The Pony Is A Silver-Tongued Devil

The Pony is going to prom again this year. Same dance, different date.

Tuesday, we went to rent a tux. Of course he got the trainee who had only taken two tux orders in her fledgling career. Thank the Gummi Mary, one of the owners of the establishment told her she wanted to watch her take The Pony’s measurements. First of all, when she needed to measure his waist at the belly-button area, she had the tape measure way up at the bottom of his ribs. As the owner said, “I don’t think his belly button is that high. Have him point it out to you.” Then, on the same measurement, the owner had to tell her as she read off the number, “Your hand is inside the tape. We don’t need anybody’s pants falling down because you measured the waist too large.” We’ll see how this turns out.

The Pony’s date happens to be in one of my classes. She was talking about prom before class. I said that The Pony had reserved his tux. And that he hoped the vest color matched her dress, because the girl taking the order took a look at the picture on his phone, and said, “Is your maximum brightness on?” I also informed her that The Pony’s truck has no heat or air conditioning, so we should hope for temperate weather on prom night. Date said, “I have a hoop skirt. I hope I fit in the truck.” I shared this information with The Pony on the way home.

“I’m sure your seat moves back. If it works!”

“It works.”

“So you might tell her that it will move back. But not in front of people! And not so it makes her feel awkward.”

“Heh. Heh. I can say, ‘I moved the seat back as far as it would go. Hopefully, you’ll fit.’”

“Stop! You’re cracking me up. You wouldn’t really do that, would you?”

“Meh. Probably not.”

That little girl doesn’t know what she’s in for.

Mate And Switch

Yesterday, Farmer H sent me a text in the middle of the day.

“I found a switch.”

Sweet Gummi Mary! What was THAT supposed to mean? A switch? Like for administering a whoopin’? Like when your stepdaddy says , “Boy, go out back and bring me a switch.” Like in that move The Quiet Man, when John Wayne is dragging Maureen O’Hara across the Irish countryside by the her flaming red hair, and a woman from the town holds out a tree branch, and says, “Here’s a stick, to beat the lovely lady.” Or maybe Farmer H found a switch to turn on his common sense. Or one that makes a light bulb appear over his head when he gets an idea. Seriously. A switch? So all I could do was send back a response.

“For...?”

“$5.00”

Okay. I DID ask. But this was not helping.

"For what?”

“His cruise control they didn’t have the ac switch today will check again another day.switch looks good and for 5 bucks I will try it about 10 minutes to install”

So…I gathered that Farmer H was looking for parts to fix The Pony’s truck, since he was sure he had found the parts on The Devil’s online version, and he and The Pony went to the Playground on Monday night, and no part was to be had. Prompting Farmer H to say, “Huh. I guess I didn’t look it up right.”

Speaking of…he sent me info for the part he needs to fix the hot tub. Info consisting of the word pump and a couple of stock numbers. “You can get it on Amazon,” said Farmer H. “My buddy at work got one there.”

Do you know how many pumps for hot tubs come up when you type in Farmer H’s numbers on Amazon? 3,367. Yeah. Kind of hard to figure out which one goes with your 1970s model free hot tub that Farmer H brought home from the estate of his boss’s deceased father. So that was not found. Prompting Farmer H to say, “Oh. I guess I will go to the pool place and ask about it.”

Yeah. Somebody around here needs a switch all right…

This Pot Regrets Implying That The Kettle Is Black

You knew it would happen, didn't you? Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's comeuppance. Even Steven adding a tally mark. Karma dangling by sharp teeth from Mrs. HM's ample buttocks.

You may recall that I pretty much declared The Pony to be a careless gambler. One who doesn't have the sense to go over a scratch-off ticket with a fine-toothed comb. In fact, I even wondered in font whether The Pony actually shares my DNA. All because he mistook a $50 winner for a $10 winner. Thank the Gummi Mary, there are safeguards in place for that. A bar code on the bottom of each ticket that, when scanned by the gas station chicken store clerk, reveals the amount of the win. As long as you can trust your gas station chicken store clerk, you're going to get what's coming to you when you cash in that ticket.

Sunday night, I decided to enter a few of my losers in the molottery.com website. You tally up points toward prizes, you know. And the Golden Ticket game has a monthly second-chance drawing to win $500, and three second-chance grand prizes. I missed the first drawing for that, so I punched in my losing scratcher validation numbers. The first seven tickets went in just fine. It's kind of a tedious process, but with some Pure Prairie League playing, and no school on Monday, I took the time.

