Hick Tossed His Cookies in SilverRedO

Hick must have been feeling a mite peckish at the auction the other night. He did not stop at buying Fruit and Nut Mix. He also bought COOKIES!

 

Surely you don't think I'd put off eating COOKIES until after I got a picture, do you? They didn't photograph very well in the bag anyway. The bag is the size of a bag that Triscuits are in, inside the box. I DID manage to get a picture before I scarfed down a serving of them. Oh, don't think these are the whole serving! I put some in a ramekin that I use for sauces. Not a giant ramekin that Hick gave me for pennies.

 

I can make out a hippo, a giraffe biting its own less-than-ample rumpus, an ape of some sort, a lion, and what I THINK is a contorted elephant. But only because I think I see a trunk.

 

The cookies are quite tasty. Crunchy, with a slight lemony flavor. Standard animal cookie flavor. My favorite way to eat animal cookies is with a dab of strawberry jam. I don't have any, and that grape jelly in a plastic squeeze bottle with an expiration date of 2010 OR 2018 is not something that I'm willing to try.

 

I am concerned that Hick has been overdosing on animal cookies. He mentioned last night that he still has 7 bags left, in the back (seat) of SilverRedO.

 

"Only 7? I thought you said you bought a case!"

 

"I did!"

 

"Aren't there 12 in a case?"

 

"Oh. Are there? I think there might have been 10. Uh. I have a bag on the front seat of the truck, that I've been eating. I gave one to you. And I gave one to my buddy up at the lockers. So there are7 left. Or maybe 9. I'm not sure..."

 

A likely story. Oh, Hick also bought another food, but you won't be seeing it here, or my description of the taste. He bought CAT FOOD. For a cat to eat. Not food made from cats. He actually sent me a text that night he bought it.

 

"Got 2 bags of cat food $8.00 a bag its $18 at the store"

 

"I hope it's not from China and will kill the dogs."

[Remember a few years back when that happened? Not my dogs, but pets in general. And also counterfeit Colgate toothpaste, I think, though I don't remember it killing anybody.]

 

"It wont its good stuff" 

[Said Hick, as if he'd taken a bite of it himself for approval before purchase.]

Funny how Hick has been driving around with animal cookies in SilverRedO, yet he put the Fruit and Nut Mix in the BARn.

While the Ponytail Guy's Away, the Auction Gets Hick's Pay

Hick said the Ponytail Guy won't be bringing any FREE food for a couple of weeks. I forget why. Maybe there's a funding problem. I didn't really listen. Like a dog only hearing its name, or TREAT, or GO FOR A RIDE... I hear Hick's soliloquies like he's Charlie Brown's teacher. 

Anyhoo... I guess Hick had the Ponytail Guy on his mind. Or at least bargain food. Because he went wild at the auction last week. HICK GONE WILD! Nobody wants to see THAT video! I didn't even know what he'd been up to until Hick said, "I got you some fruit mix."

Huh. That is not very descriptive. It could mean a box of assorted fruits in their skins. Cans or individual cups of fruit salad. Some sort of powder to flavor fruits. When pressed for more info, Hick described it kind of like my Save A Lot trail mix with bananas, raisins, almonds, cranberries, cashews, papaya, and pineapple.

THEN he left a bag on the kitchen counter, and I understood. 

 

I took it down to my lair (disregard the tax files stack), planning to put it in the zip-sealing Trail Mix bag, which is almost empty. It looks pretty good in the bag.

 

 

I expected the contents to be more firm, like my Trail Mix. Upon opening, and tasting, of course, I found them to be soft. Even the nuts don't have much crunch, but the nuts are ENGLISH WALNUTS! I like those. I'm not looking forward to getting a shell that might be contained. But since I pour it out into a ramekin, I will see a shell before I chomp on it.

 

Gotta admit, I'm not crazy about it. I think it would be tasty if mixed into a muffin! Not that I'm going to great effort to try that. If I have a packet of Martha White Muffin Mix, I might add some. Or buy some of the Apple Cinnamon flavor, if Martha makes that. OH! Or I could get some instant oatmeal, and add it to that! Yeah. I'll find a use for Hick's Auction Mix. 

