Okay, so if you haven't figured it out, there are about a million ways to tick me off. We've covered some of them here already, and I never look back, so you're on your own if you missed the lesson already. Next lesson up on deck is voice mail.
Voice mail, according to the gurus at wikipedia.org (donate money, they're worth it for the number of bar bets they solve) was invented by both IBM and Xerox when I was 2 years old. I'm 35, people, so we're not talking about new technology. Not even close to new. And sure, people started out with earlier versions of message machines, where they'd leave torturous family greetings like, "Hi, You've reached the Obama's - Barack, Michelle, Shasha, Malia and Bo (someone tries to get the dog to bark here) can't come to the phone right now, so leave a message and we'll call you back!" And then finally the dog barks. You remember those. Sure, you haven't heard THAT greeting, but you remember that answering machine. Where the longer the beep was, the more messages were already on the tape.
So now, we're modern. We're high tech. Everyone has voice mail on their cell phones. And if they don't have it there, for sure they have an answering machine at home. Because we're all so damned important that we MUST be reachable, twenty four hours a day, in mediums other than the internet spam we get. (No, thank you for the offer, but I do not need any medication for my erectile dysfunction as I do not have a penis to W*O*W her with.)
We get our new phone and we set up our cool ring back tones (HATEEEEEEEEEEEE) and our custom ringtones for each of our callers. Generic ringtones aren't enough. Nope, we have to download that crap from the wireless carrier du jour at some insane rate that never really seems like a problem... if you stop at one ringtone. But no one ever stops at one. Just ask the guys over at Frito Lay who are shipping those potato chips like they are going out of style. Betcha can't eat just one. It's the same with the ring tones.
So you get this phone, and you customize it. And you leave a near incomprehensible message for the caller because you just can't make it to the phone at that particular minute. For instance, "hey yo this is B I can't get you now so hit me back wit some'in an' I'll get wit you." I believe that translates into, "hello, caller, this is Barack and I can't take your call right now. Please leave your number and a message and I will return your call as quickly as possible." Mind you there is some incredibly loud, annoying music track playing in the room, too, or sports center, blasting away while the telephone owner leaves said greeting, which makes it all the harder to translate to comprehensible language.
All that is annoying as hell. But that's not what ticks me off!
Be quiet. You know I make a long story long, and if you didn't like it, you'd have deleted the email by now.
What ticks me off is this:
I call you. I get your greeting. I wait for the beep and I leave you a thorough and complete message, thus negating the need for you to call me back. And you, you stupid idiot, decide that you should have actually answered that telephone call who's number you didn't instantly recognize on your caller ID... and you call me back.
Don't do that!
Don't call me back instantly. Unless you know me personally and know me well, don't call me back. Just check your damned voice mail. Because the next time I call 197 kids in 1 day to remind them of their lifeguard training, and they choose to call me back to find out what I wanted... I'm going to tell them to check their voice mail. And then I'm going to hang up on them.
Seriously. What's the point of having voice mail if you aren't going to bother to listen to the message.
"I saw you called. What's up?"
"Did you listen to your voice mail?"
"Nahhh, I haven't bothered to check that."
That, right there... that's where I'm hanging up on you.
I understand your time is precious. So is mine. That's why I left you a voice mail. To cut down on me calling and calling and calling until I got you on the phone, I instead chose to take advantage of the technology you presented to me for my use, and I left you a message. Because I do NOT have time to talk to 197 voice mail systems, and then talk to 197 people live, when they decide to call me back instead of listening to their message.
I mean hell, I even use my announcer voice when I leave these messages, so they're entertaining and informative, all at the same time.
Technology... use it, don't abuse it





....disclaimer.... Story Hour is in no way endorsed or read by President Obama or his family, but I sat in traffic for 2 hours and moved 4 miles, so I'm really freaking tired and stressed out, so I couldn't come up with another family who I could actually remember all their names. At least I'm politically aware, right? Right?

There's a fridge in the garage. It's full of beverages. Sure it costs a fortune to run a fridge in the garage, but damnit, we like our drinks cold and the ice maker in the indoor fridge just can't keep up. So be it.
