I have to call a phone number tonight to see if I have to report for jury duty tomorrow. Joy! Why do these things happen when there’s already 800 things going on? I’m all about being civic-minded and being responsible, and lord knows, when I was on that jury when I lived in St. Louis, I was not only an excellent juror (elected forewoman to boot, always an over-achiever, I’ll blog it at some point…), I take the process extremely seriously. Maybe because of my deep-seated fear I will be accused of a crime I didn’t commit and there won’t be a handy-dandy CSI team to clear up the mistake in under an hour. And, let me tell you, the idea of “jury of your peers” is a scary one. Three jurors fell asleep during our jury trial (granted, they’d turned the a/c off, in July, in St. Louis, but still!), and the guy seated by me had just barely cleared the IQ test to stay in the mainstream classroom. At least that was the only explanation I was left with, because he was so stupid I wanted to punch him in the face. Behavior unbefitting a jury forewoman, so I refrained.

So, no, I don’t want the general masses holding my fate in my hands while they rush to end early so they can get home to the doublewide and catch the latest episode of Smackdown. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my services will NOT be required. Otherwise, I have to cancel multiple appointments, and work from home at night.

I did rather enjoy the photo they have on the website, making jury duty look worthwhile and exciting. SELL it, baby!

(Note the man trying to stay awake by grabbing the bridge of his nose. (I do that trick myself!) These people need an ad agency! Let’s make jury duty sexy! Or at least as riveting as an hour of “24“…..)

Truly, and we’ve heard it for years, decades even, it’s not a good idea to grocery shop when you’re hungry. I knew this, and still – went anyway. I needed to pick up buns (we were having brats for dinner), a vegetable, and fries.

When I got to the store, I’d already sat in a huge line at the CVS drive-thru, staring at the Volvo-driving woman who’d cut me off two miles earlier & lo & behold, here she’d reappeared to sit in front of me at the drive through, life’s little ironies, and she didn’t understand that these days, you don’t have to sign on credit cards at the pharmacy if, like, the amount’s under $1,000, so she just sat in the lane for seven more minutes until I think someone finally told her to leave. I was also tired from my day of coughing fits & well, you know, a day of work. So I added some additional qualifiers to the life lesson of not grocery shopping while hungry: Don’t shop when you’re tired, sick, and filled with self-pity. Because it will go something like this: you will sail right by things you need. You double back. You grow even more tired and filled with self-pity, and this cycle continues so that by the time it’s frozen-food-aisle time, your ability to pick and choose with any semblance of logic or needs-based thinking is absolutely shot to hell. Plus you’re hungry. Seriously, I came |this| close to buying the party-sized box of cheddar jalapeno poppers. And had they been filled with cream cheese? It wouldn’t have even been a debate. As it was, I got three kinds of french fries (they were on sale!), two cartons of ice cream (no sugar added & extra churned! and on sale!), and then two boxes of asian appetizer thingies (on sale!) because I wanted to rip open the box and gnaw on them Right! This! Minute!

Which totally would’ve made me the crazy lady at the grocery store. There’s always one. If only I’d been wearing my pajamas.

Whenever I think about what I could blog about lately, it all feels like a gigantic WHINE. I’m still coughing from this crap drizzling down the back of my throat, I’m still kvetching through post-dad-death stuff, my computer at work is selectively deciding what it WILL and WON’T do for me, and then throughout it all, there’s crazy non-stop knitting. I suppose if I got a little more motivation (and wasn’t dragging-ass tired every night from coughing/lack of sleep/more coughing/bitching/kvetching and whining) I could take some pictures and show that indeed, I continue to progress on the Bayerische socks, that in the time I’ve done 16 rows (on each sock – always always do I knit socks two at a time), I’ve started & finished a pair of socks out of Tiny Toes yarn, procured last fall on the Wedding Trip across Iowa. I’ve also made one baby item, with another one needing to be finished, for the lovely new bambino Sammy. But you can’t have pictures of that until they’ve been gifted!

As far as the Anger Management tour goes (that’s how I think of it in my head) – I’ve had some serious rage-aholic times the past few months, and I’m trying to stop myself when it feels like my head is going to explode right off my body in a Monty-Python-esque skit. I was challenged the other day at lunch, when our waitress disappeared and never refilled my drink or really, brought the check until she finally noticed the laser beams shooting out of my eyes. I almost had to use those laser beams on the jackasses sitting near us who had their phones on “high ring” and kept getting calls all through lunch. And then the jackass (same lunch hour) that cut me off in traffic and proceeded to slow down/speed up and basically make me crazy as we went for a Starbucks.
Like I said, it’s getting better, but I still have some challenging days, when I want to rip off the offender’s hands and beat them with them, violate their corpse and RUIN YOU! AH AH AH! (this is a reference to the SNL Barry Gibb Talk Show skit. I find it helps to channel Jimmy Fallon in times of extreme rage.)

In other news, hopefully more interesting than me being a big fat raging whiner, JWo has begun full-on garden preparation. He is going to plant seeds tonight, and has all sorts of little plants growing in our breezeway under the grow lights. I do get a thrill seeing the tomato plants, because they signify that great moment in time when we can abandon grocery-store produce, for even the cherry or grape tomatoes this time of year are sadly lacking that tart-sweet acidity and full flavor that only comes from the garden.

Oh, and I discovered this weekend my neice makes picklesicles. She actually takes pickle juice & freezes it in a popsicle mold. A quick Google of this shows she is not alone. None of us are, no matter how much we think we are, sometimes!!!

There truly is nothing like starting your day with your annual well-woman exam. I had mine today, bright & early, and everything went fine. I just always hear the song “Back in the Saddle” when I get into those stirrups….

I felt like I was reaching middle-age, because I took my little notebook in and had a whole list of things to run through/check off. It was a good thing I had my list, because the office was in a STATE OF CHAOS. Apparently the lab phlebotomist’s last day was yesterday, and the lab was supposed to send over a NEW phlebotomist (and I love to use the word phlebotomist, just so ya know) but they weren’t there yet? And so the doctors’ nurses had to do the blood draws, but the one doctor (the one who was snooty and mean to me once, and who has signs all over advertising that she can give you Botox, that woman, the one I’ll never go to unless I have a four-foot spear piercing my torso & coming out the other side, she is JUST that much of a bitch), yeah, that doctor’s nurse? She doesn’t DRAW blood. (I am so not surprised.) So my doctor’s nurse was doing all the blood draws, and my doctor came out to get me & did all the nurse-type stuff like measure me, take my temp, etc.

So that was good, because we actually got more time to run through my list and whatnot, and get me my prescriptions and thingermabobbers before I went off to get my blood drawn, and there was a phlebotomist on the scene! But this phlebotomist was not going to be the regular phlebotomist, she will be training the new phlebotomist, and I was disappointed because this girl? Could draw blood like nobody’s business. I praised her. I didn’t even require she use a baby needle, which is my usual m.o. ever since the crack-addict phlebotomist went crazy on my arm several years ago and I almost passed out when I took a gander at what she was doing. Nobody should see medical instruments jabbering around UNDER YOUR SKIN. I’m just saying. In case you, junior phlebotomist-wannabe, are studying up on your skeelz and want a free tip from Blogland. It’s just not a good idea.

(I know for a fact my husband is curled into the fetal position from having read this blog. Sorry, honey. JWo not so much on the needles. I’m brave. And proud, like dog show.)

And the rest of the day has FLOWN. But I don’t recommend starting out in the stirrups every day. (Unless that’s your thing…hey….. we’re non-judgemental here.)