 

I don't recall the details, but he said he has a lot of bags of it, over in the BARn.

Girls Don't Make A$$es of Hicks Who Need Glasses

Remember on Christmas Eve day, when Hick fell down in the driveway and bashed his face and skinned his glasses? He'd been getting by wearing his old glasses until he could see about getting his scraped lens fixed.

"Wouldn't you know it! It's the lens on my GOOD eye!"

Yes. You might recall that Hick does not have vision, other than light and dark shadows, in his left eye, due to a fireworks incident when he was 14. But of course the lens he needs would be the one that got skinned up. Just like dropping a piece of buttered toast results in the buttered side landing down, Hick's fall left him on his buttered face, rather than the unbuttered back of his head.

Seeing Hick wearing his old glasses was a bit disconcerting. His old glasses look amazingly like MY old glasses. I know they weren't mine, because mine were laying right there on the end table in their open case, as usual. I don't know WHY he got frames like mine back then. Just a plain dark-blue frame, nothing fancy. Not like Sally Jessie Raphael red glasses, or the giant plate-glass windows worn by Dustin Hoffman as "Tootsie."

Anyhoo... once the holiday weekend was over, Hick went to the optical store inside Walmart, where he got his newest glasses, after declaring how his old place charged way too much. Of course Hick had a story to tell when he got back.

"That girl is crazy! I asked if they could grind the scratches out of my lens, and how much it would be. Or if I needed a whole new lens. She said they could probably grind it, and that it would be $80. I said that I could get NEW lenses put in my frames for that much! She said, 'Well, they're bifocals, and they're the color-changing lenses...so it will be $40 per lens.'

 

I told her I only have ONE lens that is scratched! And she said, 'They need to grind both of them, or the color and prescription might be slightly different.' I told her, 'Lady, I can only see out of one eye! I don't care what they look like! It won't affect my vision at all!' So she went to talk to someone, and then said they could just do the one lens."

Heh, heh! You've gotta get up pretty early in the morning, or stay up all night, to put one over on Hick! Even with one eye, he can see through a scam.

The Journey of a 5th-Year Future Pennyillionaire Fortune-Seeker Begins With Two Single CENTS

There you go! I gave it away in the headline this time! You don't have to read about my penny-finding exploits. You can see how many I gathered, glance at the pictures, and move on to somebody who writes an interesting blog every single day, weekends included, since 2011 (here) and 2005 (my supersecret blog).

 

TUESDAY, January 5, I was forced to park out in No-Val's-Land at Country Mart. All the spaces up along the building were full. They were meant to be full, I realized, as I walked in from my unfavored parking space, and almost stepped on a PENNY! Left there just for me! 

 

 

I apologize to the man who came up behind me, having left home with no intention of being ample-rumpused by a crazy Val photographing pennies.

 

 It was a face-down 2010, looking all rustic in its close-up.

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FRIDAY, January 8, I stepped into the liquor store to buy a new scratcher for The Pony. I couldn't get it at the Gas Station Chicken Store, because I'd bought a $60 winner there the day before. [Let the record show that The Pony won $50 on the one I bought him this day.]

 

 

I only got one picture, since this face-down 2019 pretty penny was so far under the counter. I hope the guy I ample-rumpused here was not the same one from Tuesday at Country Mart!

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2021 is off to a good start for this ol' penny-picker! That's 2 PENNIES, for 2 CENTS this week, going into the dessert-dish goblet and the running tally!

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2021 RUNNING TOTAL

Penny       # 1, 2.
Dime         still at 0.
Nickel       still at 0.
Quarter    still at 0.

2020 TOTALS
Penny     134
Dime        25
Nickel      10
Quarter      1
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Val, (If Only) He Hardly Knew Ye

Hick has been less than helpful around the house for the past couple months. You'd think he'd have time to take care of his own home during the winter weekends, when there's less business at his Storage Unit Store. Not many people want to stroll around in freezing temps, to walk into dim, unheated storage units to look for bargains. I guess Hick has a crowd of cronies who show up, to lift the doors of their own units, and stand around shooting the bull. Still. That only takes up half the day on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

 

You know how Hick is such a DO-GOODER for people he barely knows. Driving them to the hospital for treatment every week, inspecting homes and property they want to buy, purchasing Goodwill toys for their otherly-abled offspring, driving a VIRUS patient to the bank... Hick really can't help enough if it's a person who is not family.

