A Camera In The Hand Is Worth A Bird In The Car

I did not post anything last night because I was not having a good day. I am sure Mabel is incensed that I had a whole day off from school, and still could not manage to write something on her own personal blog. Mabel will have to get over it.

Friday dawned dark and early, when Farmer H made sure I was awake when he left for work at 6:00. No need for me to catch any extra ZZZZs just because I had a day off work. No siree, Bob!

The Pony and I set out to collect the #1 son from his grandma's house, where he had spent the night after watching hockey. Darn that Dish Network and their withholding of Fox Sports Midwest, home of the Blues. At least it has been restored since yesterday. Once in town, I traded The Pony for #1.

#1 son and I stopped by the bank to reset the PIN on his bank card. That was a comedy of errors, necessitating three trips around the building to shove that slacker card into the ATM and be told that the transaction could not be processed. I'm glad we walked instead of driving, though I felt bad that cars had to wait in line for us pedestrians. The problem was that the card was not yet activated, which I couldn't do because I didn't have a PIN, which couldn't be reset until the card was activated. I'm buying it a watch fob for Christmas, and hoping for some hair combs.

From the bank, we T-Hoed over to another town to pay the Mansion payment, and to a Devil's Playground to pick up the new camera that #1 has been saving for. Of course The Devil was fresh out of expensive cameras. We did, however, snag a phone for The Pony. The lady who sold it to us was a complete nincompoop, but acknowledged such in her tirade against The Devil. I felt her pain. She whined to her co-worker, a young man much more electronic-savvy than she, "People don't know what it's like to look like an idiot." Au contraire. I told her, "Um, I pretty much do it every day. In fact, it's kind of expected of me."

After calling around to many different Devils, #1 realized that his camera dream had been squashed. The Devil keeps one on the display shelf, but does not stock it, apparently. It's some kind of Canon Rebel T2i fancy schmancy doohickey. The only place he found one was at Creve Coeur Camera, and Mrs. Hillbilly Mom was not driving to the city on her day off.

Sonic made me wait in line for 10 minutes for my free Route 44 Diet Coke with Lime. You'd think they would have waived that free receipt and given me one on the house for my trouble. But no. They must have been taking lessons from The Devil. My very special waitress was not there, or she would have set things right. The dudes are clueless. They'll never get a tip from me.

This day followed a bad evening after conferences Thursday night, when 7-11 held me hostage for about 20 minutes. I waited in line for gas, for two cars to move away from the pumps. The drivers had come out of the store and were sitting in the cars. One finally left, so I wove my way like a blindfolded psychic through the tight confines of the parking lot, narrowly escaping a ramming from a big red Dodge pickup who thought he could back up at will with no consideration for wending blindfolded psychics. That pump-blocker sat in his car and watched me cut in and maneuver my T-Hoe toward his front bumper and the pumps. That mystery was solved when I went in to pay, and got stuck in line behind his woman, who was jawing about lottery tickets.

At the next stoplight, waiting to make a left, a guy in front of me sat through 30 of the 60 seconds of our arrow. I honked to steer his attention from texting to turning, and he went all hillbilly passive-aggressive on me, flipping me the bird and then inching through that intersection at the speed of salt-sizzling slug. Some people! I was doing him a favor, actually, by honking instead of jumping out of T-Hoe to beat the living snot out of him.

Which brings us back to Friday, and the rest of the afternoon, in which #1 pouted like a baby robbed of candy, because he wasn't getting the camera he had already counted before it hatched. His cousin who drives him to the city sometimes was in Cape Girardeau for the day, and I decreed that he was NOT going to ask his grandma to take him.

Even Steven smiled on the boy, though. Farmer H was finagled into taking him, upon arriving home from the near-city where he works. I don't even demand a Stevening for myself. It makes me happy when my kids are happy.

But not enough to drive one to the city.