Really? That's What You Are Opening With?

When you work with the public you get a lot of comments, as you can imagine.  Not all of them are nice.  I've been cursed out.  I thought a woman was going to deck me once she was so worked up when I told her she owed $1.  Yeah, $1.

My point is that you never know what is going to happen during a transaction.  You might ask someone how they are doing, and they will literally tell you exactly how well they are not doing. I'll never forget the time I had a woman start crying and telling me she had just had to put her dog to sleep.

You get the idea.  The response you get can be kind of a crapshoot.

Normally when a patron approaches the desk I like to start with, "Hello.  Can I help you?"  or something to that effect.  Nice, friendly, and you should get  a somewhat predictable answer:

1) Hello.  I need to _______.  (renew my book, pick up a hold, request a movie, etc.)

2) *pissed and angry*  I've got a problem with my account.

3) I forgot my card and need to use the internet.

That narrows it down, quite a bit, but everyone generally falls into one of those categories.  You can generally tell the ticked off patrons long before they tell you they are mad at you/the library/the world.

So, when I greeted a patron this afternoon, I was not expecting to get in reply, "Oh, so you do have arms."

Seriously?  Where the hell did that come from?

Me: Hello!  Can I help you?
Patron: Oh, so you do have arms.

What do you say to that?

-- Yup.  Thanks for noticing!
--I was born with them.
--So do you.  What is your point?
--What planet are you from?
--What are you smoking?
--You should probably not be driving right now, sir.

I chose to ignore the comment, check the patron out, and get him out of the building as fast as humanly possible...you know, using my two arms.

So bizarre.  You can't make this stuff up, I swear.

Thrift Shopping

A little reading music, to enhance the experience

I am a long-time fan of thrift shops, flea markets, garage sales, items left on people's lawns with "free" signs taped to them, etc.  My entire house has been furnished this way.  I wouldn't say that I am poor -- I have a full-time job, I'm not getting government assistance of any kind.  I like to call myself one of the "monetarily challenged" members of society.  I work, I pay my bills, but the dollar doesn't go as far as it used to so you have got to save where you can.  Hence, my love of thrift shops and upcycling items.

I scored three great things today!  One of them is so incredibly awesome that I fell in love with it immediately.  We'll save that for last, shall we?  Let the suspense build.

First, I found a cool denim vest/jacket thing at the SPCA thrift store.  Helping animals and getting new clothes -- bonus!  I think it might be for a guy, but it has pockets and is long enough to wear sort of like a tunic (well, on me it is, maybe not on taller folks).  Winning!

 Trying to get a full-length shot with the pockets, and failing

Excellent leather-feeling collar that pops up quite nicely

Next stop was a consignment shop in Hyde Park.  (I think I left consignment shops out of my list of ways I furnished my home.  My bad.  They are fantastic as well, no disrespect intended.)  The two most spectacular finds of the day were scored here.  

First, you should know that I collect nutcrackers.  I have an ever-growing family of them that I put out at Christmas time.  Today, I added a new member to the family:

Isn't she exquisite?

My mother wanted to know why I would want a nutcracker that was dressed like a drag queen.  Say what? Hello, it is obviously the Bride of Frankenstein!  Just look at her hair.

So obvious.

And now, prepare to be overwhelmed by an avalanche of awesomeness!  I fell in love with this little guy immediately!  I snatched him off of the shelf, and I may have been petting him as I continued looking through the store.  He is so fantastically adorable that I don't know how the seller could bear to part with him.

Is he not the cutest little yak you have ever seen? (It was labeled yak, that's how I know.)

OMG so cute and fuzzy!

Right now I have my new yak friend sitting on a shelf in a china cabinet.  I have to find him a safe place to live.  If I leave him out unprotected on a remotely cat-reachable area I know Jazz-kitty will maul him.  She redecorates things on a fairly regular basis.

That is a  good day's hunting.  Where else are you going to find such great things? 

And for those curious -- all together still under $20.  

  

Jazz-kitty: Music Critic

Yesterday was a long day.  Last night found me just winding down, listening to some music while I was baking a cake to take to work today.  Yes, I find baking relaxing.  I don't care if you think that makes me weird.

