Tag: women

Welcome Home!

Another business trip in the books. More people watching, at the airport flying out and flying back, is a never ending source of entertainment. On the flight out the plane was booked to capacity and when I checked in for the flight I made sure I had an aisle seat. I don’t want to be stuck by some stranger who is in no hurry to get off the plane, I want to get out as quickly as I can. I sat in my aisle seat, first one to sit in our row, got settled in and a man stopped in front of me and said he had the middle seat so I stood up to let him in. A couple of minutes later another man stopped in front of me and said he had the window seat. As I was gathering my papers, he said that if it was easier, I could just scoot over and let him have my aisle seat. I looked at him and said, “No that’s not how it works.” The other guy moved over so he moved from the middle seat to the window seat, and the second man took the middle seat. Lucky me, he hadn’t bathed in a few days and he hogged the armrest.

The flight home provided much more entertainment. As the boarding process started, the gate agent made the announcement that people with small children and anyone needing assistance getting on board to come up and check in. I watched as a long line of people being pushed in wheelchairs, some walking with canes and some that I suspected were scamming the system just to get on the plane early queued up in front of the gate. Added to that group were parents with small children and babies, one woman came up pushing a double wide stroller and she plowed her way through the throng almost knocking one man wearing a walking cast over.

I sat there thinking, “Oh great a plane full of crying babies and people in wheelchairs, this is going to take forever to get boarded and with my luck I’ll get to sit next to an unhappy baby.” Then I remembered that I was in an exit row, no babies or small children in exit rows and I breathed a small sigh of relief. Don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for mothers of small children and most of the ones I flown with have more patience than I ever had. I was just tired and ready to be home.

The biggest welcome home came from Orso. He barked at me as I walked in the house and let me know how displeased he was that I was gone for nine days and I left him alone with Mitch. He showed me just how rough it was to be sequestered for nine days with Mitch, because as I started to walk up the stairs to the bedroom, I saw that he had diarrhea. All over the floor. At least it was not on the carpet. So at nine o’clock at night, after spending three and a half hours in a plane with one hundred and sixty-eight people and being awake for seventeen hours (not counting the time change), I got to mop the floor.

Business travel is so glamorous.

Day Trip

I wouldn’t normally call a trip to a store a day trip, but then a trip to IKEA is not a normal stop by any figment of the imagination. I used to think that a trip to Sam’s Club after eleven in the morning was crazy enough, but that was before I went to IKEA. Oh my god, is that place a zoo or what? As we waited in line to turn into the parking lot, my first thought was to just keep going, that nothing is worth this madness, but no we waited patiently to turn into the parking lot so that we could drive very slowly about three miles an hour in a long line of cars hoping for the sight of taillights lighting up on a parked car before the guy in front of us did. We circled the building and quite by accident we ran across an empty parking spot next to a parked tractor trailer. Snagging it we then had to walk around the building to the other side to go in the entrance. There were even security guards acting as parking attendants directing the madness and keeping road rage to a minimum.

Once inside it was no better, worse I would say, because now there were all of the occupants in the parked cars running amok in the building. There is even a play center to dump your kids in while you wander around in the maze the store has designed to force you to go through departments you have no desire or need to go to. The playroom for kids was filled to capacity and there was a waiting line, which meant there were kids running around out of control just like their parents, adding to the melee. People would walk along the path through the departments sort of like the yellow brick road until they see something that catches their interest, then they would just stop in these big groups blocking the expanse of the yellow brick road, only it was gray I think. I kept looking for an escape route and Mitch kept pulling me back. He didn’t want to die alone.

I have to admit there were a lot of cool things in there. We found a couple of chairs that were very reasonably priced, I found a desk that raised to a standing position or was easily lowered to a seated position and since I work from home, this was a must. We also found some really cool window panels, but it was the chaos of the crush of people that made the biggest impression on me.

