How to have a stupid afternoon/night in eleven easy steps

I had a really ridiculous and stupid afternoon and evening and I’ve broken it down into easy to follow steps if you’d like to have a stupid afternoon and evening too!

1. While you’re eating lunch in the break room with co-workers and they start asking if you saw on the news about a big mattress factory fire the day before and you say no, then start making jokes about how someone must have been smoking in bed and they look at you like you have 8 heads and a unicorn horn and say, “No, the fire was in some trailers behind the building and it was a factory, not a mattress in someone’s home.”  And you try to explain that it was just a joke about how people smoke in bed and start fires and they still look at you like you’re an idiot and keep saying, “No, it was at the mattress FACTORY” so you finally just mumble about how they have no sense of humor and sit with them in silence.
2. As you are putting a paper liner on the toilet seat in the women’s restroom, you should completely lose your balance for no explainable reason, and fling yourself very loudly into the wall and the door of the stall and alarm another person who happens to be quietly getting their pee on.
3. A few hours later, suddenly realize that you are apparently too dumb to look at a clock and discover you have been sitting at your desk working away and it is 25 minutes past quitting time and you are pretty much the only person at your end of the hall still at work.  And what you’ve been so busy working on isn’t even due for another six days and you can finish it in a matter of a few hours.
4. When you finally decide to leave the office after working late like a doofus, get on the elevator with the HOT new attorney who just started working at your firm and has his office on your floor.  As he tries to make small talk and introduce himself and says he has seen you walking around a lot but doesn’t know who you are, get so tongue tied because he is so HOT and his eyes are so piercingly beautiful that you can’t even say your name properly.  Did I mention he’s HOT?  He is also probably young enough to be your son, but who cares.  Because he's HOT. Tongue tying HOT.
5. Decide to stop at Best Buy on your way home to buy a cover for your new tablet computer thingie so that you don’t scratch it all up and ruin it.  When you walk in the front door, realize the Home Depot deactivator/scanner thing did not work and your purse is still setting off door alarms and the security guy at the door is giving you the stink eye.  Start babbling about how you went to Home Depot and they tried to scan your purse so it wouldn’t do that anymore, and how you’ve gone through your purse and can’t figure out what’s setting off alarms all across the land and ask the security guy to please not forget what you look like because you’re going to set off the alarm again when you leave.  AND KEEP BABBLING even when he says repeatedly, “Ma’am, it’s okay.  Don’t worry.” 
6. As you leave Best Buy, start babbling AGAIN to the poor security guy explaining that you are the one who set off the alarm when you came in and does he remember that because apparently you think he has no ability to remember something that happened less than 10 minutes ago, and explain you’re going to set it off when you walk out now and honest to Pete, why can’t you just shut up already?  He’s nodding okay.  Just shut up and leave.  So you leave and yes, you set off the alarms again.
7. Get a giant hankering for a Steak ‘n Shake Frisco Melt hamburger when you see a stupid billboard. 
8. Drive about 4 miles for a stupid, stupid fattening hamburger and fries which you have no business eating.  And do it in a lot of traffic so it takes you almost 45 minutes to get something that’s not even real food.
9. Get lost on your way home.  Seriously.  The Steak n’ Shake is at the corner of two major roads and you turn one way on one of them thinking you know exactly where the road comes out and another major road it’s going to connect with, but then realize you’ve apparently never been on that particular section of the major road even though you’ve lived in this city for all 45 years of your stupid life and get lost trying to drive home to eat your dumb hamburger that you don’t need.  And please don't use the GPS you have in your car because YOU WILL FREAKING FIGURE THIS OUT ON YOUR OWN.
10. Finally get on the right track and get home almost 45 minutes later and eat your dumb, cold hamburger and fries.  By then it’s time to take a shower and go to bed because you’ve had such a long and stupid night.
11. Wake up at 12:30 a.m. to pee.  Wake up at 3:00 a.m. to pee.  Get up at 4:30 a.m. to pee.  You don’t have to wake up to do it, because you have been awake reading since you woke up at 3:00 a.m. to pee but can’t sleep because you have too much on your mind which is the story of your life and realize you’ve been staying awake reading for half the night every single night for weeks which is how you have now read 15 books in only the past two and a half weeks and thank goodness for free books on Kindle.  Finally fall asleep again around 5:10 a.m.  Wake up at 5:40 a.m. to pee.  Curse self for drinking a medium Diet Coke with your dumb, cold hamburger and fries right before going to bed.  Doze back off finally around 6:15 a.m. since you don't have to get up until 7:00.  Wake up at 6:25 a.m. when your fake daughter drops something on the hardwood floors across the hall from you and it sounds like a bomb.  When you get up at 7:00 a.m., don't go in her room to check the floor to make sure it's not damaged because you don't even want to know.

