humor – Page 7 – Deep Dark Thoughts

Sometimes It Just Has to be Chicken

I’m a pretty easygoing person in most circumstances. I’m happy to go along with the group if it makes things a little simpler for everyone else, but I have noticed that not all people are like that. Some people don’t care if it’s easier. If they don’t agree with the group consensus, they’re going to go their own way.

For some people, sometimes it just has to be chicken.

I know that doesn’t make any sense right now, but I promise, it will soon.

When I was assigned to work at the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center (RCCC) twenty years ago, I met a Deputy there named Edgar. Edgar was a really sweet guy, but he was the type of person that was always going to do things his way.

Also, while I worked at RCCC, I had a sergeant that taught Interview and Interrogation classes. My sergeant, Carl, came to me one day and asked if I would like to attend one of his upcoming classes because he had a couple empty spots still available.

Having been to hundreds of hours of training in the past couple years, I didn’t really want to go. However, as a new employee, I also did not want to tell my sergeant I wasn’t interested in going to his training class. Telling your boss, no, usually isn’t the best way to get onto his good side.

As I was trying to think of a polite way to decline that wouldn’t get me assigned to kitchen duty with the jail inmates, Carl happened to mention the class was being held in Las Vegas.

Let me say that again: Las Vegas!

In addition, he had recently purchased a brand-new motorhome which he planned to drive to the class. He said, a few other deputies were already going, but he had room in his vehicle for one more.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You are going to drive me to Las Vegas in your motorhome for free.”

“Yes,” he said.

“And the County of Sacramento is paying for the training? They are going to pay for my room and food while I’m there?”

“Yes.”

I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life but turning down a free trip to Las Vegas isn’t one of them.

“When do we leave?” I asked.

We left about two weeks later. There were five of us in the motorhome for the trip. Carl was driving, and lounging in the back of the RV were me and three other deputies: Kevin, Joe … and Edgar.

Driving to Las Vegas from Sacramento takes about 9 hours on the best of days, and that’s if you drive the whole way without stopping. We weren’t doing that. We were all growing boys and we were going to need to stop and get something to eat at least once during the drive.

It was early afternoon and we were cruising through some tiny town in the middle of nowhere. I don’t know exactly where we were because I rarely pay attention to what’s going on around me in the best of circumstances. I just happened to look out the window and noticed a cluster of buildings and restaurant signs around us. Everyone agreed they were hungry and that it was time to take a short break.

Edgar noticed a KFC nearby and suggested we stop for chicken. He was quickly vetoed as the rest of us were in the mood for burgers. Edgar sat quietly, staring out the window at the KFC sign dwindling in the distance behind us. I swear he sighed a couple of times, and there may have been a small tear in his eye.

A couple miles down the road we found a Burger King and Carl turned into the parking lot.

The plan was to stop, use the bathroom, get food, and get back on the road as quickly as possible. We figured the whole process shouldn’t take more than fifteen or twenty minutes.

We all bailed out of the RV, went into Burger King and ordered. When we had our meals, we piled back into the motorhome, ready to hit the road again. Except, we couldn’t leave.

Somebody was missing.

“Where the hell is Edgar?” Carl asked, looking at us like we were playing some sort of practical joke on him and had Edgar tied up on the roof of the vehicle.

We all shook our heads. Nobody had any idea where he was. The last I had seen of him, he was getting out of the motorhome with the rest of us. After that, where he ended up was anybody’s guess.

“Maybe he got kidnapped,” I suggested.

“Well, if he doesn’t show up in five minutes, I’m leaving without him,” Carl told us. “We can report him to the police as a missing person when we get to Vegas.”

He didn’t show up in five minutes. He didn’t show up in ten minutes. Fifteen minutes later, Carl was starting the engine and getting ready to pull out of the parking lot when we saw a speck in the distance running toward us on the sidewalk. When the speck got closer, we could see it was Edgar, and he was carrying a KFC bag in his hands.

