A job well done.

Given yesterday morning's bathroom disaster, I was not surprised to see plumbers arrive to fix things. What did surprise me was hearing the one guy on his cell phone talkeing to...his boss? Maybe. Or maybe a supply place. I was surprised because he is a plumber, apparently, and yet this is what was heard:

"yeah, we don't have the part. Well...kinda bent. And it has these squiggly things at the end".

Now, if this was me, fair enough. I'm not a plumber. I just feel that if this is your job you have more words in your part vocabulary that "squiggly things".

Mrs. Methuselah

I've heard - more often than I'd care to - the "when I'm old I'll wear purple" thing. Never really made sense to me as I don't there has ever been a time when I didn't wear whatever colour I felt like.

Purple? Sure, why not. Fuchsia? You bet. Tie-dye? check. Paisley? Yup. Clown shoes with juggling frogs on the toe? My favourite footwear for the nonce.

You know when purple IS a problem? When you're 102 and have no eyebrows whatsoever and you decide to paint them on. In purple. That's a problem. But only because I don't know where to look.

At the deep orange lipstick lining the nonn-existent lips? At the purple eyebrows that almost reach the hairline...or where the hairline would be if there were more than a dozen badly coloured hairs on your dried apple of a head? Maybe at the board shorts, except that I was too afraid to see what kind of spindly legs might go with the seriously aged body. The t-shirt with "Bitchy Mama" would be ok...except for the boobs at the waistline. I really don't need to be reminded of where the girls will spend their final years.

I almost didn't get off the elevator at the right floor I was so flabbergasted at the crone with the parcel. On the up side, if I decide at ninety that I want a new career I know you can be a courier at any age you want.

A dozen, so far.

That 20 wishes I mentioned? I'm at 12 so far. And I've already taken steps to see one of them happen! So this week has started out WAY better than last week. Really didn't like last week at all.

Wishing on a Star

I read a book about wishes. So I'm making my own list of wishes. This isn't a list of goals, or direction or anything. It was wishes. Things you'd like to do, or see or have. They don't even have to be possible (I've wanted for a long time to take a trip in a deep sea submersible in the artic, to look at icebergs from below. Ain't gonna happen, but I still like thinking about it), or reasonable. Just...wishes. I'm even going to go grade-school with it and tape pictures in it when possible. So here's to twenty wishes...may some of them come true!

Promise kept. To the letter.

I promised the girl that I wouldn't cut my bangs again on my own with any type scissors or alternate cutting tools whatsoever. And I've kept that promise because I never said anything whatsoever about the rest of my hair.

Eureka!

Here’s the story (there is ALWAYS a story):
I decided to take care of a long overdue errand on the list that never ends. So off I went to the local thrift store with 9,785.5 old videos, a multi-disc cd player, a shirt that was pretty but inexplicably see through (which I suppose is no reason to get rid of it but honestly where would one wear such a thing?) and a sweater so hideous that I’m guessing it was either a gift from my ex-mother in law or that I bought it under the influence of weather so cold I was thinking solely of its warmth factor.

I usually check out the jewelry section (because someday I’ll make some fabulous find) and then I check out the games section and finally go and buy a bunch of cookie tins. I buy the tins on a fairly regular basis. I have a cooking business and tins are nice sturdy containers for delivering cookies. Containers which frequently never return hence the need for constant tin buying. The last three times that I went and bought a cartload of cookies tins it was the same cashier. I’m tempted to tell here that I am building an addition to my house made entirely out of cookie tins.

Anyway…I got to the game/puzzle area and saw the game. I’ve never – never ever – been able to score a fantastic game deal. We’ve had some decent games (Scotland Yard for a couple of bucks), but nothing worth bragging about. So I check the price. And it turns out there are two prices. Neither of which would be an issue but why not get the best deal? So I go to the till and show the cashier the two price stickers. They are both pretty firmly on, so it is hard to tell which is right. She looks at it, looks at me and asks if I took a lower price sticker off of something else and then put it on this. What? Oh, yeah, I did, and every time I rob a bank I go to the police on my way home to let them know what I’ve done. No, honey, I did not change the stickers. Duh.

So she calls over squeaky clean stripy-shirt guy. And he looks at the two stickers, tilts the box, looks at it from different angles like it has a map to Shangri-la hidden in the art work. Finally he says “I don’t know. But it’s just a game, so whatever…the lower price, I guess. If you want”. What is it with these people? No, dumb ass I want to pay the higher price.

I pay the lower price and take my game in loving hands out to the car and home. Without any tins whatsoever because all I could think of was that I had just bought Tikal for $2.99. And yes, when I got home I checked the bits and general game condition. All bits included, as well as the rules and everything in excellent condition. Not even sure if it had been played more than once if even that.

I'd help if I could. Really.

Unfortunately, though, I have no idea how to help someone whose main complaint appears to be that they are being "bombarded by concentration".

Showdown at the O.Krazy Corral.

I love history – so many crazy things. And today I am actually looking at crazy people things (or to be accurate, the insane files), circa 1909-1917. They're actually commitment records.

When they use the specific form there is a space for what outward signs there are to indicate that the person needs to be put in an asylum. And some of them are a bit of a stretch as far as being dangerous (shouting?) but my favourite is a woman whose husband said she was twitchy. Not bitchy, twitchy. Almost as bad as that one I mentioned previously where a woman was put away for being anxious.

There are also letters about people put away because they are insane AND dangerous. Twitchy woman was just insane, not dangerous. There was a guy who they say became insane “due to masturbation”. Yup, forget blindness, it can make you crazy. And then they lock you up. One more and I’ll go back to work. And I have to mention it not because of what made them lock the guy up but their word use. In an official document no less!

“Bothering the womenfolk”. No further explanation. So did he assault women? Was he a flasher? Boring? Irritating? Violent? They never say. They just say he needs to be put away for bothering the womenfolk. As God is my witness, they used the word womenfolk.

Submersible Pilot's License

I decided last week sometime that I need to get out on a regular basis. I figure if my kids are commenting on my lack of a life perhaps it's time to get moving.


There are lots of things I'd be interested in doing. The only criteria, in general, was that it couldn't cost too much, I had to be interested in it to some extent and then nothing Saturday mornings (cooking) or really late Friday nights (have to get up too early Saturdays). Maybe photography? Or Dance? Perhaps S.C.U.B.A. lessons?

So, I went to see what a) interested me, b) I could afford and c)wasn't on Friday or Saturday. What I didn't realize is that there should have been one more qualification. I needed something that I could actually USE someday. Because the only thing that came up that fit a, b and c was beginner's burlesque lessons.