Month: May 2015

Cazzo! You Kids Don’t Know Sh-T!

I called my Mom yesterday.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

I’m blessed to still have the little, gray-haired, Italian rompicoglioni (pain in the ass) in my life, so I make sure to connect with her every day.

Our conversations aren’t much to “write home about”, as my Uncle Tony likes to say, but conversations with my Mom are never ordinary, and this one yesterday, left me with a silly grin on my face.

The following is an excerpt from said conversation:

Mom: “Aunt Carmie and I went to J.C. Penny’s on Saturday to look for a wedding dress for Anne Marie’s wedding in July.”

Me: “That’s nice. Did you have fun looking around and shopping?”

Mom: “Was nice to get out and about, but couldn’t walk around and shop when we got there. Too damn tired to walk. I think I’ve got diabetes and a vitamin deficiency. I’m so LAZY these days. I don’t know what the hell’s the matter with me. I don’t ever remember being so lazy years ago!”

Me: “You’re older, Ma, and have major heart problems. Maybe you should talk to your doctor? It might be your heart.”

Mom: “Ma, che sei grullo!” (How stupid are you!) “You kids go to the doctors too much these days! They don’t know anything. They take your money, write a prescription and send you out the door in 5 minutes flat! Why go to the doctors?”

Me: “No particular reason. Just a thought.”

Mom: (Not wanting to continue the “doctor conversation”.) “I bought some strawberries this weekend.”

ME: “Uh-Hun. I thought you didn’t like strawberries, Ma?”

Mom: “I hate strawberries! Loaded them with sugar, but they still tasted nasty, so I added some ice cream and milk and made myself a smoothie. I forced myself to drink half of it. I still have the other half to drink. I don’t know how you kids drink this sh-t. It’s nasty.”

Me: “Un-Hun.”

Me: ”Ma, if you hate strawberries, why are you eating them and making smoothies with them?”

Mom: ” They’ve got those, ‘come si dice?’ (how do you say?) anti….(whatever the hell they’re called) in them and they’re supposed to be good for you!”

Me: “Antioxidants. I think you mean antioxidants, Mom.”

Mom: “Si. Antioxidants. That stuff that everybody’s eating to be healthy.”

Me: “Ma, you added white sugar, ice cream, and whole milk to it to tolerate it. Don’t ‘cha think you kinda nullified the healthy properties of the strawberries when you did that?”

Mom: “Basta!” (That’s enough!) Ma, che sei grullo!” (Are you crazy?)

Me: “Uh-Hun.”

Mom: “Cazzo! I gotta hang up. You kids drive-a me pazzo!” (crazy!)

Me: “Bye, Ma. Love you.”

Have a good one, today, People, and remember: “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. NO MAN DOES. That’s his.” Oscar Wilde.

Catch ya next time, looking at life from my shoes.

California’s Delicious, New (Recycled) Drinking Water!

Ok, so living in CA has it’s perks and drawbacks.

The fact that I have access to the ocean 20 minutes away, great restaurants, nearby shopping and opportunities for a variety of educational and entertaining experiences, along with lovely weather (more often than not), are all solid reasons for me living (and staying) in the land of fruit cakes, wackos and beach bums.

(Especially in light of the fact that I’m considered one of those “wackos” and some of my best friends are “fruit cakes” and “beach bums”.)

But conscientiously collecting shower water every day in a large, back-breaking, orange Home Depot bucket, to use for flushing my toilet, is getting old – getting VERY old.

So, I’m perusing the local newspaper headlines, recently, and I see an article on our local Mayors “guzzling reclaimed sewage water” and I think, “OK, you’ve got my interest.  What other hair-brain ideas are our elected officials trying to promote to get us to curb this draught?”

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” I’m an educated, open-minded individual. Let’s see if this article can convince me to start drinking “wastewater” to help out in this dire predicament. I’m game.”

Uh-Hun.

No, I don’t think so.

We’ve been using this “toilet to tap” recycled water now since 1997, but only for irrigation purposes.

I’m a pretty “open individual”, don’t ‘cha know, but I’m drawing the line at drinking pee water. (RECYCLED or not!)

Let our elected officials drink it.

They thought it was “delicious” and “good stuff”.

Che schifo!

Is it a wonder why our state’s education and economy are in the toilet?!

I mean, seriously!

On Friday, I read where the company that’s demolishing our iconic Candlestick Park is using THOUSANDS of gallons an hour of fresh drinking water directly from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir to dump on the rubble to keep the dust under control.

Uh-Hun.

I’m supposed to consider drinking “reclaimed sewage water,” while they waste delicious, crystal clear, drinking water on keeping the “dust under control” at Candlestick Park?

Seriously?

Che Cazzo!

Is it a wonder why people think it’s “wacked” out here?

Have a good week, People! And remember: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. (Especially if that water’s disinfected sewage!)

Catch ya next time, looking at life from my shoes!

Boo gets the Gun and Lucie gets Snubbed!

Alrighty.

