The Nerve of Some People

I decided to go to Starbucks today to sit and write.  My local Starbucks had people coming and going.  Actually, I've never seen a Starbucks that wasn't busy.  I ordered my non-fat, no whip gingerbread latte, excited that it was still available.  Being a seasonal drink sometimes they pull the plug before I'm ready.  


I am a coffee snob.  Few things in life am I particular about.  Coffee is one of them.  If I can't have good coffee then I would rather not have any coffee.  I'm not a big coffee drinker.  One or two cups of coffee in the morning are all I need. 


Eventhough I am a coffee snob I don't think I'm pretentious.  As a matter of fact I usually order a tall coffee with a little ice.  I said a little ice.  Not enough to make it cold.  Just a couple of cubes to cool it off. I guess I could order my coffee at a certain temperature.  Yes, people actually do this.  The nerve of some people.  Seriously!  


This afternoon, while sitting and drinking my not to hot coffee, I was trying to come up with ideas for my blog.  Then my ADD kicked in and I heard everything going on around me.  Conversations were being carried out between the baristas, between baristas and customers as well as customers with each other.  I picked up on one between the drive-thru barista and the customer placing their order in the drive-thru.  It went something like this.

Barista:   "Hi.  Welcome to Starbucks.  What can I start for you?"

Customer:  "I would like a Jenny?"

Barista:  "I'm sorry.  I didn't understand your order.  Could you please repeat it?"

Customer:  "I would like a Jenny, please?"

Barista:  "I'm sorry.  We do not have a Jenny on the menu."

Customer:  "Could I speak to your supervisor?"

REALLY??  That's right.  At least at this particular Starbucks, you can rename a beverage.  Yes, you can have a drink named after you.  I've been researching this to see if this display of entitlement is common.  I'll get back to you if I find anything.  

We All Have "Issues"

I just don't understand.  Our sweet cute little puppy, and she is sweet, lost it.  Her intoxicating puppy breath has now turned toxic.  It seems it happened sometime during the night.  I wonder if that is going to be her "issue."  We all have issues.  My family is not immune to them.  My pets are members of our family so they are not immune to them.   

Our first cat had a bit of a weight problem.  He was very large and very lazy.  He weighed 24 pounds.  I really don't think we fed him too much.  I think he was just "big boned". If I can round up a picture of him, I will share.

Our second cat, the one that we recently had put to sleep, was high strung.  She also had stinky breath.  Really stinky breath. Along with the bad breath came an attitude problem.  No one could get near her.  After or during the beginnings of the attitude problem came the litter box problem. Went I scooped every morning and evening I would consistently find pee on the wall.  Then I discovered the hooded litter box.  That solved the pee on the wall problem.  Yes, I had a female cat that sprayed.  When I asked the vet about this phenomena , he would in turn ask me,"Are you sure she is spraying?"  I asked him if she was in fact spraying when I saw her lift her hind end up, spraying the wall with what appeared to be pee.  "Oh," he said.   He had heard of that but, ...

The next adoption occurred a few years back.  Ruffles was adopted from a rescue.  He is sweet but a bit skiddish.  Ruffles is a Jack Russell that is not like your typical Jack.  He loves curling up on the couch.  He also doesn't like to have his feet touched. When he gets in bed you can't move him or you will lose fingers.When he's tired he's grumpy.  He takes a lot of naps.  I call him my little old man.  Maybe it's because of his Andy Rooney eyebrows.   Soon after we brought him home he would mark everything.  I wouldn't mind so much if it were all outside but it isn't.  Not only does he pee on things lying on the floor, he randomly just pees on the floor.  Nice.  I spent more time than I can tell you cleaning.  One time he was in the upstairs landing while the rest of us were downstairs watching TV.  We heard something that sounded like water running.  Of course I'm the one who jumps up to find out what the heck is going on.  I go into the foyer and see pee shooting from between the spindles upstairs down to the floor in front of me.  Really? We all love him though.

The dog we picked up from the Atlanta Humane Society was a gorgeous puppy named Spice.  We immediately felt Spice just wasn't the right name.  We renamed her another spice, Ginger. Spice was too generic.  She was, I mean is, cute.  It didn't take long to train her and the two dogs seemed to get along just fine.  This is before Ruffles started peeing on things.  


