There’s a couple about our same age that lives down the road from us. They have a lovely old house as we do, and when they moved in a few years ago, we gave each other tours of our homes. Our friendship never progressed much beyond the annual exchange of Christmas cards and an occasional brief conversation at the grocery store, but we like them a lot and always felt a kinship with them in many ways, not least of which is our shared love of old houses.
They told us about their visions and dreams for their place when we visited, and from various contractor vehicles parked outside over the years, I know they put a lot of work into completing many of their planned projects.
Last week, the local former Wyeth/bought out by Pfizer plant, where he works in the R&D labs, announced it is closing (with over 600 R&D jobs going to China instead). Today, we noticed a “For Sale” sign went up in their front yard.
So yeah, I’m a little sad for them tonight.
For @debihope and the entire coffee klatch on Twitter (from the June 1963 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine; saw this yesterday when I was thumbing through some old ads to use for craft projects).
Upon further review of my receipt after the shopping incident I told you about earlier, I realized that following the pantyhose purchase, they gave me the $2 difference back, but I had paid tax based on the higher price. FOILED AGAIN, DAMMIT.
Over my lunch break I went to pick up a few things at the grocery store. After checking out, I looked at my receipt and realized one my coupons had not scanned properly, which shorted me by $1.75. Although I was in a rush, I’m a bit (okay, a lot) OCD about my coupon savings, so I reluctantly yet determinedly walked over and got in line at the customer service desk to rectify the difference. After I explained what had happened, the counter person gave me two singles and apologized for the mix-up. I pointed out she only owed me $1.75, but she said not to worry about it (they were busy and I guess the second it saved her not to have to count 3 quarters made all the difference - or maybe she was just being extra nice to make up for my having to wait in line again because of their mistake - whatever, I took my $2 and left).
When I got outside and put my groceries in the truck, I saw that a 6-pack of Diet Coke was in my cart that I hadn’t purchased (it must’ve been forgotten on the counter by the customer ahead of me, and the bagger then put it in my cart by accident). I admit, had the customer service person not been so accommodating just two minutes before, I probably would’ve just taken the soda and not given it a second thought, especially given that I was hurrying and didn’t want to wait in that line again. BUT, I reasoned, something nice just happened to me; I want to keep the positive karma going for someone else who might get home, realize their 6-pack is missing, go back to the store, and it’s all up to me to make sure they get their Diet Coke back with no confusion. Besides, I’d mess up my own positive future karma if I didn’t do the right thing.
On my way out of the store the second time, I realized I had forgotten to pick up the one thing which had precipitated the grocery store run in the first place: pantyhose for a wedding we’re attending tomorrow.
So back I went, again. I swiped my card while simultaneously looking at my watch and mentally calculating how late I was running, and so the transaction was already processed by the time I realized I had been overcharged by $2. Now you might think, well, it’s only $2, who cares? But that’s nearly 50% of the purchase price! Plus, it’s the principle, after all; I’m sure you too have noticed that price scan inconsistencies are very rarely in the customer’s favor, ever.
Not only did I have to wait a full 7 minutes for a manager to come to the front to unlock the register to make the refund, but I also had to fill out a half-page form, giving them my name, address, phone number, and “reason for the return.” I was so pissed, I scribbled everything illegibly, except for the reason, where I printed “BECAUSE YOUR REGISTER WAS IN ERROR. AGAIN.”
Karma’s a fucking bitch, and next time, I’m keeping the Diet Coke.
I just noticed the huzz had taken this pic and put it on his FB page, and I had to share it with you because it’s the first time I think it’s been accurately depicted just how fucking HUGE our cat Hemi is, as shown by the comparison of him beside our normal sized cat, Freddie.
I found Hemi several winters ago as a tiny kitten in our back yard, literally frozen and, I thought, dead. I went inside and asked the huzz to get a shovel, and when he started to scoop up the stiff body from the snow, we heard a faint “mew.”
So, we called our vet to schedule an emergency Sunday night visit. The doctor weighed him in at just 6 ounces, with a body temperature so low it didn’t even register on the thermometer. He advised us the little guy probably wouldn’t make it through the night, and even if he did, he likely had a sickness or disease of some kind, to have been out in the cold like that and not instinctively protecting himself better in the first place.
