The WIND!
Mrs. Hillbilly Mom hates the wind like Lou Grant hates spunk. I'd rather go out for my daily driveway walk at 12 degrees with no wind (last week) than today's 67 degrees with 40 mph gusts. I even wore my fetching new sock cap with the Carhartt logo to keep my hair from whipping my face like a harsh flogging administered to a ne'er-do-well convict with a cat-o-nine-tails at a colonial Australian penal colony. (Heh, heh. I said penal!)
Sweet, Sweet Juno stayed in her house, only coming out at the very end, on my last fifty steps, to partake of the evening snack that she knows follows the walk. Jack joined me from the beginning, all hyped up, jumping at me and rebounding with his stiffened front legs. Over and over. At least when Juno comes out, she keeps him occupied.
I'm glad I wasn't driving a semi. It was hard enough to keep my body on the driveway. I staggered like an inebriated New Year's Eve reveler with an inner ear infection. Traveled from one side of the driveway to the other like Farmer H sweaving to Oklahoma and back.
Which reminds me...I had planned not to walk at all today. I hate the wind THAT MUCH. In fact, I had done my town trip earlier in the day, and settled down in my dark basement lair with a Hardee's chicken bowl and 44 oz Diet Coke, to enjoy my afternoon. Free from the pressing daylight deadline of a walk. Free from the chained-to-the-stove dinner responsibility of feeding Farmer H. He had a meeting after work with a guy they are thinking about hiring for him to train to take his place due to this retirement thing.
BURRR BURRR!
That's the vibration of my cell phone screaming that I have an incoming text.
Huh. Farmer H wanted me to feed his animals because he'd be home late. Huh. The same animals I fed A LOT (meaning often, not excess food that could founder Barry the mini pony) while Farmer H has been on his world tours. And when he was getting home after dark for several weeks. Then he started telling me it was okay, he didn't mind feeding them in the dark. He has the dusk to dawn light. Huh. NOW he wanted me to feed them.
Of course I did. Because they're just dumb animals, not dumb Farmer H. They don't know why they're not being fed. So there I went, out in the gale force winds to give them sustenance. Hoping that a limb didn't come crashing down on my head and kill me...before I had a chance to give Farmer H a piece of my mind when he gets home!
Once I knew I had to leave the comfort of my calm dark basement lair and enter the atmospheric maelstrom, I figured I might as well walk.
Retirement sure is a lot of work when you have a husband.
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Monday, January 9, 2017
Hopefully, You Won't See Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's Face As You Stand In Line At The Devil's Playground
Okay, you're probably not going to believe this. It won't be the first time somebody found Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's claims to be outrageous, and it surely won't be the last. Let's get right to it.
Perhaps you remember yesterday, when I told you that over the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday period of six-and-a-half weeks, I went off my wise choices eating plan, and ate whatever I wanted, and only gained two pounds! I was happy as could be to have stepped on the kitchen scale Saturday, to find that I had only gained two pounds. I'd been wise-choicing my way through 2016 since February 1st. I relaxed my parameters and good-enough-choiced it over the holidays.
Saturday I climbed back on the horse I jumped off of. Hopped back on the wagon. Back to my self-allotted daily calorie limit. It was simple, really. Just do it. Holidays are over.
This morning, I stepped on the kitchen scales to discover that I ALREADY LOST THOSE TWO POUNDS! I know. That sounds sensational, doesn't it? Not sensational, as in fantastic (although it IS). I mean sensational, as in made up to catch attention. Like a celebrity who buys a fake baby bump and pretends to be pregnant, and brings home an infant birthed by a surrogate, and posts selfies with washboard abs a week later, crediting healthy eating and an old-school workout regimen. Or coconut water.
What? You haven't heard about celebrities doing that? What kind of conspiracy theorist ARE you, anyway? You must be reading the wrong tabloids!
Anyhoo...you won't see any pictures of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom floating around. You'll have to take my word for it. But as of this morning, I was right back to where I was the week before Thanksgiving. At a 98-pound weight loss for the year.
I'm kind of proud of myself.
Perhaps you remember yesterday, when I told you that over the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday period of six-and-a-half weeks, I went off my wise choices eating plan, and ate whatever I wanted, and only gained two pounds! I was happy as could be to have stepped on the kitchen scale Saturday, to find that I had only gained two pounds. I'd been wise-choicing my way through 2016 since February 1st. I relaxed my parameters and good-enough-choiced it over the holidays.
