The Other Nine Reasons To Live in A Small Town

After much consultation and careful review, here are the other nine reasons to live in a small town:

 

1. You are almost certain to get healthy.  What with no McDonalds or any other restaurant with a drive through, your stuck living off the land.
2. Everyone knows everyone so when a local messes around with someone else’s spouse – you probably know that person enough to say you were either shocked or saw it comin.   
3. You are up to date and shockingly current on all celebrity comings and goings – what the heck else are you gonna do? Thank you satellite tv!
4. You know the names of every single dog in town. Even the strays. (And in some cases where they live, what their parents names are, what brand of dog food they eat, etc.)
5. Everyone just moves slower, especially when they are driving and you only have to put gas in the car once every two or three weeks, instead of every two or three days.  
6. You can just stop mowing the lawn and invite your neighbours goat, Bob, over.  
7. One day out of every 14 the local police force decides to throw on the siren, just so you know they are still around and protecting the place. From errant jaywalkers.  
8. There is a really high probability that your neighbours are going to be either farm animals or resting in the local cemetery.  
9. You can drive around in your pajamas with no make up on and no one gives a crap.

 

Goat Follies and One of the Top Ten Reasons To Live in a Small Town

I honestly think my pal Bambi is making this shit up. Who on earth do you know who "rescues" a goat, yes a goat, on the way to dropping her daughter off at work on any given morning? This is a bit of the email I got last week:

Scenerio this morning: drop daughter off at work, I'm in my pajamas because of course I don't anticipate getting out of the car. We drive by the same old farm that we always do and the goats have hopped the fence and are grazing by the side of the road. It's a gorgeous day so far so windows down, slowly driving and we hear "bahhhhhh, baaaaahhhh" as loud as can be.....and there's a goat with his head stuck in the fence. We turn around, pull over, the young man and I hop out and he runs over to the goat to comfort him. (I remind you, i'm in my pajamas). Cars are driving by, and now my son is bawling he's so upset about this poor goat. I phone a couple people and of course they know the owner's name, so I call him and he says he'll be right down. Meantime (I'm still in my pajamas!!!) we free the goat (not an easy task). All was right in animal kingdom.

I don't know about the rest of you but the most wildlife I see while driving in the morning usually consists of the road kill variety. So I am starting a new list: My top ten reasons to live in a small town - saving animals in pajamas (I should also include being able to get a strangers phone number in minutes within a couple of calls! What's with that?) The other nine reasons to live in a small town to follow.

Hoarders

Have you happened to catch the show Hoarders on the telly lately? The show is like a train wreck I tell ya. One of those things that completely grosses you out but you can’t NOT watch. It is amazing that a person or family can live in that much filth and clutter. I find myself at the edge of my seat for the last 45 minutes, waiting sooo patiently for someone to run into these houses with a Dr. Seuss size Cat in the Hat vacuum cleaner. You know, the kind that sucks up everything – even the spots! I wait in anticipation of the ‘big clean up’ at the end and rejoice with the people when they can finally sit at their dining room table after 8 long, junk filled years.

It is also amazing that some of the ‘hoarders’ look totally normal. Hair done, clean clothing, make up – the works. Where do some of these people get ready in the morning? Work? A hotel? I have seen the bathroom and there is no way someone can look that put together surrounding by that much yuck. Perhaps it’s a result of television camera crews following them around. Do they bring their make up people?

A friend and I had a little discussion the other day about this show. She confessed to being a hoader but not a ‘hoarder, hoarder’ (definition: obsessive keeper of things but not at the level of some of these poor, crazy people on the show). Don’t we all have a little hoarder in us? This show has caused my mother to watch religiously and deliberately get rid of a bag of stuff the next day. My fear is that in a couple of months I will show up at the old girls house and it will be completely empty. Is there a reverse hoarding disorder? If there is my mom’s got it.

What I want to know is if the network is going to do follow up shows? Are they going to go back in a years time and see if the hoarder is cured or have they begun the process of re-stocking the stuff and not tiding up? Does the network pay to have their therapy continue or do they run in with a fly-by-night psychologist, clean up the place and leave? Forever?

The bandwagon is calling. Time to start cleaning – one drawer at a time. Hey C – does the liquor cabinet count?