But, we had come this far, we figured we might as well try to save him if we could. Plus, we had already fallen in love with him and named him Hemingway because of the extra toes on his feet. The vet kept him on a heating pad overnight, fed him intravenously, and then did tests on him the next morning. By noon, we got a phone call with a clean bill of health, saying that he was up, around and eating normally, and that we could bring him home.
That was five years ago and I don’t think he’s ever stopped eating since.
Looks like the huzz is totally getting his geek on tonight, updating and organizing part of his comic book collection. What he doesn’t realize, however, is that our cat Fred is apparently hiding in wait, ready to SPRING out from one of the empty boxes like some kind of feline super hero.
I love Scrabble on Facebook, and I’m usually a fairly competent player. But I had to laugh when I realized I had stared at these tiles on my rack for several minutes, trying to see if I might possibly be able to make a 7-letter word out of them (worth 50 extra points), before realizing the answer was right in front of me. Duh.
p.s. I hooked it onto “RALLY” with the E and N overlapping on the R and A. Don’t even tell me if you see a better placement elsewhere I could have used; I was relieved enough just to finally realize I indeed had a 7-letter word in the first place.
I’m so proud of my good friend Amy, and excited for the latest in her series of “Touch the Art” books to come out, that I just had to share this article from our local paper today (click above to link to the story).
If you’re familiar with her prior art books for kids, you already know how great they are, and you’ll want to get these too.
If you haven’t seen them yet, trust me, her books are a marvelous, interactive way to teach kids (and parents!) about art.
p.s. They make great Christmas gifts :)
p.p.s. Click here to see the Touch the Art series available on amazon.
When I was in college, my boyfriend (now known as the huzz) and I had been home over the weekend and were driving back to campus late Sunday evening. Little did we know that what was about to happen would change our lives forever.
We were on a long, dark, deserted stretch of highway, about midway along in the 200 mile trip, when the radio started to pop and crackle with static. We looked at each other, puzzled, as I reached over to turn it off.
A few more miles later, we noticed the dashboard illumination as well as our headlights were inexplicably dimming at an alarming pace. ”What’s happening?” I asked. “We better pull over,” he replied. “No, we should just keep going,” I reasoned, figuring there was nothing to be gained by stopping. Besides, nobody else was on the road anyway, so what did it matter if our lights were working or not.
We slowed down and continued at a crawl, barely able to see the road in front of us. And then, the car died out completely. We coasted over to the shoulder and debated what to do. We had no idea how many more miles it might be to the next gas station, much less one that would be open in the middle of the night. I remembered passing a truck stop several miles back, so we decided to start walking.
The shoulder was narrow, and the few vehicles on this rural highway that time of night were tractor trailers roaring along at 80 miles an hour, violently swerving at the last minute to avoid hitting us as they passed by.
“Maybe someone will stop to help us,” he offered, in an effort to comfort me as we trekked along in the cold darkness. “NO!” I interjected, “I don’t want anyone to stop. Think about it… we’re walking in the opposite direction from where we broke down, so it’s not like anybody would know why the hell we’d be out here like this, because they wouldn’t have passed our car first. Besides, who would be out on this road at 2 in the morning, other than psycho killers and rapists?! Even if anyone does stop, we’ll just ignore them and keep on walking, okay? OKAY?!”
“Okay.”
We had walked for at least 5-6 miles, when we started questioning just how far back that truck stop had been. Did we really even see it? Were we imagining things? There was still nothing but blackness as far as we could (or, couldn’t) see in every direction.
And then, what I feared most, happened. In my peripheral vision, I sensed the intensified red glow from the brake lights of a battered, rusty old pickup truck that had just passed us. Sure enough, some asshole had stopped, and was now putting it reverse (in reverse! on a 2-lane highway! in the middle of the night!). As he approached from behind us, I chanted, “We’re not getting in that truck, we’re not getting in that truck.”
It was a man, probably in his late 60s, early 70s. I recognized instantly that he fit the stereotypical profile of a crazy pedophile bastard of some such variety. We kept walking, picking up our pace as much as we could, as he continued driving in reverse (in reverse! on a 2-lane highway! in the middle of the night!), while leaning over and popping open the passenger side door as he spoke to us in a crackly yet booming voice, “GET IN!” he insisted.
