Round 'em up. Head 'em out.

A week ago last Friday, I bit the bullet and faced the fact that I had to have new underwear. In one word, bras. Just the bras, ma’am, just the bras.

So I hitched up my drawers (which also needed replacing), circled the wagons and headed to the nearest JCP for another depressing sprint through the lingerie department. I say depressing because after scouting a sea of racks laden with every form of restraint for the female, human bosom, I had ten likely looking candidates that might suffice.

I took my choices of torture to the dressing room feeling like I was getting dressed for the local SWAT team. I pulled on the first straight jacket in line and muttered, “What the f--- is this?” I looked like I had two loaves of bread dough squashed onto my chest, with most of it oozing out under my arm pits.

I ripped that puppy off and checked the tag. Yes it was my size, yes it was in a relatively neutral flesh tone, but the key word was, “Minimizer”. Okay, time to move on to candidate number 2 with just as much success. But this time I had a shelf I could comfortably rest my chin on. So much for lifts and separates. I wanted to scream, “Just give me something that covers me decently and inhibits some of the jiggle and bounce.”

Articles 3 through 10 were sad apparitions of feminine insults. Okay, so I’m old and a bit over endowed, but I still like to appear attractive to the naked eye (pun intended). Donning my own pathetic rag-tag bra, I tried again.

Three more candidates later I returned to the fitting room. Can you believe that I was really getting depressed by now? One of these actually didn’t pinch, or stretch, or pull, or squash, or bite…so this had to be it. Now I felt like I was driving a brand new Hum V instead of wearing underwear. Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?

I wasn’t up to tackling the problem of undies at that point in time. I licked my wounds at the checkout counter and slunk home for an ice cold margarita.

SNAKE!

Jimbob called me at work yesterday to tell me we had a snake in the garage. How did he know? Well...he was trying to close the garage door, but the little snaky poo was faster. Apparently it got scared and scooted right in before the door came down.

I almost asked him what he wanted me to do about it (it was 2 hours before I could leave), but then remembered is insane fear of snakes. I can' say that I'm overly fond of the critters, but I don't turn green and squeal like a little girl.

As it turns out, a friend came into my cubicle minutes later and I mentioned Jimbob's phone call. He said, "Go talk to Larry K, he gets snakes in his garage all the time."

Okay, I went to talk to Larry and his advise was to get moth balls and spread around the garage. So I called Jimbob back and passed on the info to him. He must have bought every math ball in McKinney, because I could smell it from outside the garage door when I got home.

By then it'd been an hour and a half so he went inside to open the garage door while I watched to see if the snake made a slithery exit. Poor thing must have been overcome from the reek of the moth balls. It dropped off the top of the door as it went up and actually appeared to be stunned.

I grabbed a broom and tried to sweep it off the driveway into the grass, but it got scared and kept trying to go back in the garage. I managed to pin it with the broom and pulled gently on the tail. I finally got it out and guided it (very reluctantly) away from the garage...and of course it went right into the backyard.

Okay, it wasn't in the garage so I pondered whether I wanted to look for it again. I really would have liked to take it across the street into the greenbelt, but I don't know anything about handling snakes. Besides I didn't think it was poisonous. Maybe a rat snake or a gopher snake. Regardless, it's on its own now.

Catastrophe

I went out early Saturday to run a few errands and when I got home there were a couple of strange cars parked on both sides of the curb in front of our neighbor's house. And a dead squirrel in the middle of the road.

I backed into the driveway as usual and watched while a young girl about 17 got out of one car and she was sobbing. A guy got out of the other car and took a look at the squirrel and then went to his car for what I assumed to be something to pick up the carcass.

While he was looking, I went into the garage and came back with a plastic bag and handed it to him. The poor girl was sitting on the curb crying inconsolably. The guy picked up the squirrel and then looked around like he wasn't sure if we expected him to put it in his car. As I walked by I pointed to the garage and said, "Put it in the green one."

I think he was glad I'd come home when I did. I asked the girl if she wanted to come in for a drink but she said she just wanted to wash her face. Finally she quit crying and pulled herself together. When she left she said, "I know it was just a squirrel but I've never seen anything die."

Thank God she didn't hit somebodies pet.

Goodbye to the Persian Princess

I couldn't fool myself any longer that the littl girl was going to get better, so on Friday I took her to the vet to have her put down. I feel really guilty, but after she cried all night Thursday I couldn't deal with her obvious pain. Poor baby was nearly comatose by the time we got there.

So then I felt guilty that I'd waited so long. It was selfishenss on my part. I didn't want to let her go. But it's done now. Goodbye to Tinkerbell, the Persian Princess.

TINKERBELL

No, I'm not referring to the Tinkerbell of Peter Pan fame. Our little Persain cat, Tinkerbell is not doing very well. She's 18+ years old and has slowed down enormously in the last couple of months. She slept all last night curled in the same place.

To make things worse, she's not eating. Her normal 7 to 8 pounds is now at 4.5. As the cliche goes, "A stiff wind could knock her over." Every once in a while I catch her drinking water, but not often. Some times putting ice cubes in the water will get her to drink more.

I suppose we could take her in for all sorts of tests, but I don't want to put her through all that just to find out that she's OLD. All I hope is that she isn't in any pain.

CONFESSIONS OF A PLANT JUNKIE

I knew the moment I walked into the Master Gardener’s Plant sale last Saturday under the sham of volunteering to help and earning hours for recertification that I was in big trouble. No actually, more like deep doodoo.

I was like the heroin addict who has gone in search of a life altering “fix”. The begonias called, “Ooh, ooh, pick me. Pick me. I can give you what you want.” The pink roses shed a tear and cried, “I give you lots of flowers, missy. My thorns only hurt a leetle beet.” (But I only buy yellow roses, so I kept walking.) The fuscias whispered, “Come with me to the Kasbah. We have many exotic adventures.” The baby’s breath whined, “Mama, mama.” And the shrimp plants burbled, “Let’s go for a swim. I’m so thirsty.”

What was I to do? Everywhere I looked there was another temptation, another Narcissistic wonder of nature. How was I supposed to choose between them? Even the Satsuma orange trees were blooming with the sweet scent of spring. I was transported back to my childhood in the San Fernando Valley when the dinosaurs still roamed and orange groves permeated the landscape. Heaven, I’m in heaven.

But wait, someone forgot to order gardenias. Maybe kids these days have orchid corsages for the high school prom, but we wore gardenias. The captivating scent of these glorious white perfections stirs the longing for California in me.

I was in a dither running from place to place trying to listen to all those little darlings. How would I ever fit them all into my car? More important, did I have adequate funds to cover my checks? Yes checks. About the time I thought I’d gotten everything I wanted, I’d find something else.

The emerald green and burgundy of the ornamental sweet potatoes made me drool. The precious Dahlberg daisies weren’t very popular with the public. They wanted something “bigger and better”, “new and improved” so I couldn’t just leave the poor things there…all alone…their wispy foliage drooping with disappointment.

Decisions! Decisions! So many decisions.