Fall Bucket List

 

Wednesday meme roundup: indictment edition!

Wasn't yesterday a great day in America?! These indictments are just SO MUCH FUN! I've picked some of the best memes I saw about it all to share with you. Most of them made me laugh right out loud.

 Enjoy!

Not today

 This was the sensible lady ahead of me in line at Food Lion just now. I felt safe checking out after her!

                                                         "Not today, 'Rona!"

Solution

I hit on an idea for blocking Crazy Neighbor's camera just by chance this morning while messing around in the garage.

My big, tall, plastic jack o lantern has been called into service this morning--during the month of April, no less! He's currently grinning directly at the camera while blocking most of the view.

Take that, creeper!

Heat wave, and a progress report.

Well, the worst of the summer heat is finally arriving this week. We're supposed to have highs of around 98F (36.67C) every day, with high humidity. It's miserable outside.

 A screenshot of our local forecast for this week.

I had to force Ginger to come inside today. She's never liked being in the house, and would stay out in the garage and backyard no matter the weather if we allowed it. I think it's because she grew up in the country, with lots of land to roam on. She actually prefers being an outside dog. I had to put her leash on her to make her come in the house this morning. It's just too hot for her to be outside, and the small portable A/C unit we used in the garage for the last two years isn't very effective, plus it costs a small fortune to run. We've decided that during the worst heat of the day, both the dogs will just have to come in. George loves it. He'd happily stay indoors forever if we let him. I would love it, but it's not possible. Not only is he a destructive chewer and we fear for our furniture, but Marco has to live here and deserves plenty of time out of his cage each day. Neither of the dogs have ever taken much notice of him, but we dare not let him out while they're inside. Marco would boldly go right up to them both if given a chance. The dogs might not pay him any attention, but he loves them. When they're in the house he chatters away, calling them both by name and saying things like "Good dog!" "Ginger, c'mere...George, c'mere!" and "Hey baby!" I think it's exciting for him when the dogs come inside.

The worst part of this heat wave is that it's so hard to go outside and exercise. I did go swimming at a friend's house yesterday, which felt great. If I wasn't trying to save money this summer I'd get a membership at a pool so that I could swim every day. Maybe next summer.

Speaking of exercise....I'd like to brag a little. I'm down 14 pounds as of this morning! I've been seriously working at changing my eating habits and exercising more since early May, and after a slow start, the weight is finally starting to come off. Gregg and I both had appointments with a new family doctor last week, and I really liked her. I discussed the steps I was taking to lose the excess weight (technically I'm classified as obese in the BMI chart so there was no question that I need to make some changes) and she thought I was doing a good job on my own, but offered to help monitor my progress and support me in the process. Of course I said yes! She gave me plenty of literature about good meal planning, made some common sense suggestions about daily calorie targets, and will be doing blood work this week to check my blood sugar, cholesterol, thyroid and liver function, etc. I'm really excited to finally have a doctor I feel comfortable with and supported by. I'll be weighing in with her monthly. I think that with slow, steady progress I should be in the normal BMI range by the end of the year. That's my goal, anyway.

In order to get the exercise I need while it's so hot, I'm going to have to get creative. I have a couple of friends with pools, and also friends who like to go and walk in the air conditioned mall when it's too hot to be outside. I've been invited to join them whenever I like. Of course, Gregg and I will continue to walk the dogs in the late evening after it cools off enough to be tolerable. It won't actually be pleasant again until late September at least, though.

Speaking of the summer, I leave you with these thoughts.....have a great day, everyone!

Dog vs Storm

A line of fierce thunderstorms is headed our way. They say we're in for strong (40-60mph) winds, heavy rain, and the possibility of both hail and tornados. I don't mind at all; in fact, I kind of enjoy big storms, provided no one gets hurt and there's no real damage. Our dog Ginger, on the other hand, hates bad weather and will go curl up in a corner of the laundry room and refuse to move if it even rains hard. We hate knowing she's scared....but we may have found a way to help her!

