Smiling While Talking

 For some reason I do not know how to flirt, I also have no idea when a guy is flirting with me. 
 I am kind of broken.
 Now please don’t think I am a horrible conversationalist, I’m not. I can talk to just about anyone about just a bunch of different topics. I just can’t talk to a guy just to talk to him. 
 A long time ago it was my job to talk to people. I was a journalist and I could ask anyone anything for a story. Somewhere along the road of life though, I lost my self esteem and my confidence and well with out those two things,  flirting is just hard. 
 My niece, Lauren, tried to help me get my mojo back one night by giving me lessons on the womanly ways of flirting.
  My education was to start at the local country and western dance hall. When we got there the place was a little dead, but Lauren assured me the lack of a crowd would be good for practice. So we settled into a table and she began to instruct me. 
 “Okay, I want you to walk over to the bar, past that group of guys and smile at them. Then walk back.” She instructed. 
 “Do I order anything at the bar?” I asked.
“No.” She replied.
“Then why am I going to the bar?” I asked.
“To get their attention. Now go!” She demanded.
 So I did what she said. I pasted on a smile, did my best sashay in front of the men and went straight to the bar, turned around and returned as instructed.
 “What was that?” she asked when I got back to our table. 
 “Me following your instructions. Smile, walk, return.” 
 “That smile makes you look like like an idiot.” she said.
 “I feel like an idiot. Besides, we are in a bar, they are probably drunk” I said.
“It is 8 o’clock. They’re not drunk." She sighed. "Try again, but this time, less... crazy woman smile.”
 So I walked to the bar on the other side of the saloon, smiled at a different group of men turned around and walked back to Lauren.
“That was better. One guy looked at you.” she said.
“Which one? The one who looks like Tatum Channing?” I asked excitedly. 
“No, the one who looks like Kenny Rodgers. Remember, this is just practice.” she said. 
 Great, I had caught the eye of Methuselah’s older brother. However, being the eternal optimist, I wasn’t about to let his age get me down. Like she said, this was just practice. 
 “Okay, now you need to get him to talk to you.” Lauren said. 
“How do I do that?”
“Go say hi and ask him a question. Or tell him you like his cane, err, hat.  Say anything, just get him to speak to you.” She instructed.
 So I followed her directions. I walked straight over to his table smiled and said hi. Before I could ask him about his hat he said...
 “Hi. We'll have a couple of Bud Lights here and could you send two shots of Patron over there to that table with the sweet young things for us. Tell them they are from me and my wing-man.”
 I turned around, walked back to Lauren, grabbed her and left the club.
 Lessons were over. 
 Some time later, I was contemplating about what I was doing wrong to get a guy to talk to me. I decided I had been over thinking the whole concept and that flirting was nothing more than smiling while talking. 
 So I tried it. 
 I decided to implement my plan of “talking while smiling" in the book isle of my local grocery store. I had noticed a guy close by so I smiled at him. He smiled back and as I reached out and picked up a title, he commented it was a good read. I smiled and asked him about the book and we struck up a little conversation. 
 In my head I was flirting! I was so happy with myself for having a conversation with a stranger! He was cute, intelligent and funny. I thought maybe I could give him my email and we could go out sometime. I felt great!
 Until, a woman pushed her cart around the corner and said to the guy “Oh there you are, we need to leave and pick up the kids from your mother before seven.” 
 My self esteem fell right off the shelf I’d put it on.
 After he left I scraped up my dignity from the floor, bought the book and went home. 
 The book turned out to be a good read, but my experience turned into a great lesson.
 I gotten over a hurdle that day.
 I decided to change my definition of flirting. No longer was it about talking to a guy, just to talk to a guy. Now I view flirting in a different way. 
It is just smiling while talking.  
Two things I can do anywhere. 

