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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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6:31 p.m. - 2013-01-04
In order to pay for my data plan and smarty-pants phone I have given up having house cleaners. Mick did not ask for this. I'm sure with some finessing we'd find the dough to pay the cleaners and Verizon, but the trade-off makes me feel virtuous and who doesn't like the shot in the arm that comes from a little sacrifice? Besides, I actually enjoy housecleaning. Okay, not as much as I enjoy sex and old Warner Bros movies, but work with me here. The point is I'm taking back control of my house and its appearance. The cleaners did a fine job. No complaints from me. However I've spent the last couple days digging in and doing the kind of jobs the cleaners cannot do. Reorganizing my utensil drawers. Throwing out old stained placemats. You know, the really personal stuff. Along the way I've been doing other chores like sweeping and scrubbing down the stove and it's going just swimmingly. Of course it helps that the cleaners were here a couple weeks ago and the house hasn't had time to get really glopped up yet. I may decide to have the cleaning ladies come back in April to help with a Big Scary Spring Cleaning, asking Mick and Wolf to give up part of their spring break to help me shove furniture around and empty dead flies out of the ceiling fixtures seems mean. However for the nonce your pal the Sage is cleaning her own house with her own delicate lily-white hands. Impressed, ain'tcha? Had a scare at Shoprite earlier. Actually there were a few scares on that trip. New Rule: If you drive a red van the exact color of your taillight lenses you MUST keep the van and the lenses clean. Coming to a dead halt to make a left turn and there's salt crud preventing the innocent person behind you (like me!) from seeing your feeble brake lights and turn signal because your stupid van is so filthy thus forcing said innocent person to stand on her brake pedal and have a minor heart attack is WRONG! Take a minute and clean your stupid lenses!!! Thanks ever so. New Rule: If you drive an electric car and said car doesn't make ANY noise when you're backing up and you're pulling out of a parking space between two humongous SUVs you are not allowed to flip the bird at the harried woman pushing a 400lb shopping cart when you almost run her over. True, she is partially deaf but your smug little eco-car doesn't make ANY noise at all so how was she supposed to know you'd suddenly erupt out of that parking space in the lee of the Lincoln Navigator? Some caution and a goddamn back-up buzzer would be most welcome. New Rule: If you work the deli counter at Shoprite please move faster than Robert De Niro in 'Awakenings'. Some of us have lives we'd like to get back to and there's no way on God's green Earth it should take 15 minutes to slice a pound of muenster. Honestly you seem like a nice young man and you sort of look like my elder son before he cut off his hair and shaved his beard and got contacts, but even the familial resemblance will not save you if I ever get stuck with your slow self again. You may think that high deli counter protects you. It doesn't. You make me wait like that again and I will leap clear over it and rip your slowpoke throat out with my teeth. You have been warned. Do not mess with the menopausal, son, you will not win. To my normally nice hometown bank with the tellers I've known for years and the manager with the same name as mine and how we compare the new charms on our Pandora's when I go in......GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER!!! Having my bank card rejected at the check-out this afternoon was humiliating! Not only was I in a complete swither wondering what the hell could have happened to Mick's most recent paycheck to cause my card to be kicked back and having the stinking 20 year old "I'm too cute to have any manners" cashier give me her weariest "You suck for making my life difficult, you old fat cow" face, all my groceries were packed in my reusable shopping bags! I couldn't simply mutter an apology and slink off, my shopping bags were held captive. Fortunately my bank is just down the road from Shoprite and I was able to race over, find out that the bank was being slow in crediting our account (something they still do by hand, kudos for keeping people employed, but fuck you for not keeping up and causing me all this tsoris at the grocery, you momzers), having said nice Pandora wearing manager get our account straightened out in a jiffy, getting cash enough to cover my Shoprite tab, racing back, having my transaction reinstated, and finally leave with my food and my shopping bags. You wouldn't think that aside from the spicy danger of backing out of my driveway (again!) that a three mile trip to a poky little country grocery store (the Shoprite chain might be mighty here in the northeast, but our local one is a doink hardly bigger than a 7-11) would be so fraught, would you? But there ya go. It isn't just the folk that live in big cities who rack up the near misses and heart-stopping adventures. Au contraire, mon ami. Even those of us who reside in such small towns we have at least a nodding acquaintance with any and every one we see in a week doesn't mean it's boring. Sure, I could have done without the panic at the check-out and perhaps it's a bit sad I got that excited over the start of the annual Can-Can sale but your friend LA is tottering into her 50th year much the same as ever. Jowly of chin, speckled grey of hair, wider in the butt than in former days, yet I'm still me. And a trip to Shoprite without a story to tell? Never.
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