One out of One Hundred Twenty Five

The other day at my new job, I was handed a three-ring binder that contained 125 pages. I was told to read it. It was for my own good. I know it’s important because it looks very official and the title is “MAWSS Safety Rules Handbook”. I have to admit that it doesn’t seem much like a HANDBOOK. To me, a handbook speaks of a much smaller thing. You know? Something a little less bulky. Something you might be able to carry in your pocket or stuff into your purse.

At any rate, I opened the tome and began reading the letter in the front that told me that I was important enough that they wanted to keep me safe. Just like a mama might do. Then on the 2nd page, also like a mama, there was a little lecture about there being no such thing as fate and that accidents were avoidable. There were some general safety rules on pages 3 through 7, but after that I got pretty confused. I trudged on though, since it was my very safety at stake! I’m happy to say that I’m sure I’ll be safe if I ever find myself welding, using an axe, a hatchet or a concrete mixer. I now know the standard hand signals for overhead, crawler, locomotive and truck boom cranes. The only thing I can’t figure out is what any of those things are. But, no fear! If I can figure out which is which, I can signal them properly and avoid danger!

When I got to page 114, the title made me smile. “Office Safety” is what it said. Now, THAT was something that seemed familiar. And I must say that number 7 made me shake my head in agreement. “Do not lick envelopes; their edges may cut your tongue.”

I knooooow, right?

We HATES them

I try pretty hard to be a nice person. Well, at least I try pretty hard NOT to be a mean person. But right now I'm am thinking along the lines of murder. Let me explain.

I planted a pretend garden this year, all in pots. I started with tomatoes and have since added some squash and zucchini and even some beans! It's fun. I'm feeling my green thumbs and I like it. I love going out every morning and seeing the progress. I get so excited to see my tomatoes getting bigger and a few days ago, to see the first one getting a little pink. I could easily imagine the day I would be able to pick it and make a tomato sandwich with my first home grown tomato. I could almost taste it.

BUT...and you KNEW there was going to be a BUT in here, I went out yesterday to check on my precious tomato's progress and guess where it was? In the mouth of my dog, being chewed in a very irreverent manner. After squirting him with the water hose and telling him off, nearly through tears, I inspected the plants and found a slightly chewed green tomato still hanging on the plant, intact with teeth marks. Squirrels. It's squirrels. There are droves of them here and I feel very outnumbered. The dog was probably not the one who swiped it, but he sure took pleasure in finishing off the job begun by the giant rats with bushy tails. We hates them.

And today, we hates them even more. Two more tomatoes GONE. I'm so sad. I'm so injured. They have robbed me of the joy of the harvest and I will have to kill them all. I don't really want them to suffer, but I do want them dead. And, after their demise I plan to hang them up along the fence by their evil fuzzy tails, one after the other, as a warning to their neighbors and friends that this is not the yard they want to hang around. And what about this "dog" of mine? What kind of dog allows such behavior right under his nose in his very own backyard? My dog. That's who. I realize that he's getting old, but I just can't feel like making excuses for him. I will allow him to live, but buddy, he has been TOLD. He better step up the guard dog duties and quit taking bribes or I'm sending him to a place where they won't let him sleep inside in a cool laundry room at night.

We hates them.

This is the dog I have. A dog of leisure.


The is the dog I need. Squirrel killer extraordinaire.

Bats in the Belfry

I was flipping through a Plow and Hearth catalogue and came across a Bat House. This catalogue is just chock-full of interesting and mostly useless information. According to them, a single bat consumes up to 3,000 insects every night. Now in LA (Lower Alabama) I’ve seen mosquitoes grow to be 5” long and weigh up to half a pound. I’m sure you don’t believe that, but I know it to be true. I'm also pretty sure that my backyard is the playground for at least 3,000 of these monsters and probably more. Anyway, this bat house will hold approximately 20 bats, so for $39.95 plus shipping and handling, I feel sure my back yard mosquito problem could be solved. The only draw back is that I just don't love bats. There doesn't seem to be anything even remotely appealing about them. They are leathery, toothy, hairy and scary. I’m terrified of a bat flying too close to my head because when I was about 8 or so, my friend told me that I better watch out, because she heard they had been known to swoop down pretty low and could accidentally get caught in a person's hair. Unfortunately, she told me this on the night we were standing outside at dusk, watching a group of bats catching their dinner and even more unfortunately, I had a lot of long hair. I was afraid. I wasn’t paralyzed with fear however, because I took immediate action by zigzagging my way back to the house with my head bent down and my arms covering my hair. Everybody knows a moving target is harder to hit. My target was the front door. I imagined sitting at the kitchen table while my Mom used the "good hair cutting scissors" to extricate this writhing bat from my long hair as it dug its claws into my scalp. Maybe I’ll just stick with the Citronella candles.