I learned that you never go to IKEA on the weekend, not unless you have already been drinking and then you will end up with a huge credit card bill. Of course that isn’t the worst of the whole ordeal. You pick out what you want, then you have to go to the warehouse where you have to wander through aisles and aisles for the items of choice, (god forbid if you wrote the numbers down incorrectly) figure out how to get the one thing you want off the top shelf then get it to the other end of the warehouse to pay for all of your finds.

After you pay for everything you have a couple of choices, you can either go get the car, drive through the traffic jam to pull into the designated loading area and load your car or you can push your cart out to the parking lot and dodge cars backing up to leave and cars that will run you down to get to the vacant parking spot. We chose the latter and after almost getting run down by another guy pushing his cart out to his car and a man who couldn’t get out of the parking lot fast enough, we made to our car. As we started unloading our cart a woman pulled up and asking if we were leaving, so she could wait for our spot.

What a day.

Photo Shot Sunday

These are some of the photos I took on my last hiking excursion. It was a beautiful Sunday.

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Definitely not on my Bucket List

I don’t really have a Bucket List, mainly because I haven’t done or been hardly anyplace and I want to see and do so much, a Bucket List isn’t necessary. I want to go hiking more, drink more wine, take more pictures and on and on and on. But there is one thing that is not something I want to experience ever again. Oh there are lots of things I don’t to experience, this is just one of them.

I had the distinct displeasure of getting to experience Salmonella Poisoning this week. Not only did I get to experience it one day, but I have gotten to experience for the last five days and after I finally figured out what this might be, I will get to live with this for probably another week or so. If I’m wrong in my self-diagnosis, I may be miserable for even longer. Yay. I’ve never had Salmonella so I’m not one hundred percent sure that this is Salmonella, I’m just guessing. Of course, if it’s not Salmonella, then I have a bigger problem, maybe. If I’m right I should recover within a week or so, if not then I guess it’s time to find a doctor. God knows I wouldn’t want to rush into anything.

I think I got Salmonella from eating bad eggs. Oh and I have been eating the eggs from the same carton of eggs for the last five days and so has Orso. I cook two egg whites every morning then cook the yolks and give them to Orso. So far he hasn’t experienced any discomfort, but then Mitch pointed out that he also eats dead things. It didn’t occur to me that eggs could be the problem until I went online and read up on Salmonella Poisoning. I kept going over everything I’ve eaten for the last five days, trying different things, like not taking a certain vitamin (even though I’ve been taking the same ones for years) or blaming not enough wine (can you get enough wine?) and the only common food I had eaten for the last five days is eggs.

Who knows, maybe it was just one of the eggs I ate or it could be the whole carton. I haven’t been playing with any lizards or snakes, so that’s out and I don’t hang out with chickens, making me think I’m pretty safe on my hypothesis. As far as food poisoning goes, from what I’ve read, Salmonella is not one of the worst and most people recover from it after about a week without any special treatment or medication. Lucky me, maybe only seven days to go.

Undo

I wish I had an undo option. If I had an indo button, I could fix my stupid mistakes with a simple push of the undo button. Wouldn’t that be something special, being able to hit the undo button? Think of the possibilities. Think back through your life and all the times you said to yourself, “I wish I hadn’t done that, said that or eaten that. With an undo button you could have a second chance at getting it right. I don’t think that every mistake or misspoken word should be undoable, just the really big ones.

You have the chance to undo the harsh words you spoke to your husband or wife or child just because you were tired or frustrated from work. You could undo the night at the bar where you drank too much and woke up with someone you’ve never seen before. Or you could undo eating the super large slice of cheesecake before it ended up on your hips. There are so many undo’s waiting out there.

For me I would have been able to undo some of my biggest blunders in life. Like the time I thought a perm would be a good thing. Yeah right, a perm on a woman with naturally curly hair. Not a really bright idea. I looked like a thirty something woman with a very tight afro. I had almost shoulder length hair that was curled so tight I looked like I stuck my finger in a light socket. It took almost six months for the permed hair to grow out enough to be all cut off.

