How to Pick out the Best Oranges

So a few days ago,  I'm at work and the phone rings:

Boyfriend: Dee, I'm at the grocery store. Do you want me to get anything?

Me: Um....hmm....Yes. Can you get some oranges, please?

Boyfriend: Okay. Bye.

Ring, ring! 

Me: Hello?

Boyfriend: What kind of oranges do you want?

Me:

Boyfriend: They have two kinds. Navel and Valencia.

Me: I dunno. Get some of both. But make sure you get the ones with the thin skin.

Boyfriend: What?

Me: Get the ones with the thin skin.

Boyfriend: Thin Skin? How am I supposed to know which ones have thin skin?

Me:

Boyfriend:

Me: They're the ones that cry easily.

Boyfriend: What?

Me: They cry easily. When you tease them.

Boyfriend: Click.

Hee!!!

Thin-skinned oranges

Big Brown Baby

One day last year a woman came to the door with a puppy.  My dad answered the door.

"I found this dog in my yard.  I've got three dogs and can't have another."

So, my tenderhearted dad said to leave him.

"$%#@!!  Did you tell her we've got TEN dogs?  Daddy, you've got to stop taking these dogs!"

Lordy I was mad.

And he wasn't the prettiest thing I've ever seen and he looked suspiciously like a pitt bull.  There are fights that take place not far from our place, and I worry about strays that wind up with us, wondering where they came from and what they've been through.

Well, we named him Brownie (because he's brown) and now a year later he's the sweetest, most affectionate dog of the lot.

I can't go outside without Brownie dashing around the corner of the porch and jumping into my lap for snuggles and love.  And I have to find him a loving home where he'll be happy.  We've sold my dad's house and I'm moving into a small cottage in town.

This dog is guaranteed to bring you joy.  Anyone?  Please?  If you're interested, please email me at epritchartt@yahoo.com.  He's neutered and has had his shots, but is probably due for more.

Thank you.

This Modern World

Waiting For Answer by Can Atacan

So last night Boyfriend comes in to tell me I have to get the electricity, gas and water turned on at my new house on Wednesday. 

"Temple's turning hers off on Wednesday and you want yours turned on the second hers is turned off so you can move in smoothly, blah, blah, blah. You can do it by phone for the electricity and gas, but you have to go in person for the water. That'll be more trouble."

Okay. So I call them this morning. I get the little recording that says the wait is 45 minutes to an hour, and if I'll leave my phone number and press the pound key, they'll call me back. So I enter the phone number:

"That is not a valid number. Please try again." 

After three tries, I hang up and call back. I learn that if I go to Entergy.com, I can do it all online. I have telephonophobia, so I go online.

I have to create an account with a user name and password. I pick a security question, etc. All good. Click continue.

So I give them my SS number and my driver's license number, my new address, my old address, blah, blah, blah.

Then it asks if I've had an electrical permit and inspection. Well, the inspector came by. So I have to give a permit number. I go look for my inspection. Can't find it anywhere. Get back upstairs and I've been timed out and logged out.

So I try to log back in.

"There is no account associated with that name."

Great. So I'll just start all over. I enter a username, password, confirm password, e-mail address, confirm e-mail address, pick a security question and a hint, and click "continue."

We're sorry. That username is already in use. 

Yes. It's MY username! The one I picked! It doesn't have an account associated with it because I got bumped out of the system before I got finished! Because of that stupid permit thingie!

So now, it's been about 45 minutes of bullshit, and I'm starting to get peeved. So I decide to call again. I have to go through all the stupid menu of:

"If you speak English, press one; If the account associated with this call is the number you're calling from press one; if you're calling about your bill press one; if you're calling about an electrical outage, press two; if you're calling to stop service, press three; if you're calling to check on a start-service call that's already been made, press four; if you're calling to move service, press five; if you're calling to start service, press six; if you're calling to give us your firstborn son, press seven......BLAH, BLAH, BLAH!!

So I press about starting service.

"Please wait while we transfer you're call. The wait is between 10 and 20 minutes."

Then I turn on the speakerphone and put it down so I can do other things while I wait and this godawful Muzak cranks out at eardrum rupturing volume on my iphone. About 15 minutes later a woman comes on the phone. I'm so excited to get someone on the phone I accidentally hit End Call. 

Fortunately, I must not've hit it hard enough, because it didn't hang up. So then I start going through all the information I've already put online with the new woman, and we get all the way to, "Will there be a dog on the premises when we send someone over?" when I notice there are two cats on top of my great grandfather's secretary, and they're knocking everything off of it. The picture of the house on the bluff hits the floor. The photo of my-dad-with-Annet-as-a-baby hits the floor.

"Hang on just a second," I say. "The cats are knocking everything off the secretary."

I sure hope she knows a secretary is a piece of furniture.

I hear this little beep. 

I shoo the cats away and say, "No, there won't be any dogs over there."

No reply.

"Hello? You still there?"

No reply.

I look at my phone. "We sorry. Facetime is not available at this time. WTF? I hit "Okay."

"Hello? Are you there?"

Nothing.

Surely she'll call me back. I'd already given her my all my contact numbers. I was mid-sentence when the call got dropped. She'll call me back, right? Wrong.

Then my realtor calls. I just want you to know I've already arranged for the permit and inspection. Oh! Well, good! 

So I've now spent about two hours of premium morning, coffee-drinking, posting-on-the-internet time on NOTHING. Argh!!!!

Boyfriend comes upstairs. 

"What are you doing?"

So I tell him the whole, awful, like-a-bad-dream-where-you're-naked-and-trying-to-get-back-home-and-can't kind of story. I'm out of breath when I finish.

He looks at me.

"Don't forget to call the gas company."

