I bet you say that to all the ghouls

 

     He pointed to a vellum document, held a quill pen out to me, and grinned.  “Sign here.” 

      His smirk made my veins feel as though I’d plunged into a winter lake.  “I don’t think so.”

     “It wasn’t you, who only moments ago, swore you’d sell your soul to finish writing your books and have them published?”  His eyes glowed red.

     “Well, I may have said it, but I certainly didn’t mean it.”  I willed my heart to stop its wild rampage in my chest.  “Who the heck are you anyway?”

     “I’m not the devil if that’s what you’re wondering.  I’m one of his lowly ghouls, a minor minion.  However, if you sign here…”  He held out the document again.  “Your wish will be my command for the minimal price of one soul.”

     “No sale buddy.”

     “Don’t be so hasty.”  He sighed and leaned against the doorway.  “Here’s how it goes, Toots.  If I go back without my quota, I have to face the music.  That music is horrible.”

     “Tough, as far as I’m concerned…”  I stood and placed my hands on my hips.  “You can go to hell.”

     With those words, a clap of thunder rocked the house and the ghoul disappeared.

Yet again more snow… now we look like this:

 

Kindle, crazy, and conference

 

     I need to avoid Amazon’s E-books for a while.  It’s too danged easy to spend $$$ and the books appear too darned quick on my Kindle.  At the rate I burn through books, I must learn to restrain myself.

     However, the lousy weather we’re having and the flat tire on my van hasn’t helped.  If I wasn’t reading and writing I’d be stir crazy by now.

     Yes, Dave and Chuck I know that crazy is a very short walk for me. 

     The only truly bright thing on the horizon lately is the phone call I received from the gal I room with at the conferences.  We have our room reserved.  Next, I need to send in my registration.

     Hey, Dave.  The first round is on you.

And then there was ICE

 

     If you read yesterday’s post you know that my friend Dave is delighted with this weather.  I am not.  AJ cleared our driveway tonight so that’s not a problem.  We now have to contend with ICE.  The heavy snow on the roofs of our house is dripping and growing into substantial icicles.  Then the drips are hitting the walks and steps turning them into skating rinks.  We are running out of salt.

     Now running out of salt wouldn’t be that bad since normally I can drive to the store and get more.  However, I have a problem.  My van has a flat tire AGAIN.  I thought we were done with this problem after we had the wheels polished and tires checked last month.  Nope.  It’s BAAAACK! 

     I do not drive DH’s truck.  Ever.  I don’t like his truck.  I don’t like to drive it.  I have too many blind spots when I do drive it.  I had one narrow escape while driving his truck and I haven’t driven it since. 

     Then there’s that ice problem again.  I hate ice.  Our street is very icy and for some reason the salt truck skipped us the last two storms. 

     Hey, Dave do you deliver salt?

Yuck, did we ever get snow this time

 

     “Who filled out the order form for all this snow?”  I asked.

     “Dave did.”  A little voice told me.

     “Dave?  I’ll kill him.”  I gnashed my teeth and paced the floor.

     “You’ll be lucky if you can punch him in the knee caps.”  The little voice began to giggle.

     I tugged on boots, yanked a snow hat over my hair, and threw on my coat and scarf.  “Shut up!”  I went outside to shovel a path in the yard so the dogs could go.  Grumbling under my breath, “Dave could at least come down here and shovel this mess.”

     This storm made last February’s blizzard look like a flurry.  Isn’t it spring yet?

     Quit laughing Dave…

Brusha, brusha, brusha

 

     As I sit here looking at the little zip lock packet containing toothbrush, toothpaste, and floss I remember what my childhood dentist appointments were like.  They were nothing like the one I had on Monday. 

     As a child, I had military dentists.  They never bothered with Novocain when they drilled and filled teeth, six molars in my case.  You were expected to sit in the chair and not butt walk away from their work no matter how close they came to the root.  (And they did come too close in my case.)  Dentistry back then was brutal.

     On Monday, I was asked if I had pre-medicated—I had.  Pre-medication is ordered for me before any work is done because of having rheumatic fever in high school.  Then the dental hygienist numbs my gums with a topical numbing agent, after which another deeper numbing agent is used.  I have very sensitive teeth.  However, once all that stuff begins to work it’s let the cleaning begin.  You would think that I’d be sweating bullets after those old dentists I had but this is almost a pleasure.

If you could choose you neighbor…

 

     Who would choose?  Would there be certain pets you’d want there?  Ones you wouldn’t want?  Are you the neighbor everyone wishes DIDN’T live next door to them?

     We have two small dogs and a large domestic short haired black cat living in the house next door to us along with one teenager and two young adults and one matriarchal unit.  I love this family and I hope they stay there forever.  Patty however, has issues with the two dogs, they always have a few cross words to bark at each other when they are outside at the same time.  We’ve had people in that house I wouldn’t wish on…well…anyone!