By this time we only had one cat, Zoie.  She was elderly and stayed upstairs.  The dogs stayed downstairs except at night. Anyway, we soon found out that Ginger would eat anything.  I do mean anything.  She has eaten concrete, carpeting, toys, and yes even her own poop.  The first time she ate her poop I couldn't move.  I couldn't do anything.  I couldn't believe it.  I even talked to the vet about this.  Apparently he knew of this issue also, like the female cat spraying, but hadn't actually encountered a client with a pet that did that. 


 I decided to watch a little Caesar Millan to see if anyone else had the same problem.  Nothing.  I researched the subject online and a couple of Caesar's books.  I do love that man! Somewhere along my journey researching something was said about bananas.  Feed a dog bananas and this will cure them.  Not true.  Bananas are apparently the only thing Ginger won't eat.  You could tell she thought they were disgusting.  It was almost as if she were being forced to eat her own poop. I guess I should be grateful she only occasionally does this.






Now there's Bella.  So cuddly yet with moments of intense fire.  She's a beautiful combination of bulldog persistence and  pitbull lovability.  Once we get past the puppy months we'll see what other "issues" come up.  Hopefully it will only be her breath :0)

Yoga Mat

Here it lays.  I was looking all over for it.  It was here the entire time.  I'm just slightly embarrassed. Okay, I'm a lot embarrassed.   I should treat my mat a little kinder.  Bruce would be disappointed. Bruce is my awesome yoga instructor.  Maybe if I treated my mat nicer, it would treat me a little kinder during class.  My yoga mat and the Emergency Car Kit were removed from the back of my car before things were loaded for our Christmas Vacation. Yes, emergency car kit.  The kit that should have been in the car during our trip. We could have used it.  Anyway, today I got in my car to go to yoga class.  Before reaching the driver's door something caught my eye.  That's when I saw it laying there, in the garage.   I picked it up from the cold, hard floor, gingerly placing it in the passenger seat.  We drove to class.   My mat was very forgiving.  Thank goodness!

Hippity, Hoppity, ...

Our little baby turns 5 months old.  Time has truly flown.  So far she has been a really good puppy.  This is probably one of the last times we will see her hippity hop up the stairs.  So sweet!  Now if I can only remember how sweet she is  when she wakes me at 3 in the morning needing to go outside, wakes again at 5, does her grab and run, wolfs down her food and everyone elses, and turns into a shaken up can of Sprite when greeting you. But she's so sweet!  How could you not love her? One of the best decisions we have ever made.

The Whistler

I was talking with my dad the other day. He was telling about the home phone ringing off the hook. He does have a cell but has a problem disconnecting from a land line.  Daily there is a steady flow of sales calls. I guess my mom was the one fielding the calls before he retired.   He retired 7 years ago but this is a pretty consistent topic of conversation.  It seems the time his spends answering the phone is disproportionate to the amount of time he spends doing things he planned to do when he retired. He does manage to get in a nap or two. 


 He spends a good portion of this time speaking with/listening to both English speaking, and those who do not speak so that he can understand, salespeople. "Why doesn't he just hang up?" you ask. The thing about my dad is that he is nice. He is nice to a fault. He will be nice no matter what. He might be upset, as those around him find out later, but he will remain nice to the person on the other end of the conversation. He is the nicest man I know. I'm not just saying that. Ask anyone. He is also honest. Just thought I'd throw that in.


 When he gets these phone calls to extend a warranty, to subscribe to a paper, to vote for a certain political person, he actually listens to them. He just cannot bring himself to hang up. He lets them get through their spiel and then tries to politely say he isn't interested. Yeah,  right. 


 Not too long ago he received a call from a very rude salesman. Dad decided enough was enough. He put the phone down for a few seconds to gain his composure and then told the salesman he wasn't interested. He further told the guy to put his phone number on the "Do not call" list.  As you could imagine, this was a big step for my dad. The salesman proceeded to tell my dad that he wasn't going to do that and there nothing my dad could do about it. He further said he would continue to call him.


