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Where’s The Cheese?

The day started out pretty normally.  Pinch MacGraw stopped in for his weekly cup of coffee and hour of conversation.

After Pinch and The Frontiersman solved the world problems (you can all breath easier now), Pinch said he had to, “git on inta town an meet the boys at the restrint”.  Obviously, this was going to be a busy day on his schedule.

I had a hair appointment, and The Frontiersman was going to busy himself reading his new Backwoods magazine that had just come in the mail the previous day.

My hair appointment was pretty uneventful.  I really don’t have to do much talking while I’m there.  I learned a long time ago, you learn by listening.

In my thirty minute appointment, I found out that Gert’s daughter, Iona, is pregnant again.  This will be her fourth one and, ” we all know she can’t take care of the ones she’s got.”

Red Eye got stopped by the cops Wednesday night.  Looks like he got yet another DUI.  “When WILL they take his license away; or did they?”

It seems that Derlie Blevins, who runs the thrift shop, is moving away;  far away.  Lenwood Suggs’ wife, Sudie, caught him and Derlie together coming out of the No Tell Motel.  So much for discretion.

I wonder what they said about me after I left.

On my way home, I stopped at the grocery store to pick a few things for lunch and dinner.

You have to picture our grocery store.  It’s about the size of two two-car garages and I think it was built in the 1950s.  It obviously hasn’t been renovated or thoroughly cleaned since it was built.  In addition to that, they still somehow manage to stock it only with foods that were available in the 1950s.

When you start shopping there, you quickly learn not to buy meat there and to keep your shopping list very simple.

I found the three or four items I had on my list and then, just for excitement, I asked a young, male employee if they had Brie cheese.  I haven’t seen a blank look like that since I asked my son, when he was two years old, how his sneaker ended up in the toilet.

“What cheese?” he asked.  “Brie”, I replied.  “I don’t think so”, he answered, “but I’ll ask.”

I was interested to hear what the answer would be since the most ‘exotic’ cheese I’ve seen in there is cheddar.  I waited patiently and, within a minute or so, the young man returned and relayed the message that they carry Sargento, Kraft, Cuba Cheese and their store brand, but not Brie.

Just to add fuel to the flame, I explained to him that Brie is the type of cheese, not the brand.  He looked very apologetic, so I took pity on him, thanked him and got into the checkout line.

“Hi ma’am.  Did you find everything?”  Well, she asked.  “All except the Brie cheese”, I replied.  There was that look again.

“I’ve never seen that brand come through my line, ma’am.”  “No.” I replied, “It’s a type of cheese.  It’s French.”

“Berdie”, the cashier called to the customer service person.  “Do we carry Brie cheese, or French cheese?”  “Hold on”, Berdie answered.

This is too much fun.

“Vernon”, I heard over the intercom.  “Can you check and see if we have gray or French cheese for a customer?”

“That’s ok”, I said to the cashier.  “I’ll get it next time.”

As I slipped out the automatic door, I thought to myself, ‘Well, that was fun.  I wonder what I can ask for next time I go in.’

The Longest Winter on Record

This winter has to be the longest winter on record, and Punxsuatawny Phil hasn’t given me much hope for an early spring.  I’m beyond the point of cabin fever now.  What comes after cabin fever; psych ward?  Before I reach that stage, I decided to try to find ways to fool my mind into believing spring had finally arrived.

 My first stop in my quest to find spring was, of course, the Internet.  If you can’t find a cure for cabin fever on the Internet, where can you find it?

I found several web sites that had some workable solutions, but not all of them work for me.

          Shopping…This idea always works.  I could go on the Internet and buy    three or four of those plastic, blow-up palm trees, a blue blanket to hang over my window, a sun lamp, a CD of spring birds and a fan.

          Museums…I don’t think so.  The only museum within a two hour driving distance is a tractor museum, and it’s closed during the winter.  Not that I’d go even if it were open.

          Rent Movies…No thanks.  I’m not a movie watcher.

          Read…I can do that…in my palm tree decorated room.  I’ll just add a lounge chair to my room.

          Play games…Aren’t I already doing that?  I’m tricking my mind into believing it’s spring, remember?

Another web site suggested having a picnic in the living room.  Woohoo!  I can do better than that.  I will have my new beach room!

In the next few days all the accessories I had ordered to create my beach room arrived so, I told The Frontiersman I had a great idea for a special dinner that would relieve my cabin fever, but I needed him to go to the lumber yard and buy a couple bags of sand.  He knows better than to ask questions.

