dis-obey: to fail to obey

If you’ve been reading MySistersJar for several years, you will remember my story about the trips to the dump when the road was closed.  (https://mysistersjar.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/frazzled-mother-goes-ballistic-at-city-dump/) That road is Dixileta.  That short-cut, albeit crazy-bumpy, has been used in our digs for several years.  It’s right near my parent’s home and is the quickest way onto the freeway heading into Phoenix.  Nora refers to it as “la avenida de montaña” …the mountain avenue!  The drop on that crazy pavement is rollercoaster worthy if you are speeding!

A few weeks back, the city put up signs telling all of us who use that road, that if we weren’t driving a truck we were breaking the law.  WHAT?  How can they do that?  Easy.  Slap up a few signs… and post a policeman.

With my mother in the car, I disobeyed (that’s what the ticket said!) and took the shortcut anyway.  Not a good idea with the nice officer of the law waiting for me.  He did kindly explain the reason for the signs.  Seems the road does not belong to the city.  It is owned by the gravel company that is located just east of the signs.  It was put in for the gravel trucks, which is good because then they don’t rumble down through our neighborhood.  The city told the gravel company to do some repairs on their road.  They replied, “No, get your traffic off our road.”  And up went the signs.

So, because of my glowing flawless violation record I had the option of choosing traffic school.  yippee…..  BUT, things have improved over the years and I was able to take it online… in my pjs… while wrapping gifts, folding laundry, washing dishes and feeding the fish.  ALSO, I found one that is called Improv Driving School.  Yes, you read that right… IMPROV!  All that means is that they added sarcastic comments after the real rules of the road… and they offer 5-10 minute videos of traffic jokes at the beginning of each lesson… that aren’t required.  I thought the videos were dumb at first (well, I still do) but each of the ten lessons is timed.  They are approximately 23 minutes each… WAY more time than is necessary to read the information and answer the three questions EVEN if you are only in grade four at the present time.  So I skipped the videos, read the info, did the review and clicked on ‘take the test.’  It told me that I didn’t spend enough time reading the material… there is a clock that counts down for you.  Good grief.  If I read the whole chapter S L O W L Y, pronouncing every syllable from 25 feet with one eye covered, I would still have to wait for the clock.  This IS just the same as wasting my time in a class, except for the fact that I can go get things crossed off my to-do list while I wait for the clock to count down.  Sheesh.

Did you hear the one about the driver who died from being hit in the head by a kleenex box? (Seriously, that was on there!)

Mr. Economical

 

My dear husband prefers the Mr. Economical title over “cheapskate” or “tightwad.”  I don’t blame him.  I like to refer to him as Mr. Wallet.  :o)  He has earned this name throughout our 20+ years of marriage by continually amazing me at his new and improved money-saving, penny-pinching schemes to prosper his family.  Albeit, these are a few EXTREME examples, they are factual and worth mentioning for posterity.

The Moldy Cantaloupe Conundrum.  Somehow a perfectly ripe and inviting cantaloupe snuck its way to the back of the fridge behind the giant jar of apple sauce and remained hidden until successfully deformed and fermented.  I discovered the disgusting lumpy melon and placed it in the trash.  The next morning to my astonishment, the cantaloupe had climbed out of the trash, rolled its lumpy self over to the fridge, pried open the door and scaled the shelves to the most prominent place in the front.  OK, Rick found it and put it back in the fridge.  Sick!  So I put it back in the trash, where it belonged.  Then I found it again in the fridge….  I left it there until I had the perfect plan.  A friend of mine stopped by and as she was leaving, I grabbed the rotten fruit and pushed it inside her coat.  “Please take this home and throw it away!” I pleaded.  She did.  And the fridge-garbage-fridge-garbage-fridge cantaloupe was never discussed then… or ever again.  One point for me.