Or maybe the time I got in a hurry driving out of the airport and instead of being patient and letting the rental car bus get in front of me I decided to hit the gas in my firebird. A really bad idea since my tires were well worn and the road was wet. I lost traction and started to fishtail. I overcorrected and spun out right in front of the rental car bus and slid across the road tearing up two tires and two wheels. To add to my embarrassment the first one to stop to check on us was a deputy director of the aviation department. Yes sir, definitely an undo.

As a teenager growing up I did lots of really dumb things. Some I needed to do to learn and grow from but some I would undo. I started smoking cigarettes when I thirteen and didn’t quit until I was in my thirties – definitely an undo. I didn’t apply myself in school like I should have or go to college. I would definitely undo that, slap myself upside the head and make me buckle down and get my degree. I was smart enough, just didn’t push myself like I should have. I should have listened to my parents better, but that goes with each generation. My parents didn’t listen to their parents and my children didn’t listen to me, just wait until their children get older, that is something I wouldn’t change even if I could. Everyone should have some regrets and insights from their flubs. But some would be awesome if we could wipe them out and start over.

Crash Kelly Strikes Again

I wanted to go hiking today and decided not to wake up Mitch, so I turned on the computer and searched around for some trails nearby. I found one that was only about fifteen minutes away from our house, so I loaded up Orso and headed out about seven thirty this morning. I left a note that said we went hiking, but I neglected to say where we went. I pulled into the parking lot and noticed a car already in the parking lot. I unloaded Orso and my backpack when I noticed that there was a man just sitting in the car with the engine running. A bit odd, but you know me, once I start on a path I usually just plow on through. As I passed his car he rolled the window down and said something I didn’t hear. I said good morning and kept on walking to the trailhead and into the woods. Yeah I know, not super bright, go into the woods and make it easier for a maniac.

The man didn’t follow us, just my overactive imagination, but I was more aware of any movement I came across. I was disappointed in what I found. The trail was okay, primitive, which was fine, just not much to see. There was a creek and a rickety wooden bridge, but not much else. Maybe because we were too close to civilization or maybe I was just spooked from the guy in the car, anyway I decided to turn around and head back to the car. When I reached the trailhead I saw that the white car was still in the parking lot and there was another car parked between his car and mine. As I got closer to the cars I saw a man in the second car just sitting there. Pretty creepy, so I quickly loaded up Orso, my backpack and jumped in the car and locked the doors. What a scaredy cat. I drove home and decided to wake Mitch up so he could take me hiking.

After he got up we headed out for a second hike, this time farther away. Our destination was Federation Forest State Park, about ninety minutes away. This one turned out to be a bust because the park was closed. Not to be denied, we turned around and found a trailhead along the side of the road, which was part of the park. We unloaded and headed off into the forest. We found huge trees toppled over, some that had pulled out of the ground by the roots. Huge trees that were six or seven feet in diameter laying between other trees or stacked on trees that were crushed under the impact. The trails were a tangled mess of branches and limbs and whole trees that we had to either climb over or crouch down and crawl under.

One such tree that was laying across the path proved to be my swan song. I stepped over it with one leg and as I was clearing it with my left leg, my boot got caught on a small branch still attached to the tree. I went down hard landing on my right side. I hit a root that jutted out of the ground with my ribs under my arm. I thought I was dead for a minute, then when the pain hit I realized I was still alive. I hit so hard I thought I popped an implant. But least I landed so that I saved the camera I was holding and the backpack with the other cameras were not hurt.

Mitch walked up to me and asked if I was impaled on anything before he helped me up. I guess he didn’t want to have any blood gushing out of me. I’m not sure what he would have done if I was impaled on something, leave me and go get help or just leave me. I slowly got back up on my feet and assessed the damage. I think I bruised my ribs on the right side, but none were broken I was pretty sure. There will be a nice bruise in a day or so on my right hip too and I cut the palm of my right hand on something.