Anyway, I had Pandora on the Top Hits station, and Taylor Swift's I Knew You Were Trouble came on.  I wasn't paying much attention to it, just had it on in the background.  You know, when you kind of want some music but you don't really care what it is?  That's where I was at.

Jazz-kitty starts bugging out.  Running around like a crazy thing -- into the kitchen, out of the kitchen, into the kitchen, etc.  She does this on a fairly regular basis. Sometimes she is annoyed because I'm not giving her all of my attention, sometimes it is because the weather is nice and she is just hyper.  She freaks out if I have been gone longer than usual at work-- will meet me at the door and then take off running all over.  Sometimes she is just nosy and is watching the neighbors outside in their yards, or the birds, and running from window to window.  My point is this:  there are a lot of reasons Jazz-kitty could be acting like a little spaz.

The Taylor Swift song ends, and she calms right down.

No way!

Could Jazz-kitty seriously have been protesting Taylor Swift?  Has my little cat become a music critic?  I had to investigate.

I go straight to iTunes and buy the song on my phone.  I go into the living room, turn up the volume, and start playing the song on my phone.  Jazz-kitty comes running in from the other room and tries to beat my iPhone senseless.

She really does not like this song.....

I wonder if she hates other songs and I have just never made the correlation before between her bugging out and the music playing?

So I put the phone on Shuffle, and lay it on the couch cushion.  I really don't want her to destroy the phone, but maybe it is the music coming out of the phone itself that she thinks is some sort of a toy.

First song up is Let's Go Crazy by Prince.  No reaction from Jazzy.  Interesting.  I guess the iPhone-as-toy theory has been proven wrong.

Owl City Fireflies?  That has potential -- there are some high pitches in there, maybe that is bothering her ears?  No reaction.

Okay -- no more random shuffle.  Let's narrow this down.

I try a few different female singers and get no response.  She actually laid down when Beyonce was on, like she was getting a little kitty lullaby or something.

I tried Dropkick Murphys thinking the bagpipes might bother her, if nothing else.  Nope.

So I put the Taylor Swift song on again.  Jazz-kitty gets up and starts smacking her paws on the iPhone.  Seriously cat?  It really is just T-Swift you hate?

I went back to iTunes and bought one of her older songs, Love Story, to see if that would have the same effect.  It did not.  Jazzy gave the phone dirty looks, but she didn't attack it.

So I bought that We Are Never Getting Back Together song.  Jazzy was not a fan.  Flipped the phone right over and almost knocked it onto the floor.

Apparently Jazz-kitty is not a Taylor Swift fan, but if she has to listen to the music she prefers the older songs and not her newer work.

Jazz-kitty even took a self-portrait for all of you!  I started the "evil" T-Swift song that freaks her out, and then I switched the phone to camera and reversed it, then put it on the couch.  Jazzy, as we all knew would happen, starts attacking the phone.  My experiment worked, and she kind of took a picture of herself.

What a smart, tech-savvy little girl!

**On the off-chance that Taylor Swift actually ever sees this at some point:  (Highly unlikely, but you never know.)**

Dear Taylor Swift,

Hi there.  

I do not mean to imply in any way that all cats hate your music, or just your newer hits.  

I have two cats -- the other is named Whiz, and she is older and far calmer than Jazzy.  She did not care one way or the other about any of the music I played, and chose to sleep through all of this nonsense.

I just think Jazz-kitty is adorable, and this amused me to no end.  Hopefully other people find it funny as well or I will just come off looking like one of those bat-shit crazy cat ladies.  

Thanks for not suing me into non-existence over this, or writing a song about what an evil person I am.  :)

At a Diner? Really?

Warning: 

There are some obscenities used in this entry.  If that is going to offend your delicate sensibilities, or warp the fragile little mind of a child reading over your shoulder, then I suggest you leave right now.   Consider yourself warned.

So I went out to eat at a local diner tonight.  The people sitting behind and to the right of me were having a very loud conversation the entire time I was there.  From what I heard, they seemed to be on a date -- I'm thinking first, possibly second date.

The part I found the most interesting was that they didn't seem to be eating anything, only drinking.  I'm thinking they had already had a few before I ever arrived and that's why they were talking so loudly -- the diner certainly was not noisy enough for them to be speaking as loudly as they were.

