Must....blog.....must.....blog.....

Yeah....its been like that. Bits of this stuck inside of bits of that....I drive and noodle around with ideas and look for fun stuff and wait for the magic to happen so I can come home and drop a fully formed blog post on ya. Sometimes its just that easy.

This seems to be one of those weeks where it isn't.

Ambulance duty has been quiet. Pop culture is leaving me cold. I never rant about health care or wars or TLC programs about people who procreate like its some sort of contest, so that's out. I'm trying to be a better housekeeper. My cat continues his romance with the feral female who occasionally sits on our front porch railing. (They mostly just stare at each other. He has neither the outside privileges nor the block and tackle to take it any further.)

My mad skillz as a weirdness magnet have not relented; I stopped in a grocery store a couple of days ago for a cup of coffee, having discovered after several failed attempts at actual service at the town's only restaurant (a McDonalds staffed by surly, indifferent youtes. How many times do you walk out of a Mc D's with no food before you give up on it entirely? The answer is three.) that the Tops just across the street had a Tim Horton's in it. The ride back to the office from there is sixty miles of poverty-line architecture and the occasional dump truck so a mid-afternoon bump is absolutely necessary to keep from having to pick bits of guardrail out of my front end. I was on the way out of the store with my cup of coffee and one snack item when I was confronted.

"HEY! Zis your cart?" he said, gesturing to a cart left in the middle of the aisle.
"No...I don't have a cart....just a coffee,"
"Well its in the way! Someone's going to trip over it!" He says this while angrily trying to drag it laterally to one side instead of, you know, rolling it. On the wheels.
"Its NOT MINE." I say, feeling antagonized at being yelled at for no reason. I'm really starting to think someone needs to test the water out there in the 814.
"Its IN the WAY!!"

At this point I seriously considered kicking him in the shins. I know that isn't a particularly kind response but being yelled at by a gap toothed yokel before I had even the first slurpy too-hot sip of my coffee was too much.

The weirdness isn't always confrontational; I was having a perfectly genteel cup of tea and a biscotti with a customer who, after knowing me about 11 minutes, was sufficiently comfortable with me to relate, in startling detail, the skill with which her favorite (though sadly, deceased) natural practitioner used to administer colonics.

Most of my folks are relentlessly normal; people of the princess canopy bed and scrapbooking set. Treadmills and cute throw rugs. I only had one recently that made me feel like I was in preproduction for an episode of COPS.

It started out innocently enough. A perfectly cheerful fellow called me and said his girlfriend needed to move 'right away'. I fit him in my day without an issue, it was on the way home.
As I cruise the block looking for the house number, I see it. Oh no please no don't let that be....dammit. It IS the house. The front porch looks like a Very Special Episode of Hoarders. I pick my way through the dozen bags of trash on the curb. A small pathway exists from the front steps to the front door. On one side, it is banked up with plastic bags of clothes, lawn ornaments, old magazines, and a piano. The other side is primarily porno tapes.

Yes, VHS porno tapes. Perhaps the neighbors have some kind of 'take one leave one' lending library, I think to myself. I knock tentatively on the door. I hope no one is home. Someone IS home. He comes out and explains blearily that what is on the porch is 'all that's goin', because apparently, his wife has absconded with the gentleman who called me to make the appointment. He explains to me, while idly scratching the spiderweb tattoo on his elbow, that he's been awake for two days straight gathering up her worldlies and throwing them on the porch. On the plus side, she got the piano, all the gnomes and, apparently, the entire 'Hot Asians' series.

I tried to take a photo of a poster the other day in Syracuse advertising the 'Canastota Psychic Fair' because it had a date on it, but no times. I guess people just KNOW. (If you are just a fan and not an actual psychic the times ARE on the website. Now I'm paranoid that they know I'm mocking them.) At any rate I was 1) too far away and 2) at a traffic light driving through Downtown Sketchyville because Route 81 is closed at 690W thanks to some chucklehead who owns a building that is about to fall down (and possibly spill its buildingy bits all over 81) but who doesn't think he's responsible to demolish it. Because its historic.

Spring is coming, and I'm sure new adventures will ensue. I'm sorry I didn't have some profound musing on St. Patrick's Day. Ireland is the only context in which I can ever be accused of having Republican leanings so I tend to shy away from the subject lest I end up explaining Why I'll Never Be Invited to the White House.