They're Going to Kill Us!!!!

Did that catch your eye? -

Obviously, it is a little out of context, but that is a direct quote, made by the lady directly in front of me at the Aiken, SC, Kroger this past Monday morning. 3/9/09, to be exact.

And just what prompted this outburst? And yes, it was an outburst -

Not masked men in guns, bursting through the front doors of the Kroger, I assure you.

Here's the entire context:

The checker has finished scanning all of this lady's items, so the woman asked the Kroger employee "has that cigarette tax increase gone into effect yet?"

To which the employee responded, "Yes", and the woman then scoffed loudly, and asked for a carton of Marlboros.

As the checker was handing the woman her Marlboros, the customer yells, to no one in particular, but to everyone within a 50 foot radius: "They're going to kill us!!!!!"

So obviously, since I was right behind her, I had been able to hear the entire exchange, but I wasn't really watching - I was innocently loading my items onto the conveyor belt.

But when she makes this outlandishly bizarre statement at the top of her lungs, I turned to look at her, and calmly stated: "I assume you're talking about those cigarettes."

She looked at me like I had grown a second head - and starts to explain to me that the government was trying to kill her with this cigarette tax.

So now the irony is just slapping me in the face, and I just had to point out that the cigarettes would likely kill her before any cigarette tax increase did, but irony was evidently not on the menu for her that day, as she just took her stuff and grumpily moved on out of the Kroger.

Peace.

Help!!

3rd post in one day - I don't think I've ever made 3 posts in one week before!

Bailey - still driving me insane, begging to go out. He is lying beside me on the floor, and every 30 seconds he stands up, and breathes in my face for 2-3 minutes, until I tell him to go lie down, and then it starts all over again.

I know he doesn't really NEED to go out, so this isn't dog-abuse, or anything.

But the point of this post is, I need a bit of help -

I really, really need to know the name of this Pokemon:

Any help is greatly appreciated -

Years and years ago I knew all of them - but fortunately I have purged all those memories - but after searching on Google for hours, I have given up.

If you know - let me know! Thanks

OK - I was holding back

I was holding back in that post I made a few minutes ago.

Bailey is driving me up a freakin' tree.

He has been in and out, in and out, in and out all day. In the pouring rain.

And now that I settled down in the bedroom, with the comforter safely back on the bed, I thought he would settle down.

But instead, he immediately started bugging me to go out again. And bugging, and bugging.

So when I got damn good and ready (meaning, I finished posting, and needed to get up ANYWAY to go to the bathroom), I took him back downstairs and let him out. And closed the door. Because, as most of you know by now, he knows how to open the door when he's ready to come in.

But he is, of course, way too smart for my plans.

Because he deviously is sitting in the dark, on the deck, watching me, or listening, or both - and when I opened the fridge (to grab a beer - HA!) - and headed back upstairs, he waited until my poor old knees and I were just ONE step away from being back in the bed, and he opened the door and raced upstairs, figuring I would have a snack to share with him.

HA!

No snack for him, so he is moping again, but the joke was on me, too, because now I had to struggle back down the stairs on my horrible knees, to close the damn back door.

I'm sure I am only 2 minutes away from him begging to go out again.

Plus, I forgot to tell you about the stunt he pulled earlier this afternoon.

I decided to take a break from photographing, to try to clean a stubborn stain on my kitchen linoleum - it had been concealed for years by a piece of furniture, but the professional organizer and I did away with that piece of furniture last week (a cabinet containing about 50 co0kbooks -- for a woman with no working stove or oven! -- and supporting a microwave that hasn't worked in at least 6 years). So I filled a bowl with a mixture of 50% clorox and 50% water, and took my handy Black and Decker Power Scrubber, and slowly lowered myself down to the floor and started cleaning. Of course, Bailey immediately has to get right in the middle of all this - and wants to sniff the clorox water - and I have to tell him 3 times not to drink it, and he finally left once I turned on the scrubber. But then I had to stop for some reason, and turned my back, and I look back, and he is drinking the dirty clorox water. Like a camel in the desert. And the bowl of clorox water was less than 12 inches from his nice, full, clean water bowl...

What is the deal with him, today?

Anyway - it has been at least 7 hours since he imbibed the dirty clorox water, and he seems fine, so I guess no harm, no foul.

Musings on a Blah Day

This has been a very blah day.

It has been raining for almost 48 hours. Steady, and fairly hard. I really wish it was snow, instead - Bailey and I could have really had a good time today in the snow!

But nothing but rain.

For about 2 minutes last night, around 1 AM, it was really weird - there was suddenly a weird, really loud sound, like horses galloping on the roof of the house, and it took me 2-3 seconds to realize it was hail. Big hail.

I ran downstairs to take a look - and the hail wasn't those white chunks of ice I'm used to seeing when it hails - they were these jagged, absolutely clear crystals, about 1/4 to 3/4 inch wide - like it was raining ice cubes. No wind. Just a couple of minutes of this hail, and then back to the rain.

A few weeks ago, I hired a professional organizer to help me de-clutter my house. I have accumulated a bunch of stuff in the past 20 years, and was just too overwhelmed to tackle it myself.

So she has been coming once a week, and we tackle one room at a time - but we can't even finish one room on its alloted day, so I have ended up spending all day Sunday getting the scheduled room decluttered enough for us to tackle on Monday - and then most of Monday night and Tuesday night finishing up.

And I am tired of it.

We have thrown a lot of stuff away, and donated a lot to the Salvation Army, but we have found a lot of stuff, basically brand new (most, sadly, still with tags on it) - that is in perfectly good condition, so we have been piling it up to sell on Craig's list.

So I started photographing it yesterday after work, and then spent a good 7 hours today taking pictures, and have still not photographed all of it. So far, I have downloaded about 750 photos - so I need to go in and clean up the pics, and start posting.

I am beyond overwhelmed by all this, and the 2 days of rain haven't helped - I just feel all mopey - just like poor Bailey does.


I had to wash the comforter this morning, because he threw up on it, again - I still haven't quite wized up to his evil ways. It takes almost all day to accomplish this - it takes about 45 minutes in the washer, but then 4-5 hours in the dryer - and I don't want Bailey on the unprotected bed linens (that's a little too much dog hair, even for me) - so he has to be banned from the bedroom whenever I wash the comforter.

So he gets all mopey about that.

And I was down in the bonus room doing the pics, and he doesn't like the bonus room, so he elected to go outside and lie down in the middle of the yard, in the pouring rain, for hours.

Ahh - the smell of wet dog!

He would only come in if I bribed him with treats, and then he wanted right back out again.

But once I gave up on the pictures for today, and put the comforter back on the bed, he has joined me in the bedroom, with his cute little rain-induced faux-hawk.

And I never really notice how gray he is getting, 'til I see a photo like this.

Did I mention - the smell of wet dog?

So, I need to go start photoshopping.

See you in a month or so.
:(