And Again?

Ok, seriously. I have not eaten any carbs or sugar now for 12 days and I am fine. Really. I have not tried to eat my purse or chewed on any office supplies at all. I swear. I have, however, put a large image of jelly beans on my blog to remind me how wonderful sugar is. This time, if you all don't see it (like the larger than life hamburger that once lived happily in the background) I just don't give a shit because I know I am not crazy and you people are messing with me. (Statler, sister, I know you can see them, I just know you can!) If the beans are in my imagination please forward all my mail to Riverview. The "special place" for special people. Oh ya, that's where I will be! Can I bring my blender?

I Finally Had To Break Down

Yes I did.  I finally had to break down and go to the library to satisfy the never ending thirst for something to read.  It was that or re-read the books in my own library, which is fine, however when I do that I always spend the entire time I am reading trying to remember the conclusion and then when I do, I most certainly get pissed off at myself and don’t finish the re-read.  So the trip to the library turns out ok, however I don’t find a single book to take out in our little library and promptly hit the computer library service and had to reserve a few books.  Seriously, it’s not like the population here is 350 or even 1,000.  It’s a pretty big city.  I happily made my request for one book and was promptly notified that I was 27 on the waiting list.  Really?  I blame this totally on Oprah.  All these people reading and me having to wait weeks for a book.   When Bambi and I go to Chicago you can bet I am going to mention to Ms. O that she send some of her book club picks to EVERY library to alleviate this problem in the future.
 
On another note, since it is illegal to smoke almost everywhere, even at the beach, could we not impose a “don’t smoke when in the presence of a library book” law?  There is nothing worse than getting a book out of the library that is not even that old and the sucker smells like it has sat inside a bingo hall for the last year.  Not to mention turning a page and finding some one else’s leftover lunch!  Come on people.  Let’s respect the book.  I am so vigilante about my personal library that if I even slightly suspect that a friend is a lazy, non-bookmark using, page folder I will not even tell them I read.  Oh no you don’t.  You are not folding the corners on my books and making them look all dog eared and nasty!  Go to the library if you want to destroy a beautiful book.  I suppose my next step will have to be a letter to the movers and shakers of the anti-smoking laws.  May the book be with you.
 

The All Mighty Email

Ever go an entire day without getting an email?  It’s those days you begin to question whether or not you are still connected to the world.  Some of us, not mentioning any names, have multiple email accounts, some of which go directly to our Blackberrys.  So after a few hours of not hearing the Blackberry Buzz one has to wonder if the sucker is working properly.  A progression of tasks follow: check connection on phone – good. See if email accounts are still connected – good. Email yourself and see if it goes through – ah, good?  What the hell?  Where is everyone?  How often is it that my people don’t have something to say or comment about?  Almost never.  I have even suffered from a mini nervous breakdown when a friend took two days to respond to an email.  As it turned out she went out of town for a couple of days and neglected to inform everyone via the multiple ‘status’ methods we all have become so dependant on.  Remember back in the day when all we had was an answering machine and you had to leave a message in order to let someone know you were looking for them?  Wow.  Glad that’s over.  That almost rates as bad as actually getting up out of your seat to change the channel on the tv.  Wait – is that why we are all getting fat?  I digress….
 
Is it time to lobby to have the missing persons time changed from 24 hours to a couple of hours?  Could you just see it: walking into a police station to file a missing persons claim because your pal has not emailed you back in the required two hour window? Seriously, there HAS to be something sinister going on? Don't ya think?
 

1,800 Channels and Nothing On?

What the heck is wrong with the world when you have access to over 1,000 channels of tv shows and you spend the entire night surfing the online tv guide?  What has happened to us?  Can there not be something done about repeats?  Why oh why do they get us hooked on a show and then torture us with repeats?  I’m just about ready to pull the pin of some of the weekly shows I watch.  I was trying in vain to find out last week if one of the shows was going to be a repeat and found an online B fest, ranting about the lack of new episodes.  It is so cruel to lead a person on with the joys of watching the pretend trials and tribulations of characters and then put repeats on for two weeks in a row.  It essentially forces us to watch another show in the same time slot and therefore making competing networks very happy.  HGTV never looked so good.