Two Bones To Pick With The Devil

A while back, I complained about my new favorite lunch, the Chicken Bacon Ranch Pinwheels sold at The Devil's Playground deli department. Lately, their quality has declined. It's like they don't have personnel smart enough to roll up a pinwheel these days. I bemoaned my situation to Farmer H, and while sympathetic to my plight, he said that he guessed I'd just have to make my own. Since then, I've tried that, but mine aren't quite the same. Still, they're better than the latest couple of purchases.

One of the Devil's Handmaidens apparently thinks a pinwheel is a kind of sandwich! Because a most recent batch had very little meat, and very much tortilla. I suppose that's cheaper for The Devil. I think the packages are probably sold by weight. And I'm pretty certain The Devil injects his meat with water, too. That's why I buy my meat at Save A Lot. There is no suspiciously-separating fluid that is released when I cook it. Only juices which later solidify to grease. Not some bubbly suspension that separates.

Anyhoo...back to my pinwheels. I unroll them. Not for inspection purposes, but because sometimes I add a snippet of bacon, since The Devil goes pretty light on that ingredient in the Chicken Bacon Ranch Pinwheel. Then I roll it back, tearing off the segment of tortilla that is redundant, leaving only enough to cover the meat and cheese. I don't waste it! I eat it after the main pinwheel, with a side of an individual bag of BBQ chips.

LOOK at that sadness that passes for a Chicken Bacon Ranch Pinwheel at The Devil's Playground! Don't get me started on that limp scrap of lettuce, and the absent bacon. That pinwheel-builder put the main course right in the middle. NO! It belongs at one end, and is then rolled into a pinwheel configuration. This one was plopped in the middle, and COVERED with another tortilla! Just how much tortilla does a Chicken Bacon Ranch Pinwheel need, anyway? This is a disgrace!

Oh, and TODAY when I looked on the shelf for my Chicken Bacon Ranch Pinwheel (always the eternal optimist, our Mrs. Hillbilly Mom), I saw that there were three of them. Eager to nab them as my own, I reached out to check the date, and noticed that rather than the shelf-labeled price of $2.98, each individual package bore a price of $5.98! That's dirty pool! Bait and switch! False advertising!

Being newly assertive thanks to my blog buddies buoying my confidence, I took one over to the deli counter and waved it under the nose of two Millennials working there.

"Why is your shelf labeling the price of these pinwheels as $2.98, and the package saying they are $5.98?" A logical question, I assumed.

"Huh. Maybe they're just in the wrong place." Said the only one of the two Millennials who deigned to answer.

"They're in the same place they've been for months." I wasn't falling for that tactic. Yet that Millennial gave no further response, but walked off, my question having ruined his repartee with his fellow Millennial, I suppose, who busied himself straightening the hot food rather than make eye contact with Crazy Mrs. Hillbilly Mom.

You'd think he might have added that he'd go check on it. Or called a manager over. Or at least walked out to see what I was talking about. I marched right back over to the shelf and put the pinwheel back. No way was I going to buy something they were trying to trick me into!

I also complained to the Devil's Handmaiden at the checkout when she asked me if I found everything.

"No. And I don't even remember what, but there were several things. What's on my mind, though, is the fact that the pinwheels in the deli were on a shelf marked, $2.98, but they were labeled $5.98. So I put them back."

The Devil's Handmaiden pretended to be interested in my answer, but mainly just tut-tutted and continued ringing up my stuff and turning her carousel the wrong way so I couldn't grab them and put them in my cart until after she had already given my total and was awaiting payment.

It this treatment continues, I might just work up courage to ask for a manager. The Devil shall possibly, in time, rue the day that Mrs. HM retired.

I'm Okay With Going Giftless. Really.

Santa needs to get it in gear! Christmas is just around the corner, and his bag is empty.

