i sat down yesterday morning for some introspection ... a little refocusing ... maybe an attitude adjustment. that's a good thing to do early on a saturday morning, right? after 10 long minutes of staring at the cobwebs on the porch ceiling, i decided i didn't need it. my latest adjustment was a mere four-ish months ago, and it was still working out. my time was better spent sitting on the back porch watching the trees dance in the breeze and the dog chase impossibly fast squirrels.
completely over that spell, i went back inside and ultimately found a frog in my toilet. how did he get there? what did he want from me? i had no idea. what i did know was that harold is a silly name for a frog, so i called him kit and let him stay for what ended up being quite a long time in amphibian years. what did i care? there's another bathroom upstairs.
every couple hours, i checked on kit and he was usually in the same place ... floating with his eyes above the surface ... legs all stretched out. i assured him that he didn't have anything to worry about. he was in a safe place b/c zoey is afraid of linoleum and the bathtub (raise your hand if that surprises you ... yeah, that's what i thought), but he should start to think about going out the way he came in b/c i wasn't running a frog hotel here.
as i woke up this morning, i discovered that i'd fallen asleep on the couch. zoey had dutifully slept as she usually did in her own bed, but wasted next to no time coming over to put her nose on my face since i was so easy to reach. i let her outside and checked on kit. it must have gotten cold in the water overnite b/c he was now all curled up (as much as a frog can curl up) under the rim. by this point, it was way past time for releasing him back to the wild, but the movies i'd watched last nite were somehow more interesting than frogs.
in retrospect, that's just not true. have you seen ladder 49?
now, i don't know if you own a fondue set, but i highly recommend it. the one i have is a year older than me and i've never used the bowl part ... just the forks. usually i use one to fish my contact lens case out of boiling water, which is how i was told to clean the thing ... last week, i used one to poke at something that was on fire under a stove burner ... one time a few months ago i used one for dipping strawberries and marshmallows in a melted chocolate concoction ... today i used the blunt end of one for dislodging a frog from the side of a toilet bowl.
if i was 20 years younger, i would have plucked kit out with my hands and avoided having to wash a fondue fork and tupperware bowl. but i'm old now ... and groggy ... and fearful in the morning.
kit eventually succumbed to my prodding and slid indifferently into the plastic bowl. my pajamas and i marched him to the fence line where it was safe to reintroduce him to the wild: "kit, wild; wild, kit." i didn't want a repeat of the baby bunny incident: "don't even think about it!"
walking back to my house, i felt a pang of homesickness and wished i could somehow transport our old pond to my new backyard. sure, it was a foul looking and smelling bug (and probably disease) hatchery, but i spent summer days on its mucky shores catching frogs for no reason other than to catch frogs. at least i always had something on my feet.
once, my cousin and i filled a bucket with the little suckers and let them loose on the road, but my aunt got pissed and made us put them back.
oh, cut it out ... no harm done. we lived in the middle of nowhere. and i would never even think of doing that to kit.
September 25, 2005
September 14, 2005
when you have a name like mine ...
... really, you have no use for ancestry.com. unfortunately, there are some people out there who need that kind of thing to establish their identity. why they feel they have to steal mine to get to the bottom of theirs, i don't understand. well, maybe i do.
large numbers on my credit card statement make me nervous, and i really only use one card due to my short attention span. a college junior, i acquired my VISA because i wasn't yet able to be mean and say no to random people, even tho i should have been that day because "maury" (back when it wasn't all about the baby's daddy) had just ended and i was on my way out.
"yeah, sure, ok," and 10 days later i was a cardholder.
for no apparent reason, i was nervous about it ... i didn't have an income to speak of and no reliable transportation (besides public ... yikes) to take me to places where i could do any kind of damage. i'd been in the habit of using my debit card to withdraw $10 every week for thursday nite pizza. who wants to pay interest on that? and! why won't ATMs let you withdraw just $10 anymore? i need $50, but i have to get either $40 or $60 ... either way, i'm left looking for a 10-spot.
so, to look like i was a grown-up, i used my card to buy books. once a term. instead of carting my clunky checkbook to the student union, i now had the sleek card in my student ID holder thing. either way, i still needed a pen.
did i pay off my balance when the statement arrived? of course. i didn't want to turn into one of those people you see on 20/20. or alicia. ;)
do i still pay off the balance every month? hell no. these days i actually am a grown-up (i can at least pass as one) and understand the social importance of spending beyond one's means, but i try to stay in control whenever possible.
last nite, while feeling much older than everyone else in the room because i didn't have any homework to do and oh-my-god-it-was-9:45-p.m., i handed my responsible-looking "member since 1996" card to the vet tech behind the counter ...
