You're Doing It Wrong

[Isn’t the first rule of blogging: don’t write about what you had for breakfast?]

I tend to eat the same thing for breakfast over and over and over. For years. This means the stuff I eat on work days. Weekend eating is a whole different story. I eat the same thing until I am sick and tired of it and have to come up with some new thing to eat until I hate it. Not a great system, I’ll admit, but this is how I’m doing it.

One of my first major breakfasts, back in the 80’s, was a bran muffin, an apple, and a Tiger’s Milk bar. This was a time in my life when the size of my butt was an ongoing issue (well, you know, my size all over) and I eventually gave up the Tiger bar.

When I moved up here my breakfast was a bagel and a banana for eons. Then I graduated to variations of cereal and smoothie. When I was a vegetarian I made smoothies with tofu and protein powders and fruit and my favorite cereal was Grape-nuts. At some point I developed the notion that I was eating too many wheat products so I switched to muesli. Also yogurt was easier to deal with than smoothie making. So I had muesli and yogurt and fruit. Recently I changed the muesli to granola.

I’ve been getting sick of this breakfast for awhile now. I’m finished with bananas. I don’t want to even see bananas and yogurt mingling in the same grocery bag.

Not last weekend but the weekend before we had tons of fresh berries in the house so I unwisely ate berries, yogurt and granola every day for about 10-12 days in a row which has pushed me to the edge. I have no idea what to switch to next. Maybe an Egg McMuffin. HA!.

Do you ever have those mornings where you’re driving to work and you wonder if you finished getting ready? You vaguely remember brushing your teeth or putting on your underwear but you feel like you need to check.

Invention #1 – If a car or truck’s turn signal remains on for more than 60 seconds the car or truck will start saying in an annoying robotic voice: “Turn indicator time frame has exceeded maximum. Manual shut off now.”

I used to have a folder that I carried with me everywhere that had all my “to do” stuff in it. I haven’t been able to find it for a couple weeks now. When I first noticed it was gone I kept thinking, it’ll turn up. It just got stuck somewhere. But now I’m not so sure. Maybe someone stole it. I hope he or she is getting all that stuff done.

Invention #2 – An teleportation device so when someone’s pet poops in your yard the poop will instantly reappear on their lawn. If they don’t have a lawn, on their kitchen table.

What are the bases these days? Like when I was a girl, first base was kissing and second base was getting felt up above the waist and so on. Have the bases changed? Who’s in charge of that?

I barely read the comics any more. The only ones I read on any sort of regular basis are For Better or Worse and Get Fuzzy. This weekend I sent my mom and sister an email with the subject line: Elizabeth and Anthony Hooked Up. (RE: FBOFW) You could see this coming for awhile but I was really rooting for hot helicopter pilot.

Invention #3 – a freeway merger. Sort of like when you go to the car wash, your car would click in and the cars already on the freeway would be clicked in and the merger would quickly, smoothly and efficiently merge everyone so that the on-ramp didn’t get all backed up.

Bob thought it would be funny if we went to a bookstore this evening and said we wanted to buy Middlemarch. Should I be juvenile and admit that I already read all the spoilers online? (For historical purposes I’ll mention it’s Harry Potter VII day and also that as I write this it is before the official release time and Wikipedia has the whole summary up. What a world.)

We just talked to our neighbor and more info on the big crash. It wasn’t a motorcycle, it was an SUV and the driver ran away from the scene. Our neighbor heard it and went down there and when he saw the carnage he rang the doorbell of the house. After a long while a lady opened the door and said, “Are you the driver?”

He’s standing there in his jammies with bedhead and he says, “No, I’m not the driver.”

He looked in the car to find the driver but didn’t see anyone. Then he started looking around in the bushes. The first cop arrived and said, “Are you the driver?” and he said, “No, I’m not the driver. I’m looking for the driver.”

They looked around and then the firetruck came and they have some sort of thermal search device (How James Bond, I had no idea your everyday down the street emergency crew had stuff like that.) and finally, the lady from across the street came out and said, “By the way, after the accident, the driver ran that way.”