What's this? The eighth ticket gave me a message. Entry not recognized. Please check the numbers and try again. So I did. All my numbers checked out. This happened to me a couple years ago, and I discovered that the ticket was not a loser. So I went back over my loser. Dang. Those Golden Tickets have 10 numbers at the top, which you try to match with 60 numbers at the bottom. On and on I went. Nope. No matches. Then I got to the very last of the top 10 numbers. And in the middle of the lower 60, I HAD A MATCH! I scratched off the prize, and saw that I'd won $50.

Pony. My cast-iron soul apologizes.

Hopefully, The Headlines Will Not Report An Epidemic Of Hoof-And-Mouth Disease In Hillmomba

So...we had the big Easter feast at the Mansion yesterday. The #1 son graced us with his presence for two hours. Just slightly longer than the time it took him to drive here. And then again to drive back. Still, it was good to see him. Even though the preparations took roughly as much time as was needed to plan the invasion of Normandy on D-Day. Of course he took back leftovers, though he eschewed the ham. "I'm really not a fan of ham." Huh. I don't know what he thought I was serving when he hit the road.

#1 might be running a sidewalk cafe out of his rental house. Except that he has no sidewalk. Perhaps it's a Cul-de-sac Cafe. He got a coffee maker for Christmas, you know. And he took back enough food to feed a frat house. As long as they don't expect ham. Deviled eggs, hash brown casserole, potato salad, roasted potatoes/carrots/onions (you might have heard about us from our neighbors the Buttertons--the Hillbilly family is sometimes called the Potatotons), green bean bundles, 7-layer salad, a bottle of Kraft Chunky Blue Cheese Dressing, Sister Schubert's rolls, and an unopened package of sharp cheddar cheese slices that expire on April 6th. Hey! How long do you think that cheese is going to last in a house occupied by four college dudes?

Can you believe that boy turned down chocolate pie, and a package of Brookies (a brownie/cookie combination that The Pony picked up at The Devil's Playground), and a box of no-refrigeration-necessary bacon that only needed to be microwaved for crisping? Let the record show that he DID eat a cup of pudding that wouldn't fit in the pie, and said he was not a fan of Brookies (go commiserate with ham, Brookies!), and explained that his house had just bought a package of bacon yesterday, and it cost NINE DOLLARS!

While awaiting the arrival of #1, I ordered The Pony around like an indentured servant during his last week of indenture. He was on call, relegated to the living room couch between jobs, rather than whiling away the morning on his cheap couch in the basement, playing his new video game. The Pony was agreeable, if inefficient. At one point, I started cleaning off the kitchen counter myself, since it was taking him so long to set the table.

"What is THIS? It wasn't here a minute ago."

"Just when I start one thing, you tell me to do something else. That is...your coaster from beside the recliner in the living room."

Let the record show that it is not just Mrs. HM's coaster, but a communal coaster, in the form of a plastic lid from a quart hot&sour soup container.

"Well, I guess I'll just put it in my dishwater here. Where I was washing up the latest bunch of dishes, before I had to clean off the counter, which wasn't being done."

"I was setting the table like you said! You interrupted me when I was clipping my toenails like you told me to do last night."

"What does that have to do with the coaster being in here?"

"That's what I was catching my toenails with. I always do."

EEEEEEEEEEEE!

"WAIT! Were there toenails on that when I put it in the dishwater? Because I'm going to have to start all over with fresh water--"

"No, mother dearest. I dumped the toenails in the wastebasket when I came in, and then started setting the table. So I didn't have a chance to take it back yet."

"Oh. So you only put the EMPTY coaster from the toenails right here by where we're setting the food out for serving. And you're touching every plate, bowl, glass, knife, and fork (The Pony declared we wouldn't need spoons [tell that to pudding-eater #1] so he didn't put any on the table) without having washed your hands?"

"Wash my hands? For what?"

Uh huh. Makes you sorry you missed our feast, doesn't it?

SOMETHING Appears To Be Authentic

It's no secret that unexplained incidents happen frequently at the Mansion. Aside from the nightly footsteps that nobody admits to up above my head after Farmer H and The Pony go to bed...not much has gone on lately.

Friday evening, as I was sitting on...the...um...THRONE...in the NASCAR bathroom on the other side of the inner wall of my dark basement lair...I noticed that something was out of place. It was a Certificate of Authenticity for some 12-car collection, propped behind a yellow #4 Kodak racecar, and a car still in its box. They were on a little shelf above the sink.