 

For those of you that are “regular readers of my silliness”, you know the Princess and I have two certifiably wacked cats, named Molly and Boo.

Both cats have various “health issues,” which unfortunately, on more occasions than I care to admit, have indirectly caused  us to prematurely gray and acquire fluffy midriffs.

(Work with me here, People! You don’t expect me to blame the chocolate chip cookies for our fluffy midriffs, do you?! Stress can cause a myriad of health maladies! Among them, fluffy midriffs.)

Boo has a condition called “malabsorption syndrome” that causes her to constantly be hungry and “on the prowl for food.”

Like a newborn baby, my Siamese needs to eat regularly and howls (quite loudly) when she feels underfed – no matter what time of the day or night it is!

What drives me even more bonkers, though, is the fact that she jumps up onto our kitchen counter to prowl for food.

We’ve read all the latest info on what to do for this behavior, and have purchased more damn gizmos, than I care to admit, to try to change her behavior.

Ultimately, the cat deterrents caused us a great deal of pain and sent Boo merrily on her way with a smirk on her little face that basically said, “You dumb broads don’t have a clue what to do. Just meet my demands and everyone will be a happy camper.”

 

Uh-Hun.

 

Last summer, we started using a squirt gun on her and discovered that the little bugger doesn’t like the squirt gun.

 

Great, me thinks!

 

We’ll just use the gun from now on and we’ll be good to go.

 

Yeah, right!

 

If you know anything about Siamese, they’re smart.

 

Some smarter than their owners, and Boo is no exception to that rule.

 

On the other hand, Molly is cute, but a few fries short of a happy meal, as my Uncle Tony likes to say.

 

At least, though, with Molly, you know if you frequently feed her, periodically pat her head, and methodically make sure she has fresh water every day to dunk her paws into (so she can drink), she’ll leave you alone.

 

As long as you let her sleep wherever (and whenever)  she wants to, and leave her to hell alone for most of the day, she’ll let you share her air space.

 

God forbid, though, you pet her when she’s lookin’ cute and approachable, and DOESN’T want to be petted!

 

She bites.

 

Leaves your hand intact and doesn’t draw blood, mind you, but damn well lets you know to get to hell away from her!

 

Molly’s the Princess’s cat.

 

They totally “get each other” and eerily have the same disposition.

 

Boo, on the other hand, is my cat.

 

High maintenance, but a love-bug.

 

You can grab her by her tail and hold her upside down and she’ll just stare at you like, “Seriously? WTS are you doing?”

 

Doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, but can drive a sober person to drink, when she’s hungry.

 

Kind of like me when my Buddha belly is hungry and my BP drops.

 

So, the “squirt gun solution” seemed just the answer to our little problem, except “the gun”, as we now refer to it, always seems to be missing or inevitably someplace not easily accessible when Boo is being a naughty girl.

 

One day, when the gun was missing and we were yelling to each other, “Where’s the gun? Where’s the gun? Get the gun!” we coincidently noticed Boo’s slight interest in what we were yelling and happened to observe that she jumped OFF the counter onto the floor, saving us the trouble of finding the “blasted gun”.

 

Being the discerning cat owners that we are, we aptly decided that we’d start yelling this question/command on those many occasions that we couldn’t easily locate it, and have done so now, for quite some time, with a moderate rate of success.

 

By pure happenstance this week, I mentioned to my Tuesday Tea Ladies Group, that I’d noticed our new neighbors scooting themselves and their baby carriage to the other side of the street, when they spotted me out walking in the morning, and that it was a tad disconcerting to me.

I was relatively confident that I was free of lotion goobers, nose drool, face zits, ratty sweatshirts, and not sporting any odd looking blue rubber rain suits.

And I was definitely feeling unsettled by their perceived snubbing, and didn’t have a clue as to why they’d intentionally try to avoid me.

So, Ada, one of my more direct friends, flippantly comments, “WTF! You and the Princess yell, ‘Where’s the gun? Where’s the gun? Get the gun!’, on a regular basis, and you wonder why your new neighbors are trying to avoid you?!”

“I KNOW you (very well, I might add) and I’d run like hell if I heard you saying that every night!”

Uh-Hun.

Well, guess that little mystery is solved.

Be kind to each other, People! And if you’ve got a neighbor who’s a bit of a character and a “little different”, remember: Different is just different.

We’re all a bit odd, at times – some of us just a tad more than others.

I’ll catch ya next time, looking at life from my shoes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lucie and the Princess buy New Furniture!

 

All righty!

 

I’m sitting here crying in my soup and telling myself, “Ok, Lucie, remember what you tell people: ‘God doesn’t always give us what we want, when we want it, but what we need, when we need it’.

 

“So, I’m sure this whole damn “kerfuffle” that you’ve been subjected to this past weekend, is gonna work out in the end”.

 

Don’t ask me why, but the Princess and I are the poster children for the motto: “Whatever CAN go wrong, WILL go wrong,” every time we buy something.

 

(And don’t let me start talking about what happens to us when we TRAVEL!!!)

