Whoopsie!

It's been almost a month since I last posted, if the Blogger list is to be believed.  Clearly, things have been happening around here.

Liiiiiiiiiike, 

A) Thing the Younger is graduating high school this year, and so naturally I have to set aside some 'fret' time each and every day about this momentous life passage that was too quick to arrive.  OK, I don't really do that, but could if I was that sort of person, which I am not, and likely should be more of because things would get done around here, most likely.  We were involved, however, in discussions regarding enrollment and housing choices, both of which have occurred and are paid for.  It's going to be Tarheel country up at our house!

B) There were some birthdays and that whole Mother's Day raft of shenanigans really took the wind out of my sails for several days.  Plus which I got chocolate, so that took priority over writing anything here.

C) I also had to pay rapt attention to the Internet, as it's been a little dicey lately and needs to be monitored.  Closely.  Every day.  Did you know the average Facebook user spends 40 minutes a DAY there?  Slackers.

D) I started to write more than once, but each and every time a puff of wind blew in my face, or a cat wanted in (or out, or both, because, catS), or nobody else was making dinner, or I just coulld expend the energy to open up Blogger and just start in.

E) Also, I spent a fair bit of time working out the plan for my novel, and managed to whittle way some of the really bad ideas to arrive at what I think might be workable, and so got all skittish about writing anything else for fear that activity might push the good ideas out, which as it turns out happened quite naturally over time and it seems at this point like I'm going to have to go re-think my previous thoughts to see if they're still in the 'winning' column of Stuff I Would Like to Read (and therefore write).

F) Oh, and getting Thing 1's cosplay outfits ready for Animazement, which started yesterday, took some time.  I spent a LOT of time avoiding it, because it was going to be hard and I wasn't sure I could do it at all so didn't start because then, in a twisted way, I couldn't eff it up.  It was only when I noticed that HE wasn't starting anything either that we had a little chat about our shared procrastination issues and we dove in.  Things were going pretty well for me until yesterday, when I put the jacket (like, an actual SUIT JACKET!) together all wrong and it was too late to fix it so I wound up PAINTING another jacket approximately the right color and sheen to match what would have been the Perfect Jacket if I hadn't messed it up.  See today's pic above for what was supposed to happen.  I didn't make it that far, though it would have been awesome to have it come together, because we started working on it in January and the pattern and material set me back 80 bucks and C put a LOT of time into fusing the shiny stuff to some beefier material to make suitable (!) suiting fabric.  Oh well.  There are about a hundred ways to interpret this character (as I just found out (INTERNET!)), so I hope that the cosplay will be recognizable and enjoyed.

We DID successfully style the wig and make a Worbla mask and heart for the other cosplay character he's doing, so that's a win.  This is what we were going for:

He also did the whole suit and gloves and tie and shirt thing.  It came together nicely and I cannot WAIT to see pictures.

So, yes, it's been a while and I have NO good reasons why I haven't continued the frenetic pace of blogging I have set thus far this year.   Please accept the above neatly-listed Maytime activities as proof of my continued existence and interest in reaching out to you, the good people of the internet (and sometimes real life).

Happy long weekend!

Tiff out.

Wern-in-natin' the countryside

Ask anyone around these parts why we got a dog last year and most if not all of them would say “we have no idea.  Both Tiff and Biff have stated bluntly that they were never going to get another dog because cats are so much easier and they can just leave for longer periods of time and gallivant and frolic and such without having to worry about some dumb ol’ canine needing to be walked and fed and loved and stuff.”

And it would be true.  Every single syllable.  Once Skeeter Thee Dog passed on, we were freed up significantly to do whatever we wanted to, when we wanted to, for periods of up to 3 whole days at a time without having to call in the kitty-sitter to come refill the food bowls and check for carcasses.  We were footloose and fancy-free, and it was great.  GREAT!!  No dog hair to sweep up, no toys to throw and throw and throw, no schedule to be aware of, just loosey-goosey life, livin’ la vida lazy!

