Thursday, September 26, 2013

Call Me Pope Fivebucks

I have experienced my first miracle.  It is on par with other miracles that have big holidays carved out of our busy calendars.  And it all started at Fivebucks.  You know, the coffee place that sells a coffee cup large enough to hold the contents of an entire bottle of wine.  That one.  You also can't get a coffee for less that five bucks...hence the name.

I guess it started there, but the miracle happened on the ride home.  I had ordered a 'tall' coffee, which is really the smallest.  I think there was such a surplus of small cups from other fast food places from when they actually served drinks in small cups, that Fivebucks collected them all to sell us expensive, little coffees.  Seriously.  Do you remember the 'small' frosty?  It was the size of a cone cup.  I think you would get approximately 3.4 spoonfuls of aerated chocolate iced spread before it was a weird puddle of congealed candy skin.  Now the small frosty is at least a 40 oz.  I think that Fivebucks saw this surplus as a way to save the world.  Kind of like the Army/Navy surplus stores.  One day the empty artillery shell that decorates my candelabra will save my life, I know it.

Some mail clerk at Fivebucks was probably high as a kite one day when she had an epiphany.  I bet we could get these hosers to buy anything with the Fivebucks logo on it, she said to herself.  So she wrote up a proposal.  Because they are in the North West, and being a stoned hippie love child is part of their birth rite, she added a touching, save the world, addition.  Here it is, taken out of context...

...and to that, we need to prepare our customers.  As consumers, they will realize that by donating to the good cause of health and prosperity, which is the Fivebucks way, they become stewards of this great company.  Donations, as defined by the cost of the coffee, and the cost of sacrifice by the consumer that knowingly has purchased less than the share that they are entitled to, can be used as a tax deductible benefit to this benefactor.  Namely, Fivebucks...


So she was able to make the case for the small cup being business friendly at the same time as being consumer and environmentally unfriendly, without looking unfriendly.  But it was eloquent, so they loved it. And since the North West was built from recycled gum and broken marbles (it does twinkle a lot up there), the thought of recycling all of the now homeless 'small' cups from decades ago was perfect.  Now we have a small, tall coffee cup that holds enough coffee to get you out the door before you need to return for a refill. 



And as it happens with small tall cups of coffee, my apprehension set in immediately that I would not have enough to get me through the drive home, and in turn, what little I did have left would get cold before I got to the first traffic light.  



But as I drove on, the cup remained full enough to keep my anxiety at bay.  And the warmth tickled my tongue with each lovely sip.  It seemed that the cup held more than enough.  I began to gulp with wild abandon.  I dared to peer into the tiny hole that slushed out my life blood.  Brown splashes twinkled back at me.  I never saw the dreaded bottom of the cup!



I started to realize that I was experiencing something out of this world.  Like the people that say the hairs on the back of their neck stood at attention right before they were hit by lightning, I felt that something extraordinary was happening.  I had a bottomless cup of coffee that never got cold!  Is this what the Maccabees experienced?  



Halfway home now!  And still, I had coffee!  And Hot!


I was getting giddy... like those butterflies that twiddle in your belly before the first day of a new job.  This was the start of something wonderful!  Maybe I'll win the lottery today?!  Maybe I'll get that job I've been wondering about?!  Today, the kids will not fight!  It was a sign...the planets were aligning and they were doing it right before my eyes!!!  It was about this time when I started thinking of all the implications associated with what was turning out to be a real live miracle.  First and foremost, I'm only in need of two more in my lifetime in order to become a Saint.  I know that most of the Saints were canonized after they died, but can I preemptively pick my Saint name? The next most pressing issue would be the holiday.  What should it be named?  Should it be world wide, or national?  How many days off of school should it warrant?  The enormity of what was happening began to pulse through me.

Turning into the driveway now, and still!  I can feel the weight in the cup, it is not empty!  Gathering my things, I stepped out of the car like I was the victor coming out of the Trojan Horse.  The world was my oyster!  Tipping up the cup to revel in this miracle, to feel one with the universe.  A feeling that only something so sublime like coffee can bring.  Confidence washed over me!  Tasting my future!!!

... it was cold.


Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Who's Holding Up The Other End?

It goes without saying that I write much more that I actually publish.  ...I guess it doesn't go without saying, otherwise I wouldn't have said anything...  If you can call this blog 'publishing.'  I made the rule for myself that I would only write about mostly funny things and keep snottiness to a minimum.  So far, I have kept up the part of the bargain that I should... I'm just wondering now who is the other person that holds up the other part of the bargain.  Weird.

I actually delete many more blogs.  Some of them have actually gotten really long, and it pains me a smidge to erase them, but mostly they were written when I was grumpy, and there are plenty of bad blogs written by grumpy white women.  No one needs another.

So this brings me to the here and now.  Because I've just deleted another very long blog about the inner grumpiness of yet another stay at home white lady.

You are very welcome.

In my most recent state of grumpiness, which lasted for a foggy week, I went shopping.  I can only explain away my purchases a little by blaming the meds.  I was taking some meds, but they were steroids for a wicked cough, which made me angry instead of silly.  I much prefer the silly meds.  When I'm angry, apparently I complain a lot, and buy strange collections of wall hooks.  I also bought stuff with skulls on them.  Not the boring skulls though, the Dia de Muertos skulls.  Because I like flowers in the eye sockets and I wish I were Mexican.   If I were Mexican, I would have probably published all of the blogs that I have erased, but really I wouldn't have had to erase any because have you ever met a grumpy Mexican?  Me neither.  It's the food.  You cannot be grumpy after eating mole sauce.  Seriously, cocoa and chiles?  Together?  What part of that does not make your whole face happy?

Friday, September 13, 2013

Short Due to Sickness, Not a Short Sickness

When I first moved into North Carolina for college, I realized that I had to learn a new language to fit in.

Kind of like living in S. Florida, if you don't speak Spanish, you won't get service in some stores.  I never did get to buy a Fedora.

But this language is my own, in another form.  I know I have prattled on about the south and how I have come to love living here, but the language is what it's all about.

...so when I was first here, I was walking with a friend to class and I said to her, 'I'm ill.'

'As a hornet?'

'???'


And that's where I am today.  Ill, but not as a hornet.  I have had a bad cold for moving on ten days now.  I can't sleep.  I have coughed up approximately 1/16th of my lower lungs.  My stomach muscles are shredded.  My nose is being remodeled into a slightly pointier schnoz due to the constant blowing of said schnoz.  I mean, I have gone through seven boxes of tissues.  Seriously.  And now my ear is clogged.

Ten days.  And no sign it is abating.

Now I'm ill as a hornet.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Healthcare? I Don't Smell Any Healthcare.

This is an informational blog post based on a gruesome experience I just had.  Hopefully, some that are in the medical profession will read this and internalize it.  I'm trying to save people this needless suffering.

It's about the little lookiloo thing that the nurse pulls out to look in your ear.  It's an amazing little device that has these little ice cream cones that they stick on the flashlight part that funnel the beam right in your ear.  Nice.  So helpful.  And the best part?  The cones that go into the ear are disposable!  That's right, they come in long stacks like the cone cups they make the kids drink from at tennis practice.  No cross contamination of ear juice!

Unless you are the nurse that I saw yesterday.

See, I popped into the minute clinic to check tho make sure I only have a scratchy throat from allergies, not strep.  She did the normal up and down of questions.  She was very thorough.  (no strep by the way)

Then she pulled out the lookiloo and peeped in my ear.
Then she peeped in the other ear.

Stop here...  I have not a problem with this.  Ear goop to ear goop.  We are all friends here in these canals.  But then she did the unthinkable.

'Tilt your head back so I can look up your schnoz.'
And without warning, or changing the cone piece, she shoved that juicy ear cone right up my nose!  And then into the other nostril!!

I was smelling ear juice all day.

I thought about cleaning my ears with a q-tip and writing weird words on her windshield with the diy grease marker, but then I thought that would be creeper creepy, so instead I wrote a blog about it.

So for those of you that are or may one day be in the health care field...
Please, do not cross contaminate one bodily juice with another.  Especially when the patient will be smelling the foreign juice for hours.  It is very unkind.  I'll buy you extra cones.