I decided I had enough fun for one day so we headed back to the trailhead. As we neared the trailhead we saw a sign that was taped up that read, “Trail closed due to hazardous conditions.” Really I never would have known.

I think I need to do more pre-planning on our hikes.

People Watching

Another business trip and more people watching. This is rapidly becoming my favorite thing to do and as soon as I master my Gopro I will share some videos of my finds. Because our airport is always so busy I get to the airport extra early and hang out until my flight boards. This affords me ample people watching and with practice I am becoming quite the “professional voyeur”.

Sitting next to me also waiting for boarding to begin, was an elderly woman who had just made it through security and was not pleased with the amount of time it took to get through the checkpoint. She also was not adept at using her cell phone. She tried repeatedly to leave a voicemail to her son without much success evidently, either that or he got the benefit of listening to the same voicemail four times. She held the phone in front of her and spoke into it like a walkie talkie, so all of us around had the privilege of getting to hear the same message four times. Now I know where she fills her prescriptions and that it takes a long time to get through security. (Good to know).

Another passenger that was flying with me was a man I assume was in his late twenties to mid-thirties. He was tall and normal sized about one hundred fifty pounds with hair long enough to pull back in a ponytail. He was wearing shorts, short sleeved T-shirt and a vest, so far as attire goes, there was nothing special about him. What really caught my eye and almost drop my jaw, was his roller board carry on. He was pulling a small hard case roller board that was shaped like a pirate chest complete with pirate chest graphics. There was jewels hanging out and pirate swords next to the chest in the design. So cool if you are a ten year old boy. He dragged it behind him with his head held high like it was what his main piece of luggage. And all I had was a briefcase and a black tote, I definitely need to up my game.

On the return trip home I was seated in the aisle seat one row behind and across a man who as soon as we took off and leveled out, dropped his tray table and pulled out a brown paper bag from Noodles & Company. From the bag he extracted a round bowl about 8 inches in diameter filled to the top of the bowl with noodles and chicken. Then he reached back down into the paper bag and pulled out a pair of chopsticks. I sat there in awe watching him dig into the bowl with the chopsticks grab some noodles then stuff it in his mouth. He didn’t drop any of the food once, quite an accomplishment while flying in a plane air turbulence and so little elbow room.

What really surprised me was not that the man was able to eat food with chopsticks but that he didn’t stop eating for the entire three and a half hour flight. As soon as he was done eating the noodle dish, he tore the corner off of the free pretzels and ate them. But no, he didn’t eat the pretzels like the rest of us, you know we mere mortals tear open the package, pour the pretzels into our palm and put them in our mouth one or two at a time. He would push one pretzel up to the open corner and put each little pretzel square in his mouth by bringing the bag up to his mouth to biting on the pretzel. He did the same thing with a very large chocolate bar in his lunch bag. He tore to end of the package off and fished the bar up and took a bite, chewed, then pushed up the bar a bit more and repeated the process until it was gone.

After the candy bar, he poured granola mix into his drink glass and ate the granola by tipping the glass up and into his mouth, like you would if you were eating the ice out of your glass. After the granola it was a bag of pistachios. These he had to touch because the pistachios were still in the shell. I couldn’t believe how much food he carried on the plane. I was stuffed just watching him eat and he was not a large person, fairly normal sized, probably five foot eleven inches or so and about one hundred sixty pounds. I wish I had his metabolism, because I ate everything he ate for three hours, I would be so miserable and seriously overweight.

Aww, the joys of flying.

First Impressions

We met our next door neighbor on the other side of the house today. On a scale of one to ten on first impressions, I think we scored a minus five. Orso was outside with us while Mitch was assembling our new mower so I could cut the grass and I was going in and out dragging more boxes and containers in the house to unpack. Orso was just hanging out lying in the grass being good until he decided it was time to explore the neighborhood. I looked up and no Orso, Mitch went through the house checking each room and no Orso. I checked the backyard and side yard, no Orso. Great, we’ve lost our dog in a new foreign neighborhood.

