I spent four and a half days being a post-surgical toad so Tuesday
I ventured out of the house to go to the grocery store. I didn’t need anything
that couldn’t have waited a week, but I did need to test my driving and the
store is only five miles away using the back roads. (It went fine, by the way.)
That morning I had hit a low on the bathroom scales that I hadn’t seen in five
years---yippee-I-a!---and I was in the mood to take a break from my diet. I
looked at cakes and cookies and ice cream but I rejected them all. Then a
1.75 oz. bag of potato chips found its way into my shopping cart and after I
ate them in the car before going home I wondered why I sabotaged myself like
that. Oh, but those carbs and salt sure tasted good after a month plus of being on a
high protein diet of two shakes and one ‘colorful’ meal a day. I was feeling
slightly light-headed when I was standing in the checkout lane and I grabbed
that bag of chips, telling myself I needed the sodium. But I had made it that
far into my shopping trip without making any bad choices. So I will call the
trip to the store an ‘A-’ on the Be-a-Good-Girl test.
There’s a business I found online called 911-POOP that
claims to have francizes all over the country including where I live. I was
looking for a service that cleans out dog runs, thinking I could talk them into
not only picking up poop in Levi’s pen this winter but also shoveling the snow out
once a week. The pen is three steps off the deck and there is no way I can drag
my little snow blower down there. I called Monday morning but by Wednesday afternoon
they hadn’t returned my call. What good is having an answering service if
you’re not going to use it? If I don’t hear back from them soon I’m calling 1
(800) WAA-WAAA next. I can always go to Plan B and stand by the open overhead
garage door with Levi on a retractable leash to do his business where my
driveway plower has been, but that’s not ideal. Aside from the yuck factor at
the front of the house, he’s used to his routine and so am I. On the way home from
the grocery store I stopped by the pet store to check out their bulletin board. No
luck. I didn’t find a dog run cleaning service posted. I have shoveled snow
since I could walk. I actually like doing it. I can’t believe my surgeon won’t
let me do it this year! Other than that flaw, the man is near perfect even if
he did give me three new scars last Thursday.
Today a nice looking young guy with spiky hair and designer sunglasses propped on the top of his head came to my
door. He was wearing a black leather vest with a million pockets like cameramen or
fishermen wear. Have I ever mentioned that I’m a sucker for those vests? I have
long promised myself I’d own one if I ever get to be a skinny-Minnie. Or if I ever
get so poor I have to live on the streets, I want one of those vests. And if I ever
go to a nursing home I want one of those vests so I can carry with me all the
things I don’t want stolen from my room. When my husband’s mother was in a
nursing home half our visiting time was spent tracking down the stuff the
resident “shoplifters” carried back to their own rooms---her teeth, her glasses, her shoes
and underwear included.
One and half hours later the young man left my house and my
whole laundry list of computer issues had been resolved. It was worth every bit
of the $150 it cost me. Some of the issues were left over from my Month in
Computer Hell last fall that I could never have worked out on my own. I can now scan photos and file them. I can
now edit photos. And I can print a webpage without going through a stupid cloud.
Whoever thought that was a good idea for a computer default is crazy. Does
anyone really want to send their bank statements to a cloud hovering over
God-knows-where just to get a hard copy for your files? Not me. Anyway, my tech world was set right again and the young man who did it all is lucky I didn’t
try to steal his vest. It he had been fifty years older I probably would have
flirted with him long enough to get that vest off him so I could try it on. I
don’t think I’ve ever seen a black leather pocket vest and it was damn sexy! He
was damn sexy which only goes to prove that I might be old but I’m not dead
yet. ©
