The Do-Gooder Gets Given

Hick had a customer at his SUS2.5 (Storage Unit Store 2.5) last weekend, looking for collectible stuff like old gas station memorabilia. Hick has some signs on the wall of his shop, but the good stuff he has at home, over in the BARn. Customer asked Hick if he had any old gas pumps. Hick said,

"No, but I know a guy who does. He don't have a shop, but I know he has a gas pump, and sells stuff like that."

Hick gave Customer the guy's phone number, and didn't think anything more about it. A few days ago, The Seller gave Hick $200.

"What's that for?"

"Thanks for sending me that Customer. He bought $4,000 worth of my stuff, and here's your 5% for sending him my way."

"I don't need that! I just knew you sold that stuff, and had what he was looking for."

"No, take it. Me and my wife talked it over, and I never would have sold it if you hadn't told that Customer about me. We think it's only fair that you should have it."

So Hick took his "commission," and they both were happy.

"The guy said he sold the gas pump for $1,500. And also a big Texaco sign. Of course I have my big Shell sign on the front of the BARn, and other stuff like that. But I don't want people coming out here to look, and this guy sells out of his home."

Hick has many irons in many fires.

Those Wacky Elderlies With a Hotline to Hick

If this was the olden days, before cell phones, when landlines ruled the earth... Hick would have a special phone. Red, perhaps. At least with a flashing red light, and extra-loud ring. He's on-call, you know, 24/7/365. At the beck and call of his elderlies. No desire is too large or too small. Hick is their lifeline.

Tuesday night, it was after 8:00 when Hick's phone rang. I thought it might be one of his storage unit buddies.

"Yeah. I still have it. No, not yet. It's getting late right now. But I will. On Wednesday, or maybe Thursday. Yes. I'll let you know."

"What was THAT all about. Don't tell me it was one of your old ladies..."

"Actually, she's one of the younger ones there."

"What's broken that she needs you to fix RIGHT NOW?"

"Nothing's broken. She's been wanting to buy the couch in my office. I said I'd ask my boss about it. But he ain't been around for a couple days, and then we had the city meeting this morning, and I forgot."

"You don't really NEED a couch in your office, do you?"

"No. I ain't in the office much when I'm there. But I don't know if I can just sell it to her. I'll have to ask if I can, for how much, and what to do with the money."

"Yeah. That's really something that needs to be done on a Tuesday night after 8:00!"

Hick needs to set up some kind of round-the-clock entertainment for the elderlies! Something to keep them occupied, without breaking stuff, and keep their mind off of things that require Hick to cater to them.

Val Sees the Light and the Menu

T-Hoe has still not received an oil change, but Hick DID bring home a light for the kitchen. Of course it was the wrong light and didn't fit. He had just bought it at Lowe's. Then he decided to go down to the basement and see what he had there. Which was a light that fit! So he put it in. Took ten minutes, including trying the wrong one, and the trip to the basement.

Hick also brought in the Senior Center menu that had been out in his truck since Thursday. It looks like a tasty week.

MONDAY

Ham & Turkey Cheese Sub

Pasta Salad

Crackers

Lemon Cake OR Fruit Cocktail

(Hick ate this day, and said it was good. That the Pasta Salad was noodles with peppers.)

TUESDAY

"S'Mores for Seniors Party"

Grilled Hot Dogs w/Trimmings

Potato Salad

Pork & Beans

Soda

S'Mores & Cookies

(Hick ate this day. Said there was no Soda, and no S'Mores, and the buns were cold, like they'd been in the freezer. Hick just wanted warm buns. Didn't care about the Soda or S'Mores. He said the lady who runs it was out sick with pneumonia, and he just wants her to be okay.)

WEDNESDAY

Biscuits & Gravy

Sausage & Eggs

Hash Browns

OJ

Cinnamon Roll

(Hick plans to eat lunch this day. It's one of his favorites, although they don't give enough gravy.)

THURSDAY

Salmon Patties OR Tuna Sandwich

White Cjeddar Mac & Cheese

7 Layer Salad 

Strawberry Earthquake Cake OR Fruit

(Hick will eat this meal, too. He likes the Strawberry Earthquake Cake.)

FRIDAY

Reuben Sandwich

Southwest Salad

Cucumbers & Tomatoes

Variety of Desserts

(THIS IS MY DAY!!! Hick better bring me a Reuben! They've never had Cucumbers & Tomatoes, no matter how often it's on the menu. I hope it's not those dang wax beans that I dislike.)

Let the record show that without my "new" light, I wouldn't have been able to see to read this menu!

Two Days Forward and One Day Back

Progress is slow with the healing of my rumpus. At least there seems to be progress. I made it to town on Friday and Saturday. It was painful, and I took my cane to use at the Gas Station Chicken Store. There was a cart/walker available at the store, which helped greatly. As did the 4x a day ibuprofen, and the 4x a day acetaminophen. 

