Feeling Like a Pinterest Pincushion

courtesy of http://www.copyblogger.com

Saints preserve us…I’ve spent my day pinning on Pinterest.  If you haven’t heard of it, well it’s another bright idea someone came up with to steal time.  And it works.  It’s brilliant.  Simply log on, set up some “boards”, grab a “pin it” button for your bookmarks toolbar, and then go web surfing, pinning what you pine for.

Hours upon hours of my life today I can’t recover.  I am still in my pajamas.  It’s supper time.  I haven’t peed in I don’t know how long.  I haven’t eaten.  But, I think I have 8 boards now and a paltry 15 followers. I even added a Follow Me on Pinterest button to this blog (Gasp!)  And, while I’d like to continue this posting, I.Have.To.Return.To.Pinterest.

I’ve Pinterested and I can’t get up…sigh…

Wandering on a Tuesday Morn

pic courtesy of peltiertech.com

I’m not usually at a loss for words.  In fact, it happens rarely.  Today, I am at a loss for a cohesive posting – I don’t have one topic I feel the urge to discuss, or one story I feel compelled to share.  Instead, I’m simply gonna let myself wander.

A company spends mega dollars for marketing campaigns to produce  tv commercials which will air when I’m watching my favorite program.  They get my attention by using their own children as the actors in the commercial. I find it disturbing when small children who can hardly form syllables on their own, let alone have any concept of advertising,  tell me why their dad’s heating company is the best, or why their dad’s law firm should be the one I choose, and especially I don’t like little kids trying to sell me cars.  I imagine some folks find it charming and cute.  I don’t.

Stomping on the gas to run a yellow light so you can get to the next light faster even though it has already turned red is plain stupid.  I witnessed this behavior on Monday as I stopped at the first yellow light.  When it turned green, I casually caught up to the person at the next red light which was just about to turn green, looked over and gave him a big smile.  We both knew I was the one using my gasoline wisely and he hadn’t gotten any farther than I by pressing the accelerator to the floor to miss that yellow light.  At least I think he knew that.  There’s a chance he didn’t get it at all.

My dog is smarter than I give her credit for.  The other evening I had taco chips she wanted.  I wouldn’t part with any and so ignored her.   EmmaLou walked into another room, picked up two toys, brought them both back in her mouth and dropped them in my lap.  Then she looked from the toys to the chips.  I call that bartering.

There is a direct correlation between when I want quiet time and when my neighbor decides to add a room to his house.

The difference between the calorie-laden, fat-full dish of vanilla ice cream and the low-calorie, low-carb dish of vanilla ice cream is that the first will contribute to weight gain while the latter will result in gastrointestinal distress.  Some days it’s a toss-up whether I care that no one of the human species will be inclined to stand next to me in a matter of hours, or whether I want my jeans to button.

I’ll leave you to your own ramblings now while I meander on out of here…sigh

New Olympic Sport Being Considered

Y’all ‘member EmmaLou, Golden Destroyer?  The 75 lb bane of my existence?  At 7 1/2 years old, she’s rapidly approaching doggie dotage.  Unfortunately, she has acquired a new habit; one that I’m finding difficult to live with, and that’s putting it mildly.

EmmaLou had decided our house is now her bathroom.  Oh, she still goes outside and sniffs every blade of grass and she may occasionally make a deposit somewhere in the yard.  More often than not, I am awakened to the wafting aroma of … well… you know what comes out of a dog.  Let’s just say, I would rather be awakened by practice time from the marching band of the worst high school in Lower Slobovia than this.

The other day I had a new experience.  While working in my home office I was alerted to the sight of EmmaLou in the hallway.  She roamed around in circles and that emergency klaxon in the far recesses of my brain started going off.  This dog was about to make a deposit on my light-colored hallway carpet and I was a goodly distance away from her.  As she began to squat and get that glazed look in her eyes, I flew out of my ergonomic chair and sprinted for the hall bathroom all the while screaming at the top of my lungs, “Emma Nooooooooooooooooooo!”  D’ya think that stopped her from her mission?

Amazingly enough, I gathered gobs of tp and managed to “catch the first baby”, quickly turn around and sprint to the toilet and deposit it, grab another wad of tp and repeat the process.  Thinking I had finished handling (sorry) this disaster, I slowed my progress.  And that’s when it happened.  Everything she had been saving arrived and descended in slow motion onto my carpet.  I stood there in horror wondering if my dog had, in fact, been the result of a breeding experiment gone horribly wrong – a Golden Retriever and a hippopotamus perhaps.  I didn’t have enough tp left in the bathroom for this.

