Not-Sweets for the Not Sweet

It looks like Hick has been served up a dish of just desserts by Even Steven.

You may recall that Hick has been helping neighbor Tommy in his quest to get to town. Not that he expects to get anything out of it in return. Just because he's a people-person and a decent guy.

This past week, Hick stopped by Goodwill and almost had himself a bargain. Goodwill treasures are like scratch-off tickets. What you get is determined by pure luck and timing. Hick wandered around the store, and saw a lady sitting on a couch, holding a fishing reel in one hand, and her phone in the other. It was an old-style reel, perhaps from the 1950s, that he wanted for his Fishing Lair shack. To hear Hick tell it, he continued shopping, and happened across that lady on a couple of aisles. In my mind, I assume it was more of a stalking situation.

"Oh, I see you found a fishing reel. Are you going to get it?"

"It's marked $20. I think I'll take it."

Hick followed her some more encountered her a couple more times, and she still had that reel in her hand, so he gave up and left. I think this was on Monday or Tuesday evening. On Wednesday evening, I laid out Hick's weekly cash allowance, so he would find it on Thursday morning. I used to give it to him on Fridays, but now that his last day of the work week is Thursday, I make sure he has it then. You know, because people like to have a little cash in their pocket at the end of the work week, with a whole weekend four idle days laid out ahead of them.

Thursday evening, Hick came home all excited after stopping by a Goodwill store he frequents near his work town.

"You know those old school desks? I've had my eye on one up by work, but they had it marked $60. That's too much for me. Every time I go in there, I look to see if they still have it. And this evening, they had a sign that said everything was half price. They had a half price sale! I checked my desk, and it was only $30! So I got it. I'm going to put it in The Pony's Sword Shack for now."

"So it's a good thing I gave you your money early."

"Yeah. Or I couldn't have gotten it, and it would probably be gone if I went back."

Here's a picture of it.

AND...on Friday, Hick went back to the local Goodwill, and found the fishing reel that he wanted. It was on a shelf with some golf clubs, and still marked $20.

"I got my fishing reel. I guess that lady decided she didn't want it!"

"She probably only wanted it because you were following her around the store, and she didn't want to set it down and let you have it."

"Maybe. But I got it. For $20. I looked 'em up on eBay, and they're asking $120 at the cheapest. One just sold for $146, and another one is at $180."

So...Hick is getting rich off his junk. Not like he's ever going to sell it, of course. But it makes him happy. Just like he's making Tommy happy by giving him a ride to town so he can save $35 on a cab.

Life is a balance, don't you know...Even Steven keeps a ledger.

Is Honest Abe Trying To Tell Me Something?

Remember the other day when I found that penny in the road? The one that made me think of pennies from heaven? Okay, ALL the pennies I find make me think of pennies from heaven.

 
Anyhoo...I found that penny on my way home last Friday, after I'd stopped by my mom's grave to wish her a belated happy birthday. That's a picture of the same penny I posted earlier, only blurrier. A 2008. Nothing special for my family about that date.

Thursday, I stopped by Orb K to cash in more lottery winners (and of course trade them for new ones). As I was leaving, I found a penny on their dirty-penny-colored tile floor. Of course I picked it up. No picture, though. I left my phone in T-Hoe. So you'll have to believe me. None of that "Pics or it didn't happen" crap like Genius might tell me. Not The Pony, though. He's always pickin' up what I'm layin' down. He'd believe me without question. I put the new-found old penny (this one 1975) with the other one. It wasn't as shiny, but it was just as beat-up as the road Abe.

Friday, I cashed in my newest winners (what can I say, I'm pretty lucky with the scratchers) at Orb K again. No. I didn't find a penny there! What are you trying to do, suspend disbelief? What a freakin' coincidence THAT would have to be, to find a third penny within a week, and right in the same establishment where I'd found one the day before, AND heard one of Mom's special songs there the day before that.

I did look, though. As I left Orb K. I put my eyes to the ground and scoped out the tile and the sidewalk and the parking lot. But that place was as bare of pennies as Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard was of bones.

Val does not put all her eggs in one basket (The Pony used to, and he broke quite a few, swinging it around his head on the way from the chicken pen to the house) where her scratchers are concerned. So I took the cash this time, and headed over to Country Mart. They have two brand new machines that dispense tickets. And even I can figure out the technology needed to touch the screen and select my tickets.