Mitch stood out in the street scanning the other houses and yards, searching for a missing hundred pound brown dog. Our next door neighbor walked to the end of her driveway and asked Mitch if he was looking for a big brown Labrador. Mitch said yes he was. I had just walked to the end of our driveway when I heard her response.

She said, “Well he just took a great big crap in my yard.” Oh yay.

I turned around and went back inside to get a poop bag, thinking great just great, now she hates us. I walked out to see Orso standing next to Mitch looking quite pleased with himself.

She said, “He is quite friendly, he walked right up to me wagging his tail, but you never know with a strange dog how they might act.”

We stood there talking to her trying to be polite and hope that the future would not be judged by this initial meeting. I held Orso’s collar so he couldn’t wander off and poop again or worse. Just when I thought things might not be that bad, Orso shook his head and splattered her with a big long tendril of slobber. She looked down at her arm and Orso, probably wandering if his drool was toxic or caused cancer. All I could do was stand there and apologize. I looked around for a sinkhole or large rock to hide under, but no, nothing that easy was going to help me get away from this moment in time.

First Orso poops in her yard, then he showers her in dog drool, the only thing he hasn’t done yet is hike his leg and pee on her. At this point I wasn’t sure that wasn’t about to happen. I’m sure we are going to be great friends.

One Week In

We have been in our new home for one week now. The place is only partially a disaster. The garage is half filled with full boxes and the living room is half filled with empty boxes. So you could say I’m halfway there. We only have window coverings on the master bedroom patio door, the rest of the windows throughout the house are uncovered and bare it all. Needless to say, showering is a bit awkward. But we’re getting there, slowly but surely.

The neighbors that we’ve met are all very nice and friendly, Orso is trying to make friends with Gunner, the black lab across the street. Gunner is a little overwhelmed by this big goofy dog that just wants to be buds, something Orso hasn’t had for a long time. There is a series of trails at the end of the road by or house that is secluded so we can let Orso off leash to run around to his heart’s content.

The neighborhood is quiet and secluded, the road to our home is long and almost half a mile from the main road, plus it is a dead end so there is not much traffic coming or going. All in all a very quiet area, a complete opposite to apartment living. I walk Orso at four in the morning and all I hear is bull frogs in the pond across the road.

One week in and today I didn’t get arrested or shot, but for a minute it was touch and go. I like to consider myself fairly smart and savvy, I watch all the crime drama shows and I’m quite comfortable around guns and shooting. But today I was wearing my dumb hat. I took Orso for a walk this afternoon and as I walking down the road I saw a pickup truck stopped on the side of the road up ahead. He started backing up then stopped and just stayed there idling on the side of the road. It didn’t feel right so I decided to turn down a side road instead of walking past the truck.

About a third of the way down the side road, I heard all of these sirens coming toward me and thought it was a fire truck, but no I turned around and saw a car coming toward me with a light bar on top. The first car was a police car, the second one was a county sheriff’s car and at the end of the road was another sheriff’s car stopped. All had their lights flashing. Another sheriff’s car pulled up and turned into the neighborhood down the road from our neighborhood. I counted five cars, a mix of local police and county sheriff’s deputies and here I am walking a dog on a lonely road with no way to get out of the line of fire. Lucky me.

I walked passed the car that was parked on the side of the road and as soon as I got in front of the police car, the officer inside turned the car sideways to block the road. That made me feel much, better, (not) now we’re in between the two cars that were blocking the intersection and the midway point. Oh goody, now I’m going to get caught in the crossfire, if something happens. As I got closer to the sheriff’s car I got hit with a major hot flash and unzipped my jacket. Even as I was unzipping the zipper I had this inner thought that I was being very stupid, but couldn’t stop myself.

As I got to the intersection and turned the corner to head home, I see two men walking toward me with a dog. So what did I do but something extra special stupid. Right in front of the deputy sheriff I reached into my pocket to pull out a handful of dog treats to keep Orso’s attention on me. I caught myself at the last second and wisely pulled out the bag of kibble so that no one would see any threat and get myself shot.

