They're Doing It Wrong
I'll start with people who aren't doing it wrong. The yummy deli in downtown Vancouver is called La Bottega and right this moment I am full with treats from their delicious lunch menu. (That website could use just a teeny bit of cleaning up. Maybe I can offer to trade for food!) It's a deli, it's a wine shop, it's a sit down restaurant that was SRO today for lunch. We shared a grilled pesto salmon salad and a large serving of smoked mushroom ravioli and I picked up a couple pounds of ravioli to take when I visit my Mom and Dad. It's located on Main in the old Hank's Tavern.

So in the category of people are assholes item # 1430. On Wednesday as I took my yoga clothes out of the trunk I noticed that there was some peeling paint on the rear bumper. Remember back in April I took the car in and got all this body work taken care of and it was three different claims. Someone hit me, someone hit-and-run and I, uh, scraped something. I'm not obsessive but I like to take care of my things and the car was starting to feel like a dented tuna can so I finally took care of it and after all the deductibles and taxes and charges and extra charges, let's just say it cost about the same as one paycheck on a bi-monthly payday schedule.

I drove by the bodyshop today to have them check out the peeling paint and turns out my car was hit again. He showed me where you can see on the bumper how something hit it hard enough to make the bumper (plastic) bend and crack the paint. Then I remember that when I pulled out on Wednesday, the car behind me (remember we have tandem parking) was a Hummer. Probably didn't even feel hitting my car. Thanks guy! Or gal!

I hate to ignore it because what's a small bit of peeling paint now is no doubt going to be a crap looking bumper three months from now. I asked the body shop if there was a temporary fix so it wouldn't get worse — I know zero about car bodies but there must be some sort of something they could seal it with. If there is, there was nothing they were willing to do for me without a claim and an estimate. So there you go. I don't want to spend any more money the bumper of a 2001 car with 75,000 miles on it.

Next item. My dear husband turned 50 in March and one of his relatives thought it would be funny to get him a membership in AARP. As a spouse, I'm a member, too. I'm still in the process of owning the whole middle age thing. I don't want to be a member of a retired people club. Especially since the retired people club has been blitzing us with piles of unsolicited mail for insurance and crap like that.

I'm hardcore on not getting junk mail and catalogs and we get very little. This afternoon I decided to log into their webpage and drop them a note opting out of all these mailings. And of course there are only two ways you can contact AARP: mail and phone. Evolve or die, AARP!

So I phoned and here's where they invested their technology dollars: a phonebot to answer the phone. Remember how much I loved the Sears phonebot? It was awful. It was like reading my request one letter at a time. I got tired of dicking around and pressed the magic zero and my bot said, "I'm sorry. You didn't answer my question about what you had for lunch. If you had baloney and cheese, say: baloney and cheese."

I screamed: "I want to talk to a person!" (I really did shriek very loud so imagine a cat in a blender type voice when you read the above.) And the bot said, "Would you like to speak to a customer service representative?" And I said "Yes!" and she said, "I'll get someone to help us." And that is not a typo or error, the robot said she'd get someone to help us.

Aside, and I wish I could find the URL, but recently I saw an article online said that often phonebots are programmed to recognize swear words so if you tell the phonebot to f-off, it will transfer you to a person.

Dimitri came on the line and was happy to help me out with my request and supposedly, that problem solved. So what you learned here is that if you don't want to talk to a phonebot try screaming and swearing. The laugh you get when it works will diffuse your frustration.

Final item of the day. You know how there are stereotypical categories of certain types of cars and driving behavior? The aggro pick-up truck that can't go less than 25 MPH over the posted limit who zooms up on your bumper and terrorizes you and giving you about three seconds to change lanes before swerving around you and then flipping you the bird like you're the bad guy driven by the guy wearing a baseball cap? The pushy Subaru that absolutely has to get in front of you even if you've already let a car in or have to slam on your brakes but then gives you a wave like we're all so friendly driven by a woman with bobbed hair and a labrador in the back? The luxury sedan with the person on the cellphone drifting around in the lane and not aware of the concept of turn signals? I have a new one to add: the lame Prius driver. Hello! You aren't going to save the planet by ignoring your accelerator. (It's not getting any greener! ha!) Or hey, I'm giving you close to three car lengths, go ahead and change lanes. You're safe. Jeez.

The Awfulizer
Last night I woke up at around 1:30am with what Bob would call "a flippy stomach." I got up and drank some bubble water and read for a half hour and everything settled down and I turned the light out.

And then tossed and turned with a few segments of troubled napping for the rest of the night.

My middle of the night brain and my regular brain are completely different beasts. I lay there awfulizing about the most random things that don't even make sense. Like what if we both get sick and both lose our jobs and go through all our savings and have to grow our own food in the backyard and wolves roam the neighborhood and the vampires win and … .

I even realize that my middle of the night brain is just trying to freak me out while it's doing it but still, I get all agitated and my heart races and I can't sleep. Then I heard random sounds that worried me. One was like a gnat shivering. I kept thinking I should get up and investigate. Or another sound was like someone was going through our bills and papers in the kitchen. Because that really could happen in the middle of the night.

About 2:45a I heard my neighbor's car start and I had to wonder what he was doing at the hour. Was he going to work? What kind of job starts in the middle of the night? Is he a security guard? Convenience mart? Maybe he just had insomnia and needed a drive. Good thing he has me worrying about it for him.

Then as I drifted in and out I had bizarre dreams like people were reaching in the bedroom windows and stealing my things and this dog that was running around the neighborhood that we had to catch and then random stuff about this person that's famous for no clear reason who just got out of jail. It was a long night.