 

I mean, SERIOUSLY!

 

We always do a shit-load of research BEFORE we buy, are very respectful and courteous to all sales people and 9 outta 10 times pay TOP dollar for the item.

 

Inevitably, though, the product is damaged, the wrong color, missing a part to something that we’re more than halfway finished putting together, or some other ridiculous scenario which leaves us to deal with the quandary of: do we keep it and make do? Or package it back up, drive all the way back to the store, and deal with customer service (who for some reason are never quite as “happy” seeing us come back, as they were when we left a sizable sum of money with them when we left!)?

 

This past weekend, found the Princess and I in just that quandary.

 

As a celebration to the Princess securing full-time, permanent employment with the company that she’s been contracting with for the past year, we decided to purchase a couch and lazy boy rocker recliner.

 

So, 2 months ago we researched and tested various types, colors and comfort levels of a number of furniture pieces to replace our worn out living room furniture pieces.

 

We decided on the pieces, paid a handsome sum for both pieces and waited the 2 months for them to “make them”.

 

On Saturday, piece #1 (the couch) gets delivered while I’m mopping up a leak from our broken kitchen sink pipe and yelling at the cats for traipsing through the water and making paw prints all over everything.

 

The delivery guys unload it, unwrap it, and set it up.

 

I’m standing in the kitchen (mop in hand) looking at the pillows and saying to myself, “WTS?! I know my memory’s in the toilet, lately, but I could swear that’s not the color of the couch and pillows we ordered.”

 

I’m not positive, though, and the Princess (who has pictures of both of the furniture pieces on her iPhone) is off to Home Depot purchasing a new pipe for the kitchen sink.

 

So, I bid the delivery guys “adieu” and back to mopping I go!

 

Uh-Hun.

In the door walks the Princess 15 minutes after they leave and lo and behold, she takes one look at the couch and exclaims, “That’s not our couch and pillows, Lucie! At least not the pillows. The pillows I KNOW are wrong, and unless I’m mistaken, that’s the wrong color couch!”

 

Cavola! You gotta be kiddin’ me!

 

Nope.

 

She takes out her trusty iPhone and sure as shit – BOTH the couch and the pillows are the wrong ones.

 

OK.

 

We decide, “No biggy”.

 

We gave away our old couch, so unless we wanna sit on egg crates for the next 2 months, we agree that the “delivered couch” is fine and will blend in with our “eclectic Italian motif”.

 

The pillows, though, totally clash and have to GO!

 

So, off to the furniture store we head, pillows in hand, to tell them about the little “kerfuffle”.

 

As luck would have it, on the way to the store, we get a phone call from “said furniture store”.

 

I’m assuming they’re calling to find out if we got everything ok today because Larry and Curley of the Three Stooge’s Delivery Co. were supposed to deliver the couch yesterday, but forgot to load it, so they couldn’t deliver it.

 

Because we’re “good customers,” they squeezed us into Saturday’s schedule.

 

I’m thinking we’ll be at the store in another 10 minutes, so I’m not gonna answer the phone.

 

No biggy.

 

And besides, I’m not feeling too “friendly” with this group of clowns.

 

Uh-Hun.

 

The phone rings, again. It’s the furniture store.

 

The Princess (who is driving) looks at me and says, “Don’t answer, unless you can be civil with them. Right now, you’re a tad pissed off and I don’t think you should talk to them.”

 

“You’re right,” I answer. “I think it’s better for them and my blood pressure, if I wait until I get there.”

 

We arrive at the store, walk through the door carrying said pillows and are immediately greeted by Sum-Ting-Wong, one of our sales people.

 

I inform him that we have the wrong pillows and before I can say anything else, he looks at us like we’re recent discharges from the infamous St. Jude’s Laughing Academy and lets us know that not only do we have the “WONG PILLOWS”, but have someone else’s couch, as well, and need to drive home, so the delivery guys can pick it up and deliver it to the rightful owners!

 

Un-Hun.

 

But what I haven’t told you is that we’ve gotta go back to Home Depot, exchange our sink pipe and get a “different pipe” to fix our sink because nothing in our house is “standard” and we need a “special pipe” because apparently (unbeknownst to us, at the time), we had the other “stooge” of “The Three Stooge’s Delivery Co.” as our contractor when the house was built.

 

So I’m lookin’ at Sum-Ting and thinking, “I’ve got a sink that’s still leaking, a pipe that needs exchanging, 2 cats that are more than likely lounging on someone else’s couch (with wet paw prints, by now) and a little Asian sale’s person shaking his head saying to us, “No time for fix you pipe. You go home. You have wong couch. You need go home.”

 

Un-Hun.

 

So, home we go where we find Larry and Curley waiting for us in our driveway, while our cats are inside curled-up and peacefully sleeping on said “wong couch”!

 

Yep.

 

Is it a wonder why our friends call us “Lucy and Ethel”?

 

Life is good at our house, People!

 

Will catch you next time for another adventure looking at life from my shoes!