When I pulled into Country Mart's parking lot, I saw that my usual parking space up by the building was taken. TAKEN! But with an actual car parked in it, not like a movie seat at the Paradise Twin with a coat thrown over the back by a gal with a face like a frying pan, big wall of hair.

Besides my first choice slot being occupied, my second choice space in the row behind it was not available, because there was a man painting HANDICAP spaces up by the building, and I would have run over him and/or his equipment to make the turn into that space. I swear, that store must be a stop on The Differently-Abled Grand Tour, because it has at least a dozen handicap spaces. And I hardly ever see anybody in there riding a beeper cart.

Anyhoo...I had to go on past my parking spots, over to the end of the building, where there's another row of 5 spaces, kind of indented due to the angles of the building. I parked there and walked back, past my rightful space, past three of the newly-stenciled bright blue HANDICAP logos and lettering. (I must say they turned out beautifully. I walked through them today, nobody being parked in any of them.)

When I came back out, I was NOT leafing through my new batch of tickets (one of which later turned out to be a $60 winner) to see which numbers they were on the roll. I had two bags (where I had stashed my tickets) and an 8-pack of Diet Coke in my hands. For that reason, I was more aware of my surroundings as I headed to T-Hoe's rear to stow my purchases. I walked back past the stenciler and the minivan that was in my favorite parking space. As I clicked my clicker to unlock T-Hoe and lift the hatch (always have your keys in hand when you leave the store, ladies!) my eyes caught a glint on the pavement.

It was another penny!

Again, I did not have my phone with me. But I bent over. Set down the Diet Coke. Picked up that penny. Thank goodness the minivan shielded the sight of my ample buttocks from the stenciler. I chuckled and said, "I don't believe this!" Because that's what crazy people do, right? When I got in the car, I put on my glasses and saw that this penny, too, was from 1975. It was plenty dirty, but not beat up.

That's three pennies in a week. I'm on a roll! At this rate, I'm going to be a millionaire pretty soon. Though after keeping my eyes to the ground today, I think I might become a cigarette-buttinaire first.

Back-of-the-Book-Blurb Friday #63 "Fifty Grades of Shea"

Blog buddy Sioux is hosting Back-of-the-Book-Blurb Friday. I have 150 words to convince you to fake-buy my fake book. This week, Val dances with the devil and serves up a tale from the dark side. Do you have an appetite for just desserts? Can you stomach a dish best served cold? Are you ready to sink your teeth into Val's latest fake book? Fake-order yours today! The public is going to eat it up!

Fifty Grades of Shea

Headmaster Shea spent 50 years altering test scores, costing 50 rightful valedictorians their titles, scholarships, careers, and lives. Now those brainy, wronged graduates are getting even. No pitchforks and flaming torches for this multi-aged mob. Their revenge has been half a century in planning.

Pet food maven Mable Mablethorpe never married. Her dashed dreams of becoming a leading geneticist led her to the dog-breeding world. She built a pet-food dynasty with platonic friend Butch, a butcher who would have become a surgeon, and Shep, a veterinarian who would have become a doctor. Carnivore Chow supplies all the nutrients that meat-eating pets need, in varying consistencies, from peanut-butter smooth to chunky-crunchy for the behemoths.

Now the trio of spurned valedictorians are hosting a dinner in his honor. Will retired Headmaster Shea taste the horse tranquilizer in his tea? Will pets taste retired Headmaster Shea in their food? (146 words)

__________________________________________________________________

Fake Reviews for Val’s Fake Book

Principal Ed Rooney..."I'd rather have my left leg chewed off by the Bueller's Rottweiler while squeezing through their doggie door than ever fake-read a fake book by Thevictorian again." 

Will Hunting..."I might just be a janitor from Southie who works at MIT, but I'm pretty good with numbers, and I'd say this Thevictorian woman has a negative IQ. How do ya like THEM apples, Thevictorian?" 

Mr. Hand..."We don't take kindly to time-wasting here at Ridgemont High. I will never get back the portion of my life that I wasted while reading this fake book. I shall be showing up at Thevictorian's house this afternoon, to interrupt her orgy of 44 oz Diet Coke and gas station chicken, and even up the score."

Mr. Woodman..."I've seen better writing come out of Mr. Kotter's Sweathogs! This fake book is a real embarrassment."

