GetSheila

Scorch795 – The Beginning

Did I ever tell you about the time I caught myself on fire? No?

It was July 1995 and it came as a complete surprise to me. In retrospect, it probably should not have.

My favorite restaurant at the time was Espana’s, a Southwest Bar & Grill in Los Banos, California. My menu item of choice: flour tortilla chips. In fact, they are not even on the menu. They simply bring them to your table when you sit down like other Mexican restaurants bring you corn tortilla chips, at which point you devour them, die, and go to flour tortilla chip heaven.

One evening after work, I had a hankering for flour tortilla chips. Alas, Los Banos was forty miles from my home. Plus, I was already in PJ’s and wet hair because it had been a hot day so I took a shower to cool off first thing when I got home. I was so in for the night.

But hey! I had a stove! And flour tortillas! And oil! Now, not being much of a cook back then, I read the directions on the bottle of vegetable oil to be sure I was doing it right: “Do not leave heating oil unattended.”

Naturally I proceeded to pour the oil in a pan, turn the heat on high, and go outside to smoke a cigarette.

As I sat on my shady patio relaxing after a long day of number-crunching, I saw a flicker of something out of the corner of my eye. HOLY GOD MY STOVE IS IN FLAMES!

Now here is where I learned something about myself, something important I must keep in mind should any emergency-type situations arise in the future: mine is a deceptively calm panic.

I did not run around screaming and freaking out. I calmly put out my cigarette, came inside, and determined what to do. The problem is, calm does not equal rational.

I turned off the burner. Good.

I moved the pan off the hot burner. Good.

At this point, I should have put a lid on the pan or dumped flour on it or some other rational way of putting out the flames. Instead, my body interpreted the “Out out out!” instruction screaming from my brain as “Pick up the flaming pan and take it OUTside.”

::sigh:: It all seems so silly NOW.

As I walked the flaming pan from my tiny kitchen to the patio slider, the oil sloshed over the side of the pan, across my hand, and left a burning trail along the carpet. I then dropped the pan onto the patio cement and watched the flaming oil jump out to sprout little flame tide pools all over the cement. Lucky for me, it did not land on anything flammable, like the wood fence, the wood chip mulch, or my plastic patio furniture.

As I cursed my stupidity, I turned to deal with the indoor flames. The carpet, thank god, went out by itself but there was a tiny flame up in the stove hood vent that I could not reach.

I popped out my front door to retrieve the fire extinguisher mounted there but could not for the life of me get the pin out. The instructions said to pull the pin before depressing the handle. I pulled the thing that was attached to the handle, it came off, and I depressed the handle. Nothing.

It took about a minute (i.e. an eternity) for me to realize the thing I pulled off was not, in fact, the pin but something that was tied around the handle and now that I had depressed the handle several times thinking the pin was out, the pin was irretrievably bent and stuck.

OH GOD, MY KITCHEN IS ON FIRE AND I CANNOT EVEN WORK THE DAMN FIRE EXTINGUISHER. I AM GOING TO DIE OF STUPIDITY.

Home by 7:00!

I thought I would take the night off and come home early to make chili. I left work promptly at 6:00 and stopped by the grocery store to get absolutely everything I would need.

Did you know you need CHILI POWDER to make chili? You did? Huh. I actually knew that, too - sort of, in the back of my mind - but it was not on my shopping list so CLEARLY I thought I already had some. I mean, come on, who doesn't have a bottle of chili powder in a cabinet somewhere?

I am pretty sure I do actually have chili powder. It just happens to be in one of my other kitchen cabinets, the ones I left behind in my sister's house in Fresno.

But hey! I am home! With no homework! I have the entire evening to do ANYTHING I WANT.

Sadly, what I want is to wash my face, put on my PJ's, and climb into bed.

At 8:38pm.

The exciting life of the single gal.

Tags: tax follies

Sunday Ramblings

WARNING: I have had three glasses of ouzo. Liqueur glass, not high ball glasses, but three glasses nonetheless.

Someone's car alarm is going off. It has been going off every ten minutes for the past hour. I think it is the work of the neighborhood lothario, Dodger, a marmalade kitty who sleeps on my front porch and pees on my garage door. I know this because I came home while it was still light for the first time since I don't know when and was greeted by two pee spots with accompanying gravitational drippings down the front of my garage door. They were symmetrically placed, I will give him that.