I didn’t realize how good we had it, until we got a puppy.

The most unexpected puppy ever, a puppy that really probably ought to be living with someone else right now.  Someone else who understands dogs, who forgives them their stupidity and messes, who adores their goofy flabbergasting ways.  Who might be able to make sense of what happened yesterday afternoon in the 5 hours or so he was home alone.  Picture it:

I walk in the door at about 4:15, greeted as usual by Wern, who is standing on the couch in the usual position, happy as all get–out to see me, or so it would have appeared if I was utterly blind and had no sense of touch or smell.

The happiness was not FOR me, though, it was for the ‘work’ he’d been up to while on his own.  Work that included jumping ON the kitchen table (he’s never done that before) and eating 2 packets of ketchup, 15-20 Hershey’s kisses (wrapped in festive pastel foil, which I expect to start seeing again any day now), a tube of lip gloss, a tub of tuning slide grease, a (small) bottle of rotor oil, 2 ziploc bags, and a work glove.  In the carnage, he managed to dislodge 10+ CDs from the Ziploc they had been stored in and scatter them all over the floor, knock the (small) pile of mail to the floor, possibly eat some of the mail (can’t be sure, it’s either that or he snacked on some cash-register receipts), and knock a box of sewing pins all.over.the.floor (and carpet, and couch, and under the recliners).

It looked, quite literally, like someone had chucked a lit stick of dynamite into just the right spot to maximize ‘stuff spread’ on the BOOM.

I didn’t react well.

To put it mildly.

Oh sure, I put him outdoors (after slamming the door in his face and without checking his feet or mouth for PINS) so he wouldn’t get in my way (‘stay safe’) while I was cleaning up, and once done cleaning up I called the vet to get their recommendation on what to do (they said ‘go to the emergency room’ and I laughed and laughed).  Sure, I made sure he was safe and secured the incident zone, sure I did, and then I called Biff and asked him where the shotgun was.

I did.

Because #1 – I’d had it with this wild beast and #2 - I do not have, at this time, any money to give to ER vets for our dog.  Not even for an X-ray, because here’s why: there was some mix-up in the HR system at work and mysteriously my withholding allowances went from 0-80 (sort of) sometime in the latter third of the year and as such I owed several thousands of dollars to the Feds which I THOUGHT I was going to use to buy siding for the house after we get the foundation work done in May.  Put it another way: foundation work + tax payout (the former siding!) = almost my entire savings account, with purt’ near no room left over for stupid dog tricks like maybe SWALLOWING PINS and having to pay out mucho dollars to assess the situation.

Well, calling Biff was the right thing to do, because he couldn’t put his fingers right smack on where the shells were for the shotgun.  Not only was he totally non-helpful in my bloodlust, Biff talked me back off the ledge from which I was planning to jumpstart my murderous career and suggested I call our buddy Jen, who knows Things About Animals and is good about putting the tops of upset people’s heads back on when their idiot pets caused it to nearly blow right off.  So, I texted Jen, and Jen said ‘call me,’ so I called, and she talked me down from the radiator next to the ledge back to a reasonably comfortable wing chair in the parlor, advising us to take a path that sounded sensible and level-headed and cheap.  Gosh Jen, I’m glad we crossed paths at a company that shall not be named many years ago – and not only for your ‘don’t be daft about the dog’ attitude.

So, Wern was fed well throughout the evening.  We watched for signs of distress but none came.  No GI effects throughout the night.  This morning he was pacing a bit but I think that’s because I was up at 4:30 a.m. for NO REASON AT ALL and he didn’t get his customary lie-in until 8 a.m. with me and was confused about how to be in the morning, in the dark.  I asked Mason to take him out at lunchtime, and I’m leaving soon to go check on him/let him out/feed him some more/ensure he’s not eaten through the back door and into the garden like some canine Lawnmower Man. 

