It's me again

I'm not even going to apologize for my delinquency, or promise to be more faithful. We all know that may never happen. But I will try.

I just got home from what could have been a delightful trip, but turned into a nightmare because of weather delays and so on. We headed out of here early one Friday morning with high hopes of arriving in NYC around 2 pm. It seemed like a simple thing. It WAS a nonstop after all. But it took us 14 hours before we got there. We couldn't take off and then we couldn't land and then we ran out of gas and had to turn back at which time we were threatened with the possibility of having to spend the night in the airport in Detroit. It was worse coming home. I have decided it's due to rising fuel prices. The airlines must cut costs somehow, so they don't replace planes as frequently as they used to, which means we are flying on planes that have been duct taped together and break down more often. Then they overbook because they make more money if the plane is full. So the poor schmucks who have cancelled or bumped flights don't have a prayer of getting on another plane. They are the ones sitting around at the gate with a glazed expression, mumbling incoherently. However, they try to placate the plebes by rolling out carts of snacks. You have cheesy crackers with peanut butter, little bags of peanuts, candy bars with peanuts, etc. I'm sure they are hoping someone will have an allergic reaction, which will leave a seat vacant on the next flight. But they have to delay the flights to give the baggage handlers plenty of time to mutilate your luggage and throw it on the wrong plane. This trip I had a relatively new suitcase, well made. One of the handlers must have taken a wrench to one of the wheels and yanked it off. There was a little bloody stump sticking out. Sad. Of course, wheels are not covered when you try to make a claim. Actually, whatever it is you want to make a claim on, is not covered today. Yes, I am jaded.

Now here's another story on an unrelated topic. I bought 2 pairs of jeans at the same store. They are a store brand, same size, same style, same color. I tried both pairs on before purchase. Both fit fine. I started wearing them. One pair I love. The other one, inexplicably falls down after a few hours. I find myself constantly yanking them up. I try to keep them separate in the closet but invariably I end up somewhere, other than home, wearing the bad ones. So this week, I carefully examined them to see what I had missed. I verified the size and style number again. However, one pair was made in China and the other one, Bangladesh. Aha! Yesterday I wore my Chinese pants, today the Bangladeshi pants. I think the Chinese pants are the bad ones. So, now do I go tell the clerks at the store, or keep this bit of information to myself? Bionic Man says he's not surprised. When he was working, he found the Chinese were willing to cut corners. The Bangladeshi's were more particular on specifications. I just have to make sure I always buy the Bangladeshi pants.

This afternoon I came out of my cocoon to fix dinner and the house was HOT. What is going on? I almost never have the thermostat set over 68 so it didn't occur to me to go look there. But it's unbearable. So, naturally I think I must be dying or something. Bionic Man checked the thermostat. It's 85! I guess earlier in the day when I was delirious, I dusted the house and must have bumped it. Good Grief! That just goes to show you, you should never dust your house.

I'm now signing off.

Scrunchy Hoses--as seen on TV

Have you seen those scrunchy hoses sold on TV? I'm sure they have another name, but the idea is that they scrunch up when not in use and look sort of like just washed pantyhose legs. Bionic Man decided that he would love to get a few of those and happened upon them in a local store. Be advised, they are not everything they claim to be. Oh, they do conserve space, and the theory is a good one. However, they tend to burst under pressure. They are only under pressure when water is coursing through them, so if you only want one to hang on the side of the house, you're good. If you want to actually use one, you aren't so lucky. I'm trying to be charitable here. After his second one burst, he decided to try to fix them. It has become a daily ritual now. Trouble is that every time they burst and get fixed they are a bit shorter. Undaunted, this activity continues. I am envisioning the day when he is standing with his 18 inch hose, next to the house, trying to water the lawn, or wash the car.

glow in the dark underwear

I didn't want anyone to think that I had a lack of things to keep me entertained. We have problems here that no one has ever thought of before. Here's the latest. Tag-less underwear is an issue for Bionic Man. When he gets dressed in the dark he can't tell the front from the back. Now, I did point out that it's more of a problem for me, as my underwear doesn't have a hole in the front like his does. But then you may ask, why are we getting dressed in the dark anyway? Why not turn on a light? This would be too easy. It could one day become a game show thing. We need to practice. So, I came up with a solution. Did you know you can buy glow in the dark fabric paint? So, all I need to do is get some of that, and paint in his underwear, back and front, or if I wanted to mess with him a little I could reverse it in one or two pairs. However, he pointed out that I would then need to lay them all out on the window sill so they could get 'charged up'. This will not be a project we undertake when company is coming. And I'm wondering what it will be like to wear charged up underwear. More to come on this.

Obsessions

Between my husband and my cat I am going to lose my mind. Lately my cat has started yowling continually all day long. It used to be an alert that she wanted a treat, or her litter box wasn't perfect, or some other strange manifestation was going on. Now it seems to be all the time, for no particular reason. I started yowling back at her and it worked for a while, but now she answers me. I wonder what I am saying. I also tried giving her a time out in the bathroom. That worked once or twice, but she's on to me. I took her to the vet today and he says she has kidney disease. He actually mentioned the possibility of a transplant. I am rolling my eyes at this point. He must have forgotten I was the lady who opted not to have her cat's teeth cleaned, at a small cost to me of $395 each time. Is it just me, or does that seem a bit out of line? He might tell me if I had had her teeth cleaned annually she might not have kidney disease now. But, I pointed out to him that I could have my own teeth cleaned for a mere $100, at the time. It somehow seemed silly to spend that much on my cat's teeth, and I also wasn't interested in braces, FYI. Kidney transplant?! You must be kidding. So, then perhaps dialysis? You have to seriously ask yourself how far you are willing to go.