     The next best person who lived in that house was young single woman with two cats.  She was seldom home.  I often took care of and played with the cats.

     We won’t go into the worst of the worst that lived there before her.  I don’t want to hear about people spewing their morning coffee onto their computer screens.  Suffice it to say the roach people almost had me move out of my house and then there were worse ones.    

     We were glad when the house was sold and a new owner (see single gal above) moved in.  We were terrified when she sold the house remembering the previous tenants.  We hoped no one bought the place to rent it out but rather to live there.  We were lucky.  (See first paragraph.)  We love them.

You know it’s COLD outside when…

 

     The dogs run out do their business and dash back in, in record time. 

     Long icicles hang from everything. 

     The cars are grumpy when you try to start them. 

     The pond heater is working overtime and the Koi are hanging out directly beneath it. 

     You step outside and your breath freezes in mid-air and drops to the ground with a thud.

     You have no desire to go out even when wearing long underwear, layers of clothing, a very warm coat, gloves, and boots.

     Yep, it is that COLD outside.  When the hell is spring going to get here?

Name my Roomba

 

     We found a brand new Roomba in the MIL’s house.  The box was unopened and everything was still in plastic bags and bubble wrap.  The batteries that came with it sat for too long without being charged and wouldn’t accept a charge so I ordered a new battery for it. 

     The battery arrived today.  After charging it, it was fun to watch the little sage green guy run about the downstairs chasing down and sweeping up all those wild killer dust bunnies.  He’s so darned cute that I think he deserves a name.

     Of course, I did this while the pups were secure in their crates because Gavin has a thing for noisy moving objects.  See the picture above.  That’s Gavin chasing his RC car.  He wore out three of those before we decided it was too expensive a toy for him. 

My family turned my husband into a foodie

 

     I spent most of today reading and watching the pups wrestle each other.  The only real work I did was when it came to dinnertime.

     I made one of DH’s favorite meals, leg of lamb with all the trimmings.  He’d never had this meal before he began to date me.  In fact many of his favorite meals he discovered at my family dinner table.  This guy often managed to show up at our house in time to obtain a dinner invitation.  He loved my grandmother and mother’s cooking.

     Now his mother wasn’t a bad cook, she had some things that she made very well.  She just didn’t offer the variety of meals that we got at my home.  DH fell in love with all sorts of foods he’d never had at home.  My family enjoyed introducing him to a new world of cuisine.

     DH was daring and willing to try anything we offered.  Later, I was to discover that he’d have dinner at home and then another dinner at our place.  His parents had dinner at four and my family didn’t have dinner until six thirty.  No wonder he had such perfect timing.  He was no fool and he sure did love to eat.  He still does.

More snow and panic shoppers

 

     We’ve more snow.  It started snowing in the evening, it’s three in the morning Friday as I post this, and still the snow is coming down.  I’m glad I did my regular grocery shopping in the afternoon on Thursday.  My list had grown over the past three weeks, each time I planned to go shopping it snowed. 

     We were out of vegetables, milk, eggs, sugar, almost out of bread, and I had no snacks left for DH to munch on.  There was one box of tissues left and that wasn’t a full one.  Yes, it was time to shop.  I dodged the impending snowstorm panic shoppers as I filled my list.

     I pushed my cart into my favorite clerk’s line and joked with her about panic shoppers while she rang up my order.  Another customer told us about how a friend of hers had stopped for milk on the way home from work before the last storm.  (She has three small kids and was out of milk.)  There was no milk in the case so she went to have a couple of other items checked out and the woman in front of her had eight gallons of milk.  She practically begged the woman to spare her one for her kids.  The woman rudely told her no.  Geez, some people are real idiots.

I’m no car gal but…

 

     I admit it.  I’m hooked on watching the Barrett Jackson car auctions.  For DH it’s the cars, for me it’s watching idiots spend enough money on one car to buy several homes.  The amount of money they pay for these cars staggers me.  To me, no car is worth that much.

     Every time DH sees a 1955, Chevy Belair two-door sedan, go for a fortune, he about breaks down in tears since we sold ours for a song thirty years ago.  I sit here and tell him I told ya so, I knew he should’ve hung on to that car.  I wasn’t happy when he sold it. 

     However, at the time he was laid off from work, I worked two jobs for little money, and money was tight.  DH insisted we sell it after someone stole the radiator and we couldn’t afford to replace it.  We didn’t need the second car right then but it was his grandfather’s car and I hated seeing it go.  I adored his grandfather.  If it weren’t for that man, we wouldn’t have owned our house.  He bought it from DH’s parents and held the mortgage for us.  It broke our hearts when he died a few months before our wedding.  No, I didn’t want to see that car go at all.