I need some help from Uranus

I got me some new technology last night, y'all.  "What?!  I thought you were broke?" is what you're probably thinking.  And I am.  But I got this new technology for F-R-E-E which is the perfect price for anything.

I recently switched my internet and cable provider at home and one of their incentives to sign up with them was to give you a free gift.  My real incentive was that my previous internet wouldn't stay connected half the time and it was driving me bat shit crazy having to unhook everything and turn it all off and then back on and reconnecting several times per week and sometimes it would stay out for a couple of days even after they re-wired my house twice, plus the new provider is $60 cheaper every month.  But a free gift didn't hurt any either.

I had a choice of a Kindle Fire, a Google Nexus 7, some music thing I had never heard of, or a $125 Visa gift card.  I already have a regular Kindle, I had never heard of the music thing, and the Nexus  was worth over $200 as opposed to a $125 Visa gift card, so I went with the Nexus tablet. 

I've already downloaded a few apps that make life worth living such as Facebook, Words with Friends, etc. as well as Candy Crush (I have a theory that Candy Crush was developed by a group of mental health providers because they know how to make people addicted to something which will cause them to be institutionalized at some point).  But what I still need to search for is an astrology app.  Have I told y'all how much I love me the online astrology?  Do I believe it will predict my future and do I avoid signing contracts or buying expensive things when mercury is in retrograde?  No.  However, I just thought about something.  I should absolutely go back and see if I closed on my house while mercury was in retrograde or Neptune was up Uranus.  I read it for entertainment.

For instance, one of the astrologists I read said this about my sign (Leo!  Woot!) for this month:  "Your very best days to look for more income will be Thursday, September 5; Friday, September 6; and Saturday, September 7. Jupiter, the good fortune planet, will signal the mighty Sun and shower you with luck. Your house of income (where the Sun is moving through now) and Jupiter, in your house of confidential meetings, will work together to help you get compensated generously."  

Do y'all remember what happened on September 6th?  I was paying someone to unlock my garage door which my luggage rack had secretly locked.  Does that sound like Jupiter was showering me with luck?  I think not.  No, Jupiter was showering me with stupid crap.  Also, I do not think I have a house of income.  I have more of a shanty of income.  Or a cardboard box next to a fire in a metal barrel of income.  A living under the bridge of income.  And who knew we had a house of confidential meetings.  I need the stars to be more concerned with building me a whole house of income instead of focusing on a house of confidential meetings.  Astrology is ridiculous.  Entertaining, but completely ridiculous.

It also says I should ask for a raise this week.  Guess what I am not doing this week because astrology can suck it!

And there is this:  "Venus will be in your house of home from September 11 to October 6, so you may decide to add fresh design touches now."  For me, that would mean I should start preparing for another bathroom to leak so bad I have to have it re-tiled or a floor to fall in or something.

What I do think about astrology is that sometimes it can explain your personality a little bit. Yesterday I took this color quiz and I am here to tell you that it nailed things!  It said I'm currently obsessed about money matters.  Y'all have no idea.

