Still Doing It Wrong After All These Years

Guess where we were today?

The bean store. (The bean store is not doing it wrong.)

I can’t wait to see the look on Bob’s face (my Bob, not the Red Mill one) when he sees this giant bag of flour I bought.

As it is, I buy 10 lbs. at a time and I go through it pretty quick. I was thinking of working through some of my bread baking recipes this winter. I bet I’ll use it.

I also stocked up on a wide variety of legumes and other stuff. And I had a latte. I don’t drink coffee so right now I feel like my head is about to pop off.

Last week I did two shopping errands, each about 15 minutes, and already I hate Christmas shopping.

At one place the clerk was so worthless it was like it was her purpose to make sure I didn’t buy anything. I stomped out of the store empty-handed but now I still need to find a present.

We have a relatively new motion detector light out front. One of the bulbs burned out and I decided to deal with it right away instead of putting it off for the next three years.

I went to the good hardware store (remind me to write a post about hardware stores someday) and was directed to this item. She told me: You can’t touch the bulb with your fingers because the oil ruins the bulb.

Okay.

Of course the detector is installed up on a wall outside. So I needed a step ladder and I needed to lean at an awkward angle and I couldn’t see what I was doing and I had to cram my tiny girl hand into this little metal cylinder where the lightbulb lives. And you can’t touch the lightbulb so you have it wrapped in a little napkin.

Why would you even invent a system like this? There seriously is no better way to make a motion detector? It took me about a half hour and I said oodles of bad words and stomped in and out of the house trying to figure out what the problem was.

I even looked for online advice thinking there must be something I’m missing. One guy’s advice? “Turn the bulb into the socket in a clockwise direction.”

Wow, thanks Einstein. The world is so lucky to have you.

I finally got it all reassembled and tested it. Then I jogged up and down the driveway in a victory dance, like Rocky.

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Day 1: Twelve Days of Christmas with the Rentz Girlsâ„¢

Hey, there’s that lamp again.

I know what you’re thinking. I keep talking about the Rentz girls but so far there is just one.

Don’t worry. On Day 2, there will be girls.

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Bad Bean

My Twelve days of Christmas with the Rentz Girls ™ isn’t going to be on consecutive days. I’m going to spread it out so you have something to look forward to the entire holiday season.

Here’s one of the things I was going to write about yesterday before the interruptions.

Tip: Bad hummus is really gross. Don’t eat it.

When my poor sweetheart was sick, he had no appetite so we had tons of food in the house and I wasn’t able to eat it all myself. There were some bowls of stuff that lingered.

I made some hummus and I swear it hadn’t been in there that long. I took a giant bite and Holy Satan’s Diaper. It wasn’t immediately gross, but came on exponentially. Now I’m ruined for hummus for a while which is a shame because it’s a handy snack that’s better for me than salt and cracked pepper potato chips.

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Day Ø: Twelve Days of Christmas With The Rentz Girls™

Story of my life I got interrupted in the middle of this and now I’m in a big hurry.

I was born 5 days after Christmas so this is my first Christmas-ish. I wish we still had that chair and that lamp. That stocking still exists, it’s in bad shape and I’m not 100% sure where it is, but we still have it.

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Day 30!

Email is starting to fill me with despair. It seems like it takes half the weekend to get through my home mailbox and half the weekdays to get through the work mailbox.

And I’m pretty good about keeping up and discarding or archiving as I go along. But there’s always something that needs attention.

My poor husband has had some sort of horrible disease this week. Every time he gets the tiniest bit rundown or stressed he complains that he has threshcold. I’m so used to hearing whining about threshcold, I barely listen. I say things like, Oh, did you drink some tea?

This week threshcold turned into fever and aches. And whining. I will resist the urge to make too much fun of him because if I go down with the horrible disease I can’t whine. But I will link to For God’s sake, woman, he’s a man, he’s got a man cold! for your entertainment.

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Listen To Yourself Churn

This morning I was was reading yet another story about end of the world people who are stockpiling canned food and batteries and air filters for their underground bunker so they can be ready when the world ends.

So here’s my question.

They’re going to be sitting in a bunker rationing their survival cave food buckets and playing card games in candlelight, and then what?

Is that really a life, smugly enjoying being so smart to still be alive, all by themselves and waiting for the day when … what?

When they can all roam on the gray surface trying to avoid being eaten by the other survivors?

If everything does go to hell, I want to be a ghost (I plan on expiring in the first 15 minutes of the catastrophe, whatever it is) watching those people sitting across from each other reconstituting their beef stroganoff survival meals. I think that would be funny.

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November Soccer

Remember the plastic pants?

Well, I lost them.

I wasn’t wearing them but I was carrying them to a game where I might potentially need them but didn’t.

What can I say? I like to have a good time and that means pants get misplaced now and again.

Meanwhile, I haven’t replaced them because it seemed like something that would be easier to do later.

Later has arrived. Tonight I’m going to see the US Women’s National Team play Ireland and our seats are not protected. It’s only supposed to drizzle so I might get away without it but I don’t think I’m going to try.

I went to the Columbia store yesterday and of course they don’t have the regular old plastic pants. They have some sort of fancy plastic pants that are stunt pants with zippers on the side so you can tear away like in Magic Mike.

They also cost about 40% more. So I said I didn’t want the stunt pants and they sent me around the corner to the mountain climbing store and they have the non-stunt pants which are about 90% more than the plain old pants because they are for mountain climbing, not keeping your butt dry while you watch soccer. I can order the cheaper plastic pants online but I need to travel back in time so that I will have them for tonight’s game.

There is no point to shopping downtown. They never have what you want.

The plan is to go back for the stunt pants after lunch. At that point I’m sure they’ll be sold out and only have extra large stunt mountain climbing pants for $500.

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Vintage

I have a situation so I don’t have time for a normal post.

Here’s another sister goofy face and Mom with tiny waist and me in the background. Plus applied Photoshop tutorial.

I originally typed that “tiny waste.” I need to do a post about my lost ability with homonyms. I also find myself mistaking its and it’s on a regular basis.

Haven’t even hit 50 yet and the brain cells are a’shriveling.

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Something

This morning co-worker asked me about a popular holiday movie.

“You know the one I’m talking about? It’s called Something Something Something.”

It’s funnier if you could hear his inflection. It came out like: something … something … SOMETHING.

Argh, if you have to explain it that much, it’s not working. Only four more days!

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In the Neighborhood

It’s interesting to see how businesses do in our neighborhood.

There was a family run mini-market down the street from us. I only went in there a couple of times. I think 99% of its business was beer and cigarettes. I was getting beer. I think the lady was trying to make conversation, asking why she never saw me in there, but it sounded like she was berating me.

It eventually sold and then there was a series of people who tried to make a run of it but failed.

Then this friendly earth-mama type started selling coffee and muffins in the space. She began tearing down walls and expanding her business, selling hot food and having live music. She expanded the kitchen and opened up a great patio space. That place was hopping all the time.

Then there was a fire and she decided not to bring it back. Someone else tried to do a coffee house but it never worked out. The space is still empty.

Meanwhile there’s a different location near us that started a coffee house and wine bar. They have some hot food and are welcoming to knitting groups and 12-step meetings. They won a small grant and built a community bulletin board. That place is hopping now.

It seems like there’s always room for a good place.

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