About that time, Devoted Spouse was running up the stairs with a large roll of paper towels and the ever-present gallon-sized bottle of Resolve.  As he hit the second to last stairstep I had acquired a large handful of Kleenex and managed to scoop what was left, once more wasting gallons and gallons of precious water flushing.

I lost count of how many times I hit that toilet handle and ran back to the hallway.  I imagine that day all the meters on the utility company Plasma Screens of Flushing were in the red zone.  EmmaLou was so proud of herself.  If I could expel what she did in those copious amounts; well let’s just put it this way: I’d probably now be a size 2….sigh…

I Just Wanted to Have a Normal Morning

I was a hopeful woman.  It had started out like any other day.  I woke up entirely too early, did a little basic yoga stretching for my aching back and hobbled downstairs.  Devoted Spouse was out w/EmmaLou taking her for a peemail jaunt in the snow so I thought, “I’ll just start the coffee for us.”  How hard can that be?

Have you ever run a pot of coffee and there is no water in the pot?  I’m here to tell you it doesn’t work.  We have this new fancy coffee maker with a thermal pot so the coffee stays nice and hot.  It has all these bells and whistles, one of which rings out when the coffee is ready.  You can imagine my surprise when no sooner had I gotten the cups out then the bell rang -woot!  Coffee is ready.  No, wait a minute it usually takes about 10 minutes or so for a full pot.  I looked at the coffee machine and realized my error – well crap on a crutch.  So I fill the container with water and tried it again.  Guess what happened?  I got a full thermos of hot water — oh for crying in a bucket — I forgot the coffee — there was a filter in there, I just hadn’t put any coffee in it.  See why I need an IV drip first thing in the morning?

By the time Devoted Spouse and EmmaLou had returned, I had my act together and we had coffee perking.  I went to my comfy chair to open the laptop and say hello to the Twitterverse.

I sat down in my comfy chair and realized something was wrong.  I had forgotten my handy dandy little microwaveable heating pad for my back (yes back issues have returned gangbusters).  Aw crap on toast — up from the comfy chair and out to the kitchen I go to heat up the little amazing back warmer.  Devoted Spouse must have gone the other direction because I went to pour coffee while the little microwave pad heated only to find one cup sitting on the counter and my fav mug missing.  God love his heart — he had fixed my coffee and taken it to my comfy chair.  But I wasn’t there, was I?

Gah…

Speed forward about an hour and it’s getting hungry in my world.  I had a terrible craving for an English muffin with peanut butter and Nutella (yes I’m back on my Nutella addiction).  So I got up, took my little heating pad with me (lest EmmaLou get ahold of it and literally eat it since it is filled with corn and that would be a tasty treat for her).   I made my muffin, grabbed another cup of coffee, heated up my microwaved pad and headed back to my comfy chair.

Crap, crap, crap, I left my coffee in the kitchen.  EmmaLou was gazing longingly at my plate of pb/Nutella muffin, so as I went back to the kitchen for coffee, I picked up my plate and placed it on one of the shelves of an antique cupboard I have in the living room, knowing it was out of her doggie reach and safe until my return.  I placed my heating pad on the chair back where she couldnt reach it, and back to the kitchen I went.

Arriving back at my comfy chair I was ready to settle in — I had my favorite mug full of hot coffee, my heating pad was still nice and toasty warm and I settle myself into my comfy chair and placed my laptop on my lap ready once again to discuss everything and anything with all my Tweeps.  What’s wrong with this picture?

Yes, kids, my breakfast was about 15 feet across the room still sitting on the antique cupboard shelf just sitting there taunting me while I was firmly (and comfortably) ensconced in my comfy chair.

Moving assorted pillows and my heating pad, putting my laptop on my table away from my cup of coffee  and cell phone (oh you don’t even want to hear that story), I get up, cross the room, and get my plate of pb/Nutella on an English Muffin.  I head back to my comfy chair, put the plate on top of my laptop, get re-situated in my chair w/the rapidly cooling heated pad and prepare to munch down.

It’s cold.  The muffin has cooled; the pb is almost congealing and the Nutella is no longer a nice gooey melting glob of hazelnut chocolate deliciousness.  I got up and took it back to the kitchen, scraped off the Nutella and gave the rest of it to a very excited EmmaLou who doesn’t care if food is hot or cold; she doesn’t even care if it is technically food.  If it will fit down her throat it qualifies as nutrition in her doggie logic.

