Steaming for a Cuppa Joe

This morning I sat behind a "lady" in a green car as she sat texting away at a stop sign. I suppose I should have been happy that her right foot wasn't pushing on the accelerator while her right index finger was busy spelling out the latest chapter of her epic novel, but I was not the least joyful.  I hadn't had coffee yet and she should have assumed that there would be someone behind her who actually wanted to go somewhere.   After all, I was waiting to join about a gazillion other cars all heading in the general direction of my office and I was eager to look for the gap in the traffic that would allow me to get closer to work.  And coffee.

Someone had carelessly parked in my space at work.  My name isn't on the space, you understand, but everyone knows it's my space.  I like to park there.  It's usually available for me because I usually get there before anyone else, but today of course, I was running behind because some ridiculous person forgot to drive and trapped me for several prime minutes.  You'd think that who ever got to work before me would have had the decency to make coffee.  If you get the good parking place - the one at least four steps closer to the door, the least you can do is make coffee, don't you think?  But noooooo!  There was no coffee made. 

While driving to an other clinic some distracted, possibly brain injured person of questionable parentage who was probably a felon and not a nice person in the least got in front of my obviously important state vehicle and drove one mile per hour under the speed limit. 

Evidently the university is back in session, so the highway department decided to close some lanes here and there just to make things interesting.  There is a convenient  Starbucks on my way, but of course it was on the wrong side of the highway and with lane closures and thousands of people trying to deliver van loads of bookcases, laundry baskets and small appliances to their new apartments, the coffee was just a cruel tease.
 
You know how it goes when a lane is closed. There are signs: right lane ends 1000 feet. . . right lane ends 500 feet. . . right lane ends 14 feet. . . 12 feet, etc. It's not like it's a big surprise when the right lane ends. Yet one of 17 anal orifices behind the wheel will fly past you in the right lane and then sit there like a whipped puppy until someone lets them in. But not me. Not with that Starbucks disappearing like an oasis in my rear view mirror.
 
When I got back to my office the coffee pots had been washed clean.  It was late afternoon and I hesitated for a long minute before deciding to  make just a mug and a half.  And finally I enjoyed a well-deserved, long-overdue cuppa life-sustaining elixir.
 
A couple of sips later, while sitting in my office, my caffeine-fueled sanctuary,  Candy from down the hall stormed into my office. Usually she is as sweet as her name - suspiciously sweet, come to think of it.  But this afternoon she cut loose as only a flower of Southern womanhood in the depths of java withdrawal can do.
 
Yes, she dropped the D bomb with one hand on her hip, her head whipped dangerously side to side and a finger firmly pointed in the direction of my nose.  "Why did you think it was OK to make four ounces of coffee? Didn't you think someone else might want some damn coffee? And by the way, people who don't work should not be allowed to drive during rush hour when people who work regular hours are trying to get to work.  Don't you ever make coffee unless you make a whole pot! And they shouldn't be allowed to drive when people are trying to get back from lunch, either."
 
I just sat there quietly sipping one of the best mugs of the liquid bean I've ever had.  Some people!

Pretty Please with Sprinkles and a Cherry on Top

I hate to beg. That is unless begging gets me what I want. You see I'd rather not beg or ask at all for what I want. I'd rather just have people use their ESPN to figure out what I want, when I want it, and what color I want it in.

I've actually only known a precious few people who have that kind of extra sensory ability and they, only on rare occasions care to give the object of my desire to me.

So here I am asking, imploring, begging even for you and all your friends and literate acquaintances to follow this blog.
It's ever so witty. It will probably make you laugh and takes very little of your time. It doesn't result in magazine salesteens or Seventh Day Adventurists or Thinner Brush Salesmen coming to your door.

Following my blog will not result in being exposed to herpes, AIDS, chicken pox, Valium deficiency, or waxy buildup on your kitchen floor. It will not cause halitosis or housitosis or toesitosis or fleas.

If you're reading this and you know how much it means to me to see a new follower listed, you'd say to yourself, "Self," you'd say, "This is such a ding dang small thing to do to make that fiddy fav year woman way down there in the hot hot south, feel happy. Why, Self," you'd say, "We simply owe it to ourselves and that poor ol' slightly off center woman to get as many people following her blog as possible!"

Yes, I'm sure that's what you'd say. And then you'd go about clicking on that follow button and cajoling all your friends into doing the same.