So if you feel like it, take this quiz and let me know if it's accurate for you too:

Color Oracle

That site also has a place where you can put in your birth date, place of birth and time of birth and you can get other reports.  My personality report says my chart shows things will be very unfavorable for me in financial matters during my life (totally true),  that there will be major events surrounding my mother (my biological mother died when I was 5 which I would certainly categorize as a major event), and it says I will be a polished and refined person (okay, so it can't be 100% accurate).

What would you do with the last hour of your life?

I am feeling a little too down to write a post today.  One of my friends lost her father last night and I've been seeing all of the 9/11 reminders today, and I just don't have it in me.

But please take the time to click on the link below and watch this.   Wow.

The incredible inspiration one man gave us in the last hour of his life

Where are my keys?

Well.  I think what I learned from Music Monday this week is that there have been no songs recorded about jail/prison in the past 30+ years or that we are all at least 192-years-old with the stuff that was submitted. 

I'm going to stick with my declaration of AC/DC being the winner.  Because I heart them.  That Webb Pierce thing which TWO of you submitted?  Um, no.  Just no.  That brings back too many memories of having to sit with my Mam-ma watching Lawrence Welk and his bubbles on Saturday nights down in Vidalia, Georgia.  Usually followed by Hee Haw or my Poppie would take over the living room to watch an Atlanta Braves game while listening to the play-by-play of a different baseball game on the radio and reading the newspaper sports section about the games from the day before while gnawing on a cigar.  He was a multi-tasker and I adored my Poppie.  Except for his baseball/newspaper reading/cigar gnawing habit. 

Second Place goes to Sadie!  I also heart blues music and Muddy Waters is one of my favorites.

And if you'd like to see her submission you're going to have to copy and paste what I give you in a minute into your browser.  Blogger has a You Tube search thing built into it when you want to embed a video.  Sadie's submission is not coming up when I search and I have not been able to figure out how to copy and paste a link to embed because technology hates me.

Here is Sadie's submission:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98btg7T4tWI

Third Place goes to Bobbi because how can you talk about prison songs and not think of this one?  And because Johnny is shooting us a bird and making an EFF YOU! face (I hope that's what shows up when this post is published or y'all are going to wonder what on earth I'm talking about.)

In unrelated news, I have two bosses now that one of my bosses left our firm and let's just say that one of them is a gigantic challenge to work for on a good day.

He came to my desk this morning and said, "You are not going to believe what I did yesterday."

And yesterday was not fun because our entire system for internet, phones, and emails crashed for about half of the day and it's the third time it's happened in a week.  Our IT department is happy with our provider as you can imagine.  Especially since we are considered a leading technology law firm and our technology keeps crashing. 

Anyway, my boss came up to me this morning and told me that he came in the office yesterday morning and left his car running all day long in the parking deck.  I asked him if it ran out of gas and he said it was on empty when he got in it last night and he prayed he would make it to the gas station.  He made it to the gas station but discovered he had a flat tire.  So he had himself a great day of not being able to communicate with any of his clients and a great night of car problems.

It reminded me of something I did back in high school.  My dad was a firm believer in supporting mom and pop operations when you could.  His theory was that they couldn't afford advertising like big companies so they had to do a good job and provide good service in order to stay in business because they relied on word of mouth advertising.  I have to say his theory makes a lot of sense.

We always took our cars for service by a family run place and it was a couple of miles down the road from us and they had built a garage behind their house and that's where they fixed our cars. 

My younger brother and I shared a car for a period of time and this car had many weird mechanical issues so it was in the shop a whole bunch.  One day a friend of mine dropped me off to pick up the car from the family mechanic and I realized I had no more checks on me to pay them.  Because they knew us so well he told me to go ahead and take the car and I could drop a check off the next day. 

The next day I went back to pay them and it was pouring down rain.  I parked in their driveway and ran as fast as I could inside to drop off the check.  I ran back outside to my car and discovered I had locked the door.  With my car still running.  The lights were still on.  The defrost was blasting.  And the windshield wipers were flapping.