Implosion
On the way to lunch the elevator stopped and the UPS man *and* the Fed Ex man got on. "Whoa!" I said. "Isn't this like when Superman goes back into the past and he can't be in the same room with past Superman or the Universe will implode?" And the UPS man said: "It's not that bad."

Research show people who worry a lot are more likely to develop memory problems than happy, shiny people. Great. One more thing to worry about.

Second Hand Rose
Hey, remember the half price rose I bought? I didn't have huge hope for it but it is the source of the peachy looking rose. The bush is about 3 feet shorter than the other roses but it's blooming and no other roses are close to that color. Ah. Personal satisfication from gardening.

Meanwhile, I think I've wrung all the entertainment I can get out of that dahlia. Now that it's here, I have to say, it's not my favorite. It looks like a carnival rather than something based in nature. But the pink one. Gorgeous. I'm calling it the lotus dahlia.

I've had this funny little bump on my left foot on the outer part of the heel. Just like a very faint blister and whenever I have bare feet and my left foot is folded in my lap, I rub it.

Today I noticed that it was bigger and possibly a bit hard and even hurt a teeny bit. I think it's a plantar wart.

As soon as I realized that I thought, "Great, a blogging story," because one time I had a horrific plantar wart, partly my fault because I was young and didn't really clue in there was a problem until it was very advanced and it hurt to put my shoe on. This was back in the 80's and we couldn't diagnose things on the Internet. And I should clarify the treatment was horrific, the plantar wart was just big and painful.

But just out of curiousity, I did a little search and already wrote about this in 2001 when apparently I had a plantar wart outbreak. Also on the left foot. Funny, I have zero recollection of this. Is this what getting old is like? Thank God for blogging. I got rid of them back then, I can do it again. No cause for alarm. I wish I wrote what I did to cure it. Hopefully that stuff you buy at the grocery store because that's what I'm going to do this time.

It Doesn't Look Like It Knows What It's Doing
I can't blame it though, we've had some fairly violent rain today. Who'd want to bloom in that? I'm glad I wasn't out watching a soccer match.

I spent the past two days working on a writing project and I'm reminded how much time this sucks up. And, now my brain feels like mush. There were rewarding moments, too, but I'm not close to finished so I'm going to shower and see if I can grind at it until dinner.

Last night we had two giant salmon steaks from Alaska courtesy of coworker. I made Auntie's secret barbecue sauce which includes butter, lemon juice, garlic, butter and a few flavorings. The main ingredient is two cubes of butter. The sauce smelled fantastic and should be made into perfume or room spray. I told Bob we could dip our shoes in it and they would taste terrific.

I expected my digestive system to revolt terribly after the butter assault but nope, we did fine. There's a utensil in the dishwasher that still smells delicious so I can pull it out and close my eyes and dream of yummy salmon.

Dahlia Watch Continues
Look, there's a purply-pink dahlia in the background that's kicking its ass. I think when this thing finally blooms it's going to be as big as my head.

The other day I wrote that when people say they don't read, I can't understand what that means.

I recently read an interview with an up-and-coming young singer and she said she never eats vegetables. I find this equally alarming. What does she mean? She won't eat Brussels sprouts or boiled cabbage? Or never. Like, not even salad? Does she eat fruit? I can't imagine not eating vegetables. I finely dice carrots and turnips and add them to my chili.

[That sound that you hear is 3/4s of the population of Texas keeling over at my blasphemy with chili.]

You know when you're on a road trip and you've been eating pizza and burritos for a few days and when you finally find a decent salad somewhere you're practically weeping with relief? Sometimes if I'm eating a lot of junk food and feel sort of blucky I eat a carrot and feel about 90% better.

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There's a wildly popular online retailer that I'm not going to mention by name but I have made it a point of pride to avoid doing business with them. Then my local retail situation changed and online retailer bailed me out in a pinch once so I've turned to them a couple of times.

God, they're lame.

Let's say you find an item you might want, you'll see a little highlighted area where they tell you if you buy in the next few hours, it could be in your hands two days later. Then you order stuff and find out that super fast delivery costs about 150% of what you're saving by using this online store. So you figure on regular delivery and you do your order. Then at the last minute they say something about how this order can't ship for a few days. Huh? Well, you think you've lived this long without it, a few more days don't matter.

Then comes the day when you buy a gift over TWO WEEKS in advance, you do your checkout and all is well except that today, close to a week later, you get a notice that part of your order has shipped — just part, not even the whole thing but don't worry, they won't charge you for extra shipping — and that they expect it to arrive about a week after the date you need it for your gift. WTF?

If I use these people again, please beat me with a stick.

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Finally, our neighborhood does an annual yard sale day and zillions of families have a yard sale at the same time so people can troll the neighborhood and stop and find sales on every street corner. I'm not sure how it's organized because I was never aware of this until last year when a friend who lives in the neighborhood adjacent asked me what date the big neighborhood sale was and I said, "Huh?"

This weekend is the weekend and I only know this because on the way back from the Farmer's Market this morning we passed about 15 yard sales. Our neighbors across the street had one going.

I'm not a garage sale person. Give or visit. No specific reason, just not my thing. I was surprised by the constant stream of cars all day long. I sat outside and read my book for awhile so I could study it up close.

More than half the cars were super nice, new, expensive cars. Yeah, I realize that garage sales are for everybody I was just surprised by the giant shiny SUVs and pickups and the tuna boat sized Cadillac. The other observation I have is that the average visitor didn't seem to take much effort in parking. They'd just stop about 4 feet from the curb, often blocking our driveway or the driveway across the street and get out and start looking around. It wasn't like they were there for very long but still, how hard is it to park at the curb?

I love to get rid of stuff. Maybe we can do this next time.