The Socks and Underwear Question

I went shopping yesterday. My list was simple: socks, underwear (not to be confused with lingerie-we're talking here about the most utilitarian and cheap option for every day, wear-under-my-work-scrubs-and-remember-that-I-work-at-an-ANIMAL-stop-HOSPITAL-stop use), an inexpensive sports watch (to double as a timer for taking heart/resp rates), and simple-but-still-cute earrings. I trekked over to Target after work, hopping a bus filled with Lane Tech high school kids as the time coincided with the end of the school day.

By the way, the phones that high school students now carry simply amaze me. How did I ever manage, at the age of fifteen, to get from Point A to Point B without handheld games to play, text messaging, digital camera imaging, and Web access combined with an actual working PHONE that you could gab on incessantly at any time and for any reason? I mean, Christ, I just got a cell phone myself in '05 (age: 32!), and my only real criteria was that it be a flip phone so that I could pretend that it was a communicator from the original Star Trek TV series. All of the above just goes to prove that I am a) getting old, and b) a huge nerd.

Anyway.

I found 12 pairs of socks, 8 pair of underwear, and the sport watch. No go on cute earrings, so I consoled myself with a $7 wallet that matched the purse I was carrying. I got home, unwrapped, laundered, put away. It all gave me an enormous sense of security and satisfaction. The socks & underwear shortage that has been bouncing around my "to-do" list can now be checked off. I won't have to worry about getting new ones for a while. No matter what happens in the near future, I have plenty of socks and lots of (very basic) underwear. I looked around and made a quick mental list of some other life "staples" of which I have a surplus.

1. Toothpaste-3 tubes, Crest brand (sale + coupon = happy penny-pinching me)
2. Coffee, tea, and espresso (most of which is courtesy of my part-time gig, and if any of you loyal readers out there are lumping "espresso" with "coffee" then I highly recommend getting thee to a local snobby coffeehouse and having the proprietor explain to you the vastly important difference. I would do so myself, but I am a professional barista, after all, and I'm currently not on the clock).
3. Lubriderm lotion (which should be sold by the vat come winter-time as without a twice-daily slathering my poor skin peels off in chucks. Yes, it's as ugly as it sounds.)
4. Silk brand vanilla soy milk (sale + aseptic container = happy non-dairy drinking me)
5. Batteries (AA for the flashlight, D for the radio)
6. Light bulbs
7. Clicky pens (freebies from drug reps, theatre companies, the dry-cleaner. And yes, it must be a clicky pen)

So much abundance. So much preparedness. Not ready for everything, she is, but ready for so much. And now, socks matched, underwear folded, and all of it put neatly away, she can move on to the next "to-do" list item.

Tomorrow.

-C.

Not much new to say....

....I just need a new "most recent post". That's all.

-C.

Double Whammy

My guinea pig Pickle passed away last night. I wanted to write a little something about him, but I'm afraid that that is going to have to wait. I'm still a little stunned from having lost two pets so unexpectedly and in quick succession. In contrast to Panda, who was very timid with people, Pickle was a delight to handle and didn't shy away from attention. Everyone who came into contact with him took note of that, and his unusual extroverted nature produced a number of photo opportunities of which I took great advantage.

I just can't look at any of them now. Not yet. Not for a while.

-C.

Oh, all right....

Once you have been tagged...

1. Choose the 4th folder where you store your pictures on your computer

2. Select the 4th picture in the folder

3. Explain the picture

4. Tag 4 people to do the same. No cheating!

This was from November. In it I am dressed and ready to go to Lyric Opera; I have had season tickets for a few years. I had missed the season opener (Manon) because of my going to Colorado when my Uncle Joe became gravely ill. Now I was gearing up to go to Porgy and Bess, which was really exciting for me as it is considered the greatest American opera, I had never seen it performed in full, and it was the first time EVER that it was being performed at the Lyric. I had just gotten a great haircut and was wearing my "bowtie" earrings. I had brought back a maroon sweater of Uncle Joe's with me after he passed; I decided to wear it to Porgy and Bess in his honor. Then I decided that I should have pictures to remember it all by.

So...I tag Troy, Tiffany, Melissa, & Mary (it can be your first blog entry!).

-C.

Strange Sorrow

One of my guinea pigs died last night. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but she wasn't eating well, and sometimes guinea pigs can develop serious problems if they lose their appetites. Or she could have had a problem that caused her anorexia and led to more problems. I didn't even realize that something was wrong until the situation was dire. And now her cagemate is ill, too.

Her name was Panda. She was the most adorable little black and white smooth-haired piggy I'd seen. I thought of lots of names for her but when I came up with Panda it was just too perfect. Panda was a very neat piggy, and kind of fussy, and very, very shy with people. She also squealed louder than anything whenever she heard the rustling of the bag that held her parsley, or for that matter, any bag rustling at all. She was less a companion for me than she was for my one-eyed piggy Pickle, and I'm afraid that even if he gets through all this mess Pickle will be heartbroken to have to live without her.

I'm sad that she is gone, and sadder still because in retrospect I think that I may have missed important signs that she was ill. Pet health is not just my responsibility in my home, but it is also my job, so I'm doubly hard on myself here. More than anything, though, I'm really sad because I can only find one picture of her. I lost most of my pictures when I fried my old desktop computer over a year ago, and it looks like I didn't take any new pictures of Panda since then.

I just took for granted that she would be here for a while longer.

-C.