements his new clever plan and by each autumn he retreats, a defeated man.  Every year for the last ten years the war between my father and the groundhog has escalated, and this past summer, I think we can all agree my father went a little mental.  I was receiving extremely disturbing text messages and emails and even phone calls from him several times  a week, and I would like to post just a few of the emails my father sent to me over the course of the summer:



The war against the GH has begun. I have made the first move with an ineffective, pre-emptive strike on his home. I filled it with dirt after stuffing sticker bush thorns in the hole and then covered it with a cinder block. I was pissed the next day to find that he just dug around the cinder block (I didn't think of that) and made his entrance a bit wider. I have removed the cinder block and strategically placed a trap just outside the entrance. I put a pretzel (one of those large ones) and some lettuce in the trap. So far, he has only covered the trap with the dirt that I had stuffed in the entrance of his home. I am feeling relatively safe because I have protected the garden with the electric fence. But I'm also worried because the fence sometimes turns off intermittently. I am wondering if GH knows enough about electricity that he is grounding the fence before strolling through it. In the meantime, I am looking for some gourmet recipes for serving him should he slip into the trap. I'll be picking up some treats for him at the strip tomorrow that I will place in the trap. I can only hope that he goes for it.
 

 *                                    *                                    *                                  *                               *

The groundhog is still at large.  On Saturday morning, the trap was closed, but no groundhog. I bought a cucumber and a head of lettuce  for him, but it's Monday morning and there is no sign of him other than the rather large entrance to his home. I stuffed some more stickers, rocks and other debris at the entrance, but he just removed them. I may go out and buy some fire crackers and throw them down the hole.  The hole is not near Mom's plants, so, if I blow up the hole, it may go undetected. He is digging through the solid cement I filled his hole with. He must have a special jack hammer or something to do that, as I am finding chunks of the broken cement next to his hole as he continues to make progress.  

   *                              *                               *                                       *                *

I bought a bag of concrete and poured it down the ground hog's hole. I thought that maybe I had turned him into a fossil so that generations from now, archeologists could see what the gardeners of today had to face. But, no such luck. Yesterday I saw that he had come back and had tried to get into his house when, alas, the entrance was blocked. He thought he could just dig a new hole, but, when he tried, he hit what seemed like a cement wall. And then, he realized, it was a cement wall. I don't know if he has given up, but for now, I see no sign of him. I suspect that he will come back with a few friends and find a way around the cement, but, if he does, I will just buy more cement until the entire hill side is covered with cement. I also added another layer of electric fence so that there are now two wires: one is 6 inches above ground and the other is 12 inches above ground. I accidentally touched the fence with my shoe while also touching the chain link fence. Now I know that the electric fence is working. I won't be doing that again for a while, I hope. At least I didn't have the urination problem that the one guy had.

                  *                                      *                                      *                                    *

As you know, the groundhog family lives in a cave on the hillside behind the house. I have tried numerous times to evict them, but they refuse to leave. I have filled the door to their cave with the shale and other debris surrounding its opening. But each time they have dug it out and have made the entrance even grander than before. I have put a trap next to the entrance of their home and have filled it with lettuce, cucumbers. bread, crackers,chocolate and any other goodies that I thought would attract them into the trap. But they would not enter. Instead, they filled the trap with the stones and other debris that I had used to block the entrance to their cave. So, a few weeks ago, I bought cement mix and dumped it into the hole. I then poured water on it figuring it would seep down and harden the mix in the hole. But it backfired. The water only seeped down a few inches. So, instead of blocking the entrance, I reinforced the roof with cement. I could hear the groundhog laughing at me as he dug his way back to his home. 

 

*                                         *                                                  *                                   *

I have another thief in the garden. It seems that the ground hog has gotten other rodent friends to join his party. Now, also Alvin, Simon, Ted, Chip, Dale, and others are stealing what does not belong to them. I actually had a beautiful yellow tomato that should be picked today. But, it was bitten into on Monday morning. And by Tuesday morning, every tomato, green or not, was picked from the plants. I would suspect Gus, or Phil, but the ground hogs would not have crossed the electric fence so easily. And it is not their Modus Operandi (MO). They would have taken a bite from each tomato and left the rest. However, there is no sign that a tomato ever existed on these vines. I have no proof that the crime has been committed. It's just my word against their squeaks... If I could even find them. I am now going to war against the ground hogs AND the chipmunks.

*                                                        *                                                   *                                               *

I saw the ground hog face to face (or, more accurately, face to tail). Rachel noticed some flowers moving on the hillside sometime on Saturday. I ran out to find the largest ground hog I have ever seen--the grand daddy of all ground hogs. He realized immediately that this would not be a friendly meeting. So, he quickly ran across the hillside. I don't know where he went because he just disappeared. I am looking all over for his hole, but it must be cleverly disguised. Or, he has mastered the ability to disappear into a space-time warp that has an opening somewhere on the hillside. I haven't seen him since Saturday.

*                                                                 *                                                                                      *  

Maybe if I can keep the dog at the top of the hill, mom won't notice it for a while. Or, I could just buy one of those Japanese robotic dogs. I'd put him on a leash and have him patrol the garden--after reprogramming him to bite anything with four legs.  I just mail ordered a controller board to start building my robot. It should arrive this week.

Sabotoge

A friend convinced me to go volunteer for the Obama campaign and promised me that I could do something like stuff envelopes and I would NOT have to call people.  But in the end he brought me to the phone bank where all there is to do is make calls. Instead of immediately leaving, I stuck around, got trained, and started calling poor undecided voters.  All of the phones in this big room were connected to a big switchboard/box thing and everyone was busily calling people.  At some point maybe 40 minutes in, I stood up, walked a few steps, tripped over a cord AND BROUGHT THE ENTIRE PHONE BANK DOWN. It was terribly humiliating, some guy had to spend 15 minutes trying to fix things, certain volunteers were quite disgruntled, and everyone knew it was me.  Someone accused me of being a Republican spy sent to sabotage the campaign.  We think it was probably a joke, but I apologized 18 times, left my friend there, and cried a little on the way home.