I mean it's not like I'm asking you to vote for me or campaign for me. Just read the words of a crazy woman from a safe distance. Could be fun, eh?

Come on. . . . live on the edge. Click for FaysofLife.

Microfiction Monday

Write a story in 140 characters, then let Susan know you came to play.  (Writehttp://www.stonyriver.ie/)








"I've told you before, Darling, I'm not quite ready for true intimacy. Please be patient," he said.

But deep in her heart she wondered if she’d already waited too long.

Good Inventions

Because I believe in providing a fair and balanced blog like my friends at Fox News who also believe that their quirky opinions are the final word, I decided to bring to you some of the top inventions in the history of the Universe.

As always, I welcome your opinions, so long as you realize that if they don't exactly match mine, they are flat out wrong.

1. Time.  I will probably never understand exactly how it works, but I can't really imagine my life without it.   I mean, really. . . the past?  Really cool.  I get to remember it however I want, and I do!  Future?  Again, it's a very fun imaginary friend.  Color it however you like.  Best of all, I've got to admit I really like the present.  What a gift!
2. Vanilla ice cream.  I consider myself to be a bit of an expert on this.  I have been known to make the very best vanilla ice cream ever, but I've got to say that my good friends Ben and Jerry do a pretty ding dang good job as well.  Sure, there are fancier ice creams, but a really good vanilla is the best.  I know because I I've tried them all. Several of them I've tried several times. 
3. Baby mammals.  Baby humans are so ding dang cute that they can make you forget they are basically drooling, eat-and-poop machine insomniac noise makers, but they are just not really as cute as puppies or kittens; calves or colts.  And nothing in the Universe can be as aahhhh inspiring as a day old lamb. Those little goobers will just make you forget anything bad that ever entered your brain.
4. Fun.  Much maligned by Protestants and math teachers, this is a great idea that just couldn't be kept down.  If you've forgotten how it's done, don't go to  television or a comedy club.  Go to a preschool.  Those places are full of fun experts.  If they aren't, they are bad places that don't  deserve to have preschoolers around.
5. Trees.  Let me just say kudos to the Great Creator for this one.  Seriously one of the best ideas ever.  Fruit, nuts, lumber, shade, homes for lots of animals, beauty, water filters, oxygen producers, swings, treehouses. . . . . What else compares?  Nuttin, honey.
6. Dreams.  As long as I can remember (see no. 1) I have been entertained nightly by wondrous dreams.  No movie has come close to my dreams - both the day and the night varieties.  I feel sad for people who can't remember their dreams or restrict them only to nightmares. 
7. Physical properties of water.  Water in general is really cool and probably deserves a number of its own, however water's physical properties - specifically they way it expands when it freezes as opposed to most things, which get smaller when they are cold - is just so convenient for our planet.  If ice burgs sank instead of float, they would hang out at the bottom of the ocean and poof!  There goes the jet stream.  In other words, poof! There would go the whole weather/heat exchange/life thing we've got going. 
8. Art.  Painting, sculpting, floral arranging, dance, theatre, cooking. . . . music. (pfn) I suppose in my wildest dreams (see no. 6) I could imagine life without it, but how boring it would be. I think the Shakers tried it and look what happened to them.  Which reminds me. . .
9. Sex.  I mean the human kind, not the amoeba kind.  Sure we have to have some way to reproduce, but it could have easily been through dropping human acorns on the ground or by taking a cutting.  But no, we get to have sex, which (when done correctly) really doesn't compare to anything else.  Actually sex can combine several of the other numbers.  I'll let you decide which. The Shakers didn't like sex - banned it as a matter of fact, and they are almost extinct.  Go figure.  But like all these special, cool things, it is just a crime (literally) to misuse it. 

And the grooviest invention yet?

10.  Life.  This is the original gift that keeps on giving; the one that allows us to experience all of the other coolest inventions.  I suppose it may sound trite or oversimplified - "yeah, man I'm high on life."  But I am high on life.  It's good stuff.  My mind is daily boggled by people wanting to end it for someone else or themselves.  That is the ultimate hollow.  You end life, you end nos. 1 - 9, too.  Bad idea.

So what say you blog readers?  What did I leave out?

Bad Inventions

We tend to assume that new things are good things.  There's something magical about the word new. Because we've been bombarded with the combination every time we shop for nearly anything, we associate the word new with the word improved. Well, t'aint necessarily so.