I have a list in my head. Not so much in my head, as corners of pages folded down in some mail-order catalogs. And an email from Genius with a wish list. That came in about an hour ago. And my catalog browsing was done last night this morning around 2:30 a.m. I had planned on shopping from my old rolly chair in front of New Delly in my dark basement lair this afternoon. But Farmer H has sent me a text from his Storage Container Store asking if I want to head to the casino around 3:30. NOT-HEAVEN YES!

I guess Farmer H is feeling like increasing his newfound junk earnings. He's been making a lot of little profits. He said he bought a bicycle at the auction last night for $5, and sold it this morning at his SCS (Storage Container Store) for $10. I daresay that's better than I will do with my gambling stake at the casino. I DID win $70 yesterday on scratchers, though, for my $25 of winners cashed in. So we're both in pretty good shape to wager.

OH, NO! I just saw a commercial for a Sock Slider! SWEET GUMMI MARY! Please don't let Farmer H and the boys get me this for Christmas! I'll gladly take another $3 change purse and two boxes of Sno-Caps if they'll not gift me with this contraption!

I was disappointed when they gave me the Old People Chair. That this would be the beginning of the end. I must say, I'm still kickin', and I DO enjoy a heated nap in my OPC every evening. But I must draw the line at this Sock Slider.

Shh...don't tell them it exists.

These Beggars Are Really Ringing My Bell

'Tis the season of donating to the less fortunate.

Let the record show that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom does not mind donating. She DOES mind being coerced or shamed into donating. She prefers to donate in her own manner, in her own sweet time, whether it be through the workplace collection as in pre-retirement years past, or funding Farmer H's Santa sack so it can magically fill with toys, or helping neighbors who can't make ends meet, or wiping the payments for the $1000 Caravan right off the imaginary books for Farmer H's co-worker who bought it from us several years back. Giving does not have to be confined to the holiday season.

I know that bell-ringers are donating their time to do a charitable task. That THEY are not the ones who benefit from donations. Let them set up their cauldron out front of businesses, and ring that bell to their heart's content. Ring it 'til the cows come home. But when those cows arrive, at least make way for them to enter the home.

Today I entered four businesses. Two of them required me to run hobble a gauntlet to reach the door. I don't know when people started bringing their children to ring the bell with them. I suppose maybe they can take up more room that way, to keep you from the door. Or necessitate you asking permission to skootch by, thus initiating a dialog and eye contact, making you riper for the begging. Perhaps some of the more thin-skinned customers feel shame when one of the children huffs, or gives the stinkeye, or flat out makes a comment about not-giving. Not this ol' gal! I am not a child-hater, but I don't think I would feel any guilt if a bell-ringer child stumbled under my feet and was trod upon by the waffle-soled hiking boots that I used to wear in the snow.

Today's bell-ringers act put-out to be bell ringing. They should not have volunteered, then. Do THEY always donate when they encounter other bell-ringers ringing their bells? It's not like you get a Buddy Poppy to twirl in the face of future Buddy Poppy sellers like my mom used to do, because she felt guilty about not donating to every person who asked.

Just sayin'. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is not a curmudgeonly miser who pinches her pennies until they squeal. Okay. She IS a curmudgeon. And she DOES keep her pennies. But she does her fair share of donating in her own oddball manner.

Give her passage to the door.

I'm Pretty Sure Goldilocks Could Give Me Some Good Advice

You know how I was going to straighten up my dark basement lair last night? Okay, not so much straighten up, as throw away those three Valentine candy boxes that were sitting on the slide-out shelf of my old gray office desk? You're not going to believe this...

Here they are. The three boxes. I wonder what Goldilocks would have to say, if she broke into the Mansion and started snooping around my dark basement lair?

"Look! Valentine candy boxes! This one is TOO PLAIN!"

"This one is TOO FANCY!"

"But this one is...OOHHH EEMMM GGEEE! THIS ONE IS FULL OF CANDY!"

That's right. I picked up the boxes to throw them away, and the top one was suspiciously heavy! Further investigation revealed that the box was unopened! It was full of candy! I'd been sitting in my office with a FULL BOX OF CANDY behind me! Sweet Gummi Mary! What is the world coming too? Here I was, making wise choices, and I didn't even eat my Valentine candy!