So I ran back inside and as embarrassed as I could be, I told the owner what I had done.  He asked if I had another key at home and I said I did.  He asked me if I could get in my house and I said I could.  The owner had to drive me to my house to get a car key and my entire family never let me live it down.

I wish I could tell you that taught me a lesson and I never locked my keys in my car again.

But I can't tell you that.

Because about a year later I stopped at a friend's house in my neighborhood to drop something off and I did it again.  With the car running and almost on empty.  And it ran out of gas in her driveway.

I totally just checked my purse to make sure my keys are in there. 

They are.

This also reminds me of a story I need to tell you about this boss with a flat tire and his interview here.  It is crazy.

But please tell me all of you have locked your keys in your car with it running at least once.

If I got solitary confinement I might at least have some peace and quiet

I'm very happy to report in this Monday to tell y'all that nothing broke this weekend. Well, nothing expensive on my house broke.  I did break a few things though.

I broke my fingernail on my shoot-a-bird finger on my left hand all the way down into the quick and I don't even remember how I did it.  And then yesterday I looked down and my thumb nail was completely broken off on my left hand.  Apparently I broke it while simply sitting at a table talking to my neighbors and my older brother while I was watching pro football at a bar in Little Five Points.  I know......I don't even like football.  Yet I have agreed to go watch college football next weekend with them too.  (Texas A&M and Alabama.  Why?  I have no idea.  I could give a rat's butt about football or either one of those teams.  And I don't even drink.  So I don't like football or drinking - I'm as perplexed as y'all are why I'm going to spend two weekends in a row watching football.)

On Saturday I very nearly broke my back, my quads, and my ass.  I did yard work for almost 4 hours so I can barely walk today.  I am possibly the most out of shape person in all of America.  Remember last weekend when I was uber lazy and didn't do my yard work?  This weekend I mowed, picked up sticks and twigs in my yard because I have a stupid reel mower so a twig the size of a pencil eraser will completely jam it up, cleaned my front porch, blew leaves that are already falling, and then I started emptying out dead flowers and potting soil from containers and cutting back some of the dead stuff in my flower bed.  That's when I failed to notice the GIGANTIC spider web and GIGANTIC writing spider that had spun a web between the dead stalk of a gladiola which was honest to goodness almost 6 feet tall and a birdhouse hanging on the column on my front porch.  I started cutting the gladiola stalk and was suddenly coated in spider web and saw the spider which was as big as my head and in my giant tizzy I threw, I fell backwards and almost broke my ass right in my front yard.

Later that evening after I had taken an awesome shower and cleaned all of the dirt out of my ears, off my face, spider web out of my hair, etc., I was sitting on the porch drinking a big glass of sweet tea enjoying looking at how much better my porch and yard looked and I happened to glance over and saw that GIGANTIC writing spider hanging off of a thing on my front porch and he was eating a fat slimy bug.  Gross.  By Sunday morning when I sat on the porch drinking a cup of coffee, that thing had a whole new GIGANTIC web spun and attached to my porch again.  I guess he's my new neighbor.  He had written MMMMMMMMMMM or WWWWWWWWWWWWWW or ZZZZZZZZZZZZ in his web depending on which way you looked at it.

So yes, I broke two nails and broke my ass.  But Friday night was the high point of breaking stuff.  Friday is when I almost broke the law.

After I dealt with my garage door that had been broken by the top of my car, I didn't get to work until about 1:15.  Because I had worked through lunch one day and had worked a little bit late one night and had come in a little bit early another day, I only had to work 6 hours on Friday to get my hours in for the week.  I left the office at 7:15 and planned to stop at the grocery store on my way home.  I hate going to the grocery store on Saturday or Sunday so I usually go on the way home Friday night for my weekly stuff and then I cook some huge batch of something on Sunday, divide it up into individual portions, and then I just grab a container as I walk out the door each morning so I have my lunch and don't spend $897941341645 each week eating out.  And then by Friday, I can't stand to look at one more bite of whatever it was I made that week because I've eaten it for 5 days straight.  Then I go on Pinterest and find something to make for the next week.  I'm talking super easy stuff y'all.  I am not what one would call a gourmet cook.  I don't touch raw meat and recently had to Google how to hard boil eggs.

