I had to pull the Mom Censorship Card while waiting for my pizza at Little Caesars.

From Monday - Wednesday, I worked 12-13 hour days getting ready for our holiday open house this weekend. Thursday, I worked our Scholastic Book Fair from 7:30 AM - 6:30 PM.  Today, I worked the Book Fair from 7:50 AM - 4:30 PM.  Exhaustion set in.  K and I went to LC's for our dinner.

We bought the pretzel crust cheese pizza.  Yes, we also bought the crazy bread.  We were wild and crazy girls.  We had evening plans that involved pizza, crazy bread and some TV.

Since we ordered the cheese pretzel crust pizza without pepperoni, we had to wait.  I'm used to it.  "Hot and Ready" has never been "Hot and Ready" cheese. Since we had to wait 6 minutes, we opted to just sit in their tiny waiting area.  There were three chairs.  There were 2 chairs to the left of the door and one near the cooler, to the right.  K took the right.  There was a construction guy off to the left.  She left me to sit near him.  It's all good.  He was tired and quiet.  So were we.

They were busy humming along and making pizza.  They were chatting it up.  I was texting a few friends and so tired that thinking and typing were difficult to be done together.  The talking got louder.  Several words seemed repeated.  My ears perked up.

Are they really talking about that?

Nah.

They can't be.

I can't be hearing right.

Oh, I am.

The girl at the drive thru window was discussing periods, pregnancy tests and doctors appointments.  These things were not being discussed in hushed tones.  She kept mentioning "period."  She kept mentioning pregnancy tests.  Finally I heard enough and like sudden onset Tourette's, I couldn't take it anymore.

I leaned up a bit, the cashier had looked over at me and I said, "We don't need to know about her peeing on sticks."

"Well, she's not talking about herself," she said with a snarky, sarcastic tone.  Obviously she couldn't see a problem with it.

I looked over at the construction worker.  He looked as if he wanted to crawl under the chair.  The ongoing banter behind the counter was embarrassing him.

"This is stuff we don't need to hear and besides that, I have a 10 year old in here."

"Oh."  She was nonplussed by my Mama Bear Censorship Card being pulled.

The guy looked at me and said, "That is so inappropriate anyway, let alone wanting to look to see who the crowd is and to have a 10 year old sitting there."  "Good, then it wasn't just me."  "Um, no."

When we got back into the car, I talked with K about  it.  We've had discussion about menstruation and whatnot, but nothing like what they were talking about.  "Mom, did you hear that they were talking about killing or dead babies?"

"No!  Were they really?"

"Yes.  I heard everything, Mom."

"K, I'm sorry.  It was something that should have never been discussed out in public."  We talk about things with K.  If she asks something, we're honest.

So, have you ever had to pull the Parental Censorship Card?  I hated to do it, but I felt like it was necessary.  I can only imagine what the drive thru window patrons must have heard.

Why do people vote against safety levies?

We had a safety levy on the ballot.  It would have increased our sales tax by .25%.  It failed.

Our sheriff was quoted as saying, "This was a true need. This was not a want. ... "

A local resident had this to say:

"I’m against any more taxes.  They’re taking every damn dime out of our pockets.” 

My guess is that when that resident experiences an emergency such as a fire, rowdy neighbors, a car accident or a heart attack, they'll be calling Ghost Busters?  Uh, no.  They'll call 911.  They'll expect service.

There are many safety service levies in this area that passed.  There are many that didn't.  People vote against the levies, then complain that service is slow when they call for them in their time of need.  STEP UP, PEOPLE!  Things cost money.  Cost of living has increased for you.  Don't you think that there is a cost of operations increase for others?

UGH!