Some days ya just never know

Ann Webb, Rita Henderson and Carla Knight

Since I've talked about Ann and Rita so much, I thought maybe y'all might like to know what they looked like.  That's past tense because this picture was taken about seven or eight years ago.  It is one of the few times in my life I had short hair.  For those of you who can't determine what we were doing in this picture, we were sorta playing croquet in Rita's backyard when they lived on the Chancellorsville Battlefield in Virginia.  I say sorta because we had consumed a fairly large number of those drinks on which Rita has such a precarious grip, though Ann has a glass of wine in this picture.  I gulped my drink and hid my empty glass behind a tree before jumping into the picture.  I know it kinda looks like we were playing horseshoes, but I can assure you it started out as croquet.  It may have become some hybrid version of the two before it was over.  If I remember correctly, it was Harold's 50th birthday, and yes, we were all polluted, which was not unusual when we visited Harold and Rita.  Which means this actually could have been any other time or many other times when we were visiting.  Ann is showing off the persona she perfected being the daughter of a prominent doctor,  a member of the country club, and having had a "coming out" (debutante, not sexual preference for all you smartasses).  She thought it was just as much a bunch of snobbery as we did, much to her parents' dismay.  Rita is in the middle hoping one of us will catch her if she starts to fall.  And, as usual, I am standing around looking goofy and wondering what the Hell is going on?

I ran across the picture this morning when I was frantically searching all of the junk drawers (I know you're supposed to have only one; so sue me) looking for a permanent marker.  As a special treat for my babies when we brought Georgia home, I decided to buy new food bowls for everyone.  We haven't bought new food bowls in 15 years or more.  We write the dog's name on the side of the bowl.  All the old bowls had many doggie names on them since we've had them for so long.  I know the dogs can't read; it's for me.  Abby and Logan get the same food.  Georgia gets a mix of what she was eating at her foster home and what we feed our dogs until she adjusts to the change in diet and it doesn't upset her poor little tummy.  Bailey gets a special diet maintenance food because she tends to gain a lot of weight if we don't watch her.  Isn't it awful how I make my poor dog stay on a diet, but I'm too damned undisciplined to make myself lose any weight.  Of course, it's a little laborious now since I have difficulty remaining vertical for longer than ten seconds at a time.  Makes exercise more than a bit of a challenge.  I thought I'd try some upper body stuff just to keep my cardio up, but now I have a frozen shoulder and can't lift my stupid right arm above shoulder level (yes, I'm right handed).  It's obviously a plot to keep me fat.  What I don't understand is how I can stay fat when I'm nauseous most of the time and can't eat.  On the rare days when I can eat and keep it down for longer than five minutes, I try to eat enough to make up for the other days but that's too much like binging and purging.  Still, I'm the only fat involuntary bulimic in the world.  Oh, and I eventually found a marker (not in any junk drawer) so the dog bowls are appropriately labelled.  I did teach the dogs which location in the kitchen is the appropriate one for their specific bowl.  Maybe I can teach them to read.

My new baby, Georgia, has discovered that when I use my laptop I put the mouse on the arm of the recliner and move it around.  It's an optical mouse and doesn't need a mousepad.  So, now Georgia comes up and puts her head on my hand which is on the mouse.  I can't move the mouse because her head is so heavy and she thinks I'm scratching under her chin while I'm trying to extract the mouse from it's trap.  I usually get some really unusual stuff on the monitor -- words I didn't type, things highlighted and moved, new pages opened, old pages closed.  It's becoming a bit of a contest.  I know I shouldn't let her get away with stuff like that, but she is just so cute it is impossible to reprimand her, and it's harmless.  So far she hasn't made me do anything that couldn't be undone.  If we start accidentally going to porn sites, I'll have to make some changes to our little game.


As you must have figured out by now, I don't have a topic today.  Not important!  I can go on endlessly about nothing.  I'm currently reading some short stories by Jeffrey Deaver.  He usually writes novels and Ann, Rita and I have circulated a number of his books amongst our little reading circle.  He has also written two books of short stories, in the same genre as O.Henry, Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling.  His novels always have some final little unexpected entwinement at the end, but his short stories are more than a little twisted.  He has actually named the collections Twisted Collected Short Stories Vol 1 and Vol 2.  One of the stories I read yesterday kept swirling around in my brain long after I had completed it and actually read several more.  It was a great plot, though I don't think Deaver originated the idea.  He certainly did put an intriguing and individual spin on it.  That started me thinking, maybe I should try writing short stories.  I could actually use the same plot device as his story, but, of course, change the people, location, circumstances and a few other dynamics.  Then I realized how ridiculous it all was.  I can't write a short story.  I've never written a short anything in my entire life.  By the time I got finished with it, we'd have a 600 page novel.  So maybe that's what I should do.  Write a novel, using his short story plot as a basis, but expounding on it in the way only I can.  I gotta get a better spellchecker though.  The one that comes with this blogger does not recognize entwinement or spellchecker or debutante or mousepad or even smartasses.  I wonder who created this dictionary?


Well the little Weather Channel Desktop Icon in the system tray on my computer just started chirping.  That means some kind of weather alert.  Hang on.  Let's go see what's up.

WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY UNTIL WED DEC 15 2010 11:15 PM EST

...Winter Weather Advisory in effect from 4 AM to 4 PM EST Thursday ...

The National Weather Service in Raleigh has issued a Winter Weather Advisory which is in effect from 4 AM to 4 PM EST Thursday.

* Locations affected:  Locations across the Triad (that's us) and Burlington south to Asheboro ... Lexington ... Albemarle and Troy.

* Precipitation types:  Precipitation will begin as a period of snow before daybreak changing to freezing rain later in the morning.

* Accumulation:  Up to one inch of snow is possible along and north of Highway 64 (that's us) with a trace of snow expected south of Highway 64.  A thin glaze of freezing rain is expected in all locations.

*Timing:  Snow could begin as early as 5 AM Thursday ... Changing over to freezing rain by mid morning.  Freezing rain is then expected to change over to mainly rain (I can't help it -- the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain) after 1 PM.

* Impacts: Due to cold ground temperatures ... snow will accumulate quickly on many surfaces including some roads Thursday morning.  Light freezing rain will accumulate on elevated surfaces.  Although overall accumulations of snow and ice will be light ... the timing of the precipitation combined with cold morning temperatures should make for a period of hazardous driving conditions from around daybreak Thursday into early afternoon.

* Temperatures: Temperatures will be in the middle 20s around daybreak .. gradually warming to above freezing in the afternoon.  Overnight lows Thursday night will fall to around freezing which could result in some refreezing of wet road surfaces by Friday morning.

Dammit!  It's still not even officially winter.  Looks like it's coming from the west over the mountains, which means it won't amount to much more than a colossal headache and serious drugs for me and a pain in the butt for most everyone else.  It'll screw up school for the kids and rush hour for the workers.  There are a lot of wannabe Kamikazes in our area of the world.  They've never heard of slowing down due to weather conditions.  Nor do they understand the concept that a bridge freezes before the road surface.  Once they start to slide, that's when it's time to slam on the brakes and start twirling the steering wheel.  The last snow (which was less than an inch) gave us scenes from a demolition derby on the interstate.  I worry for Bud, not because he can't drive in the snow, but because he can.  He's a target for all those dolts out there who should have had the good sense to stay home.


And that's my world today.  Welcome to it.