My hexed summer outfit

I just got this cute summer outfit, bubblegum pink sleeveless shirt and white pants with lilies printed on them.

It is in the class of outfits I know I will miss when it goes out of style. I hate getting attached to clothing because it makes it hard to let those pieces go when they wear out or go out of style.

Don't you have clothing that you like so much but have no occasion to wear, just hanging around taking up space.

Well, I think this outfit is cursed. It seems destined to die. The first time I wore it, I pranced around and felt wonderful in it, and thought I better be careful so I can wear this time and time again, until friends and family ask if I have anything else to wear.

It was cursed. I wore it the first time, and got sick, but it didn't tank that time, I was able to wash out the offending contents that got on it, luckily, Near miss.

Last weekend I was to go to a family reunion potluck with my parents and siblings. I prepared a salmon salad to take and put it in the refrigerator.

I then went and got dressed in my beautiful summer outfit and had a few minutes left to spare until my parents showed up to take me to the party. I was floating around my kitchen and thought, yuck! My kitchen smells like fish, so I got some bleach and was wiping off the countertops with it.

You guessed it, I got little spots of bleach on my cute shirt, completely ruining it.

After the reunion I went shopping for a replacement shirt, there was none to be found. Not even close. So I went to a fabric store, found a pattern close to this shirt's design and fabric almost identical to the original. Off I go.

But I was not prepared for the curse and as soon as I slipped the fabric under the teeth of my sewing machine it growled at it, bit a chunk out of it and spit a glop of oil on it. Completely ruined that piece of fabric.

So in my sundress I tore off the bottom, cleaned it up. The machine must of thought I was a housefrau because now it screams and grinds when I fire it up. Doesn't look good.

My sewing machine is pretty close to 30 years old and I've been dancing around purchasing a new one, but all that computerized bells and whistles intimidates me, so I've put it off. Seems like a good time now to take a look at that again.

I went to Sears since my old workhorse is a Kenmore and I figured 30 years is a good run for a machine. Hoping the replacement will serve me as well.

Looking over the bright shiny new machines, I noticed a lot of them are primarily plastic. My old machine is all metal and I think old school that metal is more durable and stronger. Plus with all the advancements the new machines are a bit overwhelming in terms of choices. With the dizzying array in the back of my mind I left the store empty-handed.

I came home, put on my work coveralls, and thought I could shame my old machine into revival. With a case of tools and dressed like a maytag repairman, I went at it. Tore off the bottom cleared away some caked on grease on a worm gear, pulled out a few bunny babies, striped out a Phillips screw, just to show it who's boss and put the whole thing back together.

It's humming like a bee. Sweet!

Eviction

Nerdman got evicted. Not for any fault of his, his landlady wants to take advantage of the soaring real estate values and cash in her house. She lives 120 miles from where her house is located and hasn't seen it in 10 years.

I don't know if she understands what 10 years of renting can do to a home. Not that Nerdman was a bad tenant, but he didn't take care of the house as if it were one he owned. He had told her about a few things also that she just ignored.

Anyway she gave him 30 days to get, and he found a rent 2 own that he liked and began the process of getting out. Beings Nerdman is a major packrat, this is no small undertaking, plus the house he was moving to was in dire need of a few gallons of paint.

I felt bad for him, having to move so under the gun, so offered to help him paint. And he kept me supplied with Starbucks. Nerdman pretty much runs on Starbucks and Wendy's, so there's bound to be bleed over.

My elixir of choice runs along the lines of iced mocha (hot weather), mocha frappicino, or cappuccino. I can't seem to put this stuff exactly in the pie hole in my face and inevitably end up with a mustache or devil horns on the ends of my mouth.

I never notice this stuff until the worse possible time. Anyway back to painting with Nerdman. I found out something about him, he hates heights. Not true, actually he has bad balance.

We took a yoga class together once and his warrior stance pretty much looked more like a flailing drunken pelican. So he was acting paranoid on the ladder.

I said to him, listen, why not have me do the ladder stuff, I balance easily and am used to heights from working power distribution for many many years. Okay. So we switched places and he watched agape as I deftly pirouetted off the ladder from practically any angle.

I'm now known as his cute little mud faced ladder monkey.

Scientology

By now you're probably sick of Tom Cruise but because of his movie promotion engagement to Katie Holmes, convulsing on Oprah's couch, and escapade with Matt Lauer, he has shed some interest in Scientology (the pseudo-religion Tommie espouses). Being the dedicated alcoholic fact checker I am – I went to investigate a Scientology Temple (or maybe it was a Starbucks) and came up with these little known facts about the Church of Scientology.

10. Mormon mission: membership by procreation. Scientology mission: UFO's.
9. Jesse Jackson is seeking reparations because of slavery in one of L. Ron Hubbard's novels.
8. Bad overacting or movie (say Look Who's Talking Too or The Last Samurai) makes you an honorary deacon of the church. I think Ben Affleck's a Bishop already.
7. Communion – Day Glo Kool Aid and organic vegetables.
6. Promotion and advancement in the church is very very very similar to Amway multi-level marketing without the cool products.
5. Along those same lines, vitamins to cure illnesses and diseases only work if purchased from an authorized Church of Scientology member.
4. Apparently, L. Ron Hubbard was at Woodstock but didn't inhale (or had some of Jim Jones' koolaid and survived).
3. If you play "Dianetics" backwards, you hear Donald Trump singing "Money, money, money" talk about Nostradamus.
2. There's nothing in the entire religion about sacrificing virgins. What the hell kind of religion do you have if you don't sacrifice virgins? Maybe the whores will sacrifice something for them.
1. The philosophy of the Scientologists includes the belief that eating live human babies will give them the power to teleport inside their own internal cestpool sanctum. I wonder what's age limit for the babies that they have on this?

Vigilante drivers

This has got to be one of my most visited topics. I guess it's because I have to drive them every weekday and one of my routes takes me through a freeway that has the most congestion and accidents. Now I grace this piece of pavement at a non peak hour like 5 in the morning and it's still awful in those early hours. I'm mentioning this because a report just came out saying something I had long suspected, Sacramento has the highest percentage of low scoring drivers on the DMV tests. There it is. Anyone who has driven in the Sacramento area knows this intuitivly. A good friend of mine is a traffic engineer, he designs roadways, signal lights, timing, flow patterns, etc. He's told me a few things that are generalities of driving patterns when groups of cars (platoons) are traveling together. It's interesting, for instance, when cars are going over a hill and can't see past the crest, they automatically slow down. Even if the road doesn't require it, cars slow into a curve. I can live with these little quirks in human behavior, but it's the half wits that aren't watching the traffic that drive me toodles. Let me list my pet peeves. People who pull out and cause other drivers to have to brake when there's more than ample room behind them, a full long brake in traffic they could pull out and not cause the disruption in travel. Then they drive way slower than the platoon. You know that chunk of distance you're supposed to put between you and the car in front of you? It's one car length for every 10 mph that you're traveling, people who insist on getting in that spot, and then not keeping up with the platoon. I really don't care if the traffic is heavy, I let people weave in and out, I'm not talking about that, and I understand that sometimes a person needs to get over to turn, but the crap eaters that wedge in and then slug along. Get out of the way!!! Why can't you look around and drive in the stinking empty spot? No, you inconsiderate slobs have to drive up the tailpipe of the other people on the freeway. Are you trying to get high on exhaust, you morons.