Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Car Trouble

The hub's car woke me (and probably the rest of the neighborhood) up at 4:44 this morning.  The alarm went off and it was some time before I decided it might be my car and got out of bed to reconnoiter.

Turns out, it was not my car, but his, honking and blinking in the pre-dawn hours.  I don't know about the rest of you, but it makes me paranoid to leave the house in the dark to investigate the innards of the car with the front door of the house open. Also, it does not make me feel good to lock the door behind me, making it harder to get back in should there be someone lurking under the giant holly tree.

After the first time I came back in, I had to check the whole house for prowlers.  That does not sound bad until you know that there are 3 floors, a basement with 3 closed door rooms, and a walk-in attic.

BOO! That'll get your heart pumping.  So I don't know how to get back to sleep yet.  I turned on the radio and it is Jazz Fusion time.  Not quite mellow enough for me. I'll just listen to the government fail on NPR, that should be soporific.

Meanwhile the car seemed to be locking and unlocking itself, and Volkswagens have this thing where the lights come on when you open the car door, and also when you turn the car off.  This is a nice feature when you come home from anywhere and have to collect your bags, and coat and things, and the inside lights stay on until you get out of the car.  I believe they may even be called courtesy lights.

The car was just sitting there flashing furiously, and then the lights would turn off briefly, and then they would recommence flashing. I locked and unlocked the car with the key remote to see if that would fix the problem, but it did not, and then, the car locked itself.  Whoa, I did not sign up for this! 

  I got in and out of the car numerous times and played with the inside light controls thinking I had everything off in the front seat, when the back seat lights started flashing at a rapid rate, like my heart from running up and down the stairs in the middle of the night.  It was a very eerie sight.  Someone alert Stephen King, because the car is alive and I don't know what to do.

Okay, now my return key is not working in blogger.  What else is going to short out on me?  Because that's what I think is happening.  The car is wet from 2 or 3 days of rain.  The computer, that's just juju.

I went out again, putting on pants  under my nightgown for the second and third trips.  I opened the hood, but the battery appeared to be at an inaccessible spot in the engine for my height, in the dark.  I thought I could just unhook the battery so the car could not do anything on its own.  That was too much for me at 5 am.

  Eventually, I went out again and got into the back seat and pushed on the lights.  I was gratified, since there were not toggles or switches, that actually pushing on the lights themselves, turned them off. (At least for the meantime.)

Since the last time I got the lights off, I have checked several times.  Everything appears quiet, and the sky is lightening up.  It is 6:20.  If I had a normal job, I'd be waking up now.  When you factor in that I fell asleep at 2am, you will realize I probably got little to no sleep at all.

At least it's not hot out.

It's  a shame, this is another one of those "I got so mad, I threw my drink across the yard"-( Martin Mull ) articles.

Some people tell you how to grow things, or control mosquitoes in swamps, or how to feed the disenfranchised.  I just complain about my extra car.  I could tell you worse stories.  It's not all fairy tale here, but you don't really want to hear about it, and I really don't want to talk about it.

I just thought I'd talk about supernatural car behavior, then go back to bed.























Sunday, August 07, 2011

Good Eats

When you are alone in the house, you can eat anything you want, and the only person you hurt is....oh yeah, you.

The thing is, that when you live with someone, and you normally eat balanced meals, the kind that have protein, carbs and vegetables, not the applestack from minute to win it, and the other person or people know or believe that you are always eating reasonably you generally follow those rules so as not to get caught stuffing your face while supposedly on a diet.  That is to say, until the entire pan of brownies disappears, they think you are in control of yourself.

A while back, half a blueberry cake disappeared and I had to ask 50 questions before I found out that the answer was "my brother and I ate it".  Fair enough, but why the subterfuge?

Now I'm in the house alone, and no one knows what is going on here.  I want to eat the vegetables, I BUY the vegetables and pretty fruits, and I visit them in the refrigerator when I stop by there to see if any ice cream with caramel has appeared there as if by magic.

I'm trying to get off the meat band wagon, and frankly, that one was easy.  Now I am stuck on fried shrimp!
That cannot be totally good for me.  The shrimp themselves are iffy, in that they are probably frozen and sold in bulk to the Greek Pizza shop.  (remind me some time to tell you about the Pakistani Pizza shop, it may be here someplace)  Anyway, those farmed shrimp (and I am guessing here, but it's prob'ly a good guess) that the shrimp are farmed, and as such, they are crowded, and because of that, they are filled full of antibiotics and heavy metals that are floating around in the water from people getting cured of things and flushing their drugs down the toilet.  Okay, I totally did not mean to go there...

So for dinner, I had maybe 6 or 7 jumbo fried shrimp with "cocktail sauce".  I don't know what they  call it, it's a little take out cup with ketchup and a dab of horseradish in it.  So I had that, some onion rings, (okay, that's the first time I had those in months), and some giant light green olives that you have to eat around the pit like hand fruit, they are so large, and a bunch of chocolate chips.  No cookies, just chips.  You save a TON of calories that way.

I am sure there are those of you who will be gasping at the unvarnished nerve of me to admit to such a revolting diet, (that was just dinner) and others who are saying " pish, tosh, I just ate a chicken fried baby whale, and chased it with a red velvet layer cake and a liter of mountain dew!"

  So maybe I am not so far out of control as I think I am.  I am hoping that by confessing to you, my friends and whatever you are to me, that I will try and behave somewhat before you come asking "How's that little eating problem going?"  Or before I bust out of another size of jeans, having already donated all the fat pants earlier this summer, in a burst of optimism.  (OH, NO SHE DIDN'T???  Yeah, I did.

So let this little tale of woe be a warning to you buckaroos.  (I sent something to Texas today, and I saw Rango last night, and I am taking a little license here .)

Stay on the straight and narrow and eat the fresh food before we all explode in a collective self inflicted massacre.  Well, that was weak, but I promise to work on it....