Snippets of Life in the Not-So-Fast Lane

It's been the kind of week where I know 168 hours went by but I have no real knowledge of what occurred because so much occurred I couldn't keep track.  During the week several times I had things pop into my brain about certain happenings or whatever I was doing at the time, and thought "I should blog about this for sure."  Unfortunately, my brain has a time stamp on it.  Like a piece of liverwurst left in the sun, it goes bad after just an hour.  So I've mostly forgotten the things I wanted to tell you about.  I didn't take that course you see on television that improves your memory or uses association to guide you through remembering 265 names of people you just met in a room.

However, I do remember some things that happened, and my feelings about them at the time, so I thought I'd drudge those snippets forward and see if I could salvage at least some of my thoughts.

First, while driving to the grocery store the other day, I marveled at the fact that some of the roads I was driving on were actually being held together by a string of tar that the road crew had poured over the cracks and erosion over the course of the last 7 months.  I'm not quite sure what our township does, but I can tell you unabashedly, it isn't road work.  Some of our roads are governed by PennDot and some are handled by the local township crew.  If you ask or complain about a certain road at the township building, you'll get "oh, that's a PennDot road."  If you complain to PennDot they will tell you "oh, that's the township's responsibility."  I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but this sounds fishy to me.



Typical road repair in my area.

 Recently our own development road was repaved completely.  This came after numerous complaints by neighbors and dwellers on the road that the crevices finally had to be filled because they were swallowing trees, cars and people.  Prior to the mass phone calling campaign, the township would send a road crew which involved one truck with that crumbly black road asphalt and one man with a shovel.  He simply drove to a crevice, threw the crumbly black road asphalt into it and drove to the next kink in the armour.  He didn't even drive over the crumbly black road asphalt stuff himself.  He left it for us....unsuspecting people coming home from shopping at the grocery store who suddenly heard the bottom of the car explode in little popping sounds, which was all the crumbly black road asphalt jumping out of the hole and sticking to the bottom of the car. 

As long as I'm talking about roads, let me jump right into my next thought--how bad the drivers are in our area.  Relative to Florida, Pennsylvania may be the next largest state with a proportionately large older population.  Now, I don't want to pick on older folks, because I'm one of them, but I'm going to tell you, I get stuck behind at least 2 to 4 elderly, slow drivers on every trip I make from my house.  Directly opposite this factoid is the unfortunate reality that we also have alot of young people--new drivers--on the road who feel it necessary to "peel out," as they say, from red lights, stop signs and parking lots.  They like to make and see those "cool" black marks on the road.  We had a pair of teenagers doing wheelies with their car in our cul-de-sac once.  I remember finding them and they told me some sad excuse of a story that they couldn't get their car to stop so they just kept going round and round (they actually shouted this out of their window while going round and round).  My head was going round and round with that story, and I informed them that a state trooper lived on our road and I would go get him to help them, and suddenly their car was fixed and it went straight and right down the hill and out of our development.  I wasn't lying.  We have a neighbor who is a state trooper.  I've never seen them on our hill again.

Drivers aside and back to shopping, I visited the K-Mart from Hell this past week to buy a plastic pool for our dogs to swim in since we are going to have the heatwave of the century this entire week coming up.  This K-Mart is in an obscure little burg that I don't visit very often, but happened to be taking my mother somewhere and needed to buy her some Elmer's Glue.  (I know...my life is so exciting...)

First, I would have expected the Elmer's Glue to be in a spot where paper supplies are located.  Pens, pencils, paper, glue, you know, the regular stuff.  So I went there.  Nothing.  I looked for someone to ask, but I do believe that every single employee of this K-Mart is trained to hide from anyone who looks like they might want to ask something.  I finally cornered a person, literally, who was emptying HTH pool chemicals in a corner near the restroom signs.  "Sir," I started, "Can you tell me where I might find glue?"  One deer-in-headlights expression later, he responded "try paper supplies in aisle blah blah."  Been there done that...nothing.

So I almost gave up, except that as I was giving up and going to exit the store, there sat the Elmer's Glue in a small counter near the check out line.  Ooookkkkkkaaaayyyyy then, let's NOT make this logical.  I grabbed a container and then realized that there were only two lines, and both had every consumer in this burg in them, and they didn't seem to be rushing to open any more check out counters.  Back to the end of line number one.

Approximately 15 minutes later I had the glue paid for and then needed to pull my car to the outside garden center location to buy the plastic pool.  Thankfully, they have a checker outside and you don't have to wait in one of the two lines with 100 other people.  I walked up to the young man working this section and said, "If that pool fits in the back of my Ford Explorer, and you help me put it in there, I will buy it."  He obliged and helped me fit it into my Explorer.  I then went back to pay.

Remember the Florida/Pennyslvania comparison?  Well, it kicks in again NOW.  There at the counter is an older woman buying a plant.  "How much is this?" she asks.  The young man is about to sputter that he is helping me and will be with her in a minute, but I knew that he was making a grievous error in judgement here and that he would never win any battle he started. "Ninety-nine cents," he replies.  She plops a dollar on the counter and he then turns to me again.  I give him the "I feel sorry for you and please help this woman first" look and so he rings her up.  He hands her a receipt.  She queries, "Did you not give me my change?" (That would be ONE cent folks.)  He responds, "no Maam, I didn't, because the purchase is really $1.05 with tax, but you don't have to worry about the $.05."  Nice young man.  You would think the woman would have thanked him and called it a day.  OHHHHH NOOOOOOOO, this is Northeastern Pennsylvania, at a K-Mart in an obscure burg, and me in a hurry. 

"Oh no," she says.  I have the rest.  I wouldn't want anyone to say I don't pay my bills." And with that she pulls out a nickel and he takes it because by this time he knows MUCH more about this situation than he did in the beginning and KNOWS he won't ever win this battle no matter what he does.  "Okay, thank you Maam," is all he replies.



"Do you always throw trees at people's hair?"

 In the meantime, an elderly gentleman is carrying a large hibiscus bush to the counter and he, without looking or thinking, lifts it up and plops it on the counter.  In the process a branch snatches the older woman's hair.  (Listen, you can't make this stuff up!)  Can you see where this is going?  I could, and all I wanted to do was pay the $12.00 for my plastic pool and get the heck out of dodge before the gun fight.  I think the clerk saw the panic in my eyes because he hurridly rang me up and threw the receipt at me, and I ran as fast as I could back to my car but not without first hearing the older woman say to the man in a loud voice, "Do you always throw trees at people's hair?"  My guess is the police were called and they had to open up another line to handle the buyers after the crowd dispersed into that K-Mart to shop....and that the older woman won.

Finally, I'm happy to report that all of the recent hen acquistions we made have now settled in and are getting along with our other chickens.  Again, such excitement may be too much for some readers, and I probably should have put a warning on this.  In an effort to acclimate everyone to our flock, I actually made a video the other day.  If you made it this far, you may want to bug out now.....unless you truly are interested in piranhas and the Blair Witch video photography aspects of this film.

Aaarrrooooo!