Because even though he was in mega-jerk dog mode yesterday afternoon and evening, I’d still hate for the big galoot to feel sad or sick or ‘off’ without someone there to help him through what ails him.

Which does NOT mean I’m a ‘dog person,’ yet, but I think it’s one more step down the road to crazytown.

Tiff out.

Lacking temper-ance

The harsh truth is that all too frequently, boredom can be mistaken for contentment, and the urge to move on with can life can be mistaken for complacency.  It is possible to be content and satisfied with what makes up life as you might know it, but not be happy in it or challenged at all by it.  

Take the person who gets in their 8 hours a day at work but never really has anything to say about it.  They go, day in and out, and do what they do, content that they have something to do that doesn't challenge them too awfully much, and come home to the paper and slippers and a hot dinner bubbling in the crock.  They are complacent, content, bland as typing paper. Let them lose their position, and oh my, watch the fireworks start.  At once they are consumed with a fire to find something new, better, bigger, more FUN, perhaps, more of 'something' and much much less of what they had been doing that they thought they were happy with.  This is a dangerous person, for to take away the dulling blankets of contentment and complacency, they can now see the brightness of the world and want to burn in it.  Brilliant opportunities lie scattered all around where once there were nothing but dead ends and a beige sitting room at the end of the day.  Too see what is possible enrages and enchants them, pulls at them until finding their passion becomes the One True Thing, and many will lament at the long years spent believing that chasing after their dreams a folly and a lie.

The barmaid at the Lemon and Stick was such a person.  Only she was different from the blanketed dullard who requires a life shakeup to see clearly.  No, she saw plenty clearly enough what she was missing.  Excitement, for one.  New prospects, for a second.  Someone to listen to her crazy dreams, for a significant third.  The barmaid's current problem was that she was employed in the same small town in which she'd grown up, had never left, and where, it appeared, she would die and moulder.  Once upon a time she had confided in her cousin that she longed to leave Banner Bank, but was nearly instantly rebuffed as a fool to want such a thing as to leave paradise on Earth itself.  Why would she do a thing like that? her cousin asked, as though she's just said she'd wanted to kill her infant brother.  It's so fine here, so perfect, no war, no hate, no fears!  Ugh, and no challenges either, the young barmaid (though she wasn't so at the time, a barmaid that is) had replied, and challenge is what I want.  Some people are just like that, keeping challenge in heart and mind even when circumstances don't permit such a thing.

Years had passed since that conversation, and since that time the barmaid had learned to keep such things to herself.   Nobody wanted to buy a pint from a crazy dreamer, this much is true, and because she needed to earn her own keep now, pulling pints for the folk in town was the best way to at least be close to a chance that she might encounter a stranger who would come and drink at the tavern, or might overhear fishermen had talk of an odd new beast they'd pulled from the sea, or that possibly she'd serve an Escort, if they really existed.

Challenge or not, it was time to open.  She had stocked the clean glasses, checked the kegs, sliced the bread and cubed the cheese, then lastly ran to the kitchen to fetch the cider from the inglenook, where it was almost always cool this time of year.  In a rush, she bumped the table on which the small cow sat (though he knew he was an Ox, with a name besides that!), and rattled it good.

"Sorry," she said to the cow, though naturally she didn't think it would reply.  "I nearly got you that time, did not I?" then ran back to the front, where her regular customers were already assembling.

'Indeed you did, though not nearly enough to unseat me fully.' thought the ox. 'Didn't even wake me up, though that sunbeam certainly done.'  Sunbeams are notorious for awakening slumbering oxen.  Sunbeams are one of the few really good reasons an ox has to wake up, really, so he had to assess blame where it was, in this case, due. 

Despite his reply, though, she couldn't hear him.  Hardly anyone can hear such an ox as him.  She'd need insight and a few more years of training to do that.

Breathe deep the gathering bloom

In North Carolina, there is a fifth season.  It is the shortest of all seasons, but it has significant impact on each and every person within the central and eastern regions in particular.