Then there's my husband, of 42 years who has suddenly decided that he wants to train for a triathlon. The ONLY thing standing in his way is that he isn't an Olympic swimmer. He needs to learn the freestyle, which has always eluded him. So he signs up and prepays for lessons at the local gym. Now, I am thinking sure, that's the only thing standing in his way here. It would be as if I decided that I was going to be a prima ballerina and the only thing standing in my way was that I didn't have a tutu. I digress. After his first lesson he came home all discouraged because he just couldn't get the timing down. So, he decided that he would switch to the breast stroke. Picture this: He sits in the dining room with his iPad, watching videos of people doing the breast stroke, and tries to imitate them sitting on his chair. I do wish I had a video camera. But that wasn't efficient, so he tried laying on the floor. But the floor was hard and got in the way. So tonight he was laying across a chair counting and waving his arms and kicking his feet. He even bought these peculiar swim fins that are rounded and look like duck bills. He says they are trainers. But the last time at the pool, he says, that no matter how hard he kicked his feet and waved his arms, he didn't go anyplace. I said maybe he could patent it as a new way to tread water. He was not amused.

Neither of these things would be so bad if they weren't going on continually ALL THE TIME. You know, years ago I didn't understand when an older friend of mine went out and got a job when her husband retired. I'm beginning to see the wisdom in that.

The latst

We actually went 10 days without a sighting of ants. I was caught off guard this morning when I got out into the kitchen. Everything was going along swimmingly until I was almost done getting breakfast started. Then I saw a very large ant, just laying out int the middle of the floor in front of the stove. He was quite dead. I know he wasn't there all along. I surely would have seen him. I had no more than removed the carcass when I turned around and there were 2 more bodies. This was very odd because they must have been dragged and deposited, but it had to have happened quickly because I didn't see it happen. It's starting to creep me out. Finding the bodies all over.

On an unrelated topic, I doubt if any of you know that girls in college during the 40's were required to take a semester of training in working in a hospital, just in case they were needed to help in that way during the war. And that is how my mother learned to do hospital corners when making a bed. So now that's how I make a bed. But I have always had a problem folding fitted sheets. And I'm sure Mom never learned how to do that since fitted sheets were invented later. I did work in a laundry one summer during my college tenure, and learned how to fold flat sheets as they came out of the mangles. I think we laundered sheets for the hotels in town. And I could digress into just how the mangles got their name. But we didn't do fitted. There must be a way to do it neatly, but it eludes me. I even found a web site devoted to that sort of thing and the directions were impossible. Clearly, my sheets are prescient or something. It's like wrestling a 2 year old into the bathtub. These sheets have a mind of their own.

This is War!

Last week we had bodies littering the counter and floor. Bionic Man went to Menards to buy ant traps. Normally, for indoor use, you would buy those tiny little traps. But this called for more serious measures. He bought the big ones you are supposed to pound into the ground outside. He cut the stakes off so he could use them indoors. They were strategically placed. And we waited. We found a few ants the following day and then just random ones. I was not naive enough to believe that we had routed them or won. This morning I found 3 more, in the kitchen. Two were clearly staggering across the floor. They had eaten the poison. Shazam! The third one was larger and seemed fine. The big one must have come to investigate the untimely deaths of many of his friends, but had not, himself, imbibed. I remember the outcome of the poisoning in the other house. One morning I awoke to find several large ants dragging bodies into piles. I am not making this up! It was kind of like a scene from the Black Death in Europe. And 3 or 4 of the larger ants were really piling up their comrades. The piles were rather large too. I think I needed a tranquilizer that day. We vacuumed them up before we knew what they planned to do with the piles once they were done. Mind boggling. Maybe the next step was burning the piles so as not to spread the disease.

ants and tires

Yes, I'm back. It's been a crazy year and again, I am hoping to do better. But for those of you who may have read previous posts about the ants that live about me. I am referring to the large black ants, not the little grease ants. We could never rid the previous house of them. I enjoyed 11 years of respite from their harassment. They are back in full force. First, I would really really like to know where ants come from in the middle of sub zero weather in January?!? Shouldn't they all be dead, or hibernating or something? And why are they living with me? Why couldn't they go live with someone else? A friend of mine suggested that I was ant-free for 11 years because ants have really teeny legs and it took them this long to find me. I just killed 6 and 4 more got away. Now, seriously, shouldn't this be a July problem? We begin war games tomorrow. Meanwhile, Bionic Man is keeping the bodies in a jar to be an example to the rest.

Second, I know I have also mentioned the display on my car that notifies me of the obvious. You maybe slip a little on the ice and the display reads "Ice may be possible." So I drove my car for 3 months while it kept telling me the air pressure was low in my tires. Bionic Man said he checked the tires and everything was just fine. Something must be wrong with the sensor. I bought into that, until the usher at our church came and got him in the middle of the service one week. He said the tires were so low in back that he wasn't sure it was safe to drive and he would follow Bionic Man to the gas station to get air. I'm wondering what happened. It seems he was only checking the front tires. I suppose it's like the man who lost his wallet and never checked his dresser because he had looked everywhere else and if it wasn't on the dresser he didn't know what he'd do. So, I guess, if the display warns you that air pressure is low you have to check all 4 tires, not just 2 of them. Go figure.