A Conversation

Me [disapprovingly] (to dog, who is currently standing next to my bed, chewing on something that is not food): "What are you eating?!"

Dog: *munch*munch*crunch*blink*wag*wag*

Me [with a bewildered shake of the head]: "You make questionable decisions."

Perhaps she should examine her choices.

I am a goldsmith. I use flexible shaft rotary tools all the time at work and if I had a nickel for every time someone told me they felt like they were at the dentist, I could could put my tools down and never work again.

Generally people make these dentist remarks while I am actively using my flex shaft. Here. I will re-enact it for you.



Me: (working) whiiiz whiizzzzzz whirrrrr whiiz weeeee

Customer: "I feel like I'm at the dentist!"

Me: (enter witty/exasperated comment here, something to the effect of my wishing my dentist gave me jewelry instead of fillings)



See how that makes sense? The noise reminds them, not surprisingly, of the noises one might hear in the dentist's chair, and they make a fitting comment, in appropriate context.

Today was different.

Today I was building a ring from scratch and soldering together several of the small pieces that would make up the gallery.

Soldering. With a torch. And fire. A torch that shoots fire, if you will.

While I was soldering, the woman said, much to my surprise, "It's just like at the dentist!"

I laughed out loud before donning my I-am-in-the-customer-service-industry-and-will-most-likely-be-very-nice-to-you-regardless-of-the-batshit-crazy-things-you-say face and replying, "Yes, just like the dentist."

Hopefully that lady will find my blog one day and realize this letter would have her name in capital letters at the top, if only I had caught it.


Dear lady,

You need to find a new dentist.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Goldsmith,

Allie

How to kill the Earth in one easy step.

1. Go shopping.

That's it. Go shopping. Anywhere. For anything.

Everything comes in ballistic packaging that is nearly impossible to open, and it almost always accompanied by yards of receipt paper.

I almost always have reusable bags on me. I have grocery sized bags that fold and zip into medium-ish pouches that I keep in my car. I have medium sized bags that fold up and fit into smaller bags that I carry around in my everyday bag. I am a veritable bag lady! I am making an effort to be green.

Sometimes my efforts are thwarted, usually by sales associates that just don't get what I am trying to do. Associates that rush to used 9685723645 plastic bags for the ten things I want to buy. Associates that look at me like I am speaking a foreign language when I tell them I brought my own bags. Associates who I am clearly inconveniencing beyond belief when I actually ask that they use my one bag for not only my purchases, but (when we check out separately) my husband's as well. What am I thinking with my outlandish demands?!

I digress.

The other day I went and bought myself new earrings. Cute little star shaped cz's in little white gold settings. They came on a card in a little box. Great! Relatively minimal packaging! This was ideal, since I knew I wasn't going to keep anything but the earrings.

After the sales associate rang up my sale, I said to her, "It's all right, I don't need a bag."

Her reply?

"Ohhh, I'm going to give you a bag. Even though it comes in a little box, I'm going to give you a little bag."

Hm. I asked if I needed the bag, since some places don't like when you check out at the jewelry counter or electronics counter or somewhere else within the store and then traipse out the exit looking like the most confident shop-lifter in history. She didn't answer me. She just handed me my little earrings on their little card in the their little box in their (unnecessary) little bag. And then handed me the longer-than-the-bag receipt, detailing how much the earrings should have cost, how much they actually cost, and how much I saved, and then the shorter, second receipt detailing my debit card transaction.

Are you freaking kidding me?!

First of all, I did not need all of that information. The only details of importance were how much I had spent and with what method I paid.

Secondly, I got in our car, put my earrings in, and immediately had more trash on hand than I generally produce in an entire day at work. And that was after trying to be environmentally conscious.

If that's what I got for trying, it boggles my mind to think of what happens when people just don't care and make no effort!

Anyway, next time you go shopping and bring your own bag, and I hope you have a greener sales associate than I did. Because if those of us who are trying to help out our beautiful Earth, stop, then the terrorists have won.

Or something like that.

I got a new alarm clock today.

This is not earth shattering news.

This isn't even blog-worthy news, really.

Our old alarm clock sucked, so a friend gave us his old one when he got himself a new one. What he failed to make us understand was the fact that the display on his old alarm clock was BRIGHTER THAN THE SUN. This makes sleeping difficult if you are facing the alarm clock even a little bit. It was bright enough that you could just about read by it. I already have trouble sleeping at night, so this new celestial body next to my face did not help. And, for the record, we kept it on the less-bright of the two settings. There was a setting that was EVEN BRIGHTER!!! It lit up the entire room, no exaggeration.

Some diabolical alarm clock designer somewhere must have decided that one sun was not enough for this nice planet of ours. So they made a second one, trapped it in a nice looking piece of electronics, and only had it be noticeable while unsuspecting people were trying to sleep. There is no other reasonable explanation.

Anyway, Joe and I finally bought a new alarm clock. It's blue, which makes me happy. It plays and charges my iPhone, which makes me happy. And the display has three brightness settings, the darkest of which is juuuust bright enough to make out the time in a dark room.

Unfortunately, it will still wake me up way before I am ready, and on a daily basis. Oh well. Necessary evil.

I bet you didn't think you'd read a blog post about poop today.