Saturday I climbed back on the horse I jumped off of. Hopped back on the wagon. Back to my self-allotted daily calorie limit. It was simple, really. Just do it. Holidays are over.
This morning, I stepped on the kitchen scales to discover that I ALREADY LOST THOSE TWO POUNDS! I know. That sounds sensational, doesn't it? Not sensational, as in fantastic (although it IS). I mean sensational, as in made up to catch attention. Like a celebrity who buys a fake baby bump and pretends to be pregnant, and brings home an infant birthed by a surrogate, and posts selfies with washboard abs a week later, crediting healthy eating and an old-school workout regimen. Or coconut water.
What? You haven't heard about celebrities doing that? What kind of conspiracy theorist ARE you, anyway? You must be reading the wrong tabloids!
Anyhoo...you won't see any pictures of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom floating around. You'll have to take my word for it. But as of this morning, I was right back to where I was the week before Thanksgiving. At a 98-pound weight loss for the year.
I'm kind of proud of myself.
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Mrs. HM Fits In The Winner's Circle
The holidays have been upon us for nigh on two months now. Okay. Actually for about six-and-a-half weeks. You know what happens during the holiday, right? People feast! Oh, Sweet Gummi Mary yes! People FEAST. They feast like the Whos down in Whoville feast on roast beast! Such delicacies! The baked ham, the roasted turkey, all those sides like hash brown casserole, 7-layer salad (one layer alone being mayonnaise), and green bean bundles wrapped in bacon and rubbed with brown sugar, and the Sister Schubert's rolls, and olives, and pumpkin pie, and chocolate pie, and Oreo cake, and those tasty homemade chocolate-covered cherries gifted by my best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel! Don't even get me started on those big bags of Rollos and mini Reese's and Hershey Kisses, all festive in their red, green, silver, and gold foil, to be stuffed into stockings. Oh, yeah. And the orange that always appears in the stockings as well.
WHO CAN RESIST THAT STUFF?
Not Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, that's for sure. She had been doing so well making wise choices. But it's the holidays, by cracky! They only come once a year! Mrs. HM did not see a reason to deprive herself of goodies during the holidays. She even ate some of her own World Famous Chex Mix! And now it's time to pay the piper. Mrs. HM climbed on the kitchen scales yesterday. To see the damage she had done, after 9 and 3/4 months of wise choicing.
I GAINED 2 POUNDS!
That's right. After throwing caution to the biting wind, and ingesting the treats that appealed to her...Mrs. HM gained 2 pounds. That's it. Over six-and-a-half weeks of not-the-wisest choices.
I'd say that's a victory.
WHO CAN RESIST THAT STUFF?
Not Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, that's for sure. She had been doing so well making wise choices. But it's the holidays, by cracky! They only come once a year! Mrs. HM did not see a reason to deprive herself of goodies during the holidays. She even ate some of her own World Famous Chex Mix! And now it's time to pay the piper. Mrs. HM climbed on the kitchen scales yesterday. To see the damage she had done, after 9 and 3/4 months of wise choicing.
I GAINED 2 POUNDS!
That's right. After throwing caution to the biting wind, and ingesting the treats that appealed to her...Mrs. HM gained 2 pounds. That's it. Over six-and-a-half weeks of not-the-wisest choices.
I'd say that's a victory.
Saturday, January 7, 2017
Mrs. Hillbilly Mom Is A Woman Of Excess
My best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel gave me some treats for Christmas. Homemade chocolate-covered cherries! They are my favorite treat, out of all the treats she has ever given me in the past. Since I was (perhaps the past tense is a bit of foreshadowing for tomorrow...) making wise choices, I was pleased to have a single treat upon which my sweet tooth could concentrate.
The Mansion is not a house overflowing with Christmas cookies and candies. It specializes in holiday Chex Mix, and the Hillbilly family rarely gets to partake of this export. Oh, for the days when my mom made divinity and chocolate fudge with walnuts and peanut butter fudge (my dad's favorite)...along with those peanut butter cookies with a fork print on top, and sugared peanut butter cookies with the Hershey's Kiss on top, and chocolate chip cookies. AND even before those days, when my grandma made shredded-coconut-cherry balls dipped in chocolate, and peanut brittle, and the crescent cookies coated with powdered sugar, and oatmeal raisin cookies, and a million (well, CLOSE to a million) other sweets that I did not like as much and didn't eat. Plus the dish of ribbon candy on her coffee table beside the tall sitting ceramic cat that we six grandkids broke the head off of every year.
