Humiliation at the grocery store

Humiliation (also called stultification) is the abasement of pride, which creates mortification or leads to a state of being humbled or reduced to lowliness or submission. It can be brought about through bullying, intimidation, physical or mental mistreatment or trickery, or by embarrassment if a person is revealed to have committed a socially or legally unacceptable act.

That is where I found myself. I can stand many things and have done so, but there is something I've never gotten over is the grocery line and how humiliating it can be.

Let's count the ways grocery lines are humiliating:

1) Not being fast enough loading your items on that stupid conveyor belt

2) Not having your cloth bags first in line before the food, because now the bag person is putting your groceries in plastic bags

3) Having to dig for your coupons, but you put them away so you could load the aforementioned food onto the conveyor belt

4) Having kids with you

5) Having kids who won't stop touching the conveyor belt

6) Having kids who start playing and asking and begging for the candy that is right at their level

7) Having kids hang on you, the counter, the cart while trying to pay, load or just get through the line

8) A crying, screaming or just complaining child

9) Asking, God-forbid, if the computer made a mistake and now you must hold up the line for them to check their screen, then the receipt, then the screen, then the receipt...

10) Asking for a rain-check, which has to be filled out by hand and the checker NEVER knows the specials or the price

11) Forgetting your pin number when you swipe your debit card

And the most BIGGEST humiliation....

12) Not having enough money with you to pay for your groceries so you are forced to select 1 or more items that must be put back

And don't get me started on Self-Check-out...a new and disturbing way to embarrass us and show how incompetent we really are with those stupid scanners and if we can bag correctly.

Sam, growling Sam

My cat has worms.

Not really surprise when you see how many moles, mice & birds she has taken down. Which she then chooses to eat either just the moist and sticky innards or the head...God forbid both.

These are the treats she leaves outside the door for us to find. Which I happily give my husband the job of disposing of the decimated corpse.

The really fun part is when she catches them and brings them inside, still alive. The first time she did this was about 2 months ago. I hear this creature growling as I am sitting at my desk. I looked over at the dog who was sleeping peacefully next to the desk, it wasn't her. I get up to go investigate.

Sam, that's the kitty in question, a grey American shorthair has a cute little furry mouse trapped in her mouth. It's wiggling. Okay...

But that isn't why she is growling. Leo, our orange Norwegian Forest cat is sitting with a few feet of Sam, staring at her bored, clearly demonstrating no designs on the wiggling mouse in her mouth. But Sam continues to respond with deep throated growls.

I can not believe my cat is growling like a Rottweiler. I am deeply amused, so I step closer.

Sam whips her head around and began to growling at me, warning me off. The close I get the deeper they become. I am truly fascinated.

But now she has had enough of me and my antics and doesn't want to take the chance of me stealing her prize, so she takes off under the table. I then realize my folly, if Sam drops it, there could be mouse in the house. So not where I was going with this.

I rush to open the door wide and start shooing Sam out the door. She is definitely not pleased with me and growls menacingly, scuttling to the side away from me. Crap, now I just want her out so she can do what she needs to outside. I really don't want to be cleaning up intestines. Or wonder if she did eat the damn head.

Finally she darts out the door, clutching the mouse firmly in her mouth. I sigh.

I wander upstairs to get some coffee and look out the back window and I see Sam sitting in the grass. Then I see a bouncing little shape trying desperately to escape in the grass. Good luck mouse, at least you are outside..

Why I slept in

Why I was sleeping in today...

Ayla woke me up at 3 am because she fell down the stairs...so I slammed out of bed to get her. She was lying at the bottom of the stair, screaming. I turned on a light to look at her, she was sprawled out on her belly so I knew she probably didn't have any serious injuries. I asked her if she could get up, which she did. I took her back to my bed because she was crying and has been sick, running a fever and hacking coughs all day.

So then at 5 am she woke me up to go to the bathroom and asked me to move so she could get by. I sat up, and felt her move behind me. I reached back to touch my pillow ended up knocking her over into the end table. I hear the thump and then "I'm bleeding! I'm bleeding!"

So I rush to turn on the light, but it was just out of reach, so I went to get out of bed, tangled my legs in the blankets and fell onto the floor and cracked my head into my dresser.

I shook my head wincing, got up and turned on the light and I see Ayla with blood pouring out of her face. Dave finally wakes up and says "What's up?".

I grab a wad of tissues next to my bed and press them against Ayla's nose and check her for where she was hurt and growled at Dave to go get a towel because I see blood all over the bed. Ayla is sobbing and shaking, in fear and because her fever has spiked. All I can do is moan with her because I can feel that I have their cold/flu as well, I am so very tired and feeling totally guilty.

So we get her nose under control, give her an cold rag for the split lip and medicine for her fever, threw a towel over the bloody area and crawl back into bed.

That's why I was still sleeping at 8am. :D

Password Hell

I've reached a point in my life where I am older, not technically old, but definitely gracing the covers of AARP soon enough. I truly realize this moment when I try to remember my pins, because GOD-forbid we have just one for every account, card, or bill paying event we might have.

This hits me while I am standing in Costco after a very long day and an exhaustive shopping trip that had to be done. I am tired. I have 5 kids, so that isn't too surprising, but my brain capacity has reached a maxed energy usage and I feel the breakers starting to make that snapping noise.

The checker looks at me expectantly, his pseudo-patient stare letting me know his part is done...now pay. I swipe my card. And stand there. I rifle through my wearied memory banks to find the right digits that I need to punch into the stupid card machine. How many freakin' numbers do I really need? People can hack my account at any given time, do I really need 10 different pin numbers? I start to sweat because I know I have a finite amount of chances before the gormless machine locks me out. It happened before and it wasn't pretty.

My fingers are hovering over the buttons and a series of numbers float to the top of my muddy mind. Praying, I tap the numbers in and wait, "Did I do it? Did I get them right?". The transaction floats through and the checker dismisses me with my mile-long receipt. As I turn to retrieve my cart, I wonder, why does this have to be so hard?

I have pin numbers for all my debit cards, my bank accounts, my bill accounts and they are all different. I know we haven't tapped the true extent of our minds, but some days it feels like it.

But I realize that that is nothing compared to the passwords I have to remember. Luckily, most websites give you "email your password" to you, I just wish the ATM machine was a supportive.

Snow

Snow, snow, snow!

I turn six again every time the first snow falls. Excitement beats at my chest and a giddy little laugh breaks free because the wonder and purity never gets old for me. I watch the beautiful floating ice crystals as they fall and hope, deliciously hope, that they will stick and transform our yard to resemble those winter wonderland postcards.

I watch and watch and watch. I probably wouldn't be like this if our winters were immured in this frozen landscape for month, but we get it only periodically, so it is always fresh and exhilarating.

So we sit with the avid hope that school is cancelled so we can revel in it while it is here. We know that our time with our winter goddess is fleeting. Rustling into our snow gear that has been waiting so very patiently from last year, bundling up tightly against her cool embrace and hustle out to play. Gloriously play. Because that is the beauty of snow, no matter your age.