My husband and I have two dogs.

Otter, our beagle:



and Willy, our miniature dachshund:



Walking them is an adventure, especially when we are not in our own backyard, but for today I will focus on just one oddity of Otter's.

Our yard is not fenced in. This makes leashes a necessity, particularly for Otter. Beagles love to follow their noses, and this makes him a definite flight risk. Otter's leash is a normal, six foot leash that lets him go far enough away to explore some of the weird and gross things he finds interesting, but not so far that we can't keep him out of trouble (or piles of cat poop).

This six foot separation is not up to his standards. Whenever he finally picks the perfect place to go about his business, it is, without fail, roughly one arms length PAST the end of the leash. He can't face you either, because I guess he thinks that invades his privacy. He likes to have his side to you, if not his rear end. This results in him dragging me along the yard until he finally chooses the prime location, and then me taking one step closer to him so my shoulder does not become dislocated.

From afar, this must look like I just want to get closer to the action. That would also make me look like a crazier person than I probably am.

But he is my dog, and I am his person, so I will deal with this weirdness in exchange for the smiling and tail-wagging with which he is so generous.

And at least he doesn't eat his own poop like Willy. But that is another story.

A pretty shot from my backyard.

Slap on the wrist

There. I just gave myself a slap on the wrist for you. My blogging lately has been lazy at best. My problem, if you were wondering, is that I always think of eloquent, witty posts at the wrong times. At work, in the car, in bed while I wait (for longer than I'd like) to fall asleep. I have great ideas for fun, funny and interesting posts, and I even begin to write them in my head. I think that surely I will remember these ideas and snippets of imagined writing the next time I make it to my laptop.

And then, my brain happens.

My brain is an interesting place. Lots goes on there, half of which I am sure I do not remember (and that is being generous). It's quite unfortunate really, especially when I am really excited to write something and then when I finally sit down to create, I remember only that I wanted to write, not what I wanted to write. Grumble grumble.

When I was a junior in high school, in my honors English class, I had the pleasure of listening to a guest speaker who made his living as a writer. I, not surprisingly, do not remember his name. What I do remember is a thing he said about carrying about a notebook wherever he went. That way, when those often fleeting moments of inspiration struck, he would get up out of bed or pull his car to the side of the road so he could write his brief moments of literary genius down. Capture those brilliant ideas and well-constructed lines, and save them to share later.

If I spent the last paragraph inflating a bright shiny balloon, here is where I pop it. I have no such notebook.

Sigh.

But I promise to start feeding parts of my brain into my phone to be called on when the time is right! Because I do enjoy writing, and I like to share my writing with you. So if you could just bear with me, I will try my best to get those blogs wheels turning on a more regular basis.

Locks of Love

I cut my hair again!

The last time I cut my hair was in 2005. Since then I've managed to grow hair down past my waist and a haircut was long overdue. I decided to donate to Locks of Love again, and friend Sarah helped me out by cutting off my 23" ponytail!!!

Check it out!

Here is a before picture:

Here is Sarah cutting my hair:

Here are the after pictures:

Substantive News

I spent yesterday evening at a wedding. The bride my husband's cousin, and the groom one half of an Irish twin set. The reception afforded my husband and I the opportunity to spend some time with the paternal branches of his family tree, many of whom we don't often see. Many of whom, it is worth mentioning, are quite intelligent.

Toward the end of the evening, among the din of tables being cleared and centerpiece bouquets being divvied up, I overheard and subsequently wandered into a conversation about substantive news.

The center of this conversation revolved around one of the brilliant cousin's idea for a website that offered you two types of news. He cited the latest American Idol results as an example of the first type of news, while the second type concerned things more of the ilk of likely replacements for retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. "You know," as he put it, "more substantive news." He even had a clever title for his little imaginary website, one that highlighted what a gross waste of time your searching the first type of news would be.

My external reaction was to chuckle with the rest of the people in the circle, while the voice in my head instantly tried say, over the holier-than-thou laughter, that I would much rather discover who had most recently left the Idol competition. I make this distinction between reactions because, uncharacteristically for me, they differed.

I do not involve myself with politics. While I realize the importance of political elections and appointments, I do not share the overly-stated life or death importance some people associate with said elections and appointments. Simply put, my caring does not affect the results, and the results do not affect my caring. I could happily go the rest of my life without learning who replaces any retiring justice of the Supreme Court.

I, as a former choir singer, former singer of the national anthem at sporting events and simply a lover of singing in general, do involve myself with the mundane and politically inconsequential reality t.v. that is American Idol. I watch it with my husband every week. I like to hear the competitors sing. I like to know each week who has received the least votes and is going home. I am emotionally invested in the singers and their collective fate.

Does this emotional investment I have not lend the topic substance?

I would have liked to pose this question to the group, had I not been so cold and tired and more interested in going home than started a debate in a fancy tent on a fancy patio at a fancy mansion. And as we helped the bride's parents gather what they would be taking home, I forgot about the thirty second conversation.

Today, though, those thirty seconds crept back into my head and got me thinking, hence this post. I hold no regard for how people judge my interests, trivial or otherwise, or what news other people deem substantive. If I have an interest in something, I should be able to "waste" my time on it.

Because time spent on things that make you happy is no waste at all.