Yes, Mrs. HM was happy to only need minimum constraint with the sweets around the Mansion. She rationed herself ONE of Mabel's chocolate-covered cherries each evening, as dessert with her supper.
In the beginning.
Of course, once you're in the habit of having ONE chocolate-covered cherry with supper, you think, "What would be the harm if I just had an extra one tonight?"
Then the horse is out of the barn.
"I don't think it would hurt if I had one of these cherries for dessert with lunch. They're fruit, right?"
And the water is over the bridge.
"Since I have two chocolate cherries with supper, I don't know why I couldn't have two chocolate cherries with lunch!"
Before you know it, it's last Friday, December 30th, and you eat your very last two of your best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel's homemade chocolate-covered cherries! Oh, you may not think that's so terrible, except for the mitigating circumstances. Mabel gave me a plethora of homemade chocolate-covered cherries! Remember my Sink Jenga picture?
I had TWO OF THOSE GREEN CONTAINERS FULL OF CHOCOLATE CHERRIES!
Let the record show that these containers were not stuffed full. They each had a single layer of those long-stemmed beauties, each in its own mini fluted paper muffin-like cup. Still, some were sitting on the shoulders of others. I did not count how many were in each container, but I'm sure Mabel knows. I trust her to keep that OUR little secret.
Because, you see, Farmer H cannot eat them, being one who should abstain from sugar. I didn't notice any disappearing at an alarming rate, so I don't think he was sneaking them. The Pony is picky about what goes in his feedbag. He may have tried one or two, not that I noticed. It's the #1 Son I depend on to help me with such treats. In years past, he has devoured Mabel's peppermint bark kind of candy. And he's always got his hand in a cookie jar, even if it's a virtual jar, to help himself to anything he thinks belongs to somebody else. But #1 was only here for an overnight plus a few hours, and then we went to the casino, and then he went back to his college house, and then he went to California. So all of those homemade chocolate-covered cherries (save perhaps one or two if we're honest, which we are, because we fear prosecution if we violate the Truth in Blogging Law) ended up in Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's belly.
I HAD to eat them, you know. The sweat of my best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel's brow was stirred right into the recipe. Starving children in many underdeveloped countries would like nothing better than to lapse into a coma after consuming one of these sweet treats. So I was saving the children, really. And honoring Mabel's brow sweat.
AND I though that perhaps the treats were going bad. Not BAD, as in putting on a motorcycle jacket and flashing a switchblade and terrorizing innocents who accidentally find themselves along the back alleys of Hillmomba. Not BAD, as in sprouting green furry mold and lacy white fungi due to neglect and non-eating. Uh uh. BAD. As in perhaps fermenting right there in my own kitchen on my watch! The syrupy goodness started seeping from some of them! Don't worry. They were sitting on paper inside their green prison.
I HAD TO EAT THEM! Don't you see? They could have fermented into ALCOHOL! And Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is a teetotaller.
Of course, I could have just bottled them for the #1 Son.
The Mansion is not a house overflowing with Christmas cookies and candies. It specializes in holiday Chex Mix, and the Hillbilly family rarely gets to partake of this export. Oh, for the days when my mom made divinity and chocolate fudge with walnuts and peanut butter fudge (my dad's favorite)...along with those peanut butter cookies with a fork print on top, and sugared peanut butter cookies with the Hershey's Kiss on top, and chocolate chip cookies. AND even before those days, when my grandma made shredded-coconut-cherry balls dipped in chocolate, and peanut brittle, and the crescent cookies coated with powdered sugar, and oatmeal raisin cookies, and a million (well, CLOSE to a million) other sweets that I did not like as much and didn't eat. Plus the dish of ribbon candy on her coffee table beside the tall sitting ceramic cat that we six grandkids broke the head off of every year.
Yes, Mrs. HM was happy to only need minimum constraint with the sweets around the Mansion. She rationed herself ONE of Mabel's chocolate-covered cherries each evening, as dessert with her supper.
In the beginning.