Miss Fern..."I would give that little brat Rhoda Penmark a penmanship medal AND a writing award before I would give either to Thevictorian. And I daresay that if Claude Daigle was alive today, he would fling himself off the dock at the school picnic and drown, rather than read a single page of this fake book."

Mrs. Othmar..."WAH WAH WAH!" (Translation: That loser Charlie Brown could fake-write a better fake book that this! Even a beagle on top of a doghouse with a manual typewriter could do better! And a little yellow bird, whose only form of writing is a talon print!)

Mrs. Edna Krabbapel, in response to Mrs. Othmar..."You sing it, sister! I daresay Bart Simpson could outshine this Thevictorian woman as well. Even Ralph Wiggums could outdo her, and HE eats paste!" 

Ribs on the Grill at the Whistle Stop Cafe..."The plot of this story is beyond comprehension. WHO would ever think to serve up a human in PET food? This author gets a thumbs down from me. Oh, wait...I don't have any thumbs."

Hannibal Lecter..."I wonder how this pet food would taste with some fava beans and a nice Chianti...I think those Ribs on the Grill at the Whistle Stop Cafe are out of line, and need a swift kick. The plot is absolutely believable." 

Soylent Green..."Wait a minute...you mean to tell me that the PET FOOD IS PEOPLE? Or at least one person? What a twist! Like we couldn't see that coming from a century away."

Tommy's Day Out

Here's a little update on the Tommy situation.

Tommy called our house over the weekend, to see if Hick could give him a ride to Walmart and the grocery store. Hick was carousing around Goodwill at the time, but I gave him the message. He called Tommy and made arrangements to take him on Sunday afternoon, making sure Tommy knows that Hick doesn't mind to take him, but it has to fit into Hick's schedule.

On the way, Hick stopped for gas at the local Casey's. Tommy went in with him, and bought a local paper and a St. Louis Post Dispatch, and a candy bar. They continued to Walmart, and Tommy decided that he could just get everything there, and they could drop the grocery store stop.

Hick said he waited out in the car while Tommy shopped, but that he was in there almost an hour, and Hick had to go to the bathroom, so he went inside, and waited up front on a bench for Tommy to come out. Tommy apologized for taking so long.

"I was looking for the work gloves. I couldn't find them until right at the end. I've been cutting a path through my trees, and I needed some gloves."

"Don't buy work gloves, Tommy. I have a bunch of work gloves that I brought home from work. I'll give you some. Don't spend your money on them."

[Let the record show that it's not like Hick is scamming leather work gloves and profiting from them on the black market. They're white cotton work gloves, like you might use for light gardening, which come in a bundle. Hick uses them while pulling nails out of old wooden pallets or shipping crates, and cleaning up fallen tree limbs, etc. While I would normally look askance at workplace theft, I figure all those 2:00 a.m. calls from the workplace alarm company, and the resulting trips 40 miles to work to meet with the police who responded to the alarm, kind of balance out Hick's sticky fingers. It's not like he gets paid by the hour or is compensated for such aggravation. He's earned a few pairs of cotton work gloves here and there over the past 23 years. And there are other personnel on the call list, who live closer, who don't pick up.]

"I don't know what to do with all those limbs I've been trimming. They're just in a pile for now."

"Don't worry about the brush. I'll bring my tractor over and get it."

"A man called and offered to cut my trees if he could keep the wood, in exchange for giving me a truck. But he said there was somebody else's name on the title, so I said no."

"That's a good thing, Tommy. You don't want to get messed up with a bad title."

"I would like to get a car sometime."

This is where I think maybe Hick was mistaken in the facts he told me previously. Seems like Tommy has had a driver's license before, and has driven when his mom had a vehicle, even though she never drove. He also said that one time he worked in fast food.

Hick says that sometime, he's going to go over and ask Tommy if he wants to ride to Goodwill. Whether to shop or just get out for a while, it doesn't matter.

Anyhoo...Hick asked Tommy if he ever saw my cat, Snuggles. Tommy said she used to come around, and then she didn't anymore. He also said that he'd been looking at old photo albums, and had a picture of him and his mom with the neighbor girls one Christmas, when they brought over some cookies.

Guess who's on the Chex Mix list now.

