A Grab Bag Kind of Week

  Do you remember when you were a kid and you went to the school carnival - ours was always at Halloween - and there'd be a booth with a grab bag. You could buy a ticket and stick your hand into the bag and pull something out. You never knew what. It could be wax red lips, or jacks, or a super ball. I always lusted after the container that you would open and discover you had won a gold fish. They'd give you a fish in a plastic bag and by morning it was dead. The wax lips would probably have been a better choice. 

  

 You will note my grab bag has books and one in particular Glory Days was written by my good friend -so - go buy it. It's good.  Here's the link https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9781496201324/  You will note it isn't amazon. That was deliberate. I only use amazon when I have to. That's it.  But if you like amazon, the book is there too.

  This has been a grab bag kind of week. It began as it always does with too many things to do and too little time to do them. Get the cat in for a dental (she bites, so the vet techs are going to love that), take the attack Chihuahua to training so he doesn't bite people, get the other dog to doggie play group, get an estimate to haul in vast quantities of dirt so my back yard no longer resembles the Okeefenokee - you know what I mean, normal household stuff. And then of course I do have to go to work from time to time.

  There must be a rule, natural law, something, that states that on your most tightly scheduled days, you can be sure that something is going to gum up the works so you can do none of what you were supposed to accomplish that day.  This week it was a call from an elderly relative's housekeeper that elderly relative couldn't breath and she had called the paramedics. It took the ambulance over an hour to make what should have been a half hour trip. All the while I am waiting in the emergency room thinking, "This isn't looking good," when Kathy at the front desk informed me that said relative was in room six. Off I went to find room 6 where I found elderly relative sitting up, sipping juice, yukking it up with the nurses. Seems he stabilized on the way across town.

 Of course that was a good thing, but once someone has you trapped in the emergency room you aren't leaving there anytime soon. I waited as a variety of tests were performed. Meanwhile my phone is blowing up. I am in a customer service industry, but apparently today's customers don't understand, "I'm not available to help you right now, I am in the middle of a family emergency."

  "But this will only take a minute." Yeah. When I say emergency, I don't mean I am helping someone change a flat tire. What I mean is, there is a life and death situation going on and my head is about to explode from the stress and you aren't helping. Perhaps I need to articulate more accurately and quit with the pithy metaphors.

  And speaking of tires...upon arriving at the hospital I happened to glance down at the left front and I saw what appeared to be a suspicious bubble on the sidewall, sort of a hernia like growth coming out of the side of my tire. Tires - I like buying tires almost as much as I like buying lawn mowers.

  So once I had dropped off aforementioned elderly relative who by now was fine as a frog on a log, with scrips and a handful of new doctor phone numbers at his house, I drove off as carefully as I could to have the tire situation reviewed. Yes indeed, I needed a new tire. Must have hit a pothole they said. Yes, it's June, almost July and there are still potholes left over from the winter available to hit.

  To end the week there was this 

  We all know what this is don't we? It must be all the rain. Because we seem to be growing a bumper crop of poison ivy this year. I keep finding it in places it hasn't been before, and typically I find it as I pull it out of a flower bed with my bare hands, because I hadn't expected to find it there. I hope Dawn dish soap cleans up the oily residue as well as advertised. The last time I had poison ivy I had to have a medical intervention to get rid of it.

  In general I don't believe in Roundup. It kills a lot of good things like bees and people and it has made me give up my beloved Cheerios which I am told are now Roundup laced-but I will make an exception in this case. Roundup kills poison ivy like none other. As far as I can tell there is no evolutionary reason for poison ivy. If there is we need to know what that purpose is because the farmers around here have to find a crop that will grow in a wet moldy climate and this may be it. From looks of the fields corn and beans are no longer a trend.

  But then there's this:  

   At the moment she smells like something dead. You gotta love a beagle. Today she will be very cute from a distance. 

How was your week?