This, is pollen season.  Pine pollen, to be precise.  And it’s happening right now.

The first time I experienced it was right after I moved to NC (10 YEARS AGO!).  I was just staring out a window at the office and noticed that the air seemed…thick.  Translucent, even.  As though there was a pall of smoke drifting, perhaps a small forest fire was happening, but no, this was different.  And why was my car green at the end of the day rather than its usual white?  That was pollen, all pollen.  Amazing.

Today, as I was driving in to work, I saw an AMAZING manifestation of just how hot for it the pine trees are right now.  The tree circled in the below pic was the hottest of them all, for as I passed it a puff of wind caught its branches and a thick CLOUD of pollen was released into the wild.  It was really very impressive, and I’m sure the sticky tips of all nearby cones are ripening with new life even as I type this.  Just that one outburst alone could likely have populated hundreds of acres of pines if it had been more precisely applied!

Nature is messy.

I now regret leaving the house windows open this morning. 

---

We finally waved the green flag at a foundation company to come shore up the underpinnings of our saggy ol’ house.  Apparently, foundation business is really great right now, as the earliest they could get us on the schedule is 11 May.

One more month of fun-house bouncy floors!  Whee!!

---

I think that because I came in late today I should leave early, don’t you?  There are bad storms coming into the area and I’d like to be home before they start.  A man was killed last night when a storm front came through.  He was struck by lightning in the parking lot of a Michael’s craft store and died later at the hospital.  Scary stuff.  Nobody ever really expects to get struck by lightning and killed, you know?

Also what nobody really expects, but  I saw yesterday:  a car wreck that tore the front off one car and completely bashed in the side of another, in a WALMART PARKING LOT.

Parking. Lot.

How recklessly do you have to drive to get into THAT kind of an accident in a PARKING LOT?

So yes, two things to not expect, both of which can kill you nearly dead (or, all the way, as the unfortunate young man at Michael’s discovered (or didn’t, depending on his state of consciousness.)).  PLENTY of reason for me to go home and hunker down with some HP Lovecraft, wouldn’t you agree?

Tiff out.

Escape artist

This is  a story about a dog.

OUR dog, Wernstrom.

Yay!  A Wern story!

Gather ‘round kiddies, and learn about freedom and what one dog would trade it for.

---

This morning, as I was getting ready to leave for work, I put Wern the dog out in the backyard to get some fresh air and make his last biological deposits to the yard for the morning.  Because our backyard is fenced (and doubly fenced on the side he knows he can jump over!), I didn’t feel it was necessary to watch over him while he was doing his ablutional activities.  The worst he could do would be to chase some birds and maybe dig a(nother) hole.

I had things to do, people!

After putting on the ol’ war paint and combing my hair, I went to fetch the puppy from the yard, having fully expected to hear him pounding at the back door as he does when he realizes he’s outside, alone.  But no pounding had occurred and I was proud of him for being such a big boy and not a big ol’ ‘fraidy cat as has been his MOA forever.

Opened the back door, stepped out onto the deck.  This usually brings him running like a deer, quick like a bunny.  But….no Wern.

“Oh crap, he’s learned to jump the OTHER side of the fence,” thought I.

But he was not in the lot next door.

He must have been gone a while by this point.  Several minutes at least!  He could be anywhere!  A mild panic began to sneak through the OPEN GATE to the driveway!!  Gah!  No jumpy, just a little stroll through the freaking open gate that I didn’t check before I put him out.

Now he SERIOUSLY could be anywhere.  So I  put on my shoes and prepared to take a quick stroll through the neighborhood with a treat in hand to tempt him back home.

It was a really quick walk, as he was nosing around in the front garden, sniffing at the weird-smelling dirt in The World Out Front.  I called his name, he looked at me.  I called more encouragingly, he looked up the street, as if to bolt.

Then I said the magic words:

“Come on in, Wern, let’s get a cookie!”

