check this out.

Especially if you like farmer’s markets.

High Blood pressure reason number 122.

Two months ago, I happened across a fancy Mr. Coffee coffee maker that had all kinds of bells and whistles. It was on sale at a really good price so I bought it even though we normally only buy ‘plain jane’ because we have not had much luck with coffee pots after they quit making them in this country.  So what does our personal coffee pot melodrama have to do with number 122?   

I  woke up this morning with a stopped up nose and a sore throat. I needed a cup of coffee like you wouldn’t believe and we couldn’t get our two month old coffee pot to work. It’s touch pad technology had gone on the blink and I touched the damn thing until my thumb hurt. No luck.

I got dressed, told Susie I’d be back, put a leash on our dog, Poco and  the two of us went in search of a new coffe pot. I stopped at Home Depot first but they were not open. After all, it was only 7:30 on a sunday morning.

I drove back to the 24 hour store where I bought the Fancy Pants pot  but I had already decided I wasn’t buying anything that was not on sale. ‘Never pay Retail’ is my motto. Not seeing anything with the familiar sale tag, I walked back out into the still dark morning. 

“Nothing there, Poco.” I said to my passenger.  I never talk to the dog but here I was chatting along like I was in my right mind. When I realized what I was doing, I made a mental note to talk to someone about this.  Driving back to Home Depot, I found and bought a 20 dollar coffee pot marked down from 29.99 and headed for home.  I had not wanted to buy this pot because it was made in China but if there is one made in this country, I couldn’t find it.

Foreign appliances alone made my blood pressure go up and then to make things worse, as I left the parking lot, the sun started to peek over the horizon. It was 8:15 in the morning and still dark. I was reminded once again that Indiana, thanks to political shenanigans, had been maneuvered into the Eastern time zone. 

I mentioned this to Susie when I got home but I got no sympathy from her. All I got was a curt ”For God’s sake, get over it, would you?’

I think maybe she needed a cup of coffee.

What exactly…….

is an ‘overactive bladder’?  The television just asked me if had one. I don’t think I do. I thought the overactive label belonged to kids. Silly Rabbit.

I will say that my  bladder does get a little frisky after a beer or two but overactive? Who’s to say?

All I know for sure is that I have a brother-in-law who would pay good money to have a bladder that was a little more rambunctious.

Can he do that??

President Obama has ordered that bailed-out companies slash their executive pay.  Being a common sense citizen of our country, Executive Pay seems to be approaching the line between outrageous arrogance and criminal activity and something definitely needs to be done.   

However, for the President to just order a paycut makes me a bit nervous.  It sounds like something out of Venezuela. This seems to be putting government in a place it doesn’t belong.  Let the congress pass a law  or get the shareholders to do something.

Now the Bad news…

Even though I was ecstatic at one moment as you will earn in the next post, I was horrified in the next to discover  that something that lives underground had eaten four or five of my new potatoes. I have no idea what but whatever it was, it cleaned out the interior of my potatoes right down to the skin. It looked like something left on my plate after an evening at the Golden Corral.

This is news?

A story on Yahoo news was headlined ‘271 people throw pies at each other – break world record.’

Only 271?? I would have thought it to be much higher. This was in New York, after all, where you can get more people than that to  watch the Conan O’Brien show.

I only make note of this because Yahoo is one of the electronic places where people turn to get their news nowadays, the end result likely being the end of the print media as we know it.

However, if this represents what our electronic news gathering institutions have to offer, we are in trouble.

No mention was made of the type of pie filling.

Now it’s getting sickening.

When the story about the 18 year old South African girl possibly being a boy, hit the news, I thought it was funny in a sad sort of way.Now I actually feel bad for this young person.  It appears as if he/she was being used by the South African Sports federation to further their own agenda.

I wish Tater and the boys were still around so we could have an intelligent discussion about this.

The secret trapdoor takes shape.

I have been promising Riley Marie a tree house for a couple of years and finally Susie said we couldn’t wait much longer or she’d be to big to play in it. I started on it this week with a lot of help from the 7 year old hanging around our barn. She felt that the treehouse should have a secret trapdoor, throwing all my well planned architectural drawing into chaos. Nonetheless, with a few adjustments, I was able to include a secret trapdoor that only the boss of the treehouse will know about. 

taking shape.

I can’t reveal the exact location of the secret trapdoor because then it wouldn’t be a secret anymore, would it?

Question 107 in my upcoming marriage questionaire….

which everyone should be required to fill out before going off into wedded bliss.

107.  What colors of dishwashing liquid make you ill??

Susie sent me to the store recently to buy, among other things, dishwashing liquid.

“What Kind?” I asked. 

“Whatever’s on sale.”

I ended up choosing 34 fluid ounces of Ajax super degreaser anti-bacterial Orange in the ‘poderoso en los plasticos’ bottle. I assumed this to mean plastic which it was.

When I brought it home, I got this reaction.

“Did you not know, after 45 years of being married, that this shade of orange makes me nauseous?”  Susie said, shaking the bottle of Ajax at me, causing it to foam up only slightly in the bottle.

All’s well that ends well. We keep the bottle under the sink out of sight. God knows I don’t want Susie upchucking on the dishes. I wrapped the bottle in a plain brown wrapper, not unlike, coincidentally,  the way products on the feminine hygiene aisle used to be wrapped.

A tulip free for all.

This morning, we arose early and made our way to Garfield Park, one of Indianapolis’s city parks. There is an arboretum there and floral gardens whcih are well worth visiting. 10,000 tulips had been planted in the gardens and the authorities wanted to replace them with other seasonal flora and fauna.  The public was invited to come and dig up the tulip bulbs to keep for themselves.

tulip lovers

There were perhaps a hundred people there when we arrived and I half expected that I would need to punch somebody out if I wanted my share of tulip bulbs so I looked around for the oldest and smallest people there. I also asked before taking this picture if anyone had called in sick or was a member of the witness protection program. You can never be too careful with this privacy act stuff. 

They turned us loose at 8:30 and myself, Susie and her sister, ginny made a dash for the tuli[p beds. My fears of a riot were all for naught. The process was very orderly and everyone was well mannered.

Susie and Ginny went one direction and I went another. I picked out a corner and started digging. I sliced the first few bulbs in half before I figured out what I was doing. The person in charge estimated it would take two hours to dig up alll 10,000 bulbs. We were all finished in 45 minutes. 

I learned a lot in that 45 minutes about tulips. I may become a flower gardener. When I was all done, Susie came by to help me carry my bulbs.

I estimate we dug up around 300 bulbs and now comes the hard part; drying them out, storing them and replanting in the fall. In the end, we had a good time and I discovered that tulip diggers make the nicest people.