Sunday my shooting pain was kept at bay until around noon. I had plans to go to town again, but then a sudden bout of sideways rain and trees trying to uproot themselves changed my mind. No way was I going to try and hobble through that mess, or risk a tree falling on T-Hoe. I sent Hick a text asking him to bring my four crossword scratchers, but it had not yet arrived in his phone when he came through the door 90 minutes early. Saying, "Huh. You must have had quite a storm here."

Anyhoo... Hick offered to go back to town a couple hours later to get my tickets, but I told him there was not enough time to scratch them before Big Brother came on TV at 7:00. I didn't want them after that. It's an afternoon/evening thing, not a nighttime thing.

Hick made the last of his BBQ pulled pork meals. After Big Brother and some weird house shows, Hick went to bed. I went to the kitchen to make soup. It's easy enough. Just open a can and heat, with a slice of bread on the side. It was generic chunky soup, Steak and Potato flavor. With a slice of Honey Wheat bread on the side. It was good enough, and didn't stress my rumpus. I put it in a big cup, and used my special spoon. It doesn't match our set of silverware. It's a bit smaller, and more pointy. Hick brought it home in his lunchbox long ago. One of his co-workers' wives it probably to this day wondering where her spoon went.

Anyhoo... when Hick had come home, I mentioned that later I would try to bag up the trash. You know, thinking that maybe it would occur to him to be a DO-GOODER and say he could bag it for me. Nope. At 11:45 p.m. I was bagging that trash. It hurt a bit to bend over and LIFT the bag out of the wastebasket. We use the big black trash bags with the drawstring, and a tall wastebasket. First I threw away the paper plate that had held my bread and acted as a placemat for my cup of soup. I tied up the trash bag, set it at the end of the counter where Hick would trip over it, and put the cup in the sink with water in it, for washing the next morning.

That's when I noticed my special spoon was MISSING! What in the Hot-Heaven? Where was my special spoon? Oh, no! I had put it on the paper plate, so it didn't clink in the empty cup. I hadn't noticed it under the paper towel on top of the plate. 

MY SPECIAL SPOON WAS IN THE BAGGED-UP TRASH!

Well. You know what had to be done. I untied the trash bag, and leaned over, almost standing on my head, to dig for my special spoon. It took about five minutes, and the reactivation of my shooting rumpus/leg pain to find it. But I rescued it, by cracky!

It's always something.

Val and the Giant Lemon

It's no secret that Val enjoys the juice of a fresh lemon in her evening Shasta Zero Sugar Cola as she sits scratching scratchers. She picks up a bag of 8-10 lemons at 10Box. They're cheaper than buying individually, but you get what you get. Sometimes there's a rotten one in that bag if you're not careful and take a whiff before buying. The holey bag has clear portions so you can get a partial view, but you can't see every side of each lemon. 

Sometimes the store is out of my preferred bag of lemons. Then I gather 2-3 singles and fight to open one of those clingy produce bags. Sometimes there's a different bag of lemons. Three pounds rather than two, with a knit mesh kind of side on the bag. I have bought them twice. Not a fan.

My preferred lemons fit the squeezer just right. Cut them in half, pick out the seeds, then squeeze into my red Solo cup, add soda, add ice. These lemons have lots of seeds! One time I counted 28! Yet one time I had a bag with NO SEEDS at all! Anyhoo... I like these lemons. Sometimes I'll use a whole one, sometimes I'll save half in a little container for the next evening.

My most recent lemons are frightening. They're behemoths! Or belemonths!

They don't fit in the squeezer. They must be cut into quarters, and they still don't quite fit without manipulation. They have a reasonable amount of seeds. But I can't roll them to squish out the juice before cutting them. They are too firm to roll under my palm. If I really try to force it, I lose the juice upon first slice. The skin is so thick that I feel like 2/3 of my purchase money goes to that dead weight, and 1/3 to actual juice.

Still, I'd rather have lemon in my Shasta Zero Sugar Cola than not. No matter what kind of lemons life gives me.

Hick Can't Resist the Call of His Gals

Hick was kicked back in his recliner Friday night, after a hot day of working at his SUS2.5, stopping by the post office and bank for me, shooting the bull with his buddies, and taking a dip in POOLIO. He was waiting for me to drag myself around the kitchen with my hurt rumpus, and get out of the way so he could make his own supper. 

It wasn't THAT hard, because he just had to open a storebought container of BBQ pulled pork, put some in a bowl to microwave, then slop it on a couple of hamburger buns. Oh, and get a dill pickle spear from a jar, and some Ruffles chips from the bag. Still, it's something that I usually do for him, but I was EXHAUSTED after making a trip to town and buying the buns. My rumpus was quite unforgiving.