For two years. Look at the BEST BY date on this box:

Can you believe it? I'm pretty sure that box was from 2015. Otherwise the date wouldn't have been so close to that year's Valentine's Day. That's the year I started making wise choices at the beginning of February. And that's the year my mom died, in early February, and things were kind of in flux for a while. So it's easy to see how stuff like Valentine candy could fall by the wayside. Or at least be set on the pull-out shelf of my old gray office desk and overlooked.

FOR TWO YEARS!

Is that not a bigger dark basement lair faux pas than having a critter roaming around in the clutter, or having a tower of that clutter topple over unexplainedly? To leave CANDY, brand-name, Whitman's Sampler, fine CHOCOLATE candy UNEATEN for TWO YEARS?

I am not an expert on chocolate. I do know that when Farmer H and I, and the boys, used to take a vacation to Branson every year with my mom and dad, we would stop in Lebanon (Missouri!) at the Russell Stover candy outlet. And when we bought candy, it was always past the BEST BY date. That's what a candy outlet does, you know. Sells candy for cheap because it's past the date. I think they even had signs saying that the candy was perfectly edible, but that chocolate sometimes turns a whitish color when it's past the BEST BY date. Thought it's still perfectly edible! I don't even remember seeing a discoloration on the treats we bought.

Do you think it's safe to eat? You know, one piece every now and then? Once the Thanksgiving replacement cheesecake is gone?

Not gonna lie. I'm thinking about it. I don't think I'll die if I eat it. And I don't think I'll die if I don't. After all...I've been able to leave it untouched for two years...

And Now, The Rest (Or At Least More) Of The Story

When we last convened, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom was hearing things behind her back. Not like malicious workplace rumors about herself. She's RETIRED, by cracky! No, she was hearing slight rustling noises in her (lighted) dark basement lair. The source was not discovered before she went to bed.

Huh. The next day, when I descended to my lair at 2:38 p.m., I was shocked to see my office in disarray. Okay. Not exactly shocked, because the usual state of my office IS disarray. But now, the disarray was in disarray. One spot in particular. The pull-out shelf of my old gray metal office desk. I don't use that desk. Not in the Mansion, where Farmer H built me one in the corner as I requested, out of smooth butcher-block-look countertop.

This gray desk came from Farmer H's old workplace. They were throwing it out! I clamored for it, and it served me well in my $17,000 house. Once we moved here, and Farmer H finished the basement (finished as in framed out the rooms and put up walls and painted them, not finished as in poured the concrete in a hole in the ground), Farmer H and his buddy, Buddy, nearly gave themselves hernias moving that gray desk in. The Pony, once he was of an age to use a computer-type learning toy, claimed it as his own. Now it is mainly piled with remnants of The Pony's gaming DVDs.

Anyhoo...I have an old radio/CD player that I use to listen to basketball games when Newmentia boys and girls play in a tournament. It rests on that gray metal desk shelf, and I unplug my printer and hook it up. Beside it is a stack of things that I haven't gotten around to throwing away, or that I might possibly need one day. Until the hoarder TV show invades my space and tells me I don't. Here's the shelf and radio.

As you can see, I haven't gotten around to tossing those Valentines that my menfolk gave me. Oh, don't think there's still candy in there! I just haven't thrown them away yet. That might be a good five-second project tonight, putting them in the tall kitchen trash bag that holds my empty Diet Coke bottles.

Anyhoo...those Valentines were not askew when I went to bed. Only when I returned the next afternoon. AND the base they had been sitting on, a green plastic tub that my best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel had sent us Christmas cookies and candy in one year, was gone! Let the record show that the green tub had long ago been emptied and washed, and was acting as a repository for some items I had carried from upstairs down to my office. A couple of errant check stubs, and envelopes that might have been important at the time, and once here, a printout or two of the boys college schedules, topped off with a manila envelope holding receipts for possible tax purposes.

