Something Strange in My Living Room

The strangeness of it sent shivers down my spine. The pillows from the sofa were strewn across the floor. Magazines littered the coffee table. A wilting plant on the counter cried out for water. In the middle of it all stood the strangest thing of all with long white scissors for legs. It wore a padded bra of sorts with hideous blue and white stripes. Oh no! An ironing board.

"We can't afford the dry cleaner any more," Richard announced. I'd sent him there with some clothes I needed to wear at my new job.

"Why not?" I asked.

"They want four dollars a blouse. Do you know how long you have to work to pay for that?" he responded."

"Almost a half an hour." I'm earning ten dollars an hour and I still want to live the life I used to have. Richard and I often have the discussion of when we started to think that $10 an hour was a good paying job. We're not quite sure when our minds shifted but it was sometime in between when I was laid off and now. Reality sunk in quite quickly when I saw that ironing board.

When I was working I dropped off the overstuffed bags of dry cleaning in the comfort of my own office building. I haven't pressed my own clothes in years. At that time I only had to work for maybe an hour to pay the cleaner to work magic on our clothing. We didn't even own an ironing board. I wondered if I could even remember how to do it. Iron, that is. My! How life has changed.

So for $25 I now have an ironing board which I have to work two and a half hours to pay for. Today I ironed six cotton blouses, each taking roughly five minutes to complete. Six shirts at four dollars a piece comes to $24 so I have already paid for the privilege of ironing my own clothes. I know. Convoluted math. No matter what kind of math Richard uses, I think my paltry paycheck was spent long before I ever earned it.

But I'm fairly certain, I have a new skill to proudly display on my resume.

My New Sculptured Carpet

Richard's decided to go into the dog grooming business. Poor, poor, Ginger.

Yesterday when I came home, Richard presented me with a plastic grocery bag full of Ginger's dark brown hair.

"I gave her a haircut. I saved us fifty dollars. Look at all this hair I cut off her." He seemed so proud of his accomplishment.
"Where is she?" I asked.
"Uhm. In hiding." Richard responded.

I sat down on the sofa and out of nowhere came my precious little Ginger to sit on my lap. As she settled in, I inspected her. White skin peeked through on her chest where she'd been shaved. Long stripes of hair stood out on her back alongside patches of much shorter and varied lengths. She seemed oblivious to her bad haircut, thank goodness. If my own hairdresser had done this to my cherished locks, she'd be toast.

"She looks like a sculptured carpet. What the heck did you do to her?" I rubbed my fingers along an especially pronounced ridge of hair.

"She doesn't look that bad. Does she?" Richard pouted.

"Yes. She certainly does. People are going to stare when I take her out for a walk." Ginger perked up when she heard the word 'walk'.

"Tell them I'm starting my own dog grooming business. Try to sell them some gift certificates."

I rolled my eyes, put on her leash and said a prayer we wouldn't see anyone we knew. They might want to put her down as carpet so they can wiggle their toes through her soft sculptured pile.

Red Hot Jalapeno Peppers

I may have told you that Richard and I have lost alot of weight lately. I've lost close to twenty pounds and Richard almost thirty. So we've learned to eat salads and lots of them.

Since we found ourselves fat AND on a budget, we compare prices on everything including vegetables. The warehouse club is cheaper for just about all the produce but it's father away so we have to include mileage. Wal-mart is cheaper when tomatoes or strawberries are on sale, and has relatively good everyday prices. The regular grocery store is much more expensive so we only go there for thing like fake cheese that isn't sold elsewhere. Fake cheese you ask? Shredded soy cheese that I love and comes in mozzarella or cheddar flavor. Mmmm.

And then there are red and yellow peppers that we both love. But boy are peppers expensive! $1.78 each even at Wal-Mart. Richard went on a little outing today to the flea market in search of a salad bargain. He felt all the produce at all the different stands until he found exactly what he wanted. Arriving back home he showed off his treasures.

"Look at the size of that red pepper." He held it up to the light. It was quite plump and very red. "One dollar. I only paid one dollar for it."
Next he held up a small elongated green pepper. "And this one was only fourteen cents."
"But it's a jalapeno pepper," I said.
"I know. I thought we'd like a little kick in our salad for a change."
"I don't want it in mine. You eat it."

Richard went about making making four salads. Two for lunch and the other two would be kept in the refrigerator until dinner. Salad making is his new pastime. It keeps him out of trouble for at least a few minutes every day. And I don't have to do it or clean up. Works for me.

Richard is busy chopping away. The next thing I see is him holding his head over the kitchen sink, with the water running directly into his mouth.

"Hot pepper?" I asked.
"Really hot. I'd better pick them out." He stuck his tongue out trying to cool it.
I examined the green plates overflowing with lettuce, spinach, broccoli shreds, green peppers. There was no way he'd find the hot peppers in there.

"How are you going to find tiny slices of a green pepper in that sea of green?"

Richard put on his glasses so he could see more clearly. He pretended to pick out a few green pieces.
"I don't know but at least your sinuses will be cleared out."
We spent fourteen cents but saved a little on the allergy pill today. That's certainly a bargain!

Pickles

Our granddaughter, Melissa has just entered middle school. Everything is new, changing classes, having a locker, making new friends. She keeps telling us school is awesome, wonderful, terrific.

Today we spoke with Missy again.
"How was school today?" Poppy asked while I listened in on the other phone.
"O.K. Guess what?" she said.
"What?" we asked in unison, both surprised she hadn't used the word awesome.
"There's a teacher in this school. Her name is Mrs. McNichol."
"Oh, no," I immediately blurted out.
The rest of the world might say, "What wrong with a teacher named Mrs. McNichol?"

Richard has a very vivd memory as a child of a time when he went for a ride in the car with Uncle Johnny. Uncle Johnny taught him a few poems during their outing together. He made Richard repeat them over and over until the poems had been committed to his memory.

There they remained immortalized and ever since every Jaunich child has been taught the rhymes much to the dismay of their parents. Richard's legacy to the family so to speak. So here is why we know Mrs. McNichol.
"Missy, tell us the poem," Poppy said.

In her sweet eleven year old voice, Missy recited it for us.

"Mrs. McNichol went to pick pickles,
On a windy day.
Mrs. Martin came a fartin'
And blew them all away."

Poor unsuspecting Mrs. McNichol. Missy will never be able to look at her with a straight face.