When I was leaving work, I ran into a friend/co-worker of mine in the parking deck and since our firm takes up 6 floors and she and I work on different floors, I don't see her too often so we stood there for about 30 minutes talking and catching up.  By the time I got to the store it was almost 8:00.  I was tired, the week had stressed me out between house repairs/finances, one of my bosses who I adore worked his last day at the firm on Friday, my fake kids have been stressing me out, a friend of mine I've known for over 30 years is watching her father pass away (he fell and broke his hip last weekend and then suffered a major stroke during the hip surgery and has never completely woken up and just got moved to hospice a few days ago), etc. and my mind was honestly on about a gazillion different things but was focused very little on grocery shopping.

I stumbled around the grocery store in a daze grabbing the stuff I needed and went to the check-out.  The cashier rang up my groceries, the bag boy bagged everything up, and then I said, "Thanks!  Y'all have a great weekend!" and off I walked.  I was almost to the door when I heard the cashier screaming across the store at me, "MA'AM!  CAN YOU PLEASE COME BACK HERE AND PAY FOR YOUR GROCERIES?"

Y'all!  I totally forgot to pay.  I almost shoplifted a week's worth of groceries!

I walked back with my head hanging in total shame.  The bag boy was about to pee himself he was laughing so hard, the lady in line behind me made a half laugh/half pfftt sound, and the cashier was simply glaring at me.  I apologized profusely but Ms. Cashier was not amused.

Therefore, I've set a lofty goal for myself.  My goal this week is to stay out of jail. 

And I leave you with this:

This reminds me, let's bring back Music Monday since I seem to be posting a little more regularly.  If y'all want to play along, this week's theme is jail!  The song(s) you submit must contain one of the following words in the song title:  jail, prison, cell, lockup, penitentiary, joint, slammer, or clink.  But Jailbreak by AC/DC is probably the winner already and I've already submitted it (although there is another jail song by a man in black that I know without a doubt someone will submit and that might tie me).

I will be here at my desk jamming out to more AC/DC songs today and trying to stay on the straight and narrow.

My luggage rack broke my house. And I'm so poor I can't even go on a trip to use that stupid luggage rack.

Before I begin my rambling, I put this on the Pie on the Face page but I know some of you aren't on Facebook (Sadie and PJ, I'm looking at you).  The next Atlanta Pie party will be at my house on October 26th at 2:00 p.m.  I hope a ton of you can make it!  If you are out of town and want to come but need a place to lay your sweet head down at night, leave a comment and we'll try to find a place for you.

Okay, since several of you asked if the deactivator thingie at Home Depot made my purse stop setting off alarms, I think it did.  Yay!  When I left Home Depot that night it did not go off.  But I haven't been in another store since then so I will let you know.  I think I'm going to the grocery store after work because I know how to party on Friday night, but I don't think they have security things on the door.  So I might not know for sure until I get paid again next week and actually have a reason go into a store.

And Heather, YES!  I do have a metal tape measure in my purse.  Apparently I think I need to be the Boy Scout leader of Atlanta and I always want to Be Prepared.   But I've carried it in different purses for years and this just started happening a couple of weeks ago so I don't know if my tape measure is setting them off.

Remember a couple of days ago when I was screaming from the mountain tops or, you know, from my cubicle, that my house had not broken in eleven days and how awesome my world was.

Yeah.

Wednesday night I got home from work and hit my remote for my lovely detached garage.  Nothing happened.  I hit it again.  Nothing happened.  So I got out of my car and I could hear the motor making motor-y sorts of sounds but the door was not opening. 