[i'd like to take this opportunity to mention how much i love the staff at the vet's office. they are fantastic people who recognize my voice on the phone, love my dog, and always manage to go out of their way for us.]
... as usual, she scanned the card and handed it back to me, complimenting the picture of zoey it sports. we waited. when the receipt finally printed out, it read, "REFERRAL." no one seemed to know what that meant, so she scanned it again. and again, we read "REFERRAL."
i hadn't used the card in almost a week, and had just made a payment that afternoon. once more, "REFERRAL." at this point, the receptionist tech called whoever it is you call when you don't know what's going on with credit cards while three other techs took zoey into an exam room to clip her nails and get her generally wound up, which is good because it eventually makes her tired.
the people you call when you don't know what's going on with credit cards flat-out declined mine. this was a first for me. surprisingly, it wasn't nearly as embarrassing as TV makes it out to be. maybe that's because i was too busy being shocked and seeing how much cash i had.
i was hardly in the house when i picked up the phone. 31 digits and practically no waiting later, i was asked the oddest question i've been asked since a prospective employer asked me to rate the person i was recommending on a scale of 1 to 10 with ten being the best. duh, 10.
"have you recently been making purchases at ancestry.com?"
today i have a new account number, but i still feel violated. i'm on the verge of reverting to paper statements and giving up online shopping. of course, if i did that, i couldn't order pizza online ... i'd have to pay in cash ... and that's just not me.
large numbers on my credit card statement make me nervous, and i really only use one card due to my short attention span. a college junior, i acquired my VISA because i wasn't yet able to be mean and say no to random people, even tho i should have been that day because "maury" (back when it wasn't all about the baby's daddy) had just ended and i was on my way out.
"yeah, sure, ok," and 10 days later i was a cardholder.
for no apparent reason, i was nervous about it ... i didn't have an income to speak of and no reliable transportation (besides public ... yikes) to take me to places where i could do any kind of damage. i'd been in the habit of using my debit card to withdraw $10 every week for thursday nite pizza. who wants to pay interest on that? and! why won't ATMs let you withdraw just $10 anymore? i need $50, but i have to get either $40 or $60 ... either way, i'm left looking for a 10-spot.
so, to look like i was a grown-up, i used my card to buy books. once a term. instead of carting my clunky checkbook to the student union, i now had the sleek card in my student ID holder thing. either way, i still needed a pen.
did i pay off my balance when the statement arrived? of course. i didn't want to turn into one of those people you see on 20/20. or alicia. ;)
do i still pay off the balance every month? hell no. these days i actually am a grown-up (i can at least pass as one) and understand the social importance of spending beyond one's means, but i try to stay in control whenever possible.
last nite, while feeling much older than everyone else in the room because i didn't have any homework to do and oh-my-god-it-was-9:45-p.m., i handed my responsible-looking "member since 1996" card to the vet tech behind the counter ...
[i'd like to take this opportunity to mention how much i love the staff at the vet's office. they are fantastic people who recognize my voice on the phone, love my dog, and always manage to go out of their way for us.]
... as usual, she scanned the card and handed it back to me, complimenting the picture of zoey it sports. we waited. when the receipt finally printed out, it read, "REFERRAL." no one seemed to know what that meant, so she scanned it again. and again, we read "REFERRAL."
i hadn't used the card in almost a week, and had just made a payment that afternoon. once more, "REFERRAL." at this point, the receptionist tech called whoever it is you call when you don't know what's going on with credit cards while three other techs took zoey into an exam room to clip her nails and get her generally wound up, which is good because it eventually makes her tired.
the people you call when you don't know what's going on with credit cards flat-out declined mine. this was a first for me. surprisingly, it wasn't nearly as embarrassing as TV makes it out to be. maybe that's because i was too busy being shocked and seeing how much cash i had.
i was hardly in the house when i picked up the phone. 31 digits and practically no waiting later, i was asked the oddest question i've been asked since a prospective employer asked me to rate the person i was recommending on a scale of 1 to 10 with ten being the best. duh, 10.
"have you recently been making purchases at ancestry.com?"
today i have a new account number, but i still feel violated. i'm on the verge of reverting to paper statements and giving up online shopping. of course, if i did that, i couldn't order pizza online ... i'd have to pay in cash ... and that's just not me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)