I’m not sure what they were looking for, but I’m really glad they didn’t find it while I was out there with Orso. I wonder what’s up for my second week.

This is Good-Bye

So long, sayonara, see you later, hasta la vista baby! However you want to say it, it’s good bye apartment. After six long months, we finally found a house. Don’t get me wrong, the apartment is a very nice apartment, clean, large and the apartment management is super, I’m just not cut out for apartment living. I like my aloneness too much.

Soon I won’t have to listen to Big Foot clomping around one floor above me, hammering god knows what, slamming cabinet doors and playing video games with the volume all the way up until the wee hours of the morning. I won’t have neighbors that drag their dried up Christmas tree out and not sweep up the thick blanket of pine needles covering the hallway and stairs leading outside, so that we drag them into our apartment. Most of all I will have a place to walk Orso that is not along a busy street with bicyclists silently whizzing past you from behind startling both of us, causing Orso to bark and lunge at them. No more cars with drivers that don’t know their cars can really go twenty-five miles an hour, they just haven’t tried it.

You can tell when it’s time to go, things happen telling you that you’ve made the right decision. It’s time to move, when two days after you give your intent to vacate, you find a parking violation letter on the windshield of the truck, telling you that you have to move it. Never mind the fact that the truck has been sitting in the same spot for the last six months, but all of a sudden it has to be moved. Then it seems like every little thing is glaring at you, shouting at you, “Get out, run!”

Another clue came when while walking Orso that same day, a woman pulls her car out of the parking lot and stops to tell me that Orso’s urine will burn up the grass. I turned and laughed at her and the absurdity of the statement. I was so tempted to tell her yes I could understand how that could happen since we live in such an “arid” climate. I wanted to say, “Seriously, we are on track to be the wettest winter on record, we are getting rain every day. The damn worms are drowning coming out of the muddy soggy soil and you think my dog’s urine is going to burn up the grass?” Instead I just looked at her, shook my head and walked away.

Then the final hint that it is time to go came sometime late Friday night or early Saturday morning when I saw that someone stole our doormat. Can you believe it, someone came and stole our black astro-turf doormat? It’s not like we are on the main floor where you walk right up to the door and out, there are stairs involved getting to our door. I think what bothers me more is that someone was outside our door while I was asleep.

We got a notice from the complex management notifying us that someone would come in and make a “pre-move out inspection” to see what would is needed to be fixed or repaired before the apartment could be rented to someone else. In order to make a good impression, I have washed walls, vacuumed the carpet almost daily, mopped the floors and cleaned the bathrooms. There has been no damage done to the apartment, we haven’t hung any pictures or painted any walls so we’re good there and the dogs are well behaved and don’t destroy or chew up stuff. I even had the warmer on all day to put out a nice red apple scent throughout. What could go wrong?

The notice said “between 9am to 5pm”, and I waited all day for someone to come by. Dinner time came and no one had come by yet so I figured that everyone was too busy and started dinner. In order to clean out the freezer as much as I can before we move, I thought I would cook a steak for dinner. Well we still don’t have a grill yet, so I turned on the broiler in the oven. The steak was broiling away just fine when all of a sudden the grease caught on fire and smoke started rolling out of the oven and when I pulled the pan out flames shot out and climbed over the oven. I blew the flames out, but there was a lot of smoke, which set off all of the fire alarms in the apartment, I did not realize there were three fire alarms in one two bedroom apartment. Of course the fire alarms are screeching that high pitched screech and as a bonus there was a female voice yelling at us “Fire get out” over and over.

I opened the doors and fanned the smoke alarms until one by one they quit screeching. Just as I was about to sit back down to our salads, there was a knock on the door. Fully expecting the fire department at the door, there was one of our maintenance men there to do the inspection. Great, just as I try to burn down the apartment complex someone shows up to inspect the apartment for damage.

Well there goes our damage deposit.