on the bright side, the extra couple of days have allowed me to determine whether my streak of smoothness has ended or not.
i am pleased to report that it has. *knocks wood*
this was my theme song friday:
not because of the heat, mind you (though it was warm enough to drive around with my top down), but because i was on a roll.
my first smooth move happened early in the afternoon, when the phone rang. since i have caller id, i saw it was the company that handles my ira, and i figured the secretary was probably doing her annual call to set up a time for me to talk to my financial adviser regarding the vast wealth i don't have.
while i was not raised a southerner (everyone in my family was born west of the mississippi), i was raised to be polite, so i tend to say "yes, sir" and "yes, ma'am" a fair bit in conversations.
normally this is a good thing, well received by the person i'm conversing with.**
i think i must've thrown three or four "yes ma'am"s out there before i realized that the person on the other end had said his name was eric.
whoops.
my smoothness did not end there, dear reader.
later in the afternoon, after i'd taken care of some chores, i finally wrote up all of the donations i'd piled up for goodwill and packed them into a box so i could drop them off at the donation center en route to the grocery store. (naturally, the 1990's era teen magazines my dad shoved into my car after his last trip to the house in kansas city were on the bottom. i'd rather not flaunt the fact that i was actually interested in ym's**** articles about ways to pick up boys.*****)
since the box was pretty heavy and i had other stuff i needed to take with me for my errands (kroger ad, coupons, wallet, cell phone, checkbook, plastic bags to recycle, reusable bags to tote groceries), i simply put the other stuff into the box, on top of my donations and then unloaded them when i got down to the car.
fast forward a couple of hours. the donations have been made, unused coupons left on store shelves for other frugal customers to use, groceries purchased and put away. by this point, i was lounging on the couch, watching the last few minutes of big bang theory before heading off to bed for my pre-work nap. i reached over to turn the ringer off on my cell phone (it's pretty much inevitable that i'll get a call just as i'm drifting off to sleep), but there was nothing to reach for.
remember how i'd unloaded my essentials from that box? yeah, well, it appears i missed one.
so much for settling down for a nap.
i was on goodwill's doorstep six minutes.
thankfully, when i'd been there earlier, i'd seen which direction the donee (that would be the person who receives the donations, as opposed to the donor, who does the donating, right?******) went with my box.
also, thankfully, due to the large volume of donations, my box had not yet been dumped out.
as i retrieved my sad little dumbphone, i noticed him looking at it as if surprised i'd actually be seen in public with the poor thing. (it's developed a little hinge issue recently, and i've yet to figure out how to fix it. tape has not worked, nor has my jeannie-style blinking.)
"i know it looks a little rough," i said.
i, on the other hand? smooth.
*actually, let me digress for a minute about that, as i've had a couple more thoughts since writing that post:
thought one: is it just me, or does the marking on the side of the goldfish look more like a fin than a cross? should this be construed as proof that poseidon exists, or are we just to assume the creator of that particular goldfish was trying to make it a little more lifelike?
thought two: isn't it a little sadistic that she stares at her goldfish so intently before eating them? as i mentioned before, i can't stand having my food looking at me. it makes me feel a little guilty. thankfully, when i go out for sushi, no one ridicules me openly for putting a little ginger blindfold on my aji.
**there is only one exception that i can think of, and it happens to be one of the few people i dislike so intensely that i would not pee on them if they were on fire. naturally, because they once told me they disliked it, when i started disliking them, i doubled up on the appropriate term.***
***this is probably proof that even basically nice people can have moments when they're not so nice.
****wait- ym is no longer published? crap! i need to get those issues back! they're collector's items!
*****not that i could ever get them to work, anyway. then again, i was generally about as subtle as vanilla ice's highlights during that same era.
******i thought i was making that up, but no- it's actually a word. you can bet i'm adding it to my scrabble/words with friends repertoire.
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