Suicidal Squirrels, and Other Hazzards

With my erratic posting, I'd be shocked to find I had any readers! Still, the urge to 'blog' lingers on my fingertips.

I made almost all of Thanksgiving this year, driving to Boulder every day this week to use my parents' kitchen and going to 5 different grocery stores, almost all of them on more than on occasion! Damn the prevalence of specialty stores! I can get canning supplies in our middle of nowhere King Soopers, but nowhere in Boulder sells jars! The same, local eggs are nearly $1 cheaper per dozen here than at the same chain store in Boulder. How does this even happen?
I'm happier every day I manage to avoid driving into that town!

Everything tasted wonderful and everyone left with enough left-overs for plenty of sandwiches today! Still, I've made better meals with much less effort, so I doubt I'll go down this over-the-top road again, at least not alone!

Also, we've added another example of why I'm hesitant to lend my mom my car:

Monday, my mom tore up the front walk and had my sister and me help her lay a new flagstone path/patio. She can't life the heavy rock slabs and buckets of fill dust, so we spent 5 hours moving everything around. On Tuesday I drove my mom to the gravel place and helped her load more rock dust into my car, then lent my mom my car for an appointment and started cooking. She got back about 3, and comes into the house saying she's too tired to finish the patio so why don't borrow her car and leave the dust alone for the night? I say okay, and keep cooking. At 7, Mike comes in and says to me, "why is your car in the middle of the street with the lights on, a door open, and the keys still in it? Are you getting things out?"

Yeah. My mom left my car in the middle of the street, lights on, driver's side passenger door AND trunk door open, and the keys in the ignition. For 4 hours. Her excuse? "I was really letting go of not finishing the patio, I guess I just relaxed too much. Oops."

Unlike all the times my sister has wrecked my car, my mom has no karmic punishment attached. The car was not stolen, it started again just fine, and even if everything had gone as wrong as it could have she has the money to just 'make it right.' She ran over a huge rock in my ancient, ground-hugging Saab and destroyed the radiator? "Oops!" and a new radiator for me. Not that I don't appreciate her taking financial responsibility, but I do wish she'd acknowledge that doing something she knows is going to lead to damage is irresponsible and, well, stupid!

Sister car wrecks were pretty amazing, though. Especially the last time she drove that old Saab:
My sister got arrested for having a bong in her purse when she was 16. The anti-pot laws here are rarely enforced, but it was this cop's first day and he was a bit over-zealous. The judge sent her to alcohol classes as the lowest available punishment, which is ironic since she had chosen not to drink because she felt more in control smoking... Anyhow, right after her 18th birthday she had borrowed my car to go to a choir performance. If you don't know Saabs, their ignition is in the center console and is completely removable, and sometimes you can knock the key out on the older ones if you swing your elbow just right. My sis did not know this, and as she was about to turn onto a main street she apparently knocked the ignition just enough to turn the car off. The ignition was misaligned now, and since she had no idea it came out at all she had no idea she needed to fix it. All she knew was the car wouldn't start and the key wouldn't come out!
A cop driving by on the main road helped her push the car into a parking lot, then ran her license as protocol. Turns out, the paperwork for finishing her alcohol class had never been filed, and there was a warrant out for her arrest now that she'd turned 18! My sister when to jail, and my parents got to argue with the cops all night until someone found her paperwork and allowed them to take her home.

Okay, off to bed. Hope anyone had a lovely Thanksgiving!