I went in the normal door that leads into the storage area of the garage and I was able to manually open the big garage door with my brute strength even though my left arm is a bit weak seeing as how I've broken it twice and have spent a total of 14 months in casts and physical therapy in the past 18 months, and then I went inside and got fake son because he likes doing manly stuff.  He came out and climbed up on a ladder, looked at it and then saw a sticker that said something about electrocution and possible death and he ran for his life.  Seriously.  He said he didn't want to touch it.  I didn't want to either so I can't say that I blame him.  And he told me while he was up on the ladder reading the sticker that said he was going to burst into flames that he saw a lot of grease in a section of the track.

Yesterday I asked my co-workers for recommendations for my latest and greatest broken house problem and three people gave me names.  I Googled them all and one of them charged by 15 minute increments for however long they have to work on your problem.  No thank you.  I looked at another one and many reviewers said the owner tries to rip off poor clueless women type folks who don't know crap about garage doors (were they talking about me?  I think so) and that they were extremely rude.  No thank you.  The third company had really good reviews so I called them and they said they could come out this morning.  Ding ding ding!  We have a winner.

So I took a half day off work yet again to wait for a service person to come to my house.

The guy got to my house and I took him back to the garage and we walked in there and he bumped something and told me to hit the remote and the door opened right up.  And right then I knew, I was about to feel like a total idiot.

"HOLY CRAP!  WHAT DID YOU JUST HIT?"  I screamed.  "I'M SUCH A MORON."  He laughed and said, "let me look at something and then I'll tell you.  And I'm not going to charge you for that by the way."  And I liked him right that second.  Plus he told me his name was Brandon and his shirt said his name was Brandon, but he had to call a guy to get a quote on something optional I want to have done to my house if things stop breaking and I can save the money for it, and I learned his nickname that his friends know him by is Roscoe.  How can you not like a bald guy named Roscoe who isn't going to charge you for being an idiot?

Do y'all know what was wrong with my garage?  Apparently the emergency lock cord that hangs in the middle of the garage completely inconveniently and in a very stupid place, had somehow hooked onto the luggage rack on top of my SUV and had locked my door when I pulled out Wednesday morning to go to work.




And now I had taken a half day off work and paid someone to come unlock my garage.  Because I'm a moron. (And I can't figure out why there is a huge space before this paragraph.  It won't go away.)

I also made a special point of showing him that there was a lot of grease on the track.  Do you know what he said?  I'm going to tell you right now.  He said, "ma'am, um, there's supposed to be grease on the track.  That's how the opener moves on the track."  And right then I knew, I was definitely an idiot.  In fact, he ended up adding a lot more grease to it because it didn't have enough. 

But then he looked and showed me where a cable was about to completely come off of a pulley so if I hadn't accidentally locked my garage with my luggage rack, my whole garage door could have fallen off.  I think that's probably bad when your entire garage door falls off.  So I paid him for a maintenance service call and he tightened the cable so my entire garage door won't fall off and he tightened all of the bolts on the door and adjusted some springs that needed adjusting and he even changed my light bulbs for me.  I also had a keypad entry thing on the outside of the garage but the part that was supposed to cover the battery was missing so the entire battery was bulging and acid had leaked out of it and it was permanently stuck in the unit, plus when you buy a foreclosed house the previous owner is apparently too pissed to make a list and include codes for stuff for whoever buys the house they've lost, so I didn't have a clue what the code was.  Brandon/Roscoe replaced it for me too so if I'm a moron again in the future and lose my remote or something, I can still get the door open even if I break an arm for a third time and can't manually lift it.

So please take this advice:  If your automatic garage door opener stops working, make sure you haven't locked the door with the top of your car so you won't feel like an idiot.

Cake, silk flowers, cat food, security alarms. It's all in here. And more!

I'm going to try and get this post done right quick like because today is Cake Day in my office and if there's one day of the month we look forward to around here it's the first Wednesday of the month when the entire firm stampedes to the break room to try and fight over a piece of cake or a cupcake.  Seriously, it's like no one here has ever had the opportunity to taste cake before in our entire lives and we will stomp on people and throw elbows and all to get us a piece before it's gone.  So in 30 minutes I have to go get all Hulk Hogan on some people.  Which reminds me of a story in college when a pro wrestler (not Hulk Hogan) just about knocked me on my ass.  But no time to tell that one today.