Of course, once you're in the habit of having ONE chocolate-covered cherry with supper, you think, "What would be the harm if I just had an extra one tonight?"
Then the horse is out of the barn.
"I don't think it would hurt if I had one of these cherries for dessert with lunch. They're fruit, right?"
And the water is over the bridge.
"Since I have two chocolate cherries with supper, I don't know why I couldn't have two chocolate cherries with lunch!"
Before you know it, it's last Friday, December 30th, and you eat your very last two of your best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel's homemade chocolate-covered cherries! Oh, you may not think that's so terrible, except for the mitigating circumstances. Mabel gave me a plethora of homemade chocolate-covered cherries! Remember my Sink Jenga picture?
I had TWO OF THOSE GREEN CONTAINERS FULL OF CHOCOLATE CHERRIES!
Let the record show that these containers were not stuffed full. They each had a single layer of those long-stemmed beauties, each in its own mini fluted paper muffin-like cup. Still, some were sitting on the shoulders of others. I did not count how many were in each container, but I'm sure Mabel knows. I trust her to keep that OUR little secret.
Because, you see, Farmer H cannot eat them, being one who should abstain from sugar. I didn't notice any disappearing at an alarming rate, so I don't think he was sneaking them. The Pony is picky about what goes in his feedbag. He may have tried one or two, not that I noticed. It's the #1 Son I depend on to help me with such treats. In years past, he has devoured Mabel's peppermint bark kind of candy. And he's always got his hand in a cookie jar, even if it's a virtual jar, to help himself to anything he thinks belongs to somebody else. But #1 was only here for an overnight plus a few hours, and then we went to the casino, and then he went back to his college house, and then he went to California. So all of those homemade chocolate-covered cherries (save perhaps one or two if we're honest, which we are, because we fear prosecution if we violate the Truth in Blogging Law) ended up in Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's belly.
I HAD to eat them, you know. The sweat of my best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel's brow was stirred right into the recipe. Starving children in many underdeveloped countries would like nothing better than to lapse into a coma after consuming one of these sweet treats. So I was saving the children, really. And honoring Mabel's brow sweat.
AND I though that perhaps the treats were going bad. Not BAD, as in putting on a motorcycle jacket and flashing a switchblade and terrorizing innocents who accidentally find themselves along the back alleys of Hillmomba. Not BAD, as in sprouting green furry mold and lacy white fungi due to neglect and non-eating. Uh uh. BAD. As in perhaps fermenting right there in my own kitchen on my watch! The syrupy goodness started seeping from some of them! Don't worry. They were sitting on paper inside their green prison.
I HAD TO EAT THEM! Don't you see? They could have fermented into ALCOHOL! And Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is a teetotaller.
Of course, I could have just bottled them for the #1 Son.
Friday, January 6, 2017
Look Away, It's Hideous!
If you are a tender vegetarian, or a tenured veterinarian...look away! You will be upset by the photo that will appear. Hope you didn't dwell on the thumbnail that popped up.
Something is afoot in the chicken industry. I feel that SOMEBODY must be the watchdog for us chicken consumers. I don't really want to go all Erin Brockovich, real OR the Julia Roberts version, but somebody needs to investigate.
CHICKENS ARE MISSING THEIR THIGHS!
It's true. You might not have noticed if you're a big chicken-eater like me. It crept up gradually. Like the story that Pierce Brosnan tells in Dante's Peak, about how if you put a frog in boiling water, it jumps right out. But if you put a frog in cold water and bring it to a boil, it is cooked. Which is kind of a stupid story, because who wants to eat boiled frog, right, when you can eat fried chicken?
A few years ago, the gas station chicken store was renowned for it's chicken. Thus the name, silly. They had giant, succulent pieces of crispy golden fried chicken. It you were parked at the gas pumps filling up, the smell would waft across your nostrils like a visible aroma in a cartoon, and you just HAD to have some when you went in to pay. That chicken was so good that I took my mom there to show her how to buy it. It wasn't exactly like the Soup Nazi, but it's good to know the routine. Mom bought a single breast, and ate it over the course of three days (but Honey, it's just SO BIG) and raved about it's deliciousness. She even had me take her back there later on to buy another.