The owner of the pet store where Gregg works went to a trade show in Atlanta recently and brought back all kinds of freebies and samples. Among them are these treats that he gave Gregg to bring home for the dogs:

Active Ingredient: 4mg Phytocannabinoid Rich (PCR) Hemp Oil per chew.

That's right! Cannabis Chews for dogs! Apparently, it's the hot new trend in holistic dog care. Who knew? 

If the storms that hit tonight are bad and Ginger gets scared, I'm going to try these out on her. Will she get stoned and mellow? Go to sleep? Get extra hungry for treats? All of the above? We shall see!!  I'll report back tomorrow in the comments, if you're curious. 

Wish us luck!

Your funny for the weekend

This made me laugh so hard, I had to share it here. Have a good weekend, everybody!

The "Green Thing"

I saw this on Facebook, and wanted to share it with you all. I think some of my older readers especially will appreciate it! It made me laugh.

Enjoy.


Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because plastic bags are not good for ...the environment.

The woman apologized to the young girl and explained, "We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days."

The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."
The older lady said that she was right -- our generation didn't have the "green thing" in its day. The older lady went on to explain:

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things. Most memorable besides household garbage bags was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But, too bad we didn't do the "green thing" back then.

We walked up stairs because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.
But she was right. We didn't have the "green thing" in our day.

Back then we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.
But that young lady is right; we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.

Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.
But she's right; we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blade in a r azor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.
But we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the"green thing." We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.
But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the "green thing" back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart ass young person.

We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off... Especially from a tattooed, multiple pierced smartass who can't make change without the cash register telling them how much.

Flowers for Tom S.

Tom's post this morning reminded me of a funny article I read just last night about how florists in Colorado and California have started to offer "cannabis bouquets" for sale. What better way to say "I love you" to your stoner sweetie than with an arrangement of pretty marijuana flowers and buds?

What's that old song with the line about..."Your love....has lifted me higher....than I've ever....been lifted before....." 

Hahaha!

Prepare Yourself

Yesterday afternoon I walked outside to check the mail, and found the usual stack of bills and flyers and assorted junk in the box.  I casually thumbed through the envelopes while still standing by the street, and at first glance I misread the front of this one. What I first read was

"Prepare to Soil Yourself."

I hope the day never comes when a bill arrives that requires that kind of advance notice!

Religion in a Nut Shell

I think this pretty much sums the major ones up, don't you?

Enjoy the giggle.

My twisted sense of humor....

As I may have mentioned here before, I'm trying to learn Spanish. For more than 6 months now, I've been working my way through a set of lessons on cd (there are accompanying workbooks, as well). Considering that my main study time is while driving the 4 miles to work and back each day, and how few people I have to practice with, I think I'm coming along fairly well. I recently graduated to the "Intermediate" part of the course, and I look for ways to practice all the time.

The bookstore where I work is having a big clearance sale right now, and while going through the boxes of deeply discounted titles I found a little gem called Street Spanish. It contains the curse words, slang, and vulgarities you won't find in textbooks. Of course, I had to have it. And I've had so much fun with it so far!

For example, yesterday in response to a question about how my day was going, I was able to tell my Venezuelan friend (from another store in the mall) that I was "having a sh*t day" in his native tongue! (I was, too.) He thought that was pretty funny, and I enjoyed watching the look on his face when I said it! Hehehe. So anyway....

Last night after work, I opened up my copy of Street Spanish to a random spot and looked down. This is the sentence my eyes landed on:

Que asco! Creo que huelo un mal aire!

*translation: Yuck! I think I smelled a fart!

I laughed so hard my husband appeared from the other room to see if I'd lost my mind. When I told him what was funny I laughed even harder. Then I imagined the look on my Mexican co-worker Maria's face if I went to work and just said that to her one day, out of the blue. I ended up with tears streaming down my face. Yeah, I crack myself up sometimes.

My husband just shook his head. What fun it must be to be married to a 39 year old woman who sometimes has the sense of humor of a 10 year old boy!