Today’s question is: Why do men wear women’s dresses and accessories?

Background: First of all, I actually do not have a problem with cross dressing. It’s fine really, whatever floats your boat. However, we have this neighbor that is a little strange. His brother is even more strange. I have heard about many stories before we bought this place and lived here. One story in particular, is about when the brother was helping with bush removal out front. Apparently, they had these evergreens that were terribly over grown (a problem frequently seen around here. I’m not sure why on earth anyone would let that happen but they do). The brother must have been having some issues getting them out so he decided to douse them with gasoline and start them on fire. Great idea, don’t you think? Just so you get the picture, the offending bushes were planted right in front of the house, probably leaning against it. Needless to say, the brother ran off when the fire got out of control and the neighbors called the fire department.

This story is about the brother. He looks like a guy. His hair is a little long, but he looks like a guy. I think he might be a hippie. I think there’s a good chance he has smoked too much pot too. I’m fairly certain he is not married although he must be in his 40′s.

So, one day, the turkeys and I were taking some garage sale stuff out of the house and down the alley across the street to a friend’s house. As we are crossing the street, I notice out of the corner of my eye, the brother. He is standing outside of his mom’s car (she’s there a lot too) and he’s wearing a dress and a long pearl necklace. Since the turkeys are with me I hurry them across the street. We enter the alley and I think how lucky I am that no one noticed except me. Yep, definitely no one noticed.

The next thing I know, my middle turkey, a girl, says “mom, the only real way to tell the difference between a girl and a boy is from their penis and vulva, right?” Oh shoot, she noticed. I say to her “sweetie are you asking me that because that guy down there was wearing a dress?” “Yes” she replies. I tell her she’s so smart to notice that yes, he is wearing a dress but he looks so much like a guy. You see we have this book called What’s The Big Secret that we’ve been reading for years. It spends a lot of time talking about the differences between girls and boys and how you can tell them apart, among other things. The only real way to tell them apart is from their private parts. We continued to talk about how she’s seen him around and knows he’s a guy and that sometimes some guys like to dress up like girls. It’s just the way it is.

I love learning about life’s little lessons at an early age. It certainly keeps life interesting, don’t you think?

Today’s question is: Why would anyone want to sell someone the Brooklyn Bridge?

background: It’s been a rough few days in our little world. We had decided to invest in this project a friend of ours was doing with his company. The company is fairly large and well known around here and the return on investment would be pretty good. Originally, I didn’t want to do it, mostly because he was a friend. But as time and discussions moved along, I had decided that our friend seemed to need our help with this investment so we did it. There were a few questionable parts to the original deed but mostly I felt OK with it.

Then two days ago, he dropped off a check from another deal and the check was weird looking and I started to feel like something was wrong. I called PW and let him know my concerns. He called our friend at work, where he was informed, he no longer worked. What? He doesn’t work there? PW called me to let me know. I called our friends wife to find out what was happening.

Long story short, he sold us the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s hard to believe that a friend would actually do that, but he did. There’s a bit of talk about none of it happening on purpose. That he didn’t know at the time he took the money that it wasn’t to be used in the manner we thought. However, I don’t believe it. I think he absolutely knew he was putting the money in a separate account, an account that wasn’t registered to any known corporation, how could he not? We’ve asked for the money back and I believe, in my heart of hearts, it will come back. It may not happen when we want it to, but it will come back.

Why is it that people that are supposed to be your friends cheat, lie and basically steal? What’s wrong with people?

today’s question is: why do people have to get so annoyed with waiting?

background: Yesterday I went to the dry cleaners. We have the luxury in our town of having a drive thru dry cleaner. I always drive thru. I like driving through. Sometimes you have to wait a little and I’m always unsure of how many beeps is appropriate to indicate my presence at the window. You see, they have a sign that reads “beep your horn for assistance”. Just so you understand, I don’t actually like that policy. I don’t like beeping my horn for service because I think it can and might be considered rude for some reason. If no one is at, or around the window when I pull up I try, ever so hard, to give the slightest honk I can muster. It usually works.

However, yesterday I waited a while and then thought that perhaps they didn’t hear me. so I honked again a little bit louder. I saw a car pull up behind me right before that honk so I felt a little bit of pressure to get things moving (not sure why). I waited, and waited and waited. Nothing. I decided that perhaps one more beep was necessary. So I beeped again. Then, I noticed the car behind me pulled away, apparently she had waited long enough. A short while later, a person came to the window to help me and apologized for taking a bit of time, she had a customer up front (one that didn’t use the drive thru). No problem for me, I passed my stuff through and then asked for my pick up.

While I was waiting for my pick up I looked over to my passenger door and there was an older lady standing there giving me the evil eye. I quickly rolled down my window, wondering what on earth I could be doing that would elicit such a look from such a lady. She said to me “I’ve been waiting behind you”. She had her dry cleaning in her arms and she said it in the nastiest voice I’ve heard from an older woman in a while. I made a confused look and said, “OK, well, what exactly do you think I’m doing?” She said “you could be going a little faster you know”, same look, same mean voice. I replied “I could not move any faster, I was waiting for service and they have other people they are taking care of, I’m not in charge, it’s not my fault”. And then she replied “I have a bad back and I had to get out of the car”, mean look, nasty voice again. I raised my voice, because at this point I was pretty dang pissed that this woman was taking her waiting out on me, among other things, and said “Don’t be getting all mad at me, I’m just waiting like you were, don’t be yelling at me”. To which she replied “I am not yelling, you are”. And she was right, I was kinda, sorta, yelling. At that, she walked away, toward the walk up entrance to the dry cleaner

Upon turning toward the window, I noticed the owner on the other side and I said to him, “wow, I feel sorry for you, having to deal with people like that”. He gave me a look of sympathy and then walked to the front to help the lady. God forbid she’d have to wait for his employee to finish up with me.

Today’s question is: Why do people park like idiots?

Background: Honestly, is anyone else bugged by this? I can not tell you how many times I’ve tried, ever so hard, to get my vehicle into a parking space only to have the guy next to me either parked wrong in the space. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just because we are a world of busy people. Other times I wonder if it’s an entitlement issue. You know, I’m so gosh darn important, I need to park where and how I need to park, who cares about the next guy.

I don’t buy into that mentality, at all. I’m the parker that parks, gets out and if the car is too close to one line or the other I actually get in and move it over a bit. I can’t say if it’s because I want to be nice or if I’m afraid of a road rage guy parking next to me and keying my car. Both have occurred to me, being nice and being afraid.

The parkers I am most dumbfounded by are the ones that feel it is OK to park their car in front of a driveway or some other non questionable no parking zone get out and go do whatever their all important selves need to do. It actually makes me kind of mad that people would even ever park that way. There is no question in my mind that these people feel a special kind of entitlement. No one is more important than them.

One last note. At the turkeys school there is a car pool line. The way it works is you drive through the line to pick up your turkey (if you don’t walk like I do or park in a parking spot somewhere else). If the line is full you drive around the block (no big deal right?) until the line lightens up a bit. There is a small space in the front of the line that is a no parking zone, usually where the turkeys cross the street. Several people, upon arriving late and having a full line, decide it’s OK to quickly pull over and pick up their turkey in this small space. In my opinion it’s kinda rude and not at all safe to pick up your turkey in this manner. One day the car monitor (we have one, when we can sucker someone into it), approached one of the illegal, selfish, small space picker uppers and asked him to move along. His response was (I kid you not) “Give me a ticket then, I have more money than I have time”. And there you have it, some people in our society would rather pay the price then play by the books. A lovely lesson to teach our little turkeys, no?