Last night I had to run errands after work since I sat on my lazy butt for three whole days over the long holiday weekend listening to thump thump and ignoring the tall grass, dead flowers, and weeds in my yard.  My poor cat was starved because she had eaten all but the crumbs in her dish by the time I left for work yesterday morning so I had to go to Pet Supermarket because they carry this food called Katz-N-Flocken which, yes, is a weird cat food name, but someone told me it's the only brand that has never had a recall.  So now that I'm buying German cat food, they should probably have a recall any day now.  After that I had to go to Home Depot because I thought I'd try to fit in going to all of the interesting stores in Atlanta in one night.  How exciting am I buying Katz-N-Flocken and two different kinds of light bulbs after work in the same day?

Anyway, something has been going on with my purse for the past couple of weeks.  It sets off every single security system in every single store I go in.  I walk in and the alarms go off.  I walk out and the alarms go off.  Last night I went in the door of the Pet Supermarket and the alarm went off.  I went back outside and the alarm went off.  I entered through the garden entrance of Home Depot and the alarm went off.  I then went through the grills and had to go back out into the entrance area to get a buggy (I'm from the south and it's a buggy so shut up already) and the alarm went off.  I went back inside with my buggy and the alarm went off.  This has been happening everywhere for at least two weeks.  I've emptied my purse out completely and haven't found anything with any kind of security thingies on it so I'm perplexed why this suddenly started happening.

The shocking thing is, I have never once been stopped by a store employee.  They just look up from their register and wave me on my merry little way.  Last night I did the self-checkout at Home Depot because I can handle ringing up my own light bulbs and lawn bags.  I told the attendant that I was going to set off the alarms when I left and asked her if she wanted to look in my purse because I was really curious what would happen if I asked that.

Do you know what she said and did?

She said, "no, I'm sure you're not stealing anything.  In fact, I'll swipe your purse over one of our deactivators and see if that will stop it from happening."  And that's exactly what she did without looking in my purse to see if I was shoplifting a table saw.  Seriously, my bag is huge and I probably could have if I'd wanted to.

The lesson here is that I look entirely too innocent and wholesome to the cashiers of Atlanta and I need to get a tattoo and pierce my nipples or something.  I guess I'd then have to flash my nipples so maybe I'll pierce my eyebrow instead.

And I have no way to segue into this next thing so pretend these dots are really a fabulous segue from security alarms and cat food to how my dad was dating Martha Stewart:

...................

Anita asked to hear the story of how my dad dated Martha Stewart, so Imma tell you the story right now.

The first part of this story is not really something I'm proud to share with y'all, but it's what made this whole story so surprising about my dad.  And that is the fact that my dad had a tendency to be very uncomfortable around the LGBT community.

One day a friend of mine called me.  She was the first friend I made when we moved the summer before I started 7th grade.  She lived in my neighborhood and was out riding her bike and stopped by to meet the new kids who had moved in the house that her grandfather had built on the empty lot that all of the kids in the neighborhood had used to play football, soccer, etc. on for years and years.  Half of the neighbors were related to this friend - aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc. and my friend's dad and grandfather built most of the homes.  None of the kids were happy about a house being built on our lot, but she wanted to meet us.  We are both 45 now and are still in contact even though she lives about an hour and a half away so we don't see each other much.

Anyway, she called me one day about 4 or 5 years ago and barely said hello before she asked, "did you know your dad is dating my aunt?"

"Um.  No.  And which aunt by the way?"

"Aunt Martha."

"Oh.  Well, I don't know how to ask this in any sort of nice way, but is she the, you know, crazy one?" I asked my friend.

"Yes.  But she's on a lot of meds now and even my mom gets along with her these days."