Edgar had run two miles, ordered food at KFC, then run two miles back to the RV.

I wouldn’t run four miles if my life depended on it. Edgar had just done it for two pieces of chicken and a biscuit.

Carl opened the door and let Edgar in. “Please tell me you didn’t do what I think you just did,” he said.

Edgar shrugged with a big grin on his face, sat down, and started digging through his bag of food. “I wanted chicken,” he told us.

I suppose you’ve got to respect a guy who knows what he wants.

And Edgar wanted chicken.

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Too Many Cats

How many cats is too many cats?

I know people who will tell you that one cat is already too many cats. While their viewpoint may be personally valid, I am not talking about the merits of owning a cat. I am simply objectively asking: how many cats is too many cats?

I once went into a home that had eleven cats. The house was dirty, smelled bad, and every piece of furniture was shredded from years of animals sharpening their claws. I believe this example is an excessive amount of cats. The old lady that owned the house might have disagreed with me but, unfortunately, she had been dead for two days and her herd of feline friends had decided to do what cats do when they are hungry and the person feeding them is no longer providing free cat food.

It was a bit disturbing to say the least.

Since she wasn’t around to defend her decision, I’m going to say the consensus is that eleven is too many. So now we have narrowed down the number to somewhere between one and eleven cats.

Why am I obsessing over this right now? Well, let me tell you.

Recently we adopted two kittens. With the two cats we already have in the house, this makes a total of four yowling mouths to feed (not including EM1 and EM2). I have expressed the opinion that four cats is a ridiculous number of cats to have in one place. Other members of my family believe that four is an ideal number because each person in the house can now have their own cat.

Which is a completely bogus argument. Neither child in this house has a steady income to pay for “their own cat.” Basically, I own four cats and the kids can pet them whenever they want to, then feel free to ignore them when one of the fluffy little monsters is puking up a hairball on the living room carpet.

Four cats means four times the vet bills, four times the litter box cleaning, and four times the noises in the middle of the night as something gets knocked over and comes crashing to the ground.

So, why did we adopt two new kittens? The short answer is: we didn’t. At least, I didn’t. I thought four cats was a bad idea from the beginning, but apparently, I was outvoted.

One of our older cats, Sheba, is sixteen years old. She is slowing down and probably doesn’t have a whole lot of time left. EM1 and EM2 didn’t want to lose Sheba and only have one cat in the house, so they begged their mom and me to get a new kitten to replace the old cat before she dies.

I suggested waiting until after Sheba passes, but the kids insisted they would rather get a kitten now to torment our old cat and hurry the whole dying process along. Okay, they didn’t actually say that, but I’m pretty sure this was the plan.

Both girls started looking at adoption places and checking online for local residents that had kittens. After a couple weeks of looking, they found a family that had two kittens that needed a new home. The family was hoping that both kittens would be adopted together since they were siblings.

I told my family I thought two more cats was a bad idea. They agreed.

My wife asked if she and the girls could go see the kittens and perhaps just adopt one of them. I said, “Sure. Go ahead and take a look, but don’t do anything yet.”

“Okay,” said my lovely wife. “We will just go and look. Afterwards, we will come back home and talk to you about what to do next.”

I think that’s what she said anyway. My recollection might be a bit fuzzy since thirty minutes later, my wife and daughters were back home with a cat crate containing two mewling balls of flea-riddled fur. So much for just going to go look.

The younger of our two cats took one look at the new intruders, hissed, and ran off to hide under the bed. Sheba, our ancient cat, sniffed at the kittens then lied down on the ground at my feet. She just gave up. I think she was trying very hard to die right there in front of me.

Despite her best efforts, Sheba did not die. At least not yet. I believe if she had opposable thumbs, she would have tried to pull the cap off of the bottle of sleeping pills in our bathroom cabinet, but for now she is stuck with hanging around a while longer.