That green tub was not so much gone as tumbled ass-over-teakettle to the floor.

Seriously! What caused that? I know it wasn't a cricket! A cricket is no ant, capable of moving a rubbertree plant. And the noises I heard did not make me think a rhino was roving around behind me.

Let the record show that as I gasped and walked over to look at that debacle...a cricket strode purposefully across the floor and under my corner desk that holds New Delly.

I know that's not possible. Right...?

On The Cusp

As I sit here thinking of how to approach my latest daily masterpiece...it is 12:12 a.m. On the cusp of the morrow. That gray area between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. It's not yet the witching hour, but something is afoot in my dark basement lair. The Truth in Blogging Law requires me to inform you that I have my office light on. Just because.

Something is behind me. I have no idea what it is, but it makes a slight rustling sound. It's highly possible that there is a silent cricket creeping about. I hate crickets. I've seen one the last two days, but it evades me. I have no qualms about crushing its exoskeleton. None whatsoever. If only I have the opportunity. Yes, it COULD be a cricket, tiptoeing with its six hairy legs through the quagmire of cardboard boxes and errant Devil's Playground bags that were used to cart home the tools of my once-career.

Or it could be the big black tall kitchen trash bag that I've got laying on a box beside my new rolly chair. I put empty Diet Coke bottles in there every night. I don't have a wastebasket to give it shape. So it could be slowly settling as gravity beckons.

It could even be a ceiling tile ready to collapse. Every now and then, we have a leak from the pipes in the big triangle tub above in the master bathroom. It's not the drip of water. I've heard that before. And I'm pretty sure you can't hear mold growing.

The only time I've heard something similar was when we had a millipede stomping its thousand feet across the floor through a Devil's Playground bag landscape. I had The Pony, then, to call for help. The Pony laying on his basement couch, playing games on his laptop, keeping me company separately. Now I'm alone. Farmer H would not come down from his slumber to investigate, even if I told him I thought there was an escaped convict hiding in the boxes piled in my office. "He'll find a way out," I'm sure Farmer H would tell me, all muffledy from behind the mask of his breather, "And if he doesn't, we have an umbrella policy in case he sues us."

Seriously. I don't know what this is. Every time I stop typing and turn around, it stops. Almost as if it is a thinking being...

I think now might be a good time to wrap things up and go sit in my OPC (Old People Chair).

No Place For Everything, And Nothing In Its Place

You know how, when company is coming, and you have frittered away your time building a storage container garage, or reading conspiracy sites on the innernets? Okay. Pretend you know how that goes. Like when Mrs. Hillbilly Mom was in college, not yet a Mrs., not yet a mom, but still a Hillbilly. She and her two roommates threw a party every Saturday night. Just a small get-together. Maybe 20-30 friends dropping by for pretzel sticks (the cheapest and least eaten of any snack foods), bringing their own booze, eager to let down their hair and enjoy an evening of gossip and laughs before heading out to more expensive drinking establishments. With designated drivers, of course!

Back then, Future Mrs. HM and her co-dwellers rushed around madly, pouring a single bag of pretzels in a bowl to set in the living room, and stashing dirty dishes in the (nonworking) dishwasher and (working) oven. Being college students on a budget, shopping at the FM Store (kind of a cross between a Goodwill and a military surplus store) and day-old bread store and the insurance salvage store where Future Mrs. HM actually got a job years later while living on the cheap to attend graduate school...these three did not have a lot of possessions to clutter up their living space.

Not so Farmer H and the current Mrs. HM. Just as too many cooks spoil the broth, too many nooks lead to sloth. We needed to de-clutter the living areas for Thanksgiving dinner. Not so much to impress Genius and his Friend, but so we had room to eat on the table, and put dishes on the counter and cutting block. One of the casualties was a box of Slim Jims that usually reside on the counter, near the kitchen door. The little 4-inch kind. Oh, they could have stayed. But I didn't really want Friend to think that I was serving Slim Jims as a side dish.