 My dad asked to speak to this guy's supervisor.  The guy on the other end said "You're speaking to him."  The guy kept going on and on. My mom happens to be in the kitchen listening to the conversation, trying to keep her composure.  I'm sure it's difficult because when my Dad gets frustrated you know it.  You might not get verbal cues, but the facial expressions give him away. My mom could take no more.  She's a good "go to" when things begin to go haywire.  On the fly, she can come up with a solution. 


My mom walks over to the junk drawer.  You know the one.  She gets the whistle.  She walks over to my dad and motions for him to blow the whistle into the phone. Not knowing what else to do, my dad puts the whistle to his lips.   Using all of the lung capacity he can muster, he blows the whistle as fiercely as he can into the mouthpiece. He sucks in more air and blows again and again.  Finally his lungs are empty of air.  He hears the salesman's voice on the other end ask, "Are you finished now?" My dad responded with a hard and fast click.

New Year's Eve Spent: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

     I read all of the books and saw the subtitled movies.  There are few times I get excited when a book is on the big screen.  I was excited about going to a theater to see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  


The book had been out for a little while before I read it.  I probably wouldn't have picked it up on my own.  While on vacation one year I borrowed the book.  We were renting a condo, so when it came time to pack up, and I still had more chapters to go, I left the book there in hopes of borrowing it from our local library. I was on a waiting list for several days.   


The next day the library called to say I was bumped up to number 21.  21! Seriously!  Not waiting any longer I made the trip to Walmart, which in and of itself would constitute enough info for a novel, and picked up my own copy of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  I read all day and most of the night.  It was soooo good that I went out and bought the sequel,  reading that one with rapid anticipation of the next. 


By this time, my husband was a Girl With the Dragon Tattoo enthusiast.  Like others I know, his hunger for more was fed from my retelling what I read.  That's also the only way I could get a book discussion going. Unfortunately he doesn't read for pleasure.  I would have shared the story with my son also,  to broaden the discussion, but there are parts of that book that are just not appropriate.  I know, I know.  My husband says the same thing.  "Dear God Pam!  The kid is 14."  I know.  I'm the meanest mom on the block.  If you don't believe ask my son and/or daughter or read my previous blogs.


 Finally, I realized the subtitled movie was out.  Off to Blockbuster I went. It was really good.  Reaallly good.  It was easy to follow and it pretty much kept pace with the book.  Liz, the main character, was at first  portrayed as  a victim.  Later you found she could take care of herself.  She was very smart, strong, didn't really care what others thought, was detail oriented when it came to the work she did, and persistent. She did however use some of her talents in questionable ways. 


This past Saturday my husband and I couldn't wait to see the movie on the big screen and not in subtitles.  The beginning of this movie was hard to watch.  You would see clips of a rose, then faces and bodies, cables and possibly computers dipped in hot black wax as if they were trying to cast a mold.  The objects appeared to be lifted up dripping with whatever black liquid they were dipped in.  Heavy metal rock played in the background. It was a loud and in your face.  I didn't understand why they did what they did unless it was to scare us into believing this movie would be a punker's paradise. It was like what an advertisement would be like for Hot Topic.  


 The Liz in the latest movie release seemed to be totally alien.  I didn't really care for how she was portrayed. Too over the edge for her to be so "normal." Liz looked angry 99% of the time. I understand the reason why she should be angry but there needs to be something that is relatable.  I just didn't feel it. If you haven't seen it yet, I would rent the subtitled version instead.  It's way better!!  The best things about renting are it's less expensive, you are in the comfort of your own home and you can pause it for bathroom/snack breaks.  Also you don't have people sitting next to you that are not following the rules.  Well, most of the time anyway.  If someone does get out of hand you can always pause the movie.    :0)

A Life Worth

The party is over and the year is 2012.  2011 flew by.  No really it did.  Somehow the years begin running together.  How is it that I am 45 years old with an 11 year-old daughter, a 15 year-old son and a 47 year-old husband?  Wow! Our youngest cat passed away this year (she was 21)  along with my husband's father and a great uncle of mine.  I'm reminded of the years spent laughing and crying.  The days I never thought would end and the moments I wish never happened.   I'm still trying to hold it all together during those tough times.  It's all for a reason, but I'm glad to see that 2012 made it around the corner.