The kittens are rampaging around the house like they own the place, getting into absolutely every kind of trouble they can think of, and our other cat, Sukoshi, is still hiding under the bed.

So, getting back to my original question: how many cats is too many?

The answer is four. Definitely, four. Four cats is too many.

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Spring is Sprung

Spring is here, the days are getting warmer, and it is time once again for me to start the annual garden. The dirt is tilled, and the weeds are already turned under, so what comes next is the selection process for what types of fruit and vegetables I want to (attempt to) grow this year.

There are some basic items that I plant in the garden every year. I always make sure to have some tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and cantaloupe since these are all fairly easy to keep alive and they tend to consistently produce edible items year after year. But in addition to these annual staples, each year I try something new just to see what happens.

This usually ends badly.

For example, about ten years ago, I tried planting two avocado trees. They were both dead within a year. The following year, I planted two more, because clearly I had not yet learned my lesson. The trees are still technically alive, but I have very little hope of ever seeing any fruit on them. The fact that both trees currently have only about seven leaves on them is not encouraging.

Once I realized that avocados were not going to be a thing in my yard, I moved on to planting artichokes. I started with four plants. Two months later, I had one. By the end of the third month, I think the survivor was feeling so lonely without his friends that he committed suicide. I found him, brown and wilted, lying in the dirt outside.

He didn’t even leave me a note.

I attempted planting artichokes again the following year because, as I said before, I just can’t take a hint. I ended up harvesting one small artichoke before all four of my new plants dropped dead. Better results, but still not exactly a rousing success.

Avocados and artichokes? Nope and nope.

I have attempted corn and string beans, which are both supposed to be easy to grow. They were. The plants thrived. They both took up quite a bit of garden space, however, and when it came time to harvest, I realized that the bugs had ended up with more of the end product than I did. Neither crop was really worth the effort of planting.

Strike corn and string beans from the list.

Two years ago, I tried planting kiwi plants. EM1 loves kiwis, and I thought it would be a really cool addition to the yard if I could get them to grow. I bought two plants from the nursery and planted them in the garden.

I can hear you all asking, “Did you get kiwis?”

Well let me tell you. No. No, I did not get kiwis.

In the middle of July, during the warmest part of the summer, both plants turned into a pile of brown sticks poking out of the ground. I figured I had killed them like everything else I had attempted in the past. I left the sticks where they were, more from laziness than any real hope of the plants reviving, and the following year, to my great surprise, they came back. In the spring both plants produced new leaves and a bunch of little white flowers. I figured I was back in business.

Then in July, I had two larger piles of sticks poking out of the ground.

This spring, the kiwi plants have turned green once again, but I am not getting my hopes up. Past experience suggests the little bastards are just messing with my head, and I’m not going to fall for it again.

Fool me once…

Now that we are caught up to present day garden disasters, I am back to the original question: what should I plant this year?

Well, this year I have decided to plant blueberries.

Why blueberries? I don’t know. Why not? I figure I can kill blueberry bushes just as easily as I could kill anything else, so why not get creative?

I admit I know absolutely nothing about blueberry bushes, so the odds are really good that I’m going to murder these little guys, too. I am prepared to live with that outcome. I’ve gotten good at choking down the disappointment of dead plants in the garden year after year, so one more botanical failure is not going to be a big deal.

I read a few articles about blueberries before I bought the plants. I figured, maybe if I know a little bit more about them, I would have a better chance of keeping them alive longer than a few weeks. The article said they like a lot of water and that they thrive in acidic soil.

I’m happy to water them, but I don’t know what acidic soil is. I don’t know if the soil in my garden is acidic or not. And, if it isn’t acidic, I have no idea how to make it acidic. I’m starting to suspect the blueberries are pretty much doomed to the same fate as all my other gardening projects.

Sorry little guys. It was nice knowing you.

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Work Smarter, Not Harder

Early in my career, I remember several of the older guys telling me to, “work smarter, not harder.” I used to think that was just code the old lazy bastards in the department used to try to get the rest of us to slow down. Turns out, that’s not always true.