I would be mad at Dodger but I used to BE the crazy cat lady with neutered Tom cats that roamed the neighborhood, leaving their marks wherever they went. It turns out he does not belong to the Crazy Cat Lady from two doors down, but rather to my next door neighbor who inherited him from a country cousin, where he was a barn cat so must stay outside (or some such.) Whatever. He lets me pet him, hence I must love him.

My accomplishments for this Sunday:

1. I did laundry. All laundry. Including sheets, towels, bath mats, and the mystery sheet that showed up in my garden, which I subsequently found out belonged to my gardener, who uses it to kneel on when weeding. Strangely, he did not claim it at first. People are weird.
2. I worked for 7.2 hours, albeit from home. Ooh. The excitement.
3. I made liver and onions for dinner. Oh. God. I know liver is bad. I know bacon plus onions fried in bacon grease plus liver fried in the same bacon grease and subsequently covered in said bacon and onions is bad, but I am pretty sure I do not care. Besides, I need the iron.
4. I swept the floors because, clearly, the floor-sweeping faeries are somehow tied into the writer's guild and are still...STILL...on strike. (Where does all the dust come from? I must inspect the vents, uh, in the Spring. Yeah, in the Spring.)
5. I turned the power to my spa back on and took it out of "power save" mode so it actually heats the water now. To hell with the utility bill. It is tax season. Why  have a spa if not to immerse one's stiff body into the healing waters?
6. I moved the ironing board, stacked high with weeks of ironing, to my bedroom, where I can iron while I watch TV. Kind of like I put the treadmill in there so I can power-walk while I watch TV. It is getting awfully crowded in there. Meanwhile, nothing is getting ironed and my ass is still expanding. ::sigh::

Digression: Page Davis is back on Trading Spaces. I hate her hair. Does that make me a bad person?

So what did you do this weekend?

Tags: tax follies

So THAT'S What Weekends Are For

It is all coming back to me now. Sleeping in. Lying about. Getting things done that I have been putting off for months. For example:

Remember Zelda, my first ever MP3 player? Audible Manager, where I get my audio books, suddenly became unable to locate Zelda in February, though my laptop had no problem recognizing the connection. This was earth shatterring considering my two hour round trip commute to the office three days a week. I had grown accustomed to losing myself in audio books to make the time go by. Getting thrust back into the eternity of radio was a bit of a shock. And much less attention-grabbing. Oh how the commutes dragged.

Now, I know what you are thinking. Why did I not just take the time and fix it? Well, I tried. I took an entire Sunday (February 11th, to be exact) and tried everything I could think of. I downloaded firmware for the MP3 player. I upgraded software on my laptop. I did the equivalent of an uninstall and reinstall of Audible Manager. At the end of the day, still nothing but the sinking feeling in my stomach that I had just wasted an entire day I could have used for working on somebody's taxes or the Medium Dreams blog.

Here is the really stupid thing: it never once occurred to me to pick up the phone and call technical support. Not that I am stubborn and Must. Do. It. On. My. Own. No, I would LOVE for someone to figure it out for me but I have never had anyone around to do that. I am usually the go-to gal when somebody needs something done. (Hence the name of this blog. Your trivia moment for the day.) Not until just a few weeks ago, when I visited my friend Tania and broke her home network, did the revelation occur. I told her I was sure I could figure it out, I just needed the manuals that came with her router, blah blah blah.

She handed me a cocktail, picked up the phone, and had her network fixed in a matter of minutes. Then she handed the phone to me and tech support for HER home network taught me a little something about the wireless network settings on MY laptop. FOR FREE. (Go Linksys!)

So I called Audible tech support today and not only is my MP3 player loaded with four - count 'em, four - new audio books, but I was inspired to upgrade my wireless router's firmware and fix the wireless part of my wireless all-in-one printer that I could just never get set up properly before. So now? Now all computers and related electronics in my household talk to each other and work like they are supposed to.

(angels sing)

THAT is what weekends are for: to fix stuff that breaks during the week.

Tags: computer problems, mp3 player, audible

Stardate -316240.9

There is much I could tell you.

I could tell you about the new man in my life.

I could tell you about my fabulous new job.

I could tell you how excited I am about the new city that comes with my fabulous new job.

But if I told you all that, well, that would make me a BIG FAT LIAR.

Still the same old shit here, just a different day.

Wish you were here.

________________

P.S. Sorry about that second line. I know you got all excited thinking, "Oh my god, what? A man? No! Really? Oh my god!" And then I went and dashed your hopes on the jagged rocks of my sexless existence. That was rude of me, wasn't it? So, so sorry about that.  