And like a black bolt of lightning, he raced in the door, a dog with a mission.  His momentary freedom squandered, all for a dried pig’s ear.

Pretty sure he thinks it was a good trade.

---

Tiff out.

Scene, not seen

There is an ox reclining on a turned-leg spindle table next to the inglenook at the Lemon and Stick.

To be more precise, the table, inglenook, and ox are in the back room of the L &S, because the inhabitants of the front room can, on occasion, bump wobbily into things and people and the ox doesn't care for all that hot nonsense, so he stays where it's safer for him.

Oxen are notoriously fussy about their bodies, and the care thereof.

The Lemon and Stick has two main rooms, the pub in front and the kitchen at back.  To one side of the kitchen, pressed against the great stone fireplace, shouldered in next to the warming oven and fuel depot, is the inglenook.  It is the only dependably warm spot on cold days and the only dependably cool one on summer days, when the cooking goes outdoors and the folks of Banner Bank eat from the large pot that hangs over a fire in the pit out back.  Season after season, warm and cool both, the ox reclines, comfortable in his frail skin, content to observe that comes and goes through both front and back doors.

The ox doesn't have a name.  This troubles him, but not to the point of saying anything about it.  To say anything about it would reveal too much about him, and he has had enough revelation in his past to know the comfort of a good long silence.  He can accept namelessness, for in that anonymity his past is kept a secret, though he knows well what he is supposed to be called.

It was a long time ago though when last his name was spoken, those who brought him here don't come around anymore.  The ox espies an afternoon sunbeam creeping across the far lip of the spindle-leg table and decides, for the the fourth time today, to nap and reflect on when next to blink.

Don't be me

Hey y'all.

It is 7 a.m., and I have been run over by a stampeding horde of giant bunnies. 

Which is to say, apparently I have sleep-talked all night long.  The LOML tells me so.

With my hands.

Now, I have felt this happening before - when I fall asleep, my fingers start to twitch and jump like they are trying to convey something.   It's annoying to my bed partner, I'm sure, so I try to keep them digits cornered to make life more tranquil, but lat night, it seems, things were terrifically free range.  FOR HOURS.

The dreams that came with?  Let's just say that my first novel is written.  Oh, it's a good one too.  Full of Stuff I don't yet get, but my hand will tell me in time, I'm sure.


So, happy Tuesday, I hope you are sharp of mind and clear of purpose this morning. It's a good day to question something!

Putting down a stray thought.

Banner Bank wasn't much, at first look to a wanderer.  A few houses, a wide spot of flat earth where a barn was built.  A pub, 5 homes in a cluster with three more up the hillsides, some wisps of smoke.

Banner was three days' walk from the nearest inland hamlet, which wasn't much itself but had a smith and shop, which was something.  Banner was a days' boat ride Northward from the nearest Keep, but that was in good weather, and the seas almost never had that in store except in Sommer.

The Bank on which Banner Bank was set wasn't much to speak of either, but it was enough to keep the Winter spray from the roads and the babies from braving a tumble down its side to get to the water below.  Folds of hills rose from the bank and cradled Banner Bank in velvet hands to shield it from the winds from the East that roared over, creating many interesting cloud formations for the sedentary babies that lived below.

A quiet place of 40 souls or so, who kept tight-knit and shared meals of aspen and fish, of algae and pemmican, of grain and roots.  One pot fed the whole of them, and when from time to time a stray goat of stoat or garblin hit a snare, then they'd feast. 

Not much happened in Banner Bank, a wanderer would say.

-Tiff out.

NOW what?

Fair warning, this is turning into a weather blog, because chit's been crazy around these parts lately what with All the Winter and Suchlike.

No kidding, fully one MONTH of winter.  It's like living in the Arctic, or Connecticut!

So, naturally, after all that winter, comes this forecast for tomorrow:

Y'all.

Y'ALL.

Today = gray and rainy and wet wet wet and cold (again); tomorrow will be, apparently, MAY.

And almost no chance of rain.

