“Vagina head:  Has more kids than sense and suffers from the dangerous delusion that OTHER PEOPLE care about her DNA the way she does. “

I didn’t make up this term.  I’m passing it on. 

At Al’s last night, a customer brought in a delighted child.  I kept having to tell him “Let the grownups finish, honey; we can only think about one thing at a time.”

So finally this tiny excited blond thing shows me a big ornate scribble of dark red with a space in the middle, with an odd tiny shape inside it.

“Neat!” I said.  “A bird in a tree!”

Was that a happy kid or what?  His first non-family arts recognition.

After all those kids yelling about the football game in the rain Friday, in comes a kid with the actual potential to do something after he graduates. 

I gotta get these kids some more art supplies, and some arts grants.  They HAVE to have something they can do and be proud of after they graduate.

Like was said at the preschool class:  “You can be a football player AND an artist.  Then when you graduate, you’ll be able to do wonderful sports arts for the sports industry — and you’ll know all about football already and can sell really fine paintings to the networks and newspapers.” 

Most kids won’t be able to play sports professionally, and it can make them sad all their lives.  For somebody who’s been a sports hero in a small town team, it can shatter them.  If they know that football is a game, while art can serve them all their lives, they might be able to rise above that terrible cliff.

Art saves lives, in more way than one.

Okay, this is another of those warnings I keep trying to give people.  You know — the ones that if you don’t listen, then you’re going to have to put up with me pointing at you — doink doink doink — and saying “I told you so!”

IF I’m working as a clerk at Al’s Mini Mart (where I fill in when somebody’s on vacation, or sick or whatever, because I run my own business and live right down the road and I can usually chip in pretty darned quick) — do not come in and pull stupid scams on me!

Yeah, I’m new there, and I only fill in occasionally, and I do dumb things like can’t figure out the change or punch the $100.00 button or whatever — but don’t use my inattention to pull crap.  You will only get yourself in more hot water once I’ve figured out what you’ve done.

I have a choice.  This is YOUR ass, over there.  This is MY ass, over here (it’s not great, but let’s not get to comparing; I don’t like to see grown people cry).  Which one do you think I’m going to drop into the hot water?

For example:  do NOT mess with the credit card documents!  If you don’t like the way the receipt you have to sign prints out your CC number, don’t wait until I’m busy dealing with a half dozen customers and use the opportunity to scribble out most of the numbers, while complaining as though the store is doing something wrong, or has control over the receipts printout in the first place. 

I am, of course, going to note on the receipt that you scribbled these numbers out.  I am going to call the store the next day and get store policy on it. 

At which point, I find out that store policy is that you don’t get to use your credit card there any more, not if you’re going to abuse the privilege by scribbling on the paperwork with anything except your legal signature.

Look, silly person, those are DOCUMENTS.  You don’t get to alter them!  And considering what your husband does for a living you should know better.  I don’t know if it was your card or his — or if he was your boyfriend — because, again, things were awfully busy and 99 people out of 100 down there act like decent honest adults and don’t pull CC scams on me, and I get spoiled. 

Fine.  I have store policy now.  So I don’t have to accept your credit card.  So now the whole store and the boss knows, and if you can’t use your credit card at the store, don’t come whining to me about the bad things I did to you.  I’m not the one made you do a stupid thing like this, for whatever stupid reason you did it. Didn’t your guy that was with you there — witnessing what you did — considering what his job is, TELL you it’s dumb and probably illegal?

Or didn’t he know?  And if not, maybe he needs some refresher courses .  I don’t want him to lose his job, so maybe he better get on top of this right now before it runs past him again.

Like I said, I’m not covering my ass for yours.  I was in the army – and I CYA.

People, use your heads!  Otherwise, you’ll HURT yourselves!

I was recently accused of being a “little ray of sunshine” because I complain all the time.

The reason I complain is I am sick and tired of listening to everybody ELSE moaning.  And nine times out of ten it’s for something people like me warned them not to do.  Why do we have to put up with all the grousing NOW when we told them not to do that THEN?

If you don’t LIKE the Taliban, then don’t shake their hands and send them weapons and call them and their ilk the moral equivalent of America’s founding fathers.

If you don’t LIKE your troops getting sniped by people who don’t want them in their country, then don’t start wars to stabilize a region just so you can get cheap oil (oh, enough with the “We’re building democracy.”  You don’t like it when they vote the way you don’t like.)

If you don’t LIKE heavy industrialization and Wal-mart using your home as a temporary money pump before abandoning a junker concrete hanger and small desert in the middle of the community, then look at your possibilities for clean industries and don’t screw up your chances by destroying what you have.  There are people on formerly beautiful coral islands mourning the desert wrecks their children are starving on because they didn’t have sense to keep out the guano-mining industry.

If pollution and forest destruction cause your kids to choke and ultimately starve and die of disease, at least try to understand how it happens!

Just please, please, PLEASE don’t expect me to get in line and mourn and whine with and pity you and yours when I and my friends marched in cold winds and talked our brains out and at least TRIED to get you the information in an attempt to keep you from going off the cliff.

Or at least don’t get all offended if I stick my fingers in my ears and go “La la la I don’t HEAR you!”

I COULD be doing the mean thing and snapping:  “WE TOLD YOU NOT TO DO THAT.”

 This is the young buck deer who got his not watching the traffic right outside the west end of town. The local kids hang out right on that turn. I figure it’s just a matter of time before one of the two-legged youngsters get it the same way the four-legged one did. Their little legs are gonna snap just like that; probably hold together inside their blue jeans, though.  Those logging trucks hit hard and don’t slow down.

This guy was hanging half in the road so I stopped quick — the blue Toyota, Miz Blue, is small enough to squeeze onto the border of the road — and hauled him into the grass. Those little rib bones wouldn’t be good for somebody’s tires.

I thought about throwing him into the back of the truck, but his eyes were looking a little too green.

He’s the first dead deer I’ve seen up here. Realized why, too — usually when somebody smacks a deer, they must hop out and throw it into the back of the truck.  Well, it seems reasonable.  Meat is meat.

Next dead deer I see up here — if ever — there’s venison on the menu. His eyes weren’t that green.