It was a hail of a day

I heard thunder and thought I should go out and get the mail before the heavens opened. A few paces down the walk, a streak of lightning lit up the sky RIGHT OVER MY HEAD, accompanied by the loudest *crack* I have ever heard. After hastily picking up my skin and stepping back into it, I scurried inside and stood panting as I contemplated the mail and just how important is it to empty the mailbox every day, anyway?

Here is what it looked like just a short while later.

Hail on the ground.

Hail in the air. I think this picture is very cool. Especially the part where it was a complete accident how it turned out. Those really are giant hail stones caught in mid-air, folks.

Hail, hail, everywhere!

This is, like, the closest we will ever get to snow here. I am sure the roads were a nightmare. People in California have no idea what to do when weather happens.

Tags: hail, weather

Worries of Past and Present

One of the posts Hsien highlight in her review of 2006 that I mentioned yesterday caught my eye: Worries of Past and Present. Since we have already established I am a big ole copycat (and apparently quite narcissistic and self-absorbed right now, too), here are mine:

Things I used to worry about that no longer bother me:

1. The mole next to my belly button (had it removed - heh)
2. Hair on my big toes
3. My thin-to-nonexistent top lip
4. Eating in front of boys
5. Tan lines

Things I worry about now that never bothered me before:

1. Death, mine in particular (waa!)
2. Dry skin
3. My lack of flexibility (as in: not limber)
4. The survival of the species (as in: us)
5. Not having anyone to take care of me when I am too old and feeble to take care of myself

How about you? Won't you join in the fun and tell us about your worries, past and present? Leave you comment or a link to your blog post here and/or on Hsien's original post.

Tags: 10 things, worries

Horses be Dammed or Why No One Goes Riding With My Sister

The day was clear and hot. The horses, tall and muscular. I was a bit smaller but had no apprehensions. It was simply a day of horseback riding with my sister Karen at a local dam outside of Stockton, California. Little did I know it would turn out to be such an adventure.

I wore Wrangler jeans and a button-up safari shirt, standard riding apparel for any self-respecting cowgirl on a hot day. The pink visor was a last minute inspiration. We started down the canal trail and soon spotted movement in the brush. Commandos: the weekend-warrior, paint-gun variety. They were most respectful and didn't get into any skirmishes that would spook the horses until after we had passed by. Then all hell broke loose and the horses decided it was time to trot, ears back and heads tossing, trying to get a look at the big scary monster that was undoubtedly coming up behind them.

When we came to a wooded trail that led down to the water, I took the lead because my horse was older and had quite a lot of trial riding experience. His name was officially Satan but was so sweet everyone called him Satin. He wasn't mean or evil, just fearless. I could point him at anything and he would go: water, jump, rocky hill. He took everything in stride.

We meandered through pine trees and brush and soon came to the water, where the trail headed down to the bank and then alongside it. Out of nowhere it seemed, we came across a gigantic tree blocking the trail. As I tried to determine how to go around it, I realized there was no "around." The trail ended abruptly at the fallen tree with a lagoon on the other side. There was a sandbar in the middle of the river to our right and tulles floating around in the water.

I think of tulles as a cross between a water lily and a turnip. The bulbous tops float along on what look like lily pads, and make a great big popping noise when you break them apart. How do I know this? Because as a kid, my next door neighbor's dad used to take us fishing and pretend to bite into the tulles with great gusto, the loud popping noise a nice effect simulating his teeth ripping into it. When you're nine, you think that's neato. But I digress.

Tags: horseback riding, horses, how not to ride a horse, sisters, adventures

The Hysterectomy Chronicles: Part 5 - Recovery

The best advice anyone gave me about recovering from abdominal surgery came from my cousin Tricia: pillows. Have one with you at all times and hold it against your belly when you walk, laugh, any time you move basically. Have several more in bed to prop you up from all sides plus one under your knees when you’re sleeping. By god it works!

The Hysterectomy Chronicles: Part 4 - Hospital Days 2-3

I’m still woozy on Saturday so I’m not able to get up and walk around like I’m supposed to. All I can do is lie in bed and practice breathing into my toy designed to prevent bedridden patients from getting pneumonia. Unfortunately, I don’t do so well with that thing so I end up laying around obsessing instead. I’m never going to get over being woozy. I won’t be able to get out of bed and walk around. I’ll get a blood clot in my leg that will dislodge and travel to my heart and kill me, or I’ll develop pneumonia and die here all alone. I used to be such a happy person.