I went back to my comfy chair.  I took a snack pack of cottage cheese out of the refrigerator, got a spoon, and headed back to my comfy chair.  I sat down and gave up on the heating pad.  I put the laptop on my lap, opened it up, got ready to Tweet amazing things to the world, took  a spoonful of cottage cheese and instead of it going into my mouth, it nose-dived onto my keyboard.

EmmaLou licked off the cottage cheese while tweeting something of her own to her best doggie friend Coco the Diva D0g.  I then wiped down the keyboard, shut the laptop and left the room in total frustration.

I went back to bed.  The imminent future was simply too frightening.  I just wanted to have a normal morning.  sigh…

I Just Wanted to Get Out of the House for a Little While

Let’s talk a bit about why I should stay inside and not venture out into the world without adult supervision.

All I wanted to do was get some coffee and maybe treat myself to breakfast.  It was one of Devoted Spouse’s volunteer days and I felt like going out and maybe even getting some shopping done.

I should have known better.  It was extremely cold, there had been a light dusting of snow the night before resulting in a slippery driveway (shades of the Ice Incident of 2009) but I really needed some coffee.

Now the coffee at that highly rated restaurant Le Bob Evans isn’t the best, but the place is close to home and I figured I would just order twice as much coffee.  So I pull into the parking lot, park my car, and immediately upon exiting my car what do I do?  I slip on the ice — okay fortunately I was still holding onto the car door so I remained upright.  I did, however, have severe heart palpitations and visions of emergency rooms.

I’m inside the chic breakfast place and have been seated at one of their booths — the kind that has a booth on the other side but is separated by this weird type of glass partition.  So actually the tables themselves are connected but the people sitting in the booths are not because connected people would simply be bizarre.  (I’m not sure I even understood that sentence.)

Anyway, I’m sitting there reading the paper and trying to eat eggs and drink my coffee and the guy in the quasi-attached booth next to me keeps making his point to his breakfast buddy by slamming his hands on the table, thereby making MY side of the table shake.   After about 10 minutes of this, I calmly get up from my breakfast and walk ALL the way around to HIS side of the booth, politely interrupt his conversation and gently ask him to stop banging on the table because it is making my side of the table move and is actually quite irritating.  He looks up at me and blinks.  And blinks.  And blinks.  Like I’m a nutcase.  Then he looks at his breakfast buddy and goes back to discussing whatever they were discussing.  I say, “Thank you so much and enjoy your breakfast.”  There was no snark in my voice – honestly.  I even smiled.

I go back to my now getting cold breakfast and open up my paper when the man next to me AGAIN slams the table for emphasis.  Oh for the love of… I got up on my knees in my booth seat so I could look over the partition at him and I said to him, “Didn’t I ask you nicely not to bang on the table?”  Guess what?  It worked.  They even left.  I got to finish my breakfast in peace. Of course my eggs were cold but the table stopped shaking.  A few people were looking in my direction but I figured it was because I was wearing such a stunning outfit, not possibly due to my etiquette busting booth behavior.

As I finished up my breakfast, I remembered a tweet I had sent to the Twitterverse earlier and it dawned on me that I had mixed up the names of some politician’s wife I was tweeting about.  I felt so stoooopid I whipped out my SmartPhone and decided to rectify the situation.  To my surprise my SmartPhone wouldn’t let me tweet.  Really.  It flat out refused to let me send anything to Twitter.  Oh it was all ready to allow me to update my FaceBook page, but I couldn’t send out a tweet.  SmartPhone my butt… then I realized I was making all these comments outloud.  I looked up and realized the older couple at the booth in front of me were staring at me, and the women at the table on my other side were also watching me.  It was time to leave.  Leaving a generous tip on the formica table, I sheepishly made my way out of the premises and into the relative safety of my car, SmartPhone in hand.

After a little retail therapy at that famous establishment Target, (and a little more ice skating), it was time to get back to the peace and quiet of my own home.  I arrived safely and thought — I’ll back the car into the garage (which is still a little too full of “stuff” to actually park my car there) so I can unload all my goodies from the trunk without having to walk across a slippery driveway.  Good idea.  Until the sun got in my eyes as I was backing into the garage and I accidentally backed into Devoted Spouse’s tool cabinet.  Yikes.  I also grazed the snow blower.  Yikes squared.  The good news?  I totally missed the motorcycle…but not by much.

All I wanted to do was get out of the house for a little while…not wreak total havoc on the world.   Next time I get this bright idea maybe  I should just stay home and clean up the craft crap room.