While he was gone, I hung the blue blanket over the window (sky), blew up the palm trees and placed them strategically around the room, placed the sun lamp on top of the tall bookcase, and the fan across the room.  I placed a blanket on the floor and went to the kitchen to prepare our beach dinner.

I made macaroni salad and grilled hot dogs on the George Forman Grill.

The Frontiersman walked in with the bags of sand just as I had everything ready.  I opened the bags and spread the sand on the carpet around the blanket.  As I began putting the sand down, The Frontiersman’s eyes grew wider and wider.

“Have you thought about how you’re going to get all that sand out of the carpet?” he asked, trying to contain his astonishment.

“Get it out?” I asked in amazement.  “I just figured out how to create a beach in the house.  Why would I be thinking about how to get the sand out of the carpet this soon?”

In keeping with the spirit of the evening, we put on shorts and short sleeve shirts, cranked up the pellet stove, and turned on the birds’ CD.  I put the food on paper plates and added pickles and potato chips.  We had Diet Coke to drink.

We sat on our beach blanket, eating our beach food and enjoyed our palm trees, ‘sunshine’, ‘ocean breeze’ and spring birds.  I’m sure I started to tan.

I tried to get The Frontiersman to play beach ball (balloons), with me after dinner, but I could tell by the look he gave me that he had humored me as much as he was going to.

After dinner, we sat on the ‘beach’ for a while, reading, and eventually went to bed.

The next morning, I came down stairs to make coffee and looked at my beach room.  Somehow, it seemed like a better idea the night before.

How AM I going to get all that sand out of the carpet?  Maybe we could just rip up the carpet and put down fake grass.  Let’s see…how do I approach The Frontiersman with this idea?

The Coldest Winter

Even though I was born in the Northeast United States, I’m not really a cold weather lover.  I’ve spent several years of my life living below the Mason-Dixon Line and I like those winters much better.  I like being able to just throw a coat on and go.  The idea of putting on a heavy coat, boots up to my knees and gloves about as thick as hockey gloves just to go out and start my car and warm it up for ten or fifteen minutes and brush the snow off every day before starting out just does not appeal to me.

One thing I’ve realized, since my family and I moved back north three years ago, is that True Northerners just accept winter.  How do you do that?  Most of the people who live in this area have never lived anywhere else; some have never been out of New York State!  How do you do that?

As a conversation starter, in the grocery store the other day, I said to the cashier, “I’ve had enough snow and cold.  I’m so ready for spring.”  Her response was, “We live in Western New York.  Ya gotta expect this.”  Uh huh.

Some friends of ours, Peanut and Spud Pickles, said that the last two winters, they had to wait until February to chop their ice blocks out of the creek (pronounced crick), but this year they already started getting the ice blocks two weeks ago.  I guess that’s one reason to like cold weather.

People who live in cold climates tell some strange stories.  I don’t know if there’s any truth to any of the stories, but maybe that’s what you do during these long winter months.

Spud told us about the time they got such a heavy snowfall overnight they had to climb out the upstairs window to get out of the house.  Cutlip Leather chimed in, “Oh yeah.  That was the winter of ’56.  Ike was President.  One of the coldest winters we had.  The tractor froze on the lane ‘n we couldn’t git it out ’til June; couldn’t even see it ’til May.”  That apparently struck a chord with Spud.  “Yer right,” Spud agreed.  “That was the winter Chops, our horse starved to death in the barn ’cause we couldn’t even git out to the barn fer two weeks.”

Needless to say, I was glad to come home to our cozy little cottage where the oil tank is full and we have plenty of bags of pellets for the pellet stove for this year, at least.  Who knows what we’ll be able to afford for next winter with the way the economy is.  I think it will all be fine though.  Isn’t Al Gore promising us a warm up or something?  Is that one of those stories he just made up during a long winter?

The Job Hunting Game

I’ve been job hunting for about six months this go around.  Each time I do this, I’m a little older and I find the job hunting game more and more tedious to play.  Just getting through some of those interview questions without asking, “are you serious?”, becomes harder to do.

I’ve done a lot of research on the topic of job hunting.  I’ve always wanted to showcase my skills, abilities and my friendly personality. 

According to several job hunting web sites (Everyone knows when you need to do research, you can’t do better than the Internet.), my first problem was understanding ‘employer speak’, but after my extensive research, I now understand the underlying meanings behind the following phrases.