Last night, Farmer H asked me where his sugar-free candy went. This was a few minutes after he finished a slice of cheesecake. Not that he wanted it now, mind you. He was just asking.

"Oh, that's in the bedroom, on the brown desk. In that box I put the kitchen counter stuff in. Your wire egg basket full of odds and ends and insurance cards you should put in the cars is in there, too. And the box of Slim Jims."

Let the record show that I warn Farmer H that when he sneaks sweets, he should really have some protein to balance his blood sugar surge. So...not that he would be so foolish as to buy them for himself, of course...if he ever thinks somebody might shove a Casey's donut down his throat when he drives to town, he needs to have something with protein or at least fat to slow down that spike in blood sugar. Thus the Slim Jim box by the door. Kind of like a college health center setting out a dish of free condoms. Not that the students would use them, of course. But so they could have some just in case somebody shoved a--never mind that line of thought.

This morning I was heading to town, and looking for a Slim Jim. I don't buy or eat Casey's donuts, you know. They're not a wise choice. I'd rather save my vice fix for cheesecake. But I DO eat one of those mini Slim Jims when I take my two pills mid-morning. Would you believe I could not find that box of Slim Jims? I searched the bedroom box, and a box in the laundry room (it's just off the kitchen) and the cabinets and mini pantry and under the sink and under the counter where a dishwasher was originally going to be installed, where the wastebasket now lives, and where I put my purse if I'm not taking it with me to the casino.

NO SLIM JIMS ANYWHERE!

I gave up and decided to take those two meds when I got home. On the way down the gravel road, I spied Farmer H on his Gator, heading toward the Mansion. I pulled into the field and asked if he moved the Slim Jims. I could imagine him taking them over to the BARn, for him and HOS to nosh on during a break building the storage container garage.

"No. I didn't take no Slim Jims."

"I can't find them! I've looked everywhere! Three times!"

"Well, I'm looking for my hammer. I just had it. I hooked it over a rafter while I got a different hammer, and now I can't find it. I heard it fall, but when I looked, it wasn't there."

"One of those dogs got it. Probably Jack. He's always chewing on a water bottle you let get away, or a soda bottle, or that foil pan you let them lick the turkey juice out of. It was in the front yard. I'm sure you'll find your hammer."

"I threw that foil pan away this morning. It was a heavy hammer! Weighs at least a pound. With a rubber handle."

"Jack is strong. And Juno has something right now."

"She's got a deer bone she's been gnawing on. A leg bone."

"Or a HAMMER!"

"Nah. It's not my hammer."

"Go get Genius's old metal detector. You'll find it."

"It shouldn't be hard to find on the concrete floor. And the ground's all gravel over there, or packed mud. I looked under my tractor in case it bounced, but it's not there."

"I guess we're going crazy. How hard could those two things be to find?"

On the way to town, I was going over and over my actions as I hurried to get the kitchen ready for the Thanksgiving meal. Mentally inspecting each place I knew I moved things. Then, in between stashing places, like I was mentally walking across the kitchen, a vision popped into my head of the Slim Jim box sitting in the pantry, on top of a bag of chips on the floor. Huh. Funny how your subconscious works. When I got home, I went straight to the pantry (okay, very first I went straight to the bathroom) and yanked open the door, sure I was going to find Slim Jim sitting there on the floor, on top of a bag of chips, looking up mocking me. Nope.

HE WAS ON THE SECOND SHELF ON TOP OF A CAN OF BABY CORN, LOOKING DOWN MOCKING ME.

All right! My problem was solved! When Farmer H called me to say he was heading to town to get stuff ready in his storage container store, I asked if he found his hammer.

"Yeah. It was at the other end of the garage. I hung it on a different board than I thought."

We might need to start making detailed notes, or taking pictures, or leaving a trail of twine or bread crumbs. But most certainly not a trail of Casey's donuts.