Well. Now the pieces are way smaller. I kept hoping it was just a bad shipment, or a mistake with the ordering. The MISTER owner makes mistakes like that. Such as ordering the foam cups that don't taper at the bottom to fit in T-Hoe's cup holder. Or the 44 oz cups that taper, but are plain white, without the blue swirl pattern. But no. It was a permanent thing. The chickens are half the size they used to be.
THENNNNNNNN...we started getting mutant thighs. Oh, not just at the gas station chicken store. Now the fried chicken 8-piece at The Devil's Playground has them too! At first I thought it was just a bad package. But then the next one had it, too. It's like they MIGHT give you a regular thigh, but the second one in the package is the mutant. Or you get three legs and a mutant.
Okay. Prepare yourself. Gird your loins. Shove down your gorge. Here comes the photo.
Sweet Gummi Mary! What in the Not-Heaven IS that?
When I was a kid, my mom would buy a whole chicken and cut it up for frying. We NEVER had a thigh that looked like that! A thigh is just meat around a bone. Gristle on each end. None of this folderol attached here! I remember when you could even get a recognizable thigh from a restaurant. From KFC when it was actually called Kentucky Fried Chicken. I haven't eaten there in years, but I suspect their thighs are like this mutant fowl part above.
That's a BACK, baby! With a little stub of thigh on it. What do these chickens even look like, trying to strut around in their tiny cages? And if this is a thigh from a different chicken, where are half the thighs going? Are they being used for medical research? Is there some dark meat delicacy that I haven't been told about? Where are the normal thighs?
Sorry about the shocking photo. I had to eat the meat off the bone. So you could see the anatomy. The stores fry it up with their coating so it LOOKS like a normal thigh, see. Until you bite into that back. Yes. I had to expose the bone. It's a delicious job, but somebody has to do it. And Mrs. HM is selfless like that.
What say you, blog buddies? Is Mrs. Hillbilly Mom being ripped off by local chicken purveyors?
Something is afoot in the chicken industry. I feel that SOMEBODY must be the watchdog for us chicken consumers. I don't really want to go all Erin Brockovich, real OR the Julia Roberts version, but somebody needs to investigate.
CHICKENS ARE MISSING THEIR THIGHS!
It's true. You might not have noticed if you're a big chicken-eater like me. It crept up gradually. Like the story that Pierce Brosnan tells in Dante's Peak, about how if you put a frog in boiling water, it jumps right out. But if you put a frog in cold water and bring it to a boil, it is cooked. Which is kind of a stupid story, because who wants to eat boiled frog, right, when you can eat fried chicken?
A few years ago, the gas station chicken store was renowned for it's chicken. Thus the name, silly. They had giant, succulent pieces of crispy golden fried chicken. It you were parked at the gas pumps filling up, the smell would waft across your nostrils like a visible aroma in a cartoon, and you just HAD to have some when you went in to pay. That chicken was so good that I took my mom there to show her how to buy it. It wasn't exactly like the Soup Nazi, but it's good to know the routine. Mom bought a single breast, and ate it over the course of three days (but Honey, it's just SO BIG) and raved about it's deliciousness. She even had me take her back there later on to buy another.
Well. Now the pieces are way smaller. I kept hoping it was just a bad shipment, or a mistake with the ordering. The MISTER owner makes mistakes like that. Such as ordering the foam cups that don't taper at the bottom to fit in T-Hoe's cup holder. Or the 44 oz cups that taper, but are plain white, without the blue swirl pattern. But no. It was a permanent thing. The chickens are half the size they used to be.
THENNNNNNNN...we started getting mutant thighs. Oh, not just at the gas station chicken store. Now the fried chicken 8-piece at The Devil's Playground has them too! At first I thought it was just a bad package. But then the next one had it, too. It's like they MIGHT give you a regular thigh, but the second one in the package is the mutant. Or you get three legs and a mutant.
Okay. Prepare yourself. Gird your loins. Shove down your gorge. Here comes the photo.
Sweet Gummi Mary! What in the Not-Heaven IS that?
When I was a kid, my mom would buy a whole chicken and cut it up for frying. We NEVER had a thigh that looked like that! A thigh is just meat around a bone. Gristle on each end. None of this folderol attached here! I remember when you could even get a recognizable thigh from a restaurant. From KFC when it was actually called Kentucky Fried Chicken. I haven't eaten there in years, but I suspect their thighs are like this mutant fowl part above.