Somehow, Things Seem Connected

The time has come, the Valrus said
To talk of many things
Of writer's blocks, and evening walks
And blog posts that such brings
Of how a dream just might affect
Songs the radio sings

I got nothin', folks! No ideas. My standby topic is behaving himself, finding no great treasures, accidentally murdering no livestock, and not offering me impossible dreams. I'm on my own, and the page looks bleak. I'm killing time before the sun sets enough for my evening walk, and I got nothin'. So I'm treating you to some random amateur dream analysis.

Monday night (actually very early Tuesday morning) I had a detailed dream about being on a family vacation. My mom and dad were both in this dream. I rarely dream of them together. But it was a family vacation, at a theme park kind of like Silver Dollar City. Kind of folksy, not a lot of rides. It was mainly MY family. Not Hick. I don't recall the boys being there either. But my adult niece was.

Anyhoo...in this dream, we were getting ready to leave and head home. It was a long drive. I needed to get back to my room to change clothes and pack. But nobody in this dream would tell me how to get to my room. [Let the record show that in real life, I am terrible about directions. I can't picture where things are in relation to other things. I got lost one time in a Dillard's store at Battlefield Mall in Springfield, Missouri, because it was arranged on a spiral or circular kind of floor plan, and had mirrors everywhere, and I kept walking laps around it until my friend found me...or I might still be there, a spinster, thin as a twig, but with great endurance.]

In this dream, I told dream Mom and dream Dad that I didn't want to make everybody late, and dream Dad kind of grunted in the way he had, a man of few words, and made it clear that I BETTER NOT make everyone late. Still, nobody told me how to get to my room.

I woke up remembering all the details. I knew what clothes I was wearing, the colors of the stripes on my tank top, the texture of the surface of the roof that I climbed on in my dream, looking for the way to my room. In this dream, there were two motel complexes, and nobody told me which one I was in. So I climbed a long ramp not meant for people, and stopped short of hoisting myself over a rough, sparkly, tan asphalt ledge to look for my room.

In my dream, I next went to the nicer of the new motels, after painfully hiking back down that ramp, my knees sore. I walked through several dining rooms full of people who seemed to be from a group of Amish or Mennonite people. They acted as if I was an intruder. I wound around through there to a dead end, trying to find my room, thinking how did I even get there, since I clearly don't drive on the highway. And that once I found my room and changed into my jeans, I would ask my niece to ride with me, and she would probably drive for me on the highway.

Then I woke up. The most disconcerting part was that I figured if I was supposed to be going on a trip with dream Mom and dream Dad...well...I know where THEY are now, and it's not someplace I'm in a hurry to go! Unless I'm headed further south, which would also not be a pleasant thought.

I was thinking about this dream on the way to town. You know how they are, so clear in your mind after you wake up. Thinking, thinking, rather than taking time to grab my dream book to look up stuff about it. Anyhoo...I was in one of those states where you just kind of drive automatically. I got out to the county lettered highway, going through the motions, with no memory of driving those three miles to get there.

I was still dwelling on this dream as I turned onto the parking lot of Orb K to cash in a winning scratch-off ticket. A song started up on the radio.

"Holes in the Floor of Heaven." By Steve Wariner.

Funny how I just blogged about it the other day. Of course I sat in the car and listened until it was over. I sent a text to The Pony to tell him it made me think of him. He was in class, learning about Renaissance church art.

Funny how I got myself in the car at the right time, with the radio on the right station to hear that song.

The Magnanimous Mr. Hick

He's a chameleon, that Hick! A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, stuffed in an old pickle jar, rolled up in Grandma's handmade quilt, packed in a steamer trunk, and awaiting the highest bidder at the auction.

Monday I made a trip to Walmart. Hick knew I was going. He's off now on Mondays, you know. I have suggested that on one of them, we might make a trip to the closest casino. My treat, of course. I DO have a $15 food credit that will buy us each a delicious hamburger there. I had mentioned it on Saturday or Sunday, knowing that this Monday was not feasible, because Hick had a doctor's appointment in his workplace town at 1:30.

Anyhoo...Hick knew I was going to Walmart over in Bill-Paying Town, because I asked what treats he might want from there, them having some different snacks that our usual Walmart. He asked for some individual packs of lemon sandwich cookies. They're probably all the rage with diabetics these days, right after the clandestine Casey's donuts.

I left my phone in T-Hoe this time. Not intentionally. But it was just as well, because I don't take in my purse, and that phone in my pocket pulls my pants down when I walk. I probably need to get some new pants. Anyhoo...I came out of Walmart at 11:30 and saw that I'd missed a text from Hick.