I'm not actually sitting on a flowered sofa with a hand-crocheted Afghan covering my lap telling my grandchildren that I walked five miles through knee-deep snow, up-hill to and from school. I'm not anti-new.  It's just that there are some things that just should never have been invented. 

I've developed a top ten list for your debate.

1. Algebra. I am still waiting to find myself in a situation where I need to figure out what X equals. I'm sorry, Mr. Scheurman, it was painful and I just don't see it.
2. Cigarettes.  I think if someone wants to throw money away to suck poisons into her lungs and poison anyone around her who is trying to breathe,  she should be required to smoke cigars, a pipe or at the very least go to the trouble of rolling her own.  Making smoking more convenient was not a good invention.
3. Thong underwear.  Seriously!  Why even bother?  I have never felt the need to floss my butt and I don't think other people should, either.  Which reminds me of no. 4.
4. Underwire bras.  The inventor of this modern torture device was a sadistic, pure evil, misogynistic, testosterone-laden psychopath.  And I don't like him very much.
5. Gym parking lots.  If people would walk to the gym, they wouldn't have to go in. 
6. Spandex "work out" clothes.  If you've ever partaken of no. 5, you know the kind I'm talking about.  This is just wrong as well as superfluous if one has body paint.
7. Twinkies.  I didn't taste one of these modern marvels until I was a married woman.  I immediately spit it out.  They are poison and don't even taste good. 
8. Light beer.  If you're going to drink beer, drink beer.  Don't pretend that it's diet beer.  It isn't diet and it isn't beer.  I'm from Wisconsin and I know.
9. Chewing gum. Who decided that what we really need is something that makes humans look like cows chewing cud? Why was that ever a good idea? And in what Universe did people decide it was ok to chew gum in a professional setting, at a wedding or funeral, or anywhere I can see them?
10. And the stupidest invention in the history of the Universe is. . . . (drum roll, please) Methamphetamine.   Someone actually went to the trouble to find out what would happen if he mixed some cold medicine with some drain cleaner and some other fancy stuff; cooked the toxic substance down, and then smoked the particulate.  Now who on God's green Earth is actually that stupid?  Here, man, smoke this, you'll be hooked tomorrow, lose everything you have including your family, possessions, freedom and your ability to think.  Yeah, sounds AWESOME, man!  I've seen so many people whose lives and souls have been stolen by this garbage and they aren't pretty let me tell you.  Not only do their brains stop functioning like a human brain, their teeth turn into little pointy black things, their skin turns grey and full of lines and creases and they look as if they've been held captive in the dark, damp basement of an evil witch for the past year or so.  Now most people buy their first meth from someone who is cooking it.  That's just more stupid than can be expressed here in polite company. But if you were going to buy a Ford, you probably wouldn't want to buy one from a person with black teeth that were falling out  during the test drive, who weighed about the same as your house cat and was about four times a jumpy; even if that man drove a ford himself.  So why in the world would anyone buy meth from a meth cooker who looks like that?  Doesn't it ever run through the buyer's mind that just maybe the seller looks and asks like that because of the meth?  I've known a lot about drugs and worked with people who've  been addicted to all sorts of drugs but I have never seen anything that comes close to being as down right STUPID as meth.

Meth Mouth

City on the Hill

I know government is complicated.  There's all that go along to get along, I'll vote for this if you vote for that, you donate X to my campaign and I'll do such and such. Some politicians probably go into the work with good intentions, who knows? But one thing is sure, our big government isn't efficient. 

Yet we expect it to go around the world fixing everything.  Earthquakes, starvation, lack of education, lack of health care, floods, corrupt officials - the U.S. government is supposed to clean up everything.  I think the U.S. government should take care of people who're affected by earthquakes, without enough food, who lack education, who lack heath care, etc.  It should take care of American people. 

It should make sure every American has the basics of health care, education, food, housing - you know, the basics.  As for corrupt officials and bad tyrannical governors, it has enough to deal with right here at home.  It is ridiculously arrogant of it to go to work on the flecks in its neighbors' eyes when it has a couple of 4 X 6s in both its eyes. When the U.S. is perfect - when all our people are fed, housed, educated, have health care, then perhaps the government can go help others countries.  But we're a long way from that. A long way.

I'm not unconcerned about the plight of people in other countries.  I'm very proud of the way the American people individually and as part American non-profit organizations  help people, other animals, and their habitats all over the world.  Non-profits are held accountable for their efficiency and we as individuals can choose which ones to help through.  I'm proud to be an American!  Just think how much more the American people could help if we were all secure.