I mean, sometimes it is. But not always.

I was working a day shift as a patrol officer back around 1997, when an incident during a traffic stop gave me a new appreciation for the expression.

We had a new officer working on our shift at that time. For the sake of brevity, let’s just refer to him as Officer Newguy. That morning during briefing, the sergeant on the shift told us that our Field Training Officer (FTO) was off sick and Newguy had no one to ride with. I was not an FTO, but I was the senior officer working the shift that day, so the sergeant said the trainee was going to ride with me.

I told the sergeant I would be happy to take the trainee. I said, “I can use the extra five percent FTO training pay. Thanks, Sarge.”

The sergeant stared at me for a long moment, then asked, “What?”

“Well, if I’m going to be working as a training officer, I just assumed I would also get paid as a training officer. Seems fair.”

The sergeant just stared at me some more.

“I’m not getting paid, am I?” I said.

“You’re not getting paid,” the sergeant agreed.

That was how the day started. That was the working harder part. The working smarter part came later.

A couple of hours into the shift, Officer Newguy was driving our patrol car and he asked if he could make a traffic stop. The car in front of us had a brake light out and he wanted to stop it and talk to the driver. I told him to go ahead.

The officer turned on the overhead lights and stopped the offending vehicle.

The driver of the car was a kid, about seventeen years old. He explained he was driving his mom’s car and didn’t know the brake light didn’t work. He apologized and handed us his driver’s license and vehicle registration. He was unable to find any insurance paperwork in the glovebox and told us so.

Newguy and I returned to our car and I had him call dispatch on the radio and check the kid’s driver’s license information. We discovered the license was suspended because the driver had recently gotten into an accident and he did not have any car insurance. This wasn’t a huge deal, but it was still technically a misdemeanor crime for the kid to be driving a car without a valid license.

Officer Newguy went back to talk to the kid. He had the driver step out of his car, then told him that his license had been suspended.

Before the sentence was completely out of the officer’s mouth, the kid was running down the street looking like a blond version of Forest Gump with the bullies running after him. Newguy took off after the kid like a dog takes off after a squirrel.

I tried to tell Newguy not to chase the kid, but they were both already too far away to hear me. The last I saw of Newguy was a blue uniform climbing over a fence into someone’s backyard.

I got a second glimpse of him when he popped up just long enough to hop another fence, but I knew they were too far away for me to ever hope to catch up with them.

Foot pursuits can be dangerous. The driver was just a kid, but you never know when someone is carrying a weapon. Besides, just jumping fences can cause an injury. I was about to use the radio to tell Officer Newguy to stop and come back to the patrol car, but Newguy beat me to it.

“One in custody,” he announced on the air.

“Bring him back to the patrol car,” I responded, then waited for Newguy to return with his prize.

After Newguy placed the handcuffed kid in the back of our car, he looked at me with a huge smile on his face. He was sweaty, muddy, and had a brand-new hole in his shirt from a nail sticking out of one of the fences he climbed.

“I got him! I caught him trying to get inside a house about a block away from here.”

I held up the kid’s driver’s license, which I had been holding during the entire foot pursuit. “Was he trying to get into this house?” I asked, pointing at the address printed on the front of the license.

The smile on Newguy’s face disappeared. “Uh … yeah.”

“We stopped this kid a block away from his house. Where else was he going to run to? You know, we could have just walked over there and knocked on the door after he took off. Or even better, tow his car and call his mom. Her information is on the registration.”

Newguy was not happy. He was even less happy when I told him to write the kid a ticket and let him go.

“He’s not going to jail?” Newguy asked me, incredulous.

“It’s a traffic misdemeanor. We’re not wasting everybody’s time driving him to the jail.”

“But he ran!”

“And you were silly enough to go running after him. That doesn’t change anything.”