The Acrid Trash Bag Affair.  Rick’s dad visited our house one summer and kindly mowed the gargantuan lawn for us.  He tediously placed all the clippings in 8 or 9 garbage bags, ready for transport to the dump.  Behind our house was a sloping hill of trees and an old, dead 1960-something truck carcass.  Finding all the trash bags full of grass, Rick carried each one to the back of the property and emptied them down the hill, where he always put the cut grass.  Next, being Mr. Economical, he folded the bags now lined with cling-on grass blades and put them at the bottom of our garbage can for future use.  Well, 100 degrees + grass clippings in plastic = smelly mess.  I believe I did mention the assaulting aroma, but continued to fill the bags until they were used up.  Next came a trip to the dump, being that there was no garbage removal in our remote town in Northern Alberta.  When we arrived at the crater-size hole half filled with bulging black trash bags, I gasped and exclaimed to my dear husband in an excited voice, “Honey!  Look!”  He looked, but wasn’t quite sure at what.  I pointed to the hole and proclaimed, “Look at all the FREE trash bags just waiting to be emptied!  We’ll never have to buy garbage bags again!”  He rolled his eyes toward heaven.  I believe he was thanking God for ME.

Unbelievable….

We’ve had a BUSY weekend, fo-sho.  (That’s gangsta talk for “for sure”… thanks to my 14 year old daughter, who is a little gangsta herself.) 

What is so unbelievable, you ask?  I found out today that the short-cut-only-2-mile road to the dump was open the entire time I was driving 7 miles the long way around.  It figures, doesn’t it?  And with the current prices of gas… I could’ve bought a new pair of shoes!

Anyway, we farmed out each of the kids and it is movie night here.  WOOOoooo HOOOOoooo!

No blogging time tonight.  Maybe tomorrow.

Hope your weekend was FAB!    XOXO, Linda

Frazzled Mother Goes Ballistic at City Dump

All I can say is, I was SO close to being that headline in tonight’s nightly news.  Thank God, I’m not.

In the middle of the night last night, when my brain full of buzzing wires was still at work, I figured out that 440 copies of my new book will be delivered here VERY SOON.  Intervention was needed in the garage to make space available.  I rounded up my strong sons and we loaded the back of the van for a trip to the dump….. an old, HUGE TV, a dead computer monitor with all the attachments, a broken sled from 1970 (made me sad… it was mine), a bike frame, another delapatated bike, a warped piece of plywood and some crutches minus the large rubber stoppers from the bottoms.

Once a month at the Phx. City sanitation transfer station (the dump) if you bring your water/sewer bill your trip is free instead of $20.  I dug out a bill from the file cabinet and we were off.  The area that surrounds our home is in the heat of roadway reconstruction.  The dump is 2 miles straight north of our home, but I had to head south for 2.5 miles first. 

I’ve only been to this transfer station once about two years ago.  I forgot that the drive up window lane is on a gigantic scale.  So I mistakenly drove up on the scale behind the guy in front of me.  The dump lady hung out the window and flapped her arm at me to get off the scale.  I s-l-o-w-l-y backed down the skinny ramp.

The guy in the white truck currently at the window was having issues…. not just crazy-woman-driver-behind-on-the-scale issues…. other issues.   Five, maybe eight-minute-long issues.  I finally backed out of my lane and went to the next lane.  Then the aforementioned white truck drove through…. and so did four other trucks behind him…. while I waited for the gentleman in the gray truck who had issues.

I eventually arrived at the window, only to be told that the water/sewer ticket in my hand was three days passed the 60 day expiration limit…. and VOID.  Bummer, dude.  I drove seven miles back home, dug through my husband’s top dresser drawer filing system and found a current ticket to the dump.  The boys and I grabbed snacks, drinks and got back in the minivan full of junk.  Another seven mile drive to the city facility…. and when I pulled up to the same window with the same nice lady….. I COULDN’T FIND MY TICKET!  I almost cried.  We searched high and low.  Nada.  The angel-lady watched us search for about five minutes (maybe this was the issue with the other men??) and she finally said, “What’s your name, honey?” 

“Linda Crosby.” 

Then she made my frazzled day by saying, “I’m so proud of you for not yelling at your kids.  You give kids something to hold and they lose it every time!  I know you made the effort and went all the way home.  You can go through this time without a water bill.”  I thanked her 27 times.  (I didn’t tell her that it was ME who left the bill at home.)

My son said to me, “I thought we were going to have to go home and come back again and I was going to stay home this time!”  I think I would’ve stayed home too!  God bless the lady at the dump.

www.LindaCrosby.com