There is no wind in the basement, unless The Pony is fanning that door maniacally as he enters and leaves. And a draft from a door won't move a metal car in a box. I don't recall any earthquake tremors. That's the first thing I thought of. The New Madrid Fault has been behaving itself. So I asked The Pony, in case he had not.

"Have you been slamming the bathroom door?"

"What?"

"The door down here on the bathroom. Have you been slamming it so there's a wind?"

"Noooo...why would I do that?"

"I don't know. But I noticed that certificate is falling over, and there's a car out of place on that little shelf."

"By the sink? I haven't told you this...but I was sitting on the toilet one day, and a car AND that certificate fell off the shelf! And I didn't do ANYTHING! I was just sitting there, and it happened all at once!"

"That certificate of authenticity? It fell all the way down?"

"Uh huh. And that car it was behind. That yellow one."

"Huh. I was sitting there, and saw that the certificate is leaning on the yellow car. The #4 Kodak. But the car next to it in the box is sticking out over the edge of the shelf."

"I don't know WHAT'S going on. But it wasn't ME!"

Yeah. I don't think it was.

The Importance Of Being Sternest

Sweet Gummi Mary! The apple has rolled so far from the tree that it bounced off a bluff, dropped into the Mississippi, bobbed out into the Gulf of Mexico, hung a left just past Florida, and washed up on a beach along the coast of Europe, in England, right between Germany and France on that newly-discovered (to Mrs. HM) island of England.

I am so shocked that I'm tempted to order a maternity test. Surely The Pony was switched at the hospital! I have no other explanation for the shocking turn of events that befell Mrs. Hillbilly Mom today at the gas station chicken store.

The Pony has had a lottery ticket laying on the kitchen counter for a couple of months. Yeah. Mrs. HM's housekeeping leaves a little to be desired. It's not like she's a hoarder. This was not a mummified cat found under a pile of pizza boxes. To be fair, it's on the kitchen counter that sticks out like a peninsula, from the side of the sink, dividing the kitchen from the dining nook. Not the kitchen counter by the stove, where Mrs. HM does her food preparations.

So...amongst the pack of napkins left there from Christmas dinner, and Mrs. HM's school bag that rests there every night, and a couple of Entertainment Weeklys, and a lottery ticket awaiting mailing to the #1 son with his $6 for Chinese food, and a pair of winter gloves, and Mrs. HM's purse...was this winning lottery ticket. It was a $10 ticket. The Pony had traded in some of his Christmas winners, and got this one that won $10. Every now and then, I'd ask him if he wanted me to cash it in. "Nah. That's okay." So now that he has turned 18, he could do it himself. He's bought one or two, just to say he did.

Today I asked if he wanted me to cash it in while I was in town for a 44 oz Diet Coke. "Sure. Why not?" That's a standard answer for him. I was not planning on getting any tickets today. I cashed in my $300 winner yesterday, bought a few, and pocketed the rest, to play with another day. Which was not today. Nor did I take my stack of small winners for trade-in. I was only going to get a soda, and two $5 tickets for The Pony when I cashed in his winner.

As I was filling my 44 oz cup with my magical elixir, I noticed that The Pony had not scratched off the bar code area. That's a no-no! The clerks HATE that! It means they have to grab the plastic spoon taped to the ink pen they loan out, and scrape that ticket until the bar code is revealed. So...I took one of my handful of coins to be used for exact change on my soda payment, and scratched for The Pony. There. Easy peasy. I approached the counter.

It was the cranky old clerk who's nice to me. The one who gets all rattled, and says every step of the transaction. "Is that soda separate?"

"Yes."

"A dollar sixty-nine."

I handed over my correct change. She rang it up, and turned to scan the winner. She punched it in the register, took the receipt, stapled it to the ticket as per procedure in the gas station chicken store, laid it by the register, and said, "That's fifty."

"WHAT? Can I look at that? I thought it was a ten-dollar winner!"

There is was. Plain as the nose on Danny Kaye's and Jimmy Durante's faces. FIFTY DOLLARS. The very first number on the ticket was a winner, with a dollar bill symbol that meant DOUBLE, and a $20 amount under it. AND there was a $10 winning number on down the ticket. Huh. The Pony was certainly not observant.

"I'll take a Twenty-five Hundred For Life, and a Cash Vault. And the forty dollars left in cash. That's my son's ticket! I can't believe he didn't know how much it won."