The enlightening conversation seemed to revolve mostly around drinking, what they liked to drink, how much they could drink, etc,; and it was all taking place amidst  a sea of profanities.  If I am saying it was a lot of profanities, you best believe it was a lot of profanities because that normally does not phase me.

Allow me to share a sampling of the dazzling repartee:

Female: What the hell are you drinking?  Oh god, that's fuckin' disgusting!
Male: hahaha  Not it's not!  I like it! huhuhuh
Female: That's like Mexican piss in a bottle.  It's gross.
Male: Maybe I like drinking piss.  hahahaha
Female:  I can't believe you drink fucking Corona.  How can you stomach that shit?

You get the idea.  This lead into a dazzling debate betwixt the two about what was the most piss-tasting beer they had ever had.  I never got to hear her final response.  He settled on Keystone Light, and it tasted like piss but he really liked it.  Not the most resounding endorsement for a beverage.

We were far from over, however.  They changed topics for a while, and I am not sure if they were friends with the waiter or they were just really sloshed and making friends with him.  They were asking him all about his eyeglasses, had he always worn them, were they new.  They really were fixated with his glasses.

Then they switched back to more discussions about alcohol.  I'm referring to this as the I-Can-Drink-You-Under-The-Table-I'm-So-Awesome period.  Really not sure how this is supposed to make one a "catch", unless it is a plus to prove that you have a tendency to get shitfaced in diners and remember nothing else that happens that day/evening.  I suppose that would make you a perfect girlfriend for all the wannabe rapists out there.

I remember this part pretty much verbatim, as she repeated it several times.  He had been waxing poetic about some sort of wine, she just wanted whatever giant wineglass he was describing but she would fill it with rum not wine and drink it all, wine is a pussy drink, blah blah blah.   You get the idea.  Here is the line that stayed with me:

Have you ever had a zombie?  No?  I had 3 of those before  like 12:30 at the Palace.  You aren't even supposed to do that!  That shit isn't legal!

I'm assuming she meant the drink, not that there were actually zombies of the brain-eating variety around.  How is this illegal?  Frowned upon due to the high alcohol content, perhaps.  Even if it was on a Sunday, since it was 12:30 it would be legal -- even 12:30 pm would be okay since it is after noon.  Maybe she isn't legally old enough to be drinking anywhere.  I had no idea as they were sitting behind me.

Finally I'm leaving and get to take a look at them.  I was really thinking it was going to be an older woman, a little rough around the edges.  Maybe a younger woman who just looked like she had done some hard living.

I was so wrong.  Young chick, probably closer to the barely able to legally drink side of things.  And that brings me to my big question of the evening:

When did it become cool to get smashed at a diner?  Did I miss something?  Is this some hipster bullshit?  Diners are generally good for the food, not the alcoholic beverages.  Is this a thing now, or is it just this chick that goes around getting hammered at all of the local diners?

In Which I Try to Sneak Up on Deer

True fact #1: Deer are not scared by a back porch light. They will still raid the bird feeder.

True fact #2: It is hard to sneak up on deer, even in your own back yard. I spent half an hour trying.

True fact #3: It is even harder to get a picture of said deer in the dark.

So once again, the Creepy-Deer-That-Stare-At-You-When-You-Try-And-Fail-To-Take-Their-Picture were back in the yard, raiding the bird feeder.  

This time, however, I was prepared...or so I thought.

As mentioned in my previous entry about the Creepy Deer, last night I decided to leave the back porch light on and see if they would still come and raid the bird feeder.   There were two reasons for this: to see if they would be too scared of the light to come into the yard, and if they did then maybe it would be light enough for me to get a picture.

They were not scared.  In fact, they brought friends!  Tonight it was a posse of four, although I only saw two at the feeder at any given time.

I tried, and failed, once again to take pictures of them from the back bedroom.  Even with the porch light on it was not light enough near the feeder to get a good picture.  My brilliant plan failed.  Using a flash once again yielded only craptastic pictures of my window screen.

I decided to be proactive and go to the deer, since the flash didn't seem to phase them at all.

I slowly opened the back door and crawled out onto the porch as quietly as possible.  I didn't want them to see or hear me and bolt.  