I patted Newguy on the shoulder, and for the first time in my career I got to utter those words of wisdom to someone else. “Use your head, rookie. You have to work smarter, not harder.”

And I know exactly what Newguy was thinking at that moment when I said it.

“You lazy bastard.”

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That Magical Time of Year

Winter must truly be a magical season, but I don’t mean that in a good way.

Every year in the late fall, I clear out weeds from the garden and orchard, I put down fertilizer for all the trees and bushes I have planted over the past decade, as well as trimming and pruning those plants so they come back healthy in the spring. I double check sprinkler valve timers to be sure they have fresh batteries and are functioning properly. And I spend hours checking miles of hoses, sprinkler heads, and drip lines to make sure there are no clogs or leaks.

Then comes that magical few months we call winter. Winter absolutely must be magical because somehow, every spring, just like magic despite all my planning and hard work, I find dead trees surrounded by acres of weeds, non-functioning valve timers, and broken drip lines.

And the chores begin all over again.

Abra-effing-Cadabra!

This year was no different. I spent several weeks recently identifying all the broken stuff and trying to fix it. I have cut down three dead trees and replaced two of them. (The third one may grow back on its own, so I’ve adopted a wait and see policy with that one.) I have spent hours mowing, spraying and pulling weeds and have only just begun to see progress. And, I discovered several broken drip lines throughout the yard, two broken sprinkler heads, and three valve timers that have decided to retire early.

Buying replacement parts has also become quite the endeavor this year. My choices are to go to a nursery and bump into every other stir-crazy, shut-in trying to find any excuse to be out of the house right now, or go online to order parts and wait out the prolonged delivery times. Personally, I prefer the online route, but that’s only because I dislike interacting with people. Especially large crowds of people that should be staying home instead of constantly popping up in my way.

My latest project involved the three dead valve timers. It only took two weeks to complete what should have been a five-minute job. I started out by going to each of the timers and checking battery function. Two of the dead timers came right back to life with a fresh infusion of double-A goodness. The third one was not so cooperative. When I opened it up, it immediately leaked some kind of grey and brown crud all over my hand.

That timer was all the way dead and needed to be replaced.

I checked my toolbox and the cabinet where I keep spare sprinkler parts in the garage but could not find a spare timer. I was sure I had one, but I guess winter had one more magic trick up her sleeve and made it disappear.

Next, I went online and ordered a new timer. I decided to order two of them because I figured I should keep an extra one on hand for when (not if) the next volunteer in the yard decided to call it quits. Then I spent the next two weeks hand watering all the plants on that particular drip line until the new timer arrived.

With a new valve timer in hand, I trudged out to the well pump to turn off the water to our yard. Have you ever noticed that one project often turns into two or three?

As soon as I turned the water off, I noticed that the water pressure in the lines was low. This happens every year or so when the water filter gets gummed up and starts interfering with water flow.

To check the filter, I unscrewed the filter housing and was instantly assaulted by a geyser of slimy black water. It was just like the end of the log ride at Disneyland, that is if the log ride was dropping you into a vat of stagnant sewage and it smelled like a humid locker room.

I slogged back to the garage, dripping and dry heaving, to look for spare filters. Fortunately, I had a spare set. I swapped out the old filters for the new ones, made a mental note to order some new filters for next time, then trudged back to the front yard to replace the sprinkler valve timer. (You know, the original reason I was even out there.)

After replacing the dead timer, I decided to turn on the sprinklers to check the water pressure. I wanted to see how they were working after I had put the new water filters in the well pump. One of the sprinkler heads started gushing water from somewhere two feet underground.

Apparently, the water pressure was excellent. The sprinkler lines? Not so much.

Back to the garage I went to get a shovel and a new sprinkler head.

Despite all the fun things I got to do that day, my favorite part of the day came when I took the extra valve timer I had ordered and decided to put it somewhere in the garage where it would be easily found when I needed it. The way things were going, I figured that day might come sooner rather than later. I decided that the best place for it would be a storage cabinet right next to my toolbox.