And yes, I think the government must defend us from all enemies that threaten to harm us.  I just don't think we need to go far to find threats.  Our biggest threats are those we face right here.  You need only to go to an ER, look under bridges, listen to a high school English class, or talk to a 15 year old about to give birth to get an idea of what threatens us.  I would be no less proud of our soldiers if they were engineering our roads, turning around street gangs, and providing health care here at home.  And I don't think it's too much to ask of all young Americans to serve their country for a couple of years.

We are the city on the hill.  We'd better fix our roofs, wash our windows and grow healthy gardens if we expect to set a good example.

It's unrealistic for us to expect our government to be efficient if we expect it to be all things to all people.  The government, brothers and sisters, had better be us. If you aren't letting your elected representatives know exactly want you want on a  regular basis, then you aren't doing your job.  How can they represent us if they don't hear from us.  Obviously, it doesn't work when the only people they hear from are the ones who give huge gifts to their campaigns. 

It's supposed to be of the people, by the people, for the people. I reckon that means the people of the United States. 

Super Me!

On my way home from work today I was thinking about what super power I would choose.  Not that anyone has offered any super power to me.  Well, not for a while anyway.  I mean, there was that one guy in high school, but hey, I wasn't as naive as he hoped.

At first I thought that being able to fly would be pretty cool.  Then I tried to figure out what I'd do if I could fly.  Oh, sure, the first few days I'd probably just fly around and enjoy the wind in my face, check out what a bird's eye view really is, try to guess the buildings by their roofs - you know, normal first couple of flying days stuff.

But what I'd do with my power after just playing around a while stumped me. Before I could rationally choose flight as my superpower, I'd need to have some idea what benefit it would be to me and the rest of the world.  And in order to figure that out, I'd need more details.

How fast could I fly?  How long?  How high?  Would I be able to pick up things and fly with them, or does super strength not automatically go along with being able to fly?  These are things I  need to know.  Because  I couldn't carry any more when flying than I can when walking, and if I couldn't fly really fast and really far, I'd be limited to rescuing small animals and children who were nearby.  I suppose I could be a courier of small packages but how helpful (and how fun)  would that really be?

Then it occurred to me that times being what they are, I'd need to keep my ability a secret.  Someone would surely shoot me or I'd be kidnapped by the government and have horrible experiments performed on me.  Well, of course!  This is why flying superheros wear masks and costumes.  They have to protect their identities and their lives!  I'd never actually thought it though before. So flying, while really cool and not something I'd turn down,  isn't probably the power I'd choose.

By the time I reached the city limits I was considering invisibility.  Right away I thought that would be very cool because I could sneak in and out of places.  But what would I do with that?  I'd possibly be very tempted to turn to a life of crime because it would be so easy to steal things.  Then I'd be Superguilt Woman!  I felt bad for even thinking about it. I could listen to what people said about me, but then I'd probably feel hurt and angry.  I could foil the plans of evil-doers, but I'd have to work with people who know where to find likely evil-doers and I've already determined I wouldn't care to let the government in on my abilities.  So basically,  having the ability to invade people's privacy probably isn't something I'd choose.

Same goes for reading minds.  While at first glance you might think it would be helpful, I don't need to know what people are really thinking.  I'm frightened enough by the bits they are willing to tell me. Sometimes I don't even like being able to read my own mind let along anyone else's. Talk about invading privacy!

So what then?  Talking to animals?  Been doing that all my life.  A human magnet? Sounds dangerous.  Xray vision?  No big deal in the age of MRIs.

I though for a bit about having the ability to convince people - sort of Supercharm.  Just think of it!  I could convince everyone to recycle everything, to conserve water and give up their gas guzzlers.  I could convince people of the errors of their ways because. . .  Oh.  What if I'm not right about absolutely everything?  I know, it's a stretch to even imagine such an absurd notion, but still. . .That's a lot of responsibility.  And I've been known to be irresponsible on the very rare occassion.

By the time I got home, I realized it hadn't rained enough to keep me from having to water my gardens.  That's when it came to me.  A super power that would really improve the quality of my life (which is pretty ding dang groovy already) without being interesting enough to get me in trouble. I realized that at that very moment, in the spirit of the true Batwoman,  I'd really like to be disgusting to mosquitoes.