<Celebration break> Oooo-WEE!  Happy happy happy dance, move yo' tiny feet!  Happy happy happy dance, to the Springtime beat!  Wooo!!!!!</Celebration break>

It's a though the weather has heard the collective groaning in NC and allowed a 1-day respite, a reversion to what it's almost supposed to be like here at this time of year (normally closer to mid-50's), to tease us and please us before bringing back the rest of the week's weather woes:

• Thursday - high of 50, rainy
• Friday - high of 38, cloudy
• Saturday - high of 53, partly cloudy
• Sunday - high of 60, partly cloudy.

Well, OK.  Friday will be a pure misery, but maybe I can allow my hopeful heart to allow in a speck of positive thinking that the Terrible Month of Winter might finally be leaving town.

Please God, make it so.  Hear my prayer.

NOooOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo!!!!!!!!



Tiff out.

Nature doesn't understand hyperbole.

OK, the last time I posted I was being 'funny.'

No, really.

It was meant to be a humorous look at the way Southerners react to the portend of dire weather conditions, and not AN ACTUAL INVITATION for such direness to show up and stay awhile.

Let me complain:

We got snow.  Many snow.  Many much snows, to heaping proportions.  Like, 6 inches.

If it had be fluffy-bunny snow, it would have been 2 feet.

Alas.

Not fluffy bunny snow here, but CLYDESDALE snow, with tromping clods of slush being flung from on high, so dense that it was, nearly, coming down in already-formed snowballs.

Then, some folks lost power.  We did not, and felt happy.

Then, it started to melt, then froze over.  Nothing good can come of this.

By last Friday, the ice of the morning gave way to a reasonably clear afternoon, so I ventured out to get supplies and to see what and-of-days things were going on since I last glimpsed the bigger world three days before.

Kind of like this...the snowslides

Nothing much had changed, but the size of the puddles.  And the amount of snow sliding off the roof, which, because it was so heavy, completely obliterated the boxwoods out front.

Ka-RASH.  Goodbye, shrubs.

That was the 'good' day.  Then Saturday came, with more precipitation, ice, general horribleness to scare one into a preppers lifestyle at least as far as stocking up on good movies and batteries are concerned.

Today?  FREEZING RAIN.  Temps hovering around freezing, so any trip out would be a real adventure of 'spot the black ice!' before spinning out and over and an embankment, where you'd join several other cars who Also Did Not See It Coming.

All the while, the rain came down.

I think we own lakefront property now, is what I'm hinting at.

And I don't own a pair of boots.

On the upside, it's supposed to be in the upper 50's on Wednesday!  And then Thursday?  35 degrees and RAIN.

We need to go buy some paddles.

Tiff out.

Oh, whar is my fainting couch?

Y'all.

We are supposed to get more snow here tonight.  Third time in a WEEK.  OH, sure, it snows one day and is melted the next, but OH!  Dreadful.

I only half overstate, as it snowed all day yesterday, started really piling up to a massive 2 inches or so.  Funny, but the flakes kept coming but the totals never went as high as it looked like it was supposed to be.  No matter, as the runoff from the roof this morning when temps got back above freezing was pretty impressive.  When I went out for supplies this afternoon it was a chilly 43F, so keep us in your prayers.

It's supposed to snow again tonight.  Between 4 and a million inches.  Forecasts vary, as do enthusiasms.  Kids were out of school nearly all last week, have been out this week, and will likely not return until April, when all threat of snow in the Rockies (the lower elevations) has passed.

We entertain ourselves here as best we can, between storms.  Life can throw some curveballs, but if we can get to the McDonald's for Mint Mocha Chip Frappes at least once a week then everything is OK in our book.

Boy, sure hope this winter is over soon.  I almost had to wear gloves today.

Tiff out.

----

PS - This was originally (2 minutes ago) sent to my family as an overall update of what's going on around the NC regions, and I liked it enough to share with you, mostly people to whom I an NOT, in fact, related.