 

If I ask Hick to inspect or repair something, he gives me the runaround!

 

"I wish the doorknob on the this garage door would work! I either smash my head into the door, or yank my arm out of the socket. It turns, but it doesn't unlatch."

 

"Let me set this Santa down, and I'll look at it. Huh. Seems like it's not pulling back the bolt when it turns."

 

"So that's it? Where are you going?"

 

"I'm moving these Santas."

 

"Surely you would know how to fix something like a doorknob..."

 

I might as well have been talking to the doorknob about fixing Hick!

 

"The light under here is burned out. I can only see half of the stove. This side is dead."

 

"Huh."

 

Of course it's the side I cook on all the time. But no offer from Hick to get a bulb. I guess I'm supposed to figure that out on my own. Or start a small grease fire for brightness.

 

"Hey! Whatever happened to that little emery board I had laying on this table? Every time I try to use it, I can't find it. I left it right here, by my glasses case, where I could find it."

 

"Oh. It's over here. [Hick unreclined, and leaned forward to dig under some papers on the mantel.] It's MINE, anyway. It came in that envelope to me. The one you asked why was a politician sending me a letter."

 

"You don't even use an emery board! A lot of good it's doing over there."

 

T-Hoe is going downhill faster than Robert Redford in a skiing movie. During the snow and ice the other day, I put him into AUTO. Just out of 2WD, so he would automatically latch into 4WD if I went into a skid. Coming home, the roads were clear, so I turned the dial from AUTO back to 2WD. The indicator light didn't change. It stayed on AUTO. Not only that, but a new message popped up on the dash: SERVICE FOUR WHEEL DRIVE.

"Hey, T-Hoe says to SERVICE FOUR WHEEL DRIVE. That's the third message that plays over and over. Service Suspension System, Service Park Assist, and now this. I had it in AUTO during the snow, and now it won't come out of it."

"Huh."

"Aren't you going to look at it? Or take it to your buddy? It's WINTER! I might need to drive on snow."

"Try taking it out again next time you drive it. That might fix it."

With all the assistance I was getting, I knew better than to mention T-Hoe's tires again. You know how they need a little more air during cold weather. Mine are supposed to have 35 psi, and they had 24-26. I noticed, because ANOTHER message came up: CHECK RIGHT REAR TIRE PRESSURE. With a little symbol of a flat tire. 

I just did it myself at the Gas Station Chicken Store. In the chill wind, standing on my head, ample-rumpusing a couple with a barking dog who were parked in the handicap space with their hood open. I actually did a pretty good job, not knowing how much was going in. When I started T-Hoe again, the magical reporty thingy said they were 36, 34, 34, 36. Close enough!

The other stuff is out of my expertise level. I'm not sure how to shame Hick into re-assuming his random chores. I probably should have held off a FOURTH day before mixing that cherry-pie-filling yogurt that he likes. With the excuse that I had a hangnail, and hurt my arm on the garage doorknob yanking, and wrenched my back when T-Hoe jerked into 4WD.

A Twisted O. HICKery Short Story

Hick supplied a couple of Christmas gifts this year, by way of his Storage Unit Store inventory. Stuff he'd bought at auction, that he thought would be good for resale. They WERE! He sold them to US! For me to pay him some of the Christmas money.

Anyhoo... the Hick presents included a set of two pocket knives in a gift box, and a set of five kitchen knives in a box with a magnetic flap closure. 

I already mentioned how my sister the ex-mayor's wife stabbed her thumb using the pocket knife we gave the ex-mayor, while she was cutting a plastic tie on a purse handle for her granddaughter.

Hick stopped by their house yesterday to pick up my dad's drill press that Ex-Mayor had taken shortly after my mom died. He didn't want it any more. I guess he's doing spring cleaning. Of course he knew the fastest way to get rid of an awkward item... Now it's come to live at Hick's Home For Unwanted Inherited Tools.

