After the Love

Driving home late last night I caught a glimpse of something sad in the alley. There, next to the dumpster, was a sure sign that the romance has disappeared for one of my neighbors.

There it was. A valentine's teddy bear, thrown away like garbage.

But not even like garbage... I mean garbage at least makes it into the trash can!!! The owner of this bear must've been so over the teddy-bear-giver that she couldn't even bother to lift the lid...and make the effort to get the discarded love-token actually into the dumpster. So there it sits... next to the dumpster. Beat up and dirtied, waiting for a dog to come by and pee on it.

It inspired me to write a poem... a haiku if you will... in honor of this sad site:

Next to the Dumpster

She must hate his guts

Tossed away with pure disdain

Teddy bear trash heap

Reality From The Road

I just spent 5 days driving from San Diego to St Louis and here are a few things I've learned from the experience:

1. Winds can be so bad that a semi truck can literally be bent in two by it in Arizona.

2. Storm chasers are real!!! I saw one - a very interesting vehicle looking like a home-made tank headed north in Kansas!

3. Men wear overalls in other parts of the country. I saw a lot of them. On men that were not wearing them for style or fashion points.

4. It is acceptable in Oklahoma to drive with a cigarette hanging from your mouth and a roll of toilet paper in your hand.

5. Dirt and Trucks go hand in hand. I saw so many red-dirk covered trucks out of Texas and Oklahoma it was insane. Not just a little dust, mind you, but full on mud and dirt covered in chunks all over the truck.

6. Miss America 1981 was born in Elk City, Oklahoma. It's true.

7. Kansas is "The Wheat State" and 1 Kansas farmer feeds 129 people.

8. Those California Cheese ads with the cows out grazing in the fields that are just soooo happy they're in California now - they are a big fat lie. The dairy farms in California (ahem, Land-o-Lakes in Hemet I'm talking to you) are big squares of dirt with a million cows per square inch. It's revolting. On the other hand... Angus beef in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas - huge spans of grassy fields dotted with cows here and there. Now THOSE are happy cows.

9. Phoenix has radar guns with cameras attached all over their freeways. So... either don't speed or wear a hat and glasses and pull the shade down.

10. Texas has some seriously fancy rest areas. You could practically live at one.

11. Toilet seat covers in public bathrooms - not something you find in every state! Gross, I know. So it is important to master the hover technique.

12. The most obnoxious baseball fan at a game will always sit right behind you screaming in a way that you think may damage you permanently. True in San Diego. True in Phoenix. True in Kansas City. I would like to find out if it is true in every single baseball stadium.

13. "Cracker Barrel" is code for "lots of butter."

14. Joe Mauer is huge. Ginormous. Billy Butler is not a small guy - and Joe next to him made him look like a little kid.

15. We are being ripped off in California for gas. $3.10 here is $2.62 in other parts of the country.

16. Speaking of country... if you like country music (and you know I do)... you are in luck driving cross-country! Most of the time there was a great country radio station available (or 5 or 6) even in the middle of nowhere! If you like other music... well... you may not be so lucky.

17. Garth Brooks is popular even though he has been retired... what... 10 years? He has a road named after him in Oklahoma. And a freeway exit. And he sings from the Jumbo Screen at the KC Royals games - "Friends In Low Places" a song that was played as the last song at my Jr. Prom. So... a long time ago.

18. Rudy's BBQ - get the brisket. Eat there whenever you see one. OH, and Braum's ice cream - get the black walnut. Eat there whenever you see one. Enough said.

19. New Mexico has a lot of trains. I saw 7 in one day. None made it into a photograph. Ha ha hahahah.... I'm so funny.

20. The Missouri River is wide... and kind of dirty looking.

Dent Art

There are a lot of fancy cars in the parking lot at work. A lot of regular cars too and one very vehicle that draws my attention like no other...

It's a minivan. White. Pretty basic. Tinted windows. Has an SDSU sticker on the back window.

And it has a big ol' dent on the left side rear behind the passenger door kind of over the back left tire.

It's a really odd place for a dent. I mean, it's not like he backed into something and smashed the car's tail light or something. It's not like he scratched the side of the door when he opened it too close to something. It's weird. It almost looks like a bowling ball was on a pendulum and swung into the side of the car to create the dent.

But more weird than the dent's location is that the dent has been... decorated... so to speak. There are four letters in gold stencil painting, like they were spray painted into the dent. Permanently, because they never go away even when it rains. D V N O see:

It's Dent Art. Seriously. DVNO. What do you think that means? It's so bizarre!!!

The driver, by the way, not so rough on the eyes, although he was probably in kindergarten when I was in high school... but I digress...

Guy with the Dent Art.... WHAT THE HECK? Stop by my office and let me know what the DVNO is all about! You take a plain white minivan to a whole new level.

A Letter To My Neighbor

Dear neighbor in my very urban neighborhood,

While I am a morning person, I prefer the soft sound of a cat quietly yawning at my feet as a wake up call and not the ear-splitting ridiculous call of your rooster just an alley away from my open bedroom window.

I know it is shocking, but I do not want to be awake at 5am on the weekends... or even on the weekdays for that matter, and your lovely bird seems to have the lungs of a giant, able to crow for several hours straight all morning!

Silly me, living in the heart of one of the biggest cities in the United States, I didn't realize that Normal Heights was prime farming land where a rooster would be necessary!!! The cement had me fooled.

Don't get me wrong, I love roosters. Seriously, I love to eat chicken. Fowl is my favorite meat and chicken is my favorite fowl and I consider roosters to be of the same yummy edible quality as regular old chickens. My big black cat, he loves chicken too. We are big time fans of chick-fil-a. Yum yum good.

Also, did you know that the freeway is a wee one block away from us? It would not be difficult to imagine how an escaped rooster could wander into traffic. So... be careful!!! Maybe you should send him away to your uncle's sister-in-law's cousin's nephew in... say... Jamul? Just to be on the safe side of course.

Sincerely,
Suzy

Lamb Butt

So I was shopping in the grocery store the other day. VONS - a regular store, not some funky-crazy-specialty store. Minding my business, in the dairy section, looking for a little "you can't believe it's not butter" butter, when I saw something shocking.

So shocking that I picked it up to look closer.

So shocking that I started laughing hysterically in the middle of the store.

So shocking that I ripped open my purse and yanked out my camera and took a picture.

What could be so shocking you ask?

Butter...

sculptures...

that's right.... SCULPTURES...

in the shape of a lamb!!!!! A LAMB!

Seriously. What are you going to do with this? Put it on the table for Easter? A little kid would cry over this when you hack off a little buttery lamb butt to put on your roll. Or worse, when you decapitate it to butter-up your mashed potatoes. Lamb shaped butter. Who thinks of these things? They're creepy, these lambed-shaped butter sculptures.

They are a baaaa-d thing.