Carefully, I slowly opened the back porch door.  I figured I probably had one good chance at a photo with the flash before they ran.  That part I was right about.  Sadly, I still didn't get a decent picture.

This was my first attempt.  You can still see the snow in the air from when they took off running, and their little glowing eyes in the neighbor's back yard.  (Yes, I was shooting in black & white.  I was hoping the contrast would give me a better result.)

I tried to zoom in on them in the neighbor's yard.  I got 4 sets of glowing eyes.  This is how I know they brought a posse this time.


I did try walking across the yard to get a better picture of them in the neighbor's yard, but to no avail.  They took off running.

And this was the state of my bird feeder.  When I got home from work this evening it was still more than half full.  They emptied it again.

Tonight I will once again try to get a picture of the deer in action, emptying my bird feeder.  I need to come up with a better plan.  Perhaps if I leave a light out next to the bird feeder, making the whole area brighter, then I will have a better chance at getting a photo.

If you have any ideas, let me know!

Creepy Deer

So first there needs to be a little back story here...

About a month ago I was talking to the neighbor that shares my back property line.  He was removing a bunch of trees (which is good because then they won't fall on my garage again!), and I had gone to take a look.

Now, my back yard is tiny.  On the short walk to the back fence I noticed these weird piles of poo in my yard.  It wasn't from a dog or a cat, both of which I have seen wandering through the neighborhood on a fairly regular basis.  It looked too big to be from a squirrel, groundhog or possum, which are the only other animals I have seen.

My neighbor tells me it must be from the deer.  He swears they are here all of the time, hanging out in the yards.  I agreed with him, but I really thought he was wrong.  We live in a little neighborhood between 2 major roadways.  There aren't really any big wooded areas for the deer to hang out in during the day.  They would have to be like commuter deer or something that came from Elsewhere.  I've been here two and a half years and I have never seen a deer in the yard.

Now fast-foward to last night.

It was about 1 in the morning.  I was getting ready to go to bed, turning off the lights and double-checking that I had locked the front and back doors of the house.  It was a clear night, and you could still see everything outside pretty well because it was just a full moon not too long ago,  and all of the snow makes things brighter.

I was in the kitchen, turned off the light, and I was double-checking that I had locked the back door that leads to the back porch.  I happened to look through the door window and through the back porch door into the yard.  I saw this big black shadow in the yard.

OMG!  WTF is in my yard?!

I didn't want to turn on the light and alert whatever was out there that I had seen it.  All I could see was a big shadow and most of it was legs.

I made sure the door was locked, and then I crept around to the back bedroom to get a better view into the yard from the window in there.

There they were, about 6 feet from my back porch: two deer, eating the bird food off of the ground.  Holy crap, my neighbor was telling the truth!

They looked enormous!  It took me a minute to figure it out.  The snow is so hard, because we had a lot of ice and sleet in the last storm, that you don't sink into it at all.  You can walk across my yard without leaving a foot print at this point.  The deer, one in particular, looked so tall because they were standing on a pile of snow!  One was almost as tall as my garage roof!

They were happily muching away, and then the bigger of the two would swing the bird feeder with its head and spill more of the bird food onto the snow.

Well, I had to get my phone to get a picture of this.  Wildlife!  Up close and personal in my yard!

So I made my way back through the house in the dark to get my phone, and snuck back into the bedroom.  Yup, deer are still there.

I thought there was enough light outside to get a picture without using the flash, but it didn't work.  All I got was a black square for my troubles.  Hmm.  Maybe my digital camera would work, if I put it on the black and white setting?  So I went and got that as well.

No dice.

What now?  I decided to try one with the flash.  The deer probably wouldn't really see it or notice, since I was inside and there is a bush  in front of the window to screen me from their sight a bit, right?

Wrong!

The flash goes off, and I end up with a crappy picture of the window screen.

The deer both freeze.

Then, in what seemed like slow motion,  they both look up and turn and stare directly at the window.

I swear, I think they saw me!  It was so creepy!

The three of us were frozen in this weird staring contest for a minute or so, and then they apparently decided I was not a threat and went right back to eating again.

I decided that was enough happy fun time with the creepy deer for one night, and I went to bed.

This morning when I left for work I had to refill the bird feeder.  They emptied the entire thing!