I opened the cabinet and placed the new timer on a shelf…

Right next to three other brand-new, never been used, still in the box, valve timers.

Abra-effing-Cadabra!

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The Morning Routine

These days I’m in a bit of a rut. It seems every morning just blends into the next with nothing to distinguish one part of the week from another. I frequently find myself completely forgetting what day it is, or not noticing the time unless I’m wondering if it’s still too early to pour that first glass of wine.

I pretty much know from moment to moment what I will be doing, because it is exactly what I did the day before. It isn’t exciting, but it is reliable.

Just for fun, let me run you through my typical morning routine.

At 8 AM the alarm on my bedside clock goes off and I am awakened to the sound of country music because I have no idea how to adjust the settings on the radio and I’m too lazy to read the directions that came with the clock. Now, you may wonder why I set an alarm when I have nowhere to go, nothing to do, and all day not to do it. The answer is simple. I have discovered that if I don’t set an alarm, I don’t wake up.

I am likely to go to bed on Monday night and only get up sometime late Thursday afternoon. While I consider this to be a lovely, restful period of time, WebMD seems to think that this is one of the warning signs of clinical depression.

Or cancer. It might also be cancer.

Anyway, to avoid getting cancer, I set my alarm every day.

As soon as I wake up and turn off the alarm, the cat immediately jumps up on the bed and starts to meow, demanding to be petted. At least, I think she is demanding to be petted. I suppose it’s possible she is simply expressing her displeasure that she spent the entire night watching me sleep and yet again, I failed to die. Come to think of it, she does tend to appear a little irritable in the morning.

I choose to believe she wants attention, so I pet her for about five minutes before getting out of bed.

Once I’m up, I throw on sweatpants and a shirt, brush my teeth, and go outside to water the plants on the back patio. I have timers and drip line that automatically water the lawn and surrounding landscape, and it would be very easy for me to set up the patio to do the same thing. I also have more time than I know what to do with each day, so filling and emptying a water can is a good way to take up some of that empty space.

After watering, I come back in the house, sit down at the computer and spend about an hour online checking out my social media accounts. I write a few witty comments that are generally ignored by everybody, check my message folder to make sure that it is still empty, and see if everybody is still spouting hateful political rhetoric every chance they get.

Spoiler: They are.

Social media time is followed by exercise. Every morning at about 9 o’clock, I go out and walk for 4 or 5 miles. The original plan is to walk 2 or 3 miles, but I find once I get outside it is sometimes very difficult to convince myself to go back in the house.

The kids are in there.

I don’t like being trapped in the house with them.

Generally, my daughters don’t like to spend time with me and they avoid me whenever they can. This is a good thing. They are horrible people that don’t clean up after themselves and say really mean things to me because they think it’s funny to hurt my feelings. I blame their mother for this.

I barely talked to them while they were growing up, so it can’t be my fault.

When I do finally go back in the house, I sit down at the computer and check to see if anyone enjoyed my earlier, witty online statements. Usually the answer is no. The only person that reacts to my posts is my wife, and I can feel the pity emanating from the tiny thumbs-up symbol she slaps on each of my comments.

She might as well be patting me on the head and saying, “That’s okay. You keep trying.”

Somewhere around 11 o’clock is when I finally stop torturing myself on social media and get to work writing. This is really the end of the morning, time-wasting routine and the beginning of my day. I spend the rest of my daylight hours sitting in front of the computer trying to create something others might one day enjoy reading.

Well, okay, not the entire time. I occasionally stop to eat, or drink, or watch a movie, or sneak back onto social media, or go work in the yard, or run to the grocery store.

Or lie down on the couch to take a nap.

What I guess I’m saying is: I’m not really all that productive most of the time.

But at least when I take a nap, I always set an alarm.

That way the cat knows when it’s time to jump up and get petted.

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