Anyway, I've been visiting the garage fridge for, ohhhhh, we'll call it "forever." But tonight, when I wanted to get a drink... several hours after the sun went down, I opened the back door. And stood there, looking right, then left, then right, then left like I was about to step off the curb to cross the street, cementing the fact that I am a moron.
No really, I am a moron. Because I'm barefoot, in boxer shorts (hawaiian print, thank you very much) and a sweatshirt (don't criticize my after shower attire, okay?) looking around for the stupid raccoon. I've already mentioned I've gone to the garage a kajillion times in the past month alone, and now, suddenly, the night we set the humane trap, I'm all skittish to go get a pepsi. Apparently I thought that my unusual technique of multiple traffic checks would protect me.
The good news is that I made a safe, successful journey to get my caffeine fix. (No, it does not keep me awake at bedtime. Enough with the stupid questions already.) The bad news is that I alerted my parents before I went outside, for fear I'd have a run in with the critter. Really, they were sitting on the couch watching Wheel of Fortune on the DVR. What did I think they were gonna do for me?
Because when I WAS out in the garage, before I opened the door (seriously, it's a household style door and not the roll up door. Didn't I tell you about stupid questions?!) I thumped it a couple times, and then let it swing into the wall behind it, to let whatever was there know I was coming. In case they hadn't paid attention at the traffic signal.
And then I heard the chittering sound. I stood still for a bit and listened, then turned around and trucked back inside all "come to the garage, right now, come to the garage right now come to the garage right now." Vanna was turning over some wicked letters though, and it took them about a dozen more iterations of me all "come to the garage right nowwwwwwwwwwwwww" before the parents got up. Of course I probably sounded like a squirrel on amphetamines I was talking to so fast, and it's almost tax day (Poor Dad. Hang in there! You're almost done being accountant for the masses!) so they were pretty much done moving around.
But they got up.
And trekked out to the garage, where I was waiting again, with my finger over my mouth in that librarian shushing gesture, and we all listened. More chittering. Lots more.
We've got a familyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy up there.
Which changes the whole ball game.
So now we'll take the can of tuna out of the trap and wait out moving day for the coons. No sense trapping the mom when the babies would just die, and then cause the need to rip out sheet rock, as well as throwing away everything in the garage.... wait. Yeah. Not even worth it for a clean garage. I hollered up to the raccoons and told them they had until June to find a new apartment, as I would not be held hostage for my midnight caffeine fix any longer than that.
Freaking raccoons! We live in the city! Over four million people, and still, we end up with raccoons in our attic. Vaughn, Brian, Bryson... you all can definitely say "told you so."

At least around here, family equals food. It's math that even a toddler can count on. Fortunately, our youngest child left the toddler years behind about five years back, but still, she knew she could always count on tons of food whenever there were dozens and dozens of kneecaps at her eye level at Grandma's house.
A few weeks back, I got an email message that was setting up a treat for my Dad's impending birthday. I went downstairs, quietly confirmed a few details, and got back a reply. Next thing I know, I've got an email from my Aunties saying they are arriving on Friday, to celebrate, and surprise us all.
Naturally, I went downstairs and said "I've got a secrettttttttttttt. Clean the house."
Because I'm like that.
And then I walked away.
Mom starting figuring stuff out, and come Friday, Dad was so excited he was twitching, but he didn't really know who was coming down. He had a suspicion, but just waited out the confirmation rather than making a guess. Because either way, he was going to eat.
Because Mom - she puts on a spread when we have guests. It's a dead giveaway something big is going on.
The variety of food is an inverse proportion to the importance of the guests, too. Important to us, that is. So if the Pope were to stop by, he'd be offered up a wedge of cheese and some crackers, with a nice white wine. But the Aunties... they got the full on sixteen variety meal, five different meals. I'm hoping to start eating some time tomorrow, but in the mean time, I'm still full.
Seriously, the menu covered several pages, and involved trips to Sam's Club, Kroger, Walmart, HEB, and then back to Sam's. Fortunately I was working, so I missed the actual trips, and just got home in time on Friday to start cooking. I entered the kitchen and didn't really leave it at all, until Sunday afternoon.