That's a BACK, baby! With a little stub of thigh on it. What do these chickens even look like, trying to strut around in their tiny cages? And if this is a thigh from a different chicken, where are half the thighs going? Are they being used for medical research? Is there some dark meat delicacy that I haven't been told about? Where are the normal thighs?
Sorry about the shocking photo. I had to eat the meat off the bone. So you could see the anatomy. The stores fry it up with their coating so it LOOKS like a normal thigh, see. Until you bite into that back. Yes. I had to expose the bone. It's a delicious job, but somebody has to do it. And Mrs. HM is selfless like that.
What say you, blog buddies? Is Mrs. Hillbilly Mom being ripped off by local chicken purveyors?
Thursday, January 5, 2017
Mrs. Hillbilly Mom Is Still In The Loop
Surprisingly, snow days are not as much fun when you're not actually working!
Oh, I got the call. The call informing teachers from Newmentia that due to inclement weather, school would not be in session. Actually, I got TWO calls! One on the faculty shout-out app, and the other because I was previously a student's mother. Oh, I could get off those lists if I wanted to. But I don't really care. I was snug in bed when they came in at 5:30 a.m. No skin off my nose.
When I saw the forecast, but mainly when I saw the county road crews spraying the center turn lane yesterday (who knows why, since people around Hillmomba DON'T USE THEM CORRECTLY) over by Terrible Cuts (where I was getting shorn) and the Chinese restaurant (where my best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel tried to stand us up one in-service day)...I offered T-Hoe to Farmer H.
THAT'S RIGHT! Selfless Mrs. Hillbilly Mom offered her Sweet Baboo the only working 4WD vehicle among the 7 we pay insurance on. Technically, the Acadia, the #1 Son's Mariner, and The Pony's Rogue are ALL WHEEL DRIVE. That's not 4WD in Mrs. HM's book. You can't gear them down for heavy-duty traction.
Anyhoo...we paid my sister the ex-mayor's wife an exorbitant amount for my mom's 2002 TrailBlazer for the specific purpose of Farmer H having a good 4WD vehicle to drive to work. Even though he has the Ford F250 Club Cab Long Bed, which IS 4WD, a truck with nothing in the back is not as good as a regular car with weight evenly distributed throughout all four wheels. He has taken it before, and had slippage.
Funny thing about Mom's TrailBlazer. Last time Farmer H tried to use the 4WD, it was stuck. So he had some work done on his truck, and then took in the TrailBlazer, and come to find out...the 4WD is shot. Some gear thingy is stripped. It would cost $900 for just the part. Farmer H may spend $1000 on shoe inserts at The Good Feet Store because he is too embarrassed to say no after he didn't ask about the price first...but he won't pay $900 for a part to make his current vehicle's 4WD work.
"I really feel bad. All those times we told your mom to just put her car in 4WD so she could get out of her driveway. She tried to say that car wouldn't make it. She must have spent WEEKS at home because she said she couldn't get out. And all that time she was right! I really feel bad."
"I know. Sis and I told her that, too. 'MOM! What are you saving it for? Just put it in 4WD! Leave it in 4WD during the winter. PARK it in 4WD so it's ready.' But she'd be out there dumping ashes and poking through the ice with a broom handle. I feel bad, too. At least I went to pick her up and take her to the store. Even if she WOULDN'T let me pull in the driveway."
Yes. Selfless Mrs. HM let Farmer H take T-Hoe to work. While she stayed home, even eschewing her daily 44 oz Diet Coke! The wind chill was 12 degrees, people! It wasn't worth driving A-Cad to town, not knowing how his AWD would handle. I DID, however, walk up the driveway with a black plastic trash bag flung across my back like a female sore-kneed Santa, to put trash in the dumpster, which is going to be a day late being emptied.
Farmer H said the back roads are slick. He saw three cars off between the Mansion and the highway this morning, one of them being a trash truck getting winched out.
This evening, I got THE TEXT again. No school tomorrow at Newmentia. Sweet four-day weekend for my former work brethren and sistren. I, on the other hand, hope to get out tomorrow for a 44 oz Diet Coke.
Oh, I got the call. The call informing teachers from Newmentia that due to inclement weather, school would not be in session. Actually, I got TWO calls! One on the faculty shout-out app, and the other because I was previously a student's mother. Oh, I could get off those lists if I wanted to. But I don't really care. I was snug in bed when they came in at 5:30 a.m. No skin off my nose.
