My Squirrely Mornings

I can tell you when the squirrels wake up in the morning.  

Well, the ones around here anyway.  They wake up after the big, yellow, death monster swallows the human kits and leaves to find more humans to eat.  Once the monster vacates the vicinity, only then is it safe to venture out to find something to eat for breakfast. The way they go to find breakfast is NOT scampering down the trunk of the tree they called home for the night.  Oh no.  They still have to practice their jumps - you know, since one of them landed like a sack of shit last week and their tutor is putting them through the ringer.

So, before breakfast, the young squirrels are jumping from their tree, onto the house roof.  They are to jump from the roof, back into the home tree - using ALL of the trees surrounding the roof-line.  Now, that’s not too bad.  It’s good training for the young squirrels. However, if you’re the human living inside a METAL roofed house, its not so great.  I heard the first thud of the squirrels landing and Buddy, my vicious monster of a dog, starts to growl.  Now, he’s almost 10 years old and other than peeing when we get out of bed, he’s not a morning dog so I don’t blame him for being grumbly. Then there are subsequent thuds. Buddy starts barking his fool head off (which startles me into spilling some of my coffee - I don’t know why, this has been going on for almost three weeks).  Buddy’s barking, in turn, scares the little squirrels on the roof (if the frantic scratching, thudding and whatever else nonsense they’re doing up there was any indication).  Which makes Buddy bark even more because he thinks the entire planet is imploding on itself and the only thing stopping that is his barking.  Apparently dog barks are have super sonic waves that repel falling objects…

Anyhoo!  Buddy is barking at the back door, so, like an idiot, I open the blinds so he can see there was nothing out there hellbent on destroying him; only to have a kamikaze squirrel miss his jump from the roof to the tree next to the deck by mere millimeters and fall right in front of the window.  Buddy, seeing the damn fool squirrel land on the porch, barks with excitement (he loves chasing squirrels - they are his friends) and runs smack dab into the glass, which prompts the squirrel to understand its in danger and scurried up the tree as if Satan had a hold of his tail.  I opened the door, just to get a moment peace by letting the fool dog out when ANOTHER squirrel takes a ginormous leap of faith and launches itself from the rooftop above the door, over my head and into the tree the first squirrel missed.

Well, that gave me my heart attack for the day.

Words must have been said between the two little squirrels because they got into a tussle, one big mass of fur and tails rolling around in the crook of the branch.  Buddy, needing to get his two cents in, barks firmly as if to say, “ENOUGH!”  Not lying,  both squirrels stopped their foolishness, both looked down at the dog - who thought they wanted to be friends with him so Buddy barks his excited, happy bark and he starts jumping at the tree.  Only then did the youngsters see the danger they were in and both scurried up further then jumped back onto the roof, scampering back in the direction they had come from.  I get Buddy back into the house and sighed with relief as I took a relaxing sip of my coffee and went back to reading.

I should have known better.  It’s not like this hasn’t been a daily occurrence for almost a month.  

Just as I got used to the silence, Buddy barked, startling me and causing me to splutter my coffee (coffee coming out of the nose is not pleasant, in case you were wondering) and the thud happened. Again.

Y’all, this has been going on for two and a half hours, every morning for 21 days.  I’ll tell ya what, the military drill instructors got NUTTIN’ on a squirrel’s drill instructor.

Home on the Range

So I was on my way home from grocery shopping in Manhattan. I decided to take the back way because…well, because the back roads are more peaceful. Besides, I like seeing the calves have the zoomies.

Anyhoo, after seeing pasture upon pasture of cattle (no calves having zoomies unfortunately), I passed what appeared to be a cow with chaps on its head. After a WTF moment, I slowed to get a better view of the bizarre looking creature while thinking, “Poor dipshit underestimated the bull’s land speed record.”

Even as that thought entered my mind another thought popped up (my thoughts interrupt each other all the time), “They can’t be buffalo, it’s got to be some weird hybrid breed of cow.”

“That’s a buffalo. It has to be.”

“Where did these buffalo come from?”

“Are those buffalo?”

“I’m hungry. Does buffalo taste good?”

I was going to dismiss the sight, but the thoughts kept clamoring for me to pay attention to them (I have a head full of children) so to shut them up and appease the curiousity, I decided to get a better look. I couldn’t stop since there was a truck behind me, so I turned around at the earliest turnoff and looped back around.

Yup. Buffalo. Now, how do I tell Fort Riley their “cows” got out? And who do I call to let them know they left the pasture gate open because all three were meandering their way to the opening?

Hill Billy?