We kept walking, heads down, not looking at him.
“GET IN!” he repeated, even louder and scarier sounding. “You’re going to get hit. Now GET_IN_THE TRUCK.” He wasn’t going to give up. I quietly muttered, “Well, looks like he’s not gonna leave us alone and he’ll just kill us either way, so I guess we don’t have a choice.” We climbed in and sat in paralyzed silence, staring straight ahead. As he threw it into drive and decisively hit the gas, he accusatively demanded, “WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING OUT HERE?”
I squeaked out, “Um, our car broke down, and um, we were trying to walk back to the truck stop, and um…” “WHAT?! THAT TRUCK STOP IS AT LEAST 25 MILES BACK, YOU NEVER WOULD’VE MADE IT!” he hollered. “WHERE ARE YOU HEADED, ANYWAY?”
In unison we feebly told him the school name, not sure why it mattered, since we’d obviously never see it again.
Within a few minutes, our abandoned car was in sight. He pulled over in front of it, and instructed us to “sit tight.” He reached over into the glove compartment, grabbed something and then proceeded to get out of the truck. Was it a gun? A knife? Was he coming around to the other side to drag us out of the truck and into the woods to kill us? I considered our options. Should we make a break for it now? Burst out of the passenger side right now and run for the trees?
Before I had a chance to think any further, he was already back in the truck in a flash, and in one quick motion, threw a screwdriver back into his glove compartment and tossed our car’s license plate onto my lap, “Here, you don’t want to leave that out here where someone could steal it.” Yeah, right, I get it buddy, YOU don’t want to leave any traceability of who we are, before you murder us, I thought to myself.
Then he said, almost yelling, “I noticed when I got out to get your plate, that one of the chairs I had in the back of my truck must’ve fallen out, so I gotta go back and look for it.” With that, he suddenly turned off the road and into the forest. I wondered why he bothered making up such an odd excuse, when we both very well knew why he was pulling into the cover of the trees: to murder us. At this point, the only question in my mind was whether he’d rape me first (maybe even both of us?), before repeatedly stabbing the screwdriver into our heads.
For several miles, we bumped along as he dodged trees, driving further and deeper into the forest. “I’m a retired engineer,” he explained, “so I know all these shortcuts from the routes of the train tracks.” This made absolutely no sense to me. It was so dark, I couldn’t see any train tracks anywhere, and couldn’t understand how driving through woods could possibly be a short cut. We remained completely silent, tightly holding hands, for what seemed like forever.
And then, out of nowhere, BAM!
There it was, in the glare of his headlights, a fucking chair in the middle of the goddamn woods. In that moment, I realized this guy was totally legitimate - eccentric, sure - but not out to hurt us.
He stopped, got out, threw the chair into the truck bed, and off we went, back to the highway. He continued talking loud in his booming tone, “SORRY I TALK SO LOUD, BUT IT’S BECAUSE I’M HARD OF HEARING. IT’S ALSO WHY MY VOCAL CHORDS ARE ABOUT SHOT. DRIVES MY WIFE NUTS!”
As we neared the college town around 5:30 am, he said he wanted to stop and have breakfast. We had no money, so declined ordering anything when the waitress came to the table. “NONSENSE!” he scoffed, “I know you college kids don’t have any money, but you have to eat. Order whatever you want - it’s on me.”
We ate together, he told us about his wife waiting for him at home, how he had spent all day at an auction, which is where he bought the chairs. He paid the bill, then drove us back to my dorm and dropped us off, reminding me to take the license plate. We were so tired by that point, we never got his name and I can’t remember if we even thanked him.
How did it change our lives? Well, I admit I wrote that line at the beginning for dramatic effect because, let’s face it, you knew I lived to tell about it. But it did change our attitude, in that we have stopped and helped other people several times over the years, in an effort to “pay it forward,” when we might not have otherwise. And every time we do, I tell people that story. And now, I’ve told you too.
Happy Halloween.
(And yes, it was the alternator. My parents came up the next day to jump the battery and get the car, but that’s another story. Let’s just say it involved more than one round trip because the boyfriend/now huzz thought he had the second set of keys with him, but it turned out they were locked in the car and as a result, his life was likely much more at risk with my folks that day than it ever was with the crazy stranger the night before.)
