Odds & Ends

I have just about had it. I’ve been getting shit non-stop from the truck drivers for Chica no longer being here. Look, she had three months to know the difference between limestone and gravel. Sedimentary and igneous, remember from Earth Science? She had three months to realize that the crushing plants are stationary, so if a certain material is coming off a conveyor one day, it will sure as hell be in the same place the next day, so there was no reason to ask me every fucking day where the chips were because they were in the same damn place!

I think they miss her chalupas.

My brother-in-law is mad at me. He’s been bugging me for jalapenos, and being the nice person I am, I came through for him. WITH the caveat that it had been a pretty warm summer, so the peppers were on the warm side. I mean, damn, I have to wear latex gloves to clean the things. Being the manly former Marine that he is, though, he bit into a whole one. Tears immediately begin streaming down his face. Old Sarge cleans the seeds out for him, and he takes another bite. By now, my BIL is turning beet red, eyes running, coughing- it takes him 6 beers to put the fire out. And I’m the asshole. Ah well, I made amends by bringing him jalapeno poppers, which definitely show my peppers’ softer, gentler side.

The laundry room has been in desperate need of a good cleaning. I am so lucky to have a first floor laundry, but as crowded as we have been, it’s been catching the overflow. This weekend I was sorting through golf bags, Carhartt’s and dust bunnies. I found buried underneath some coveralls a decrepit old pair of tennis shoes. They were in such bad shape, cracked, ripped, stained red in several places. I brought them in to Old Sarge and said, “Honey, is there another place I can put these?”
He looks at them long and hard, and says, “No, I’m done with it.”
“Are you sure? I can take them upstairs.”
“No, it’s okay. It’s done.”

After the explosion at Khobar Towers, Old Sarge’s feet were pretty torn up from all the glass and debris. These were the shoes he wore afterwards.