Tongue licking plastic=bad.

So the problem with working a food prep job as well as an administrative job is this:

When you cut half your nail off chopping lettuce and have to bandage it all up one night, it really sucks the next day while your trying to type all day and turn pages and you just keep licking your nasty, plasticky bandaid to turn the page. yuck.

A Cashier After My Own Heart.

Sunday afternoon we stopped at Safeway to pick up a couple last minute things for lunch. After getting more than I intended (as always!), I realized I forgot to bring a bag.

If you know me at all, you know I am obsessed with not using plastic bags. They are just useless and a perfect example-to me-of our wasteful, environmentally-lazy society.

So while we stand in line, I'm lamenting over the fact that now we have to have like 20 more bags than we need, because the cashiers always, always underpack the bags, even when you ask them nicely to pack them "full". Plus, I see this 19 or 20 year old cashier who will not stop talking to the lady in front of us who she is currently cashing out. By the time it gets to us, I'm already a little put out. She sweetly says, "Hello" and starts scanning our items through, I rush to say, "Oh you can pack the bags as full as they go."

Now, most of the time, cashiers respond with: Yeah. Okay. Sure. Whatever. Then proceed to put one carton of eggs in one bag. But not my girl. She pauses, looks at us, and puts her hand up to her heart and says, "Oh!, ohhhhhhh." Then reaches behind her all excited and pulls out a whole handful of their current instant-win gamecards and hands them to us. She was just SO excited. Even speechless. I do believe she was more excited than I was! I kinda smiled at Don with a kind of can-this-really-be-happening-can-there-really-be-someone-more-excited-than-me-about-not-using-plastic-bags? kinda smile.

(He was just like, "Ahhh. So there are more crazy people, than just my crazy wife.")

She packed a beee-u-tee-ful bag. When I said, "oh, you can even put it all into one bag...." She said," Well I don't think I can fit it all in the one, but... you can just carry this, and then if I put this here, and omph, you can carry this too...there! It will all fit!!!"

So thank you to my kindred spirit cashier, you made my day!

For more information on why plastic bags are evil, check this out and use your cloth bag today! Evil plastic: http://www.reusablebags.com/

(And no, I won nothing out of the handful of gamecards.)

words chalked on pavement as I walked home

sit and be still

until in the time

of no rain you hear

beneath the dry winds

commotion in the trees

the sound of flowing water

among the rocks,

stream unheard before

and you are where

breathing is prayer

That's The Kinda Car Theif I'd Want To Be.

So when I come out to my car this morning, I think, "Huh. That's weird. I don't remember spreading the entire contents of our glove box all over the seats. Ohhhh, someone else did it." (I'm not the sharpest in the morning.) But oh boy, they musta been sorely disapointed. Our car looks rich and cool, but is sadly misrepresenting us as people. With a sticky ashtray full of pennies and nickels, some homeade scratched up cds and an old pencap, we're just poor, disorganized people. I mean really? They didn't want that empty film canister or the cinema city coupon? (Actually, I am truly grateful they didn't take the coupon...it has no expiry date!) But I do have to say, I was thouroughly impressed with the 'careful' way they broke in. Really. I couldn't even tell they had(other than the mess). I thought I had left the door unlocked. They just jiggered the lock with something. I thought I would have to climb in and out the passenger side, but when I got to work and tried to lock the door, the lock still works. I mean, hey, not bad. That's pretty impressive. They probably felt all James Bondish. You know, to passerbyers it just looks like you are opening 'your' car door with a key. Although they did actually steal the sticky ashtray full of (probably) sticky pennies and nickels. So I'm guessing I wouldn't actually want to be like them afterall. But James Bond? yep. Or even Macguyver? Oh yeah.

Embarrassing Singing & Pink Onesies.

Yesterday it was Don's birthday. Ooooh, he is 26. So 'old'. I like to flaunt these next six or so weeks in his face because it's the only time I will be 'younger' than him. Also, two days now I have come home to someone singing 'Happy Birthday' on our answering machine. Even though on some levels it annoys me, it also makes me smile. I must admit I have never had anyone sing anything to me on my answering machine....I think. And funnily enough, it was both middle aged ladies who were doing the singing. I don't like to think of myself doing that, and yet I strongly suspect it will happen. I even just unconsciously sighed a long-drawn out sigh. While in high school, I once had a fellow cashier say to me, " My mom bought a pink-all-in-one jumpsuit today. She is 45, when do you pass the point of sanity and see that in the store and be like, 'I think that is exactly what I'm looking for! I'll look great in that!'" For some odd reason this conversation, which we had many a laugh at, has always stuck with me. And when I see something which is ...interesting, and consider trying it on, I always think to myself, "Is this my pink jumpsuit?!?!"

My Last Vacation?

That is what I am sure the past three days I spent at the cabin were. I cannot forsee anything else coming up despite the +28C weather we are expecting for the entire rest of the week.
Sigh.
I didn't even go swimming.
But, I did have a good time.

Things I love about my Cottage:
-that I always vary between calling it ta Cabin/Cottage.
-These paper Chinese lanterns we have hanging from the
ceiling that have been there for a couple years from an old birthday.
-The amount of eating we do there.
-The amount of reading we do there.
-The new tile backing my dad put behind the woodstove.
-The 2 trees that line our path to the beach. They seem like beach guardians.
-Our microwave from the 70's (80's?).
-Eating meals on the attached veranda on hot summer nights.
-Canoe rides through calm still water.
-Picking rocks out of the sand while sunbathing.

Things I Do Not Like About My Cabin:
-The island(w/causeway) taken over by the nudies.
-The algea that covers the water on a windless, boiling hot day.
Just the kinda day when you want to go swimming.
-Our totally rocky beach. I just wish we had a bit more sand.

But that's it. If I was like a writer or an artist of some sort, I would definately move out there, at least for a few months. It would be the ideal quite, calming, beautiful place to live and work. But somehow driving 2 hours everyday to come into Extreme Pita just doesn't seem worth it. Oh well. I am looking very much forward to Thanksgiving Weekend....in a whole month. sigh.

Tonight I'm An Engineer.

Okay, well, that may be streching it a bit, I am helping Don record his own first cd. But really all I do is: stop,delete, back it up, press record again. I am really good at it.
It does make me think of how glad I am to be computer literate. Sometimes I think about my parents and how they still have trouble working their 2 or 3 remotes and while it makes me smile*, it also makes me want to keep up with technology, however fast it keeps moving. I just like knowing how to work things. Sometimes. I have no idea how to work a blackberry, a palm pilot or a Ipod, but I DO know that if you gave me 5 minutes with it, I could figure it out. And if you gave me an uninteruppted half hour with it, I'd be a _________(fill in the newest technological gadget)genius. And that's good enough.

*It's true they have trouble with the remotes, but they both understand and use e-mail and, I must give credit where credit is due, my Dad has helped me figure out my computer problems various times. But we both have our forte. I am definately the better Internet Navigator. So there.