Friday, April 8, 2011

And just when I thought that people couldn't surprise me.

On Thursdays and Fridays, when the weather permits, I allow K- to play on the playground until the bell rings.  (About 15 minutes.)  When we went over, she couldn't find anyone she knew to play with.  While she was busy trying to recruit, I noticed that there were some moms standing in the tot lot.  Out comes Mr. D-, our janitor, with a garbage pail, long hazmat gloves, a dust pan and small broom.  It was at that time that K- ran over to tell me what was going on. 

"A kid pooped on the playground."

What?

I caught bits and pieces here and there, but was finally told the full story by Mr. D-.  A mom with her child came to pick up a kid from school.  Mom was busy on the phone and the 4 year old decided to drop trou in front of her, lower the boom and deposit a pile in the mulch area of the tot lot.  Oh, it gets better.  Apparently, the mom never got off the phone.  She didn't correct the child.  She did nothing to clean up the mess.  What made her mad?  Said pile dropper stepped in it. 

She went, picked up the child needing to be retrieved and left.  She left the pile behind full well knowing that it was a sunny day and that the kids would definitely be playing on the playground after school. 

Stuff happens.  Don't get me wrong.  Kids make bad decisions.  Got it.  Mom should have done something to "secure the area" until she could get Mr. D- to come help to deal with it.  No, instead they did a drop and run.

That is so many different levels of gross and wrong, I can't even comprehend them all right now.  That is completely beside the germaphobia that I suffer from.

Needless to say, we left the playground early.

Smiles in my day:
-  That we have a fearless janitor who has had to not only deal with a pile of kid poop in the playground, but also had to bury one of our 3rd grade class room's dead chickie doodle.  (It is a 3rd grade project in our school to raise chicks, then to send them off to the farm.  I don't know the details, but I did see the chicks.  So cute!)
-  We found a mom and pop sporting goods store and I scored K- a pair of soccer shoes.  I didn't want to go to Dic*k's Sporting Goods and now I don't have to!  Hooray! (ETA: Did I read the post before I hit publish?  Probably not because the sentence above was a bit too scary.  I've since corrected.  Geeze!  Multi-tasking is not necessarily the way to go!)

Have a great day!

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Drip, drip, drip and more people that visited.

Drip, drip, drip, drip.  It was the kind of drip loudness that I feel could have been in The Tell-Tale Heart.  Wow. 

I came home from work today to be greeted by a pack of Craftsman wrenches on the bathroom counter with the faucet partially unassembled. 

My husband couldn't take it anymore.  Apparently, the tent face towel that I left in the sink last night to muffle ended up getting fully saturated over night and ended up doing a slurp drip instead of a silent drip.  Oops.  I at least tried.  I'm happy to say that at this point, the faucet is reassembled and seems to be behaving nicely.  Let's hope that it doesn't take after the smoke detector and decide to start up again at 3 AM.

On to other things.  Pajama girl was back today with gyro boyfriend (apparently, he works at the fast food joint around the corner) and you would be glad to know that she had pants on!  Oh, and she had real shoes, too! 

We had jelly bean man in this afternoon.  I have no idea why he thought he could find jelly beans at the store, but he kept talking and talking about these gourmet jelly beans that he has spent 2 weeks looking for.  I gave him the name of a few different places to try and of course, he has tried them.  I asked him what the name of the beans are or what the color of the bag is and he can't tell me.  I would have been nice to keep an eye out but other than calling them "gourmet," he gave me nothing.  My co-worker insists that he really is just looking for Brach's. 

We had a group of ladies in today that wanted three people helping each person with each one piece transaction.  Finally, I told them that we have a system and it was all good.  (Kindly, of course.)  They were snobby and obviously, I was beneath them. 

Joe was kind to remind me about the lovely lady on Monday.  I was hanging a bunch of St. Andrew's Abbey when a customer came in and plunked her purse down (oh no she didn't!) on TOP! of the ceramics that I was attempting to hang.  I rescued an angel from the bottom side of her bag, then couldn't find my hammer to continue hanging the blessed things.  "Joe!  I can't find my hammer."  "I took it and I don't know where I put it."  Then, the customer pipes up, "Oh, I have it under my bag."  Really?  You know that I'm hanging things and you dump your giant luggage sized purse right on top of everything I'm working with?  ARGH!

No body smelled today.  That's a great thing!

I'm really not crabby.  It's just a week full of customer observations. 

Smiles in my day:
-  Wednesday! 
-  The drip is silent.
-  K- has started to read Twister on Tuesday to us.  I love to hear her read!  She is getting words I never dreamed that she would be at this point and I love that she is working on catching the tone in the sentences.  At the end of the grading periods, Mrs. S- does reading leveling with the class and I hope that K- does get bumped up the next level.  I think that she's able to handle it, but when she gets moved up, it is such an incredible atagirl for her. 

Have a great day!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Different visitors and generalized rambling

From time to time, we get those customers that I would term as bloggable.

Today, I had a batch load.  Allow me to share.

The wet ashtray couple-
They were browsing, window-shopping really, and they smelled so bad.  At first I thought something had been lit and had gone out.  Since we don't smoke in the gallery, I thought that a light had blown or a case backing had caught fire.  I quickly dismissed those conclusions when I realized that the two people shopping were the culprits.  Truly, they smelled exactly as a wet ashtray smells.  A bonus to this lovely couple?  The gallery director witnessed a PDA that could have been trippin' on the way to a littl*e bl*ue pil*l moment.  Oh, yes.  Good times.