"If you want to run to Casino this afternoon we can you just have to ride to Doctor with me"

Huh. That was SO not going to happen. Yes, the doctor was on the way to the casino. But I had no desire to sit around in a urologist's office, even with that casino carrot dangling at the end of the stick. Besides, it was 11:00 when Hick sent the text. He KNEW that I was in Bill-Paying Town. A trip which takes me 45 minutes minimum one way. AND he would need 45 minutes from home to get to his appointment on time. There was no way I was going to make it home and put away groceries and find my casino card and gambling money in time for him to leave for the doctor. Besides, I'd already spent money on my scratch-off tickets that I would have given HIM for casino purposes.

I guess it's the thought that counts. Even though I think he only offered to get credit for offering, knowing full well that I would have to say no.

Sometimes, Hick is like those Sour Patch Kids. First he's sour...then he's sweet.

Let's Hope Hick Never Takes Such Good Care of ME!

Way back in April, I posted a photo of our last batch of chicks that hatched shortly after Hick returned from his trip to Sweden. It was an afterthought to the story about HOS (Hick's Oldest Son) taking care of that hen while Hick was gone. (Let the record show that HOS had a $100 winner on one of his lottery tickets that I gave him as thanks.)

Anyhoo...here's the picture.

At the time, Hick thought we had six new chicks. Turns out there were actually nine, he just couldn't see them under the hen.

Hick takes really good care of his chicks. The feathered kind. He had them put up in the goat shed, with a board nailed up to keep other critters out. When they got a little bigger, he moved them to one of the old rabbit hutches, where he always keeps the chicks. We haven't had any for a while, because we're down to only a handful of chickens, due to the appetite of the neighbor dogs. Or maybe the appetite of my Sweet, Sweet Juno for eggs.

Anyhoo...yesterday he let the chicks out. They're about a third grown. Not as big as Hick hoped, after seeing the new neighbors behind us, whose chicks hatched later and are now bigger than ours. I told him that they wouldn't grow as big, penned up like that. So he decided that they're big enough to take out of the hutch.

One problem with previous chicks was that they'd get in the goat and mini pony's water bucket and drown. So Hick put a stick down in it, at an angle, so if a chick falls in, it can hopefully get on the stick and hop its way out of the pail.

Hick kept an eye on the chicks all day. The hen chases them away, he says, because she's sitting again. So they're pretty much left to their own devices. They scatter around, cheeping, pecking at the chicken feed the squirrels haven't finished from the night before, or a crust of bread that Hick tossed them at lunch time, and then run under the chicken house that none of the chickens really like to sleep in, preferring to roost in the tree limbs hanging over it.

Hick mowed the BARn field for a while. Then he worked on his Railroad Car Shed, painting parts of the outside. He mowed a little of the front yard. Mainly just puttered around, doing what he does best, fiddling with this and that, not finishing anything at one time. He kept a close eye on his chicks, in case the neighbor dogs showed up, or our very own Jack decided to sample them. Jack has not been raised around chicks, only the full size chickens. He chases them for sport, despite being chastised when he's seen, but has never bitten or killed one. At times, it even looks like he's herding them back to their chicken house area.

I was putting my shoes on for my evening walk yesterday evening when Hick came in the front door.

"You know my chicks I've been taking such good care of? Now there's only eight."

"Oh! Did the dogs get one? Did JACK get one? I know how he is. We might need to put the shock collar on him again, like when--"

"I ran over one with the lawnmower."

"NOOOO!"

"It was quick."

"A white one or a black one?"

"A white one."

"You couldn't see a WHITE CHICK? They practically glow, they're so bright!"

"Actually, I didn't see it at all. Until later. When I came back from parking the lawnmower. I thought, 'What's that on the gravel?' And it was a chick. It was flat. Its guts were coming out its butt."

"Okay! Enough with the details! Which tire did you run over it with?"

"Like I said, I didn't know I did. Them dogs might have got it. And THEN I ran over it."

"Sure, put the blame somewhere else!"

"Yeah. I didn't see any teethmarks on it."

They hatched right after Hick got back from Sweden at the beginning of April. He's been fussing over them ever since. Now...I guess he can do 1/9 less fussing.

Let's hope Hick never takes such good care of ME!