-Seeking candidates with a wide variety of experience > You’ll need to replace three people who just left.                -Must be deadline oriented >  You’ll be six months behind on your first day.               -Good communication skills a must >  Management communicates, you listen then figure out what they want you to do and hope you get it right.  If not, they communicate louder.            -Some overtime required >  Some time each night and some time each weekend.

I’m now also very aware of the Eighteen Interview Do Nots.  Do not have a flapping, dried booger, or a long, protruding nose hair when you show up for the interview.  Do not ask about hours, salary, benefits or anything else that might help you make an informed decision.  Do not use words like “mammy”, “pappy”, “getter done”, or “irregardless”, unless it’s for a job at the Monster Truck rally.  Do not fall asleep during the interview and, most importantly, do not forget to leave when the interview is over, just to state a few.

Because of my job hunting history, I can tell that the job market is very tight.  I’ve done all the research, haven’t made any major faux pas, but I’ve had only two interviews so far; one for a job that requires wearing a hair net and Latex gloves, the other would require me to have the strength of Atlas.

Oh well.  Let’s see…where should I look tomorrow?

My Grocery Store Adventure

Now, I like a good adventure as much as the next person but, grocery shopping has gotten to be a drudge over the past several years, especially with prices going up on a daily basis.

I’ve decided I wish I could live in one of those metropolitan areas where I could go on a grocery store web site, order groceries and have them delivered that afternoon.

I had to go grocery shopping yesterday.  When I say I had to, I mean I HAD to.  The last time I went grocery shopping was the day after Christmas, so all we had left in the house was a box of macaroni, a half bottle of ketchup, a stick of butter, some flour, some sugar and a green, furry thing in the fridge that might have had leaves on it at one time.

The temperature outside my kitchen window yesterday morning was -12F.  For a lot of people, just seeing that temperature would have been enough of an adventure.  Me?  Oh no, not me.  I have to wait for the coldest day of the year to go grocery shopping.

After some courage building and dawdling, I finally got started out about 11:30.  The Frontiersman decided to go with me because he wanted to look for some things at Wal-Mart.  Ok.  At least I would have someone to talk to along the way.  Right.  The drive from our house to the nearest town with a Wal-Mart and a major grocery store is about thirty-five miles.

On the way, I began telling The Frontiersman about something I’d heard on a talk radio progrem the other day.  After talking to him for about ten minutes, I heard some very deep breathing coming from my right side.  I glanced over and noticed The Frontiersman was fast asleep.  I thought about waking him up, but decided against it.

As I was pulling into the Wal-Mart parking lot, The Frontiersman began waking up.

“So, what’s your opinion?”, I asked.

“Huh?”

“What are your thoughts about what was said on that radio talk program?”

“What radio talk program?”

“Never mind.”

“Ok.”

After spending about forty-five minutes and $100.00 in Wal-Mart, we got something to eat and went on to the grocery store.

I’m convinced that some evil sick-o designed those darn shopping carts to lock together and then let go when you finally give up fighting.

I really didn’t appreciate the humor when that eighty something year old, ninety pound lady walked up behind me and very casually pulled out the cart I had been struggling with.  And then, she had the nerve to smile very sweetly at me, as only little old ladies can do.  I know I loosened that  cart up for her.  I decided to ignore the incident, in spite of the sarcasm, and do my shopping.

I navigated my way through the aisles without too many strange experiences, except for when I was in the produce section and couldn’t reach the last two bags of baby spinach.  Who ever thought of putting high shelves in the produce department, anyway?  I knew there was a logical reason I took my whole Steno Pad with me to the grocery store.  It makes a good swatter when things are on high shelves and you’re short.

The two older ladies in the meat department arguing over the last package of on sale spareribs was kind of entertaining.

The Frontiersman was on good behavior and only had to be reprimanded once for throwing some less than healthy odds-and-ends in the cart.

Since it was mid-afternoon, the checkout lines weren’t too long.  That was a plus, and watching the mom ahead of me wrestle the candy bar away from the three or four old boy in her shopping cart, whose face and hands were covered in chocolate, was good entertainment.

On second thought, maybe I would miss the free entertainment if I didn’t make the trek to the grocery store.  I guess I just need to go more often.  Don’t tell anyone how entertaining the grocery store can be or they’ll start serving coffee and cookies and charge us for the entertainment.

The Mystery of Memories

I don’t know what it is about Winter, but it always makes me think of the little village in which I grew up, and the wonderful old homestead.