Our neighbor hadn’t heard anything else but since the other neighbor heard he was taken away in handcuffs, my guess is that they tracked him down. Unrelated but on the same day, on the other side of town, there was a big standoff with a gunman and SWAT teams, etc. Not a regular occurrence around here and the local news is gummed up with that and nothing about Mr. Speedie who missed the turn and crashed through landscaping and rolled over a poor innocent parked car.

The photo is from the men’s room at the office. Apparently there is a room other than the bathroom part that is the “sprinkler room.” I still think it’s funny.

Last night Bob went to bed really early and crashed hard. When I went to bed he was sleeping on my side.

“Hey Hon, you’re on my side,” I said.

From the way he grunted without even twitching a muscle, I knew he couldn’t be moved. I crawled in on his side favoring the middle and crashed hard myself.

I vaguely remember waking in the night and I was still mostly in the middle but Bob had gotten up and crawled back in on his side and was hugging the edge.

When I woke in the morning I was totally on my side and he was gone.

I think it’s funny that people pick a side and stick with it. (I’m assuming this is true, any couples out there regularly switch sides?) And it feels funny to be on his side. Like if I wasn’t so tired I might not fall asleep.

I don’t know what to do with myself this afternoon. We ran some errands this morning. I’d like to putter in the yard but it’s raining a little too hard for that. I don’t mind a drizzle but this is heavier than a drizzle. It’s not like I don’t have a million other things to do.

The carnage was still there when I got home tonight so I went down to take photos. I could not see the full damage to the car this morning so my jaw hit the ground when I saw this.

A police car drove up right then and the resident was sitting on the porch but I was too embarrassed to ask questions. Another neighbor said he heard the guy was taken away in handcuffs. Wow.

Most of my photos turned out blurry. I’m the worst photographer ever. Here’s the view from our street. You can see the rock wall ruined. (Also you can click on the photos if you want a larger view.)

This is the car. Look how far it is away from the curb. Yikes.

Last night I got up around 3am for the regular middle of the night stretch. I was about 3/4ths of the way back to sleep when I heard a loud engine zooming down the street. I like the windows open in the summer and the bedroom is in the front of the house. I guessed it was a speeding motorcycle and about the time I was thinking, “What a moron,” I heard: THUMP SKID CRASH.

This was way down the street and I wondered if I should do anything. About 10 minutes later I could see a reflection from flashing lights on the wall and I thought I heard voices and that deep rattle-y sound that a firetruck makes when it idles and I drifted off to sleep.

This morning when I took off for work I looked around for evidence of a crash. A number of years ago the cops were chasing a car late at night and he tried to turn onto our street and lost control and took the turn way too wide, smashed a car on the far side of the street, bounced across and hit a huge truck on the driving side of the street and then spun back across and clipped another car before crashing into a giant bush in a neighbor’s yard. It was very exciting. The police siren kept blaring and all the neighbors got up and stood out in the street in their slippers and bathrobes and watched. Our neighbor across the street, Olivia, was a senior in high school and she came and asked, “Does anyone know? Was it some kids?”

Just so you don’t get the wrong idea, we actually live in a nice neighborhood. Not nice like McMansions and fancy homes but nice like, small mostly well kept homes where lots of teachers and people with small children live. It’s not a like a suburban development. Well, maybe you could argue it is, but the 1940’s version. What do I know, I’m not an urban planning expert.

Back to last night’s crash: at first I didn’t see anything. When I got to the end of the street I saw the problem. Mr. Speedy hadn’t been able to make the turn. The street ends at a T and you have to do a slight left and then right (is that what they call a dogleg?) to follow on the other side of the cross street. Mr. Speedy went diagonally through the landscaping of the house at the end, went up and tore apart a little rock wall, through a giant shrub then in a shower of dirt apparently caught some air and landed on a compact car parked on the street before bouncing off and hitting the street. That must have hurt.