The clerk completed the transaction, and I stuffed the cash in my shirt pocket. Do you think it crossed Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's mind to buy tickets with that forty dollars? You know her pretty well. Of course it did. I might as well have been Larry "Pinto" Kroger in Animal House, with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other shoulder, giving me conflicting advice.

Maybe that was one of my tickets that I didn't want to take one day, so I laid it on the counter by my purse. The Pony thinks it was a ten-dollar winner. I'll give him his two tickets. He won't know any different. And it might have actually been MY ticket anyway. I seem to recall cashing one in for him already...I can stop at the Orb K and get some tickets for myself.

Wait. I ALWAYS reveal the bar code on my winners. ALWAYS. So if that was MY ticket, it would have been scratched off. That's the first thing I do when I see it's a winner. Scratch the bar code. Even before I see how much I've won. That couldn't have been my ticket.

I kept driving, right past the turn-off to the Orb K. The Pony was shocked to hear that he'd won $50 on that ticket. I told him my dilemma.

"You could have used it for tickets. I don't care."

"No. It was yours. But how a son of mine cannot figure out how much he won on a lottery ticket is beyooooond me!"

The Pony put away his winnings. Then he sat down to scratch his two tickets. "Huh. Loser. Another loser."

To which I responded, "ARE YOU SURE?"

I might need to dig them out of the trash to check them. And schedule that maternity test.

It's Not Like I Can Arrange A Playdate

The Pony and I stopped at Terrible Cuts for haircuts on the way home yesterday. In fact, yesterday's post was going to be titled: Haircut, Hair Cut. But I saved this part for today.

Thank the Gummi Mary, I got my favorite Terrible Cutter. I think her name is Doris. She looks like the world's first (self-proclaimed) supermodel, Janice Dickinson. Well. Not like a model, exactly. But kind of rough, with the same features, and kind of the same attitude. But here's the thing. I like her. I really like her. In spite of her blunt comments.

Yes, my Supercutter has no filter. Like when she puts that strip of cotton stuff around my neck before nearly asphyxiating me with the drape thingy, and says, "Wow! You sure have a lot of moles!" Seriously. It's not like they're the size of that lip growth on Maisy's teacher in Uncle Buck. The one John Candy tossed a quarter to as he left her office, telling her to take it downtown and hire a rat to gnaw that thing off her face.

Or like yesterday, when SuperC started combing through my hair, and said, "I look at my color at home, where it's dark, and think I'm fine. But when I go out, I see how bad I need to touch it up." Um. Yeah. I get it. My roots are showing. No need to announce it to the 15 people waiting and watching, listening in on our intimate conversation.

Still, I kind of like that ol' gal. We are kindred spirits. We don't suffer fools. Gladly or ungladly. SuperC got to talking about her heating bill. How she had turned off her heat, and even though it was getting down near freezing last night, she wasn't going to turn it on. She was just going to wrap up. Because heating bills are out of control, you know, and there's a charge on there that everybody gets, and they won't tell you exactly what it is. So one day the girls in the salon called, and they were told it's for people who can't afford their heating bills. "They USED to ask if you wanted to donate a dollar for that! But not anymore. They just TAKE IT! And it's a lot more than a dollar. And the PHONE BILL!"

"I know! I still have a land line--"

"OH! The 9-1-1 charges!"

"I don't even mind that. Because it's local, and there's got to be some way to pay for the 9-1-1 system. But those "taxes" from AT&T are eating me up! If you look at them, they're really about money for free phones for people--"

"I KNOW! If you want a phone, get out and work for it! Or go without a phone!"

"Yeah. I don't know why everybody with a land line has to pay about $30 a month for these freeloaders. They can afford everything else--"

"They're getting their heat paid for!"

"Yeah! Only about half of my phone bill is for my own services. The rest of it's those taxes."

Uh huh. We are not people people, SuperC and I. And sometimes, I feel bad for her. Talking about how food is so expensive now. And even though she loves grapes, those bags in The Devil's Playgound are just too much for one person. So she breaks some of them off, and puts them in another bag, so she can buy less. She was afraid to get caught, but then a Devil's Handmaiden told her they really don't care if you do that.

Yeah, I feel bad for SuperC. I'm worry that she goes home alone and sits in the cold, eating a meager amount of grapes, looking at Facebook. She told me that. She never comments on stuff. She just reads other people's. And she likes some of their videos. "They're so CUTE!"

Too bad it's hard to make new friends when you get old. Friends who might think you have ulterior motives. Friends from a different socioeconomic background.

Sometimes, I wish I could just ask SuperC to join me in a warm restaurant for a grape or two. My treat.