At 6:30, Hick's phone rang. I didn't quite get the gist of it, except Hick kept repeating, "I'll be there Monday."

"Who was that? What are you doing Monday?"

"It's one of the old ladies at the apartments. She says her air conditioner isn't working. I told her we'd have to get somebody to fix it, and I'd be there Monday."

"She could DIE! Old people die all the time in this heat, in brick buildings! It's going to be in the 90s again all weekend."

"She has a fan. She kept saying, 'Well, I guess I'll just sit here and sweat by my fan.' And I thought, well, okay, you do that. I don't know what she wanted me to say. So I kept telling her I'd be there Monday to deal with it."

"I'm not sure that's enough. Doesn't she have people she can stay with? Family?"

"She can go sit in the lobby on that floor. It's air-conditioned. She don't even have to leave the building. I can't work on an air conditioner. I have to call the heating and cooling people."

"I guess that WOULD be hard to get somebody on a Friday night or weekend."

At 7:00, just as I called him into the kitchen as I was trying to sit down at the table with scratchers, Hick's phone rang again. He got up, and said he had to go to town.

"That was a lady at the apartments. She's locked herself out."

"I thought you were going to put a drop box there with a key."

"I AM, but I haven't had time to put it on the wall. So I'll go let her in."

It takes 20 minutes to get to the apartments. 20 minutes back. I was expecting Hick to be home around 7:50. His bedtime is usually around 8:00! Plus, he still needed to make his supper. Time dragged on. I figured maybe he had stopped to pick up fast food. At 8:25, Hick returned. With nothing.

"That was a long time just to unlock a door. I hope the AC Lady didn't see you there!"

"Oh, she did. I gave her another fan that we had there. I told her she should open up her windows and let some air in. It's cool right now. And I said she should go sit in the lobby if she's hot. That's where the Key Lady was waiting for me. She said it was plenty cool. I don't know if she will or not."

"Then another lady came out and started complaining about the little lady who just moved in. Said she has a mouth on her, and won't shut up, and has been knocking on doors, begging people for food."

"That's not your job! They're taking advantage of you!"

"Yeah. I ain't gettin' involved in that stuff. I want to say, 'If you can't get along, then maybe one of you should move somewhere else.' But I DID see that Little Lady getting a roll of toilet paper from one of her neighbors. So she might be a pest, asking for stuff. I don't think she's got nothin'. I might ask the cooks to give her some of those frozen meals they give people for the weekends. So she will at least not go hungry."

"This is the first of the month! And she's already out of money?"

"I don't know. She give me $700 for the rent. I'll see if they know somebody who can help her."

"So you went to town to unlock a door, but you also had two other ladies to deal with?"

"Yeah. I looked back at the old guy's notes, and he was charging them a $100 unlock fee if he had to go open their door. I'm not gonna charge anyone for that, but I need to get my key box done."

For the record, I'm still not keen on Hick having this job...

Still in the Dark, But a Glimmer of Light at the End of the Rumpus Tunnel

Hick came home Thursday afternoon without a light bulb. He forgot. He SAID the menu for the Senior Center was out in his truck. Prompting me to say, "Oh, I'll run right out and get it!" My rumpus declined. Funny how Hick went back out to bring in some soda, and STILL didn't bring in that menu. 

My rumpus was not acting up quite so badly. I'd estimate it was at 90% of the previous day's pain. As long as I stayed bent over, grasping any furniture or wall within reach, I could slowly navigate my hillbilly mansion without the breathtaking shooting pain. The foot numbness was still there, though.

When I lay down for my 20-minute nap, I was able to stay on my left side! That was NOT an option the day before, when the only relief I could find was on my back, with a fist jammed under my left rumpus cheek, and my neck bent sideways. This time, I lasted 10 minutes on my side, and could lie on my back with the rumpus unpropped. I even stretched another 10 minutes out of that position, until Hick came in from POOLIO and made noise taking a shower.

The Universe must have some kind of plan in the works. Hick had actually sent me a text from town, asking if I wanted him to bring anything home. Yes. Four crossword scratchers. Normally, I would get them from two different places. Hick got them all at the Sis-Town Casey's. Numbers 43, 44, 45, 46.

Number 43 - LOSER

Number 44 - LOSER

Number 45 - WON $10

Number 46 - WON $50

Heh, heh! You know that irritated Hick! He so rarely buys a winner, but has been trying since winning $40 a week ago. He has since put that money back into tickets, and it is gone. Now he has brought me a nice profit, while I sit home on a damaged rumpus.

You can keep Val's rumpus out of town, but you can't keep the luck out of Val's rumpus.