When I saw the forecast, but mainly when I saw the county road crews spraying the center turn lane yesterday (who knows why, since people around Hillmomba DON'T USE THEM CORRECTLY) over by Terrible Cuts (where I was getting shorn) and the Chinese restaurant (where my best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel tried to stand us up one in-service day)...I offered T-Hoe to Farmer H.
THAT'S RIGHT! Selfless Mrs. Hillbilly Mom offered her Sweet Baboo the only working 4WD vehicle among the 7 we pay insurance on. Technically, the Acadia, the #1 Son's Mariner, and The Pony's Rogue are ALL WHEEL DRIVE. That's not 4WD in Mrs. HM's book. You can't gear them down for heavy-duty traction.
Anyhoo...we paid my sister the ex-mayor's wife an exorbitant amount for my mom's 2002 TrailBlazer for the specific purpose of Farmer H having a good 4WD vehicle to drive to work. Even though he has the Ford F250 Club Cab Long Bed, which IS 4WD, a truck with nothing in the back is not as good as a regular car with weight evenly distributed throughout all four wheels. He has taken it before, and had slippage.
Funny thing about Mom's TrailBlazer. Last time Farmer H tried to use the 4WD, it was stuck. So he had some work done on his truck, and then took in the TrailBlazer, and come to find out...the 4WD is shot. Some gear thingy is stripped. It would cost $900 for just the part. Farmer H may spend $1000 on shoe inserts at The Good Feet Store because he is too embarrassed to say no after he didn't ask about the price first...but he won't pay $900 for a part to make his current vehicle's 4WD work.
"I really feel bad. All those times we told your mom to just put her car in 4WD so she could get out of her driveway. She tried to say that car wouldn't make it. She must have spent WEEKS at home because she said she couldn't get out. And all that time she was right! I really feel bad."
"I know. Sis and I told her that, too. 'MOM! What are you saving it for? Just put it in 4WD! Leave it in 4WD during the winter. PARK it in 4WD so it's ready.' But she'd be out there dumping ashes and poking through the ice with a broom handle. I feel bad, too. At least I went to pick her up and take her to the store. Even if she WOULDN'T let me pull in the driveway."
Yes. Selfless Mrs. HM let Farmer H take T-Hoe to work. While she stayed home, even eschewing her daily 44 oz Diet Coke! The wind chill was 12 degrees, people! It wasn't worth driving A-Cad to town, not knowing how his AWD would handle. I DID, however, walk up the driveway with a black plastic trash bag flung across my back like a female sore-kneed Santa, to put trash in the dumpster, which is going to be a day late being emptied.
Farmer H said the back roads are slick. He saw three cars off between the Mansion and the highway this morning, one of them being a trash truck getting winched out.
This evening, I got THE TEXT again. No school tomorrow at Newmentia. Sweet four-day weekend for my former work brethren and sistren. I, on the other hand, hope to get out tomorrow for a 44 oz Diet Coke.
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Don't Do The Crime If You Prance Into Evidence Photos All The Time
Yesterday, I returned from my daily 44 oz Diet Coke procurement trip to find THIS blocking T-Hoe's entrance to the garage:
I'm pretty sure I know who's responsible. In fact, the perpetrator appeared in the picture as the phone was ready to snap the evidence photo! Is THAT a happy accident, or what?
AND as I panned over to show the door to the garage, the perpetrator again magically appeared! Circumstantial evidence? I think not!
Let the record show that such a limb was not in the driveway when I left for town. And was not there when I went out for my evening walk. I have observed Puppy Jack dragging branches twice this length across the front yard.
His puppy dog eyes may fool a jury, but they don't fool ME!
I'm pretty sure I know who's responsible. In fact, the perpetrator appeared in the picture as the phone was ready to snap the evidence photo! Is THAT a happy accident, or what?
AND as I panned over to show the door to the garage, the perpetrator again magically appeared! Circumstantial evidence? I think not!
Let the record show that such a limb was not in the driveway when I left for town. And was not there when I went out for my evening walk. I have observed Puppy Jack dragging branches twice this length across the front yard.
His puppy dog eyes may fool a jury, but they don't fool ME!
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