So tonight I am doing an experiment.  I am leaving the light on the back porch on to see if they are brazen enough to come in the yard when the light is on.  If they do I am hoping that the porch light will make it possible to get a picture of them eating all of my bird food.

Isn't this exciting?  Do you feel involved in my weird problems?

Stay tuned for further developments!

In Which I Scare the Hell Out of Myself

Been a while, huh?  I did warn you that I kind of suck at remembering to update.

So here we are, back again.  You might have heard that Nor'Easter Athena was hitting the North East (surprise!) right now.  We didn't get that much snow here, but the wind is still crazy.  I can hear it howling past the sides of my house, and I have to keep a rocking chair propped up against the door on my front porch so it doesn't continually slam open and shut.  I know it is very windy out -- important fact to keep in mind as you read on.

About 2 o'clock this morning it must have gotten very windy.  Jazz-kitty starts bugging out and wakes me up jumping on and off the bed.  I got up, gave her some treats, and hoped she would calm down.  I figured while I was up I might as well take a gander at the back yard and see how much snow we had gotten.

I go out on the back porch, note that there isn't much snow, and then I notice the side door to my garage.

Why the hell is the door wide open?

Now, I had gone out before work that morning to retrieve my shovel and ice melt, but I know I did not leave that door open.  I'm a little OCD about making sure things are secured when I leave a place -- just ask my coworkers.  I know that door was shut.

Remember that it is 2 in the morning.  I'm half asleep.  Rational thoughts are not the ones taking precedence in my brain at this point.  I try to tell myself that it must be the wind that blew it open.  That must be it.  I snuggle back into bed, and just as I start to drift off my brain decides it is time to remind me that it might be a burglar or a homeless person.  Thanks, brain!  Just what I needed to dwell on in the middle of the night.

So I get up again, a little freaked out at this revelation.  I go out on the back porch and look again.  Yup.  Door is still open.  Shit.

Does it occur to me that there are no footprints in the snow, so very little chance anyone has gone in or out since I got home hours earlier?  Nope.  However I do jump to the conclusion that a poor homeless person would have shut the door behind them to keep the relatively warmer air inside, so cross that off the list of horrible scenarios running through my head.  

Now on to the thought of a burglar, rummaging my garage as I stand there in my pajamas on the back porch like an idiot.  That motivated me to get back inside and make sure the back door was securely locked.

WTF do I do now?  No way in hell am I wandering out to the garage in the middle of the night to confront a possible pissed-off burglar.  Yeah, in my mind it morphed into a shady character complete with black ski mask that was pissed because after breaking in he/she realized I had jack shit of any value in the garage, except for maybe my brother's tools.  I'm not going to call the police about this either because I don't want to be the crazy lady who called because the wind blew her garage door open.  No way.  I have to call them enough at work that I don't need them thinking I am a nutcase.

But what if my imaginary, pissed-off burglar is so angry at finding nothing of any value in the garage that they decide to break into the house?  What the hell am I going to do then?  I needed a plan.

So I made sure my purse, my car keys, and my cell phone were all next to my bed.  If anyone tried to get in I could climb out the window and call the police, and drive to safety.  That's a good plan!    I'm so smart!  And then I grabbed the baseball bat just in case I had to beat the living shit out of someone.  Back-up plan.

I finally managed to drift off to sleep around 4 in the morning.  Here is my spectacular thinking on why it was safe to do so:  my neighbors would be up in a couple of hours to get ready for work and shovel if necessary. A smart burglar would want to leave before anyone saw them, so they obviously must have left the garage by now.  That was literally how I convinced myself to get some sleep.

When I woke up this morning and was more lucid, the first thing I did was look at the garage again.  The door was still open, but it looked so much less ominous in the daylight.  It did occur to me then that I was a moron and there were no footprints, just tracks from stray cats, birds, and squirrels. 

 I called my mother and kept her on the phone while I went out to look around and see if anything was missing, just in case an axe-murderer was waiting to get me.  Nothing was missing, no sign of anyone or any furry animal friends having been inside.

And then she tells me, after I got back inside the house, "That happened last week too, during the hurricane while you were at your brother's.  Dad thinks the latch is old and doesn't catch well.  He's planning to put another lock on it this weekend."

........

Seriously?!