I'm not complaining, but when Mom started fretting she didn't have enough buns for sandwiches on Friday night, I called my brother. He and his family were on the way over, and they'd already been called five minutes earlier about getting tomatoes and lettuce, to make good sandwiches. So Chucklehead and I are on the phone and I'm telling him we're having a meltdown about not having enough buns, even though there was a nice bread, also, and he asks "should I get buns or not?" He cuts to the chase, that brother of mine. I told him it was up to him, but it looked like Mom was trying to feed the entire 4th Infantry Division, and so she said 8 buns wasn't enough. Needless to say, he brought buns.
We had ham, we had chili con queso, we had strawberries & blackberries. We had creamy jalapeno dip. We had romanoff sauce, for the fruit. We had stuff I can't remember. And we had shoestring onion rings, which were damned fine. Oh, yeah, deviled eggs. We had those, too. Saturday started off with breakfast tacos, and the food never went away, but just morphed into lunch. Which morphed into dinner. Dinner was brisket, homemade potato salad, more stuff I can't remember but I'm pretty sure I cooked or stirred. And ice cream cake. God bless Carvel and their cakes. Although I do NOT recommend trying to wait out the last "60 seconds" of an NCAA playoff game, if the cake is out of the freezer. Just set the DVR and catch up on the game, because the cake was melting everywhere, even before the candles were lit.
There was a boatload of food moving through this house this weekend. Two full jars of mayo, the big ones, are gone. Ditto for the mustard. Something like 4 dozen eggs, in all their cholesteroly glory moved through the kitchen, too. And none of them died a Humpty Dumpty death, either, but thanks for asking. But everyone who came through this house gained another ten points on their bad cholesterol reading.
Seriously, it was awesome this weekend. Dad, Mom, the Aunties, Chucklehead and his family, and best of all, Rio and his son stopped by, too. Fabulous. But if someone came and snatched all the leftovers, I'd be quite pleased. Ham sandwich anyone? Brisket sandwich? Potato salad? Queso? Creamy jalapeno dip? Anyone? Anyone?

Oh heck, we're gonna have a lot of tomatoes, from the looks of things around here. That's great, too, for the tomato eaters in the family. I can't eat them, since they make me itch, but the fans of the nightshade family will be having a feast. And their friends, too. And their friends also, based on how fast these suckers are taking off.
Watering is being scheduled. Planned. It's a big deal around here, because we've killed a ton of azaleas. You can't eat azaleas though, so maybe we'll do better this time around. Dad is in charge of watering. We've got a half dozen different types of sprinkler heads though, so you have to pay attention to what you're doing. And every spring there's a learning curve, on which one adjusts which way.
Which would explain how Dad and I ended up being chased across the yard this afternoon while we were adjusting one of them. Damn that sprinkler anyway. Wet socks and crocs do NOT make a good combination. But they do make a delightful squishing sound for a good while afterward.
So anyway, the garden is going well. So far. I have high hopes for it, though, given it's initial rate of growth. Which means all y'all (that's the plural of y'all, by the way, in case you aren't from down here) better be fixin' to (a Texas way of saying getting ready) accept a lot of produce. Except for corn. Because if the corn does germinate and grow, and make it past the squirrel who lives in the back yard, it's not getting shared. Don't even ask.
You can have tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes, heritage tomatoes, mortgage buster tomatoes or Homely Homer tomatoes, which are apparently wicked ugly but taste divine. Again, I wouldn't know. You can probably have bell peppers, green, red or lilac, because we planted them all. You can have some green beans, since we planted maybe a third of the seeds we've got, and I hear they produce like crazy. And the zucchini and yellow squash will either be all or nothing. So you'll get gobs and gobs of that or none at all.
This week I need to scatter some leaf lettuce seeds into the beds, now that I think about it. I knew I forgot something. But I did start most of the seeds in the little greenhouse beds we've got, so we can get some nice buttercrunch and bib lettuce going, too. And carrots. Who seem reluctant to germinate. And oooooooooh, ornamental peppers which will turn the flower beds out front into a riot of color. Color most of us won't be able to eat, given the reported scoville level of these peppers. So you might could probably (definitely) have some of those.