Anyhoo... while Hick was at their house chatting, the Ex-Mayor was making some lunch in the kitchen, using one of Sis's new knives. HE CUT HIMSELF!

Seriously! I had no idea that they couldn't use knives when we gave them the gifts! I didn't think we'd have to add a warning that KNIVES ARE SHARP AND MAY CUT THROUGH SKIN. 

Let's just gloss over the fact that we were the purveyors of the implements Sis and Ex-Mayor used to maim themselves. Let's instead consider the irony...

Ex-Mayor loaned Sis his pocket knife, and she stabbed her thumb, so she can't hold her kitchen knives to slice foods.

Sis loaned Ex-Mayor her kitchen knife, and he cut his finger and can't grip his pocket knife.

Sometimes, these O. HICKery stories write themselves...

These Young Whippersnappers Don't Know How To Post Office

It shouldn't be that hard for a Genius to mail a letter. Not even a letter! Just some winning scratcher tickets. It's not rocket science. Or maybe it should be, for him to understand.

Every week I send Genius a letter. I tuck two scratchers into the envelope. When he has a winner, he saves them until enough accumulate that he decides he wants to cash them in. He can't exactly take a Missouri lottery ticket into a Pennsylvania convenience store to cash it. So he sends them back to me, and I send him a check. Which he promptly takes a picture of and deposits it somehow through thin air, into his bank account that does not have a brick and mortar building.

Anyhoo... Genius phoned me shortly after Christmas, to say that he is NOT hurting for immediate money, but that he was going to mail back the tickets, and I could reimburse him after I got them.

"Okay. Are there a lot of them? Make sure you put on enough postage. I can get two sheets of paper, and two scratchers, in the envelope before it is overweight."

"WHAT? What do you mean by that? If I have to mail something, I just put it in an envelope and slap on a stamp."

"Uh... hasn't anything ever come back to you with POSTAGE DUE stamped on the envelope?"

"No."

"One year, my TAX RETURN came back! I guess I had too many forms in it that year. Boy, was I ever shocked to step out on the porch of my $17,000 house, and find my own handwriting on the envelope addressed to the Internal Revenue Service! Good thing I didn't wait to mail it on April 15!"

"So you have to add another stamp? What do you do, go around WEIGHING your mail???"

"I used to take it into the main post office, before all this mask crap and only two people allowed in the lobby at once. I'd take it to the counter, say I thought it felt heavy, and they'd weigh it. I think it would cost an extra 17 cents, which I'd pay, and they'd rubber-stamp it, or put a generic post office stamp thingy on it next to mine. Lately, I just put on two stamps if I know for sure it's too heavy. If I have more than two pieces of paper, and two scratchers inside."

"I was just going to put all mine in an envelope and mail them. With a stamp. But there are too many to fit in one envelope."

"You could put in four, probably, for one stamp. And mail me one envelope each week."

"WHAT? Why would I do THAT? I don't want to look like some crazy stalker, sending an envelope every week!"

"Uh... that's what I do, send you a letter every week..."

"Well. I just take my stuff down to the mail room of my apartment building, and give it to them to send out. I don't want to look like a weirdo! So I guess I'll split up the tickets so they fit, and then put two stamps on each envelope. It's not like I have a shortage of stamps! I still have all those Madonna and Child stamps, that I hope didn't offend my Muslim co-worker when I sent out some stickers to everybody on my work team!"

Let the record show that Genius and his roommate both work from home, on different techy kinds of jobs for different companies. So it's no hardship for one to run out during business hours to buy stamps. But Genius likes to delegate responsibilities, and sent Friend on the stamp errand. Seems like the post office was all out of stamps, except for the Madonna and Child version. I think they have a LOT of them.

Tuesday, I got FOUR envelopes from Genius.

 

I think I'll let him know that the mailman must think I have a crazy stalker. And that I'm pretty sure my office will be safe from evil activity for a while, as I store these envelopes to cash in the scratcher winners as needed.