So my boyfriend and I were sitting on the front porch, both of us enjoying a beer and the evening watching squirrels, kids and birds play. As we were discussing something to do with one of his cars, there was a loud THUD! The sound was as if someone had dropped a 50 pound bag of feed at our feet. I immediately thought one of the kids had hit one of the cars parked on the street. The moment I turned my head to look, I saw a chubby squirrel bolt around the other side of the tree. I started laughing and asked my boyfriend if that was the squirrel.

He was already chuckling and shaking his head in disbelief by the time I asked the question. “Yep.” By the time he finished describing what had happened, we were both laughing like idiots. Apparently, squirrels learn about gravity the same way humans do. By plummeting to their potential deaths. From extremely high places. AND, since it looked like it had a pretty good winter stash of nuts, the poor squirrel’s center of gravity was not what it once was (I can totally relate…). The squirrel took the kamikaze leap of faith that only squirrels seem to be able to do.

Its faith was lacking. The squirrel missed the branch and landed like a sack of shit at the base of the tree. I commented that the poor thing was lucky it didn’t break its neck.

To which my boyfriend replied, “It’s a shame. Woulda made a good snack.” He scoffed at my look of horror and shook his head in disapproval. “You ain’t a hill billy.”

My shoulders squared. “I never said I was a hill billy. I’m a redneck. We don’t wait for the animals to kill themselves by doing some damn fool thing.” I took a haughty sip of my beer and added, “We scrape them off of the grills of our trucks and load the body into the bed.”

I am NOT ashamed

“You should stop saying you work in retail, no offense.”

Offense has been taken and I’ll be back for the gate later.

I am not ashamed that I chose to make the retail industry as a way to pay the bills. I couldn’t afford to go to college and knew sturdent loans were a honey trap, so I chose to gain my “higher learning” from life. And it taught me well - mainly that people in general are stuck up snobs that have their noses so far up in the air they drown every time it rains.

It reminds me of when I was made to feel ashamed that I grew up “poor” and lived in the country all of my life (there were 6 of 14 kids living in the house at any given time - that’s why we were “poor” and could only afford housing in bumfuck Egypt). I was made to feel ashamed that I knew how to slaughter and butcher chickens. As a joke, it was put in my high school yearbook that my future goals was to “let the chickens run free” (when the shit hits the fan, at least I know I won’t starve to death). I was made to feel ashamed that I had a vocabulary higher than a fourth grader and wasn’t afraid to use it (if I had to learn that shit and have the ability to articulate it in ordinary circumstances, why wouldn’t I expound? It’s not like algebra will ever be utilized in my typical day). I was made to feel ashamed that I like doing all things society deems “not girly” (but it made life easier when there was no on to help me change a tire at 1 a.m.) I was made to feel ashamed that I want a man to want to take care of me (and not in a “man’s work” kind of way, but in the “ooo, that bisch! We should knife her” kind of way - you know, a support system).

I was made to feel ashamed because I didn’t want to get married (marriage is sanctioned slavery). I was made to feel ashamed for not wanting to inject my body with poisons made in laboratories disguised as medicines (God gave us plenty to heal ourselves with). I was made to feel ashamed that I had a child out of wedlock; that I refused to marry the father; that I refused to vaccinate my child after an allergic reaction to the MMR vaccine; I was made to feel ashamed for not taking my child to the ER for every fever, ache and pain he had. But most of all, for the most part and from most people - absolute strangers and from those who were closest to me - I was made to feel ashamed to be me.

I’m not ashamed. I’m proud. And not in the “independent adult woman” kind of way - because I still need someone to open a jar for me. I’m proud of the way I stood my ground, stared the haters in the eye and told them to fuck themselves.

I am sick and goddamned tired of the notion that people work in retail are idiots or morons. I’m tired of the notion that all we do is stock shelves. I’m tired of the notion that working in retail isn’t hard. If it’s not that hard, then how come you people can never find where maple syrup is? If it’s not challenging, then how about you deal with your cranky toddler with nothing but a smile and nice words all day, every day, regardless of how they are acting (because let’s face it, when y’all are getting pissy for being in line for TWO minutes, y’all are acting like toddlers throwing tantrums)? If retail isn’t laborious, then you go on right ahead and lift over 500 pounds per shift, walk over 10 miles per shift, work in sweltering heat and arctic cold, day in and day out for a measly $10 an hour.

Working in retail is NOT something I’m ashamed of doing. Working in retail taught me to see things from another’s viewpoint. It solidified my belief that one should be kind to another because we don’t know what’s going on in their life. It taught me how to adapt like a frigging marine due to the chaotic changes that is the hallmark of retail. It taught me how to prioritize and take the lead when no one else will.

No. I’m not ashamed of working retail and I REFUSE to stop saying it like it’s something to be ashamed of.

…I’ll take that gate now, thank you.