Angel in a Dog Suit

My first dog was a German Shepherd named Shadow.  That was the sweetest, smartest dog I've ever had.  After we'd left for school in the mornings, Shadow would leave our house on Linton Avenue and walk up to my dad's office downtown and scratch on the door, asking to be let in.  At 2:00  p.m., when school let out, she'd walk to the door and howl, asking to be let out.  When we arrived home, there she was on the porch waiting for us.

A year or two later my dad moved his office from Commerce Street to Main Street.  Somehow, she knew the new location and walked up to Main to visit for the day.  My father used to cradle her in his arms and say, "You're just an angel in a dog suit."

We also had a sitter who came to stay with us every Thursday at 2 p.m.  On Thursdays, instead of going to my dad's office, Shadow walked down to the corner of Linton Avenue and Oak Street to wait for Augusta, whom she adored.  Augusta always brought a stick with which to scratch Shadow's rump.  How did Shadow know it was Thursday?  And sometimes, she'd go visit with my great aunt Annet on Clifton Avenue, always asking to be let back out in time for us to get home from school.  She was brilliant.  I couldn't think about Shadow for years after she died without collapsing in tears.

Now I'm looking for a home for another shepherd, this one snow white like an angel.  If you'd like to meet this angel in a dog suit and consider adopting him, please write me at epritchartt@yahoo.com.  I don't want to have to take him to the pound.  He's a sweet, affectionate dog.



Whitey:

Whitey just appeared one day a couple of years ago.  I think he's probably a young dog.  He's beautiful, too.  The shape and size of a German Shepherd.  I think of him as a white German Shepherd. I accidentally ran over him in the driveway one day, and he still loves me anyway. He's friendly, he's neutered and he needs a loving, forever home.  I'm moving soon, and if I don't find homes for these dogs, I can't imagine what I'll do.  Please share these stories with your friends.

Elodie

epritchartt@yahoo.com

Dog Days of Summer

Well, I knew the time would come, and it has.  We've sold my father's house, and now have to cull through a hundred fifty years of family furniture, mementos, photos and memories and decide what to take and what to give up.  It will be painful parting with things I've known all my life but the house I'm moving into is much, much smaller than this one, so I've no choice.  But frankly the older I get, the more zen I become, wanting to pare down and not be owned by possessions.

But the most painful paring of all will be parting with my father's beloved dogs.  The closer my dad got to his death, the more concerned he became for the lives of other creatures sharing our world.  He lived in the country where people often drive up, stop the car, shove a dog out onto the road and drive off.  Inevitably, the dogs would find his house, following some scent or sense that this was a safe haven.  In fact, he liked to refer to his place as "Cur Haven" rather than the stuffy "Grafton" it had been dubbed years ago.  He never turned away a hungry dog.

Whitey, Hessie, Teeny and Brownie

Every evening he fed the birds around the house.  Every evening he walked out to the pear tree in the side yard and poured corn for the deer, which congregated in huge numbers under its branches.  He would sit on the porch and watch the deer, his sense of amazement and magic never diminishing through all the years.

During droughts, he'd even pour water into the ruts in the road where tiny frogs hatched from tadpoles, spawned during spring showers.

He fed a couple of colonies of cats around town, never missing a day regardless of the weather. He also brought many of them home. And once in awhile, a cat would emerge from the woods, sensing that same safe haven.

The late, great Tommy Feral snuggling up to Versace.

Fully feral cats learned his voice, came when he called and eventually submitted to his gentle stroke, grateful that life was not so brutal as it had once been.

So now I have 10 dogs and seven cats, and while I can take the cats and one small dog with me, I can't accommodate 9 large dogs in a small house in downtown Natchez.  So I'm asking my readers to help me find homes for the other dogs, who deserve nothing more than to live out their lives in comfort  I'll post one dog per day  Today's dog is Tick Tick:

August 18, 2013 - Tick-Tick found a forever home today with a sweet family with three boys who have another Blue Tick hound, a female.  Tick-Tick should be very happy there!

Tick-Tick

Tick-Tick:

I found Tick-Tick (a Blue Tick Hound) in the front field one day gnawing on a deer carcass.  It was strange because I've never seen a dead deer just lying out in the open, especially since it wasn't deer season.  At first I thought it was Blue, another of Daddy's Blue Tick's.  The dog saw me driving down the driveway and jumped up and started trying to run after me.  You could almost hear him yelling, "Wait!  Help me!"

Suddenly I realized this wasn't Blue.  This dog was emaciated and limping badly.  So I stopped.  He was so happy to see me.  His front right paw was badly mangled.  His ears were shredded as well as his nose and mouth.  We later decided he'd been caught in a steel trap with a raccoon and had been trapped for weeks until his toes finally fell off and he was able to escape.  Those traps should be illegal.

I opened my car door and Tick-Tick jumped right in.  We took him to the vet where it was learned he had heartworms.  After amputating his leg and neutering him, he stayed at the vet for two months and was treated for the heartworms.  $2,000 later we had one of the sweetest dogs you've ever seen.   He's content to lie on the porch, eating dog food and getting love from anyone who cares to give it.  He's a big, goofy dog and would be wonderful with children.  I have no idea how old he is.

Please write me at epritchartt@yahoo.com if you'd like to meet this dog.

Planting Trees

My father planted these oak and pecan trees in 1973.  He bought 425 acres, built a lake on it, a house on it and lined the drive with oaks and dotted the fields with pecan trees, each bearing a birdhouse.  It's a hopeful thing to do, to plant a tree you know you won't see at its peak.  These trees (the oaks, anyway) will, hopefully, be here 300 years from now, majestic and beautiful. In that way, he left the world a better place than he found it.  One of many things he did.

The front gate