Everything about this post except the MMCF's at McD's is true.

It's always something

Homeownership:

If it's not one thing, it's another.

If it's not needing a new water heater, it's having to re-side the house.

If it's not being snowed in, it's needing to prop up the entire house's foundation.

If it's not chocolate, it's pralines and cream.

You heard me!

We need a new water heater, a sump system to ensure the crawlspace doesn't flood (AGAIN!  WHO KNEW?!?), new pilings to shore up the 'overspanned' floor joists, and, well, pretty much an entire new sill girder thing that apparently holds up the entire house.

Oh, it's just that thet house might fall in, someday, is all.  No bigs.

Silly me for being concerned about that bouncy floor.  It made all those contractors poke around in our crawlspace and find things they should have just not looked at.  I mean, I KNEW the floors weren't level, but the house is 114 years old, so some amount of sagging was expected.

Our house is super-good at sagging, it appears.

SoooOOOooo, sometime in the not-too-distant future we shall be purchasing a firm set of undergarments for the Tiny House, and she shall be perky as a moderately middle aged lady once more.

All it's going to take is time, and multiple thousands of dollars.

Good thing we have the time.  Have to work on the money angle.

Send help.

Tiff out.

'Stash it!

To-day, because there was a Big Storm headed our way and I was working at home (WAH!), I took my usual lunch break to go run a few errands before all Hades broke loose and we were covered in 10 feet of snow up to our necks and armpits.

Or, the 2 inches of predicted snow fell, along with a nice coating of freezing rain and sleet.

It's the South, y'all.  We can get worked up over much MUCH less winter weather.

So, I toodled up to the gas station to get myself some gas, but instead of just pumping at the pump like one does in this day and age,  I wanted to get maybe a little cash so went indoors to use the debit portion of my card, thinking that 20 bucks in hand for a meteorological Armageddon would be a good idea.

No, I don't know why.

Whatever.

I swiped my card, clicked in my PIN, realized that the gas station don't give OUT no cash back y'all, stashed my card, signed the pad, and went to pump my gas.

And realized that on the 30-foot walk from the register to my car, I'd lost the card.

The card I pay for EVERYTHING with.  The card for which I'd just punched in the PIN, in full view of more than one person because I just wasn't being that careful about the full body shield and such.

That card was GONE.  Not in the regular par of my wallet, not in the other parts of my wallet, not in the OTHER parts of my purse, not in my jacket pockets, not in the car.  It. Was. GONE.

I walked the route twice, hoping to see it, very gratified when a lovely woman in a sharp blue SUV asked me with great concern in her voice if I needed help looking for something.  No, I needed no help, it would be tough to miss a card the color of mine in the short distance from pump to front door.

I figure I was in for a call to the bank.  Report in a possibly stolen card.  Bonus points: the bank is closed for President's Day.  So, yeah, whoever now has my card might have an extra day to purchase things from my account.  I could see the dollars flying past, me grabbing futilely at them while some dark menace sucked them away into its gawping greedy maw.  MY MONEY!

Well, I had one more stop to make, and another way to pay for that purchase, and determined that the first order of business once I got home would be to call the bank's service line and hope they could help me.  As I sat down in Carl (our new van!), something poked my hip.  It made an owie, and I hoped for a moment it wasn't a scorpion or assassin's poison dart.  Knowing, of course, that that owie was more likely something more mundane, I reached to my hip and discovered that....

My pants have pockets and this is where I put the card.

Pants have pockets!  The pants I am wearing today have pockets!  In which I had put my card!

Happy days are here again!!

I, therefore, could stop being suspicious of the guy behind me in line who I was working up to being SURE was a pro pickpocket, could stop fussing mentally about the hassle of having to procure another card and in the meantime having to deal with the bank and alternate methods of payments, could rest easy knowing that full of the fact that I am a dumbass and forgot my pants have pockets, sometimes.

Just another day in the life...

Tiff out.