When I was growing up, the village seemed so boring, and the house just seemed like an old house that needed a lot of updating.  Funny how time and distance changes ones perception.

The few times I’ve returned to my hometown, it seems like a quaint New England village, although New York State is not part of New England.

The house has been, for many years, college rental property and was divided up into apartments, so I can’t even imagine that I would recognize the inside, although the outside doesn’t look that different.

The wonderful swing set that was in the back yard is gone, but I think I spent more time playing on that swing set than my brother and sister ever did.  I remember swinging on the swing or riding on the swing style see saw and singing for hours at a time.

I imagined myself being a circus star as I hung upside down from the braces on the upright poles.

We had a large, old lilac bush that I loved to climb in.  I can still remember how rough the bark was on the limbs, and how my legs and arms used to get all scraped up from climbing around in it.

There was a small hill on the north side of our house where I spent so much time playing.  I used to bring a blanket out and lay it out on the grass.  Then, I would bring my doll out in her buggy with all her clothes.  After playing for a while, I would go in the house and make a picnic lunch and bring it out to ‘share’ with my doll.

My father had a lovely flower garden on the opposite side of the house.  He grew tulips, daffodils, irises, and all colors of roses.  Those flowers were his pride and joy.  He also had a strawberry patch and we always had strawberry shortcakes in Spring.

It just dawned on me why my thoughts travel back home during Winter.  That house brings to mind memories of wonderful Spring and Summer days.  I guess it’s the cabin fever that does it.  Ok.  Mystery solved.

Job Hunting, Western New York Style

I have been job hunting for four months now.  Job hunting in Western New York takes a lot more effort, time and patients than what I’m used to.

During the time we lived in Northern Virginia (1995-2006), I never had this much trouble finding a job.  On the average, I could hit the pavement for three days and put nine applications in and within the week, I would get a minimum of five interviews.  Out of those, I would get at least three job offers.

Since September, I’ve had one job offer and it’s for a job I’m not even able to do.

I signed on with a temp. agency back in September.  Every week, twice a week, I check two newspaper web sites want ads.  I also have three job hunting sites I check twice a week.  That’s a lot of looking.

Does anybody even know what a commodity specialist does?  How about a process developer or a process innovation leader?

Tomorrow, I’m going to apply to one more temp. agency in the general area, but I hope they have a cheat sheet of this foreign language called ‘job titles’ for me to review.

Happy New Year!

I really feel hopeful about the New Year.  No, I don’t live in a cave.  I watch TV news.  I listen to the radio talk programs and read newspapers.  I am fully aware of the doom and gloom forecasts made by financial analysts yet, in spite of that, I feel optimistic.  Granted, I am talking about my own life and the prospects for my family, not the world in general, but I definitely feel the fog lifting for us.

It’s not that we’re any different than you are.  We definitely have our worries, especially since The Frontiersman just retired,  we’re on a fixed income (the amount the government determined is fine for us isn’t nearly enough), I haven’t found a job yet and our son is still in college.

I woke up this morning, New Years Day, to bright blue skies with the sun shining like a brand new diamond ring.  What could be a better harbinger of better things to come than that?

I really believe I will get a job that I really like this year, with people I really like being around and be able to pay off the pesky credit card bill that has been annoying me for two years now.

Our son-in-law had bariatric surgery yesterday so I feel very positive that, as his weight drops, his health will greatly improve and he will be with us for a long time to come, adding to the quality of our daughter’s life and adding to our happiness.

The Computer Genius will finish his Associates Degree and be armed with the tools he needs to get a good paying job (for this area), and he’ll continue on to get his Bachelor’s Degree on a part time basis.  He was a little slow on the uptake, but he’s really focused now.  His life should really take off.

The Frontiersman is happy in his retirement, and has time to do the things that keep him that way.

I wish you all a healthy, prosperous 2009 and hope you find many things in your life to be optimistic about.

The Week After Christmas

I really like the week after Christmas.  That week used to depress my spirit since the hustle and bustle of Christmas is over and my husband and I never make any New Years Eve plans.

Maybe because I’m older now, but I find it very soothing.  The week after Christmas is when I can sit down with a good friend and enjoy a cup of tea and all those wonderful cookies that took me forever to make.

I love to have friends in for dinner that week, too and hear the stories of their Christmas get togethers, and the gifts they recieved.

That’s the week to relax and to sit, curled up in the big, comfy chair in the evening and enjoy the beautiful lights of the Christmas tree.

After this week, it’s back to routine and trying to get through the long, cold winter ahead.