p.s. Please don't ask me why I have a Plow and Hearth catalogue because I have no idea. Also, it is of interest that I found out that chock-full is a hyphenated word and that the word "catalogue" can also be spelled "catalog", but apparently only within the confines of the borders of the USA. You learn something new every day.

You could poke somebody's eye out!

I use scissors on an almost daily basis. I keep them right here to my left where I can reach up without much paying attention and have them 'in hand' immediately. So the other day, I reach up for my scissors and they are gone...again. I scream wildly in the direction of the hallway "WHO TOOK MY SCISSORS?!!" And from that general direction I heard back "NOT ME!" "IT WASN'T ME EITHER". Baloney you say. Little liars. I'm almost certain that these thieving liars are not the product of my parenting skills. I can't think of anyone else to blame though. Maybe the public school system?


So, this little episode reminded me of the "good hair cutting scissors" that were the express property of my mother. These scissors were used to cut the bangs of the three red haired girls that also belonged to her. I'm not saying it ever came out well, I'm just saying that's what they were for. They lived in a drawer in the kitchen and we were forbidden to touch them because they were mama's "good hair cutting scissors" and she didn't want us using them for ANYTHING else because she didn't want them getting dull. Now, when I was looking for some scissors and I couldn't find any handy, the kitchen drawer just called to me. I knew it was risky. I knew I was taking my life into my own hands, but there were moments when I used those scissors to cut paper. Surely, surely I was never stupid enough to remove them from the kitchen but I do vividly remember the yelling, "WHO TOOK MY GOOD HAIR CUTTING SCISSORS?!!" And the triple chime of "IT WASN'T ME" in return. It probably wasn't me for real.

I told Larry that on his next trip to wherever it was he went to get me stuff to please bring me a new pair of scissors, which he did. I showed them to the ruffians and told them not to touch them or they would die a horrible early death. I've caught them both at least once with my new scissors in their hands and they both turned four shades of purple before all the blood drained out of their face and left them ghostly pale. Oh man. I have turned into my mama. They still better keep their grubby little hands off my new scissors.

Cows are not my friend

So, my long lost friend at Facebook posted a picture of a cow today (*shudder*). It reminded me of a fishing trip long, long ago, when my Daddy took me to a catfish pond at feeding time, handed me a cane pole and let me throw in my line. Immediate success is what happened, and it happened over and over again. That ruined me for fishing from that day forward. Any time I had to sit and wait more than a minute or so for the little cork to get pulled under, I was underwhelmed. It wasn't fun sitting in the hot sun, getting nibbled by bugs, if you couldn't pull in a fish every minute or so. Although this picture is not me, but my daughter, it is a dadgum close duplicate of that day including Daddy in the background.

Anyway, the cow. The cow picture reminded me of how much I dislike cows. On my way through the pasture, going to that pond, I had to watch my step. What I witnessed that day was simply horrific. I figured that those huge piles of manure could only come from a monstrous sized beast and sure enough when I got close enough to one, all I could think about was getting away from it. I'm not sure what I thought it might do to me. Bite me? Step on me? Fall on me? I had heard the words "cow tipping" at some point in my young life. Could they actually tip over and FALL on you? They were HUGE. You would surely perish. Cows were obviously a menace.


Although I do love a steak or a really good hamburger, I simply haven't liked the live-type cows since that day. If we are driving and pass a pasture full of cows, I just try not to look. My friend at Facebook assures me that cows are friendly and she even feeds them by hand. I think that's ludicrous. I told her I was pretty sure that cows eat people. She denied it. I'm personally not getting close enough to find out.