Y'all.  One weekend when I was in middle school or high school, this aunt decided to park her car sideways across the street in front of her house so that no cars could pass through and she stayed out there all weekend long in her nightgown on the hood of her car.  I am not making that up.  And no one called the authorities because everyone knew she was harmless.  And because there were other ways in and out of the neighborhood.  But yes.  Just a little bit crazy.

And now my dad was apparently dating the nightgown wearing hood ornament of Snellville, Georgia.  Yes, y'all.  That's the real name of the place where I grew up.

I told my friend that my dad had not told me he was dating anyone, let alone her Aunt Martha and asked her how she found out.

She told me, "well, we were having a wedding shower for one of my cousins at Great Momma's house and the doorbell rang.  My mom opened the door and there was your dad and Skipper."

Skipper is Martha's son, he's 50-something, has never lived on his own, is a 100% momma's boy, doesn't even have a driver's license so his mom drives him to work, and always has himself a gay old time.  I've adored Skipper and his sister since the first moment I met them, but I was surprised to hear my dad would be going to a wedding shower with Skipper since I'd never actually known my dad to go to a wedding shower ever, much less with my good friend's gay cousin seeing as how he was a little uncomfortable in the company of members of the LGBT community.  Turns out Martha was bringing a bunch of the food and flowers to the shower and her car was too full to fit my dad and Skipper in as well and the shower was right down the street, so my dad drove Skipper and they arrived before Martha and that's how my friend's mom found them together standing at the front door ringing her bell.  So to speak.  And then Skipper informed the family that his mom and my dad were knocking boots.  I don't actually know if they did that, but they were going out in a romantic kind of way.

I figured I would just keep this information to myself and see if my dad would tell me eventually.

A couple of weeks after my friend informed me my dad was dating her aunt, I had to go to my dad's house for something.  And when I walked in the front door I almost passed out.  There were enough silk flower arrangements in that house that my dad could have opened his very own silk flower shop.  His living room alone had 9 arrangements.  There were silk flowers in the kitchen, in the bathrooms, every bedroom, etc.

So I said, "Um, dad?  It looks like you've gotten into silk flower arranging or something.  What's going on?"

And he said, "I love 'em!  Do you remember Skipper from down the street?  He's been coming over and helping me with them."  He never mentioned that he was dating Skipper's mom as well.

A few weeks later, my brother called and said, "Bev!  I'm calling to warn you that if dad calls, don't answer the phone.  He's looking for money."

I was with my mom at the time and had, in fact, ignored a call from my dad because my parents had been divorced for only a short time and my mom didn't want me talking to my dad while I was with her.

My brother went on to tell me that he had answered when my dad had called him and he told my brother he was dating a woman and her son was in jail.  "This lady thinks I have some money and I don't want her to know I really don't have much but she needs me to bail her son out of jail.  Can you loan me the money and I'll pay you back?"

My brother told me my dad said he was dating someone named Martha and I don't think my brother had a clue who Martha was.  But I knew.  The thing is, I will never believe Skipper was in jail for anything because he's the most docile and nicest guy in the world and I can't imagine he would ever do anything that someone would get arrested for.  But I also don't know of another son Martha has so to this day I don't know what to think.

My brother said he was going to loan my dad the money as a test to see if my dad would actually pay him back. 

A few weeks later I was at my dad's house and saw a couple of cards on his mantle.  I am nosy y'all.  So when he walked out of the room I ran over to see who they were from.  And they were both signed, "Love, Martha Stewart."  I had completely forgotten their last name was Stewart and I about cracked up. 

At some point a few months later my dad asked me to go back to his bedroom for some reason or another and when I walked in there I said, "wow, dad.  Nice bed!  Is that new?"

He told me he had helped a friend's son out with something and they didn't have the money to pay him back so they gave him a bed instead.

And because I'm a pain in the ass I asked, "is this someone you dated, dad?"

He said it was just a friend of his that needed help.  And he never told me he dated Martha Stewart.

But I knew.