The needy lady-
Now, I have helped this woman before.  She comes in with a cane.  I helped her with the door.  She went to the counter, flopped her cane and purse up on the counter and went talking away to the floor manager.  She went and got what the lady needed, the woman went on and on about the earrings, then kept mentioning about how her husband had passed away.  As sad as that is, I've helped her before and knew that she was baiting for a discussion.  The floor manager took the bait.  She told her all about her husband's problems, about her cat who is now her bed companion and about how she thought the cat was a boy, but was really a girl, she found out that the cat was pregnant and had a cat abor*ti*on.  Yes, you read the asterisks correct.  She went on about how kittens would be too much to take care of, so she just decided to abo*rt them.  Oh, yes.  Counter conversation that I could never ever in a million years imagine having ever.  FYI, I didn't comment.  I felt it best to bite my tongue and move on to another task.

The pajama girl-
We had two girls come to visit.  My guess is that they were college age and that one had rolled out of bed and went with her friend when she said, "Hey, I'm going to - - - - !  You wanna come?"  She was dressed in plaid printed fleece pajama pants, Uggs (by brand name no less) and her hair was wadded up in a knot.  That's okay.  I don't look like a rock star either, but I leave my pajama pants AT HOME! 

Squeaky-
She was pajama girl's companion.  She was dressed very nice and had heels on that squeak, squeak, squeaked with every step she took.  The poor dear.  They really were nice shoes.  I have no idea why they squeaked like that.  Yowza.

On a completely different note, the bathroom faucet is dripping and kept me up for a few hours last night.  I actually got to the point of praying to God that Hubs would have to get up to pee so that he could jiggle with the handles to maybe make the madness stop. 

On a related note, do you know what is NOT on TV at night?  There is nothing entertaining.  I mean, there has to be someone out there somewhere that finds watching poker on two different channels at the very same time entertaining, but I do not.  I have determined that if I were rich, I would buy Wen hair products and my unruly hair would be fixed lickety split in one wash.  I watched parrots mate on PBS, then cockatoos in Australia being shooed away by a guy on a golf cart with a guy to keep his crop okay and another guy who tries to pick his fruit before the birds get to it.  Cops was on, which is always entertaining on its own level.  I should add that I did fall asleep to the TV Guide channel because there was some special on the worst celebrity break-ups, which I've watched before but watched again because NOTHING WAS ON.  Oh, yes.  The other night I watched Amelia.  It was good enough for a one time run, but not enough to watch again. 

That leaves me to the weather report.  I mean, this post is a hodge podge of train wreckness, so why not press on with that theme?  Yesterday it was humid, 60 F and it rained and poured all day long.  Today, it was mid 30's and sprinkled a few flakes every now and then, several times.  Yup.  Welcome to Ohio.

Hubs has just put out the request that we buy blinds for our bedroom.  Now, we had them and still have the old ones.  When he put up the new woodwork, we wanted to hang new blinds.  Then, I think Hubs was okay with no blinds.  It is getting a bit sunnier out and the neighbor has installed new dusk to dawn lights.  He said that he feels like he is in the Kenny Rogers Roasters episode on Seinfeld.  The lights are bright and blue and oh my.  I will now be looking for light blocking blinds.  I wanted them, but had to let Hubs come to that conclusion.  You know how that can go sometimes.

Hubs is fine with my returning to our bed this evening.  With him feeling horrible, I've been trying to sleep on the couch to give him the bed to feel better but the lack of sleep (highlighted above) has been dreadful.  I welcome the ability to rest in my own bed. 

Smiles in my day:
-  Hubs was able to leave work early to come home and to take a nap.  He is positive that he is suffering from allergies compliments of the first "burst" of spring and all the pollen that goes with.  To say that it has assaulted his nasal passages is putting it lightly.
-  Being greeted by my friend's partner and his friend this AM when I got to the gallery.  They were looking around to try to see what's out there and how to price his/their work.  The excitement was wonderful.
-  Being able to heat lunch up at work without the pressures of a line stacking up behind me.

Have a great day!

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Tales from the Trenches: The man cold continueth.

I bought the plain Greek yogurt-- the kind he said he wanted-- and it "tastes like paste."  When I put some vanilla extract in it, he claimed that it made it taste like licking an envelope.

They don't make sugar free cough drops without aspartame, except for little kid honey ones and Hubs is determined that he can't do honey.  That could be true because if you get honey out of your zone of living, you can have a reaction to it due to bees, pollens . . . and given his allergies, I wouldn't be surprised.

He doesn't like the Scotties tissues that I have in stock because they are "dusty" and "make [him] cough."  The toilet paper that we buy in a bulk box from Sam's doesn't present a dust issue.  Who knew?  :S

He's coughed and sneezed all over the bedroom, which is fine.  Even though I changed the sheets to my very favorite extra soft LL Bean flannel sheets, I don't get to sleep there.  I slept on the couch.  Well, he decided to lie all over the couch today, too.  Um, thanks?

He had a fever of 100 F, but it's gone now.  It was a few hour thing. 

Wow.

Monday, April 4, 2011

The man cold has landed.

As I type, my husband is lying in the bed next to me with his head jammed between two pillows and huddled under a pile of blankets.

The man cold has landed.

He spent all day yesterday in bed resting.  He has a sore throat and sinus' that are "like balloons."  Most likely, the man is suffering from a sinus infection.  Pile that on top of his general yet-to-be-accurately-named digestive syndrome and you have one pile of a husband.

Literally.

So there we have it.  A man under the weather, under the blankets and hogging the bed.  Let's hope that he feels better soon.  Sleeping on the couch isn't as comfy as my lovely bed.

Have a great day!