The Mega Fart

I just do not understand teenage boys.
Case in point...
 On a recent  junior high school choir field trip I was a chaperon and experienced a “OMG-I-can’t-believe-that-just-happened” moment.
  The boys were allowed to sit in the auditorium while other choirs took the stage for competition. We chaperons had the idea that we could monitor the boys better if they were sitting in rows in front of us. Of course the boys all sat in the back row, so we shuffled them out of it and moved them forward. 
 The plan was for we three adults to sit on either end of the row and one in the middle to watch over our charges. 
 As the last boy exited the row, I maneuvered my way down the last row to take up my perch at the far end when I was stopped cold by the worst smell in the history of the Earth.
 A fart.
 Now, this wasn’t just any fart.
 It wasn’t just a little patch of gas. 
 No, this fart was a tsunami of nasty that had the potential to kill. It was so bad that if it could be bottled into a bio-weapon, anyone holding the cork could take over the planet.
 My eyes watered, my hands covered my face and I was getting light headed from lack of oxygen. Mercifully my feet began to move backward sending me out of the row in search of breathable air. 
 The boys began to notice the smell and stared coughing and gagging and waving their hands around to dissipate the stench. (Like that was gonna help.) The other chaperons noticed and began to retreat covering their noses. Heck, if a skunk was there it would have vacated the area.
  It was so bad, no one would claim it. I was with a group of 13 and 14 year old boys and none of them claimed it! You would think a fart of this magnitude would be something an eight grade boy would be proud of. Nope, not this time. It was so bad, ownership was abandoned.
  I looked around for the guilty party, but the boys were stoic. None of them ratted out the actual culprit. I guess the boys knew who was the owner, but they were not sharing with the chaperons.
 I know girls are capable of passing gas, but girls would hint as to who was responsible. They wouldn’t say a name, but they would stare at the person responsible and then people would know. 
 Not the boys. The boys stuck together. They protected their fellow brother with an unspoken united front of silence.  I’m sure high fives and back pats were passed out at a later time, but in that moment solidarity ruled.
 I couldn't understand it. Why not out the culprit?  I wanted to know who did it. Not because I could do anything could be done about a normal bodily function, but for self preservation.
 I wanted to avoid the line of fire in case of a secondary attack.   

Online Outsourcing of Love

Last night a Facebook friend of mine was all aghast on the site about an advertisement she found online. She is a freelance writer and was surfing to pick up a job when she came across an advertisement for an online dating ghostwriter. 
 The advertisement was searching for a “writer/texter” who could assist “successful executive" men in finding the love of their lives. The job entailed setting up dating profiles, screening potential dates, communicating with said potential dates via text or email and arranging in- person meetups. It also required the writer to write from the male perspective (specifically) and use language that would lend “mystery” to the client. 
 The idea that any man would outsource his love life did not sit well with my friend. 
 I thought WAIT! This could be my dream job. 
 I could get paid to pretend to be a toad of a toilet paper executive looking for love. I could fabricate wonderful qualities about my amphibian like client who shrunk the roll. I could bring delight to some woman’s day every time I text her. She would love me! 
 Then she would meet my client a realize what a douche he actually is. 
 Seriously, who does this?
 How big of a loser do you have to be to hire someone to make you look better on a dating web site...
 There are companies online that will do everything but the kissing, for their clients. They will pick the best dating site, create the most attractive profile, take the best pictures of their clients and Photoshop any ugly right off the screen. They will sort through the chicks' profiles so only “high-quality” women are presented to their clients. These services will make anyone look, as Brad Paisley sang “so much cooler online.”   
 All for the bargain price of around half a grand a month. 
 These sites are raking in the dough.
 They do everything except hold the hand of their client on an actual date. (Although, I bet that can be bought too.) 
 It’s not a bad idea on paper. I've tried the online thing. It is exhausting. Having someone cull the herd for me would be beneficial. However, if I ever found out a guy had a service text or email me to lay the foundation for our romance, he would be walking home with a limp.  
 Hiring someone to communicate with a potential mate sounds like a business deal. It reminds me of a job applicant being vetted by a manager before meeting the boss for the interview. Maybe that is what the client wants. He is too busy making money to take time to find a wife. He is a businessman, so his answer is to pay someone to come up with a short list of potential candidates. 
 I can just imagine what his “qualifications" are for the job. This guy is an executive, he has executive taste, so his wife should be executive quality. (I could bemoan what “executive qualities” are for a woman, but the thought of cataloging my gender is just not on my to do list right now.)  
 In my opinion, users of online dating ghostwriters should fire the service and hire someone to help with their actual work load. That way they have the time to make an actual connection, not just an outsourced one. 

Thanks clipartpanda,com for the free clip art.

Stinky and Smelly

  

Having two teen aged daughters has given me a great love for my dogs.
My dogs don’t talk back to me. They don’t cringe when I talk to their doggy friends. They love everything I cook and they never complain about anything I do or anywhere I take them.
 If only my teenagers could take a hint from the dogs.
 Stinky and Smelly are my two little dogs. One is a Rat Terrier (“the” American breed) and the other is a Dachshund-Terrier mix who looks like he had some Dalmatian swimming in his gene pool at one point (maybe warthog too, considering how much he farts.) They give me great memories every day and their antics make me laugh or want to kill them every single day.
 Kind of like my teenagers.
  One day I came home to find a white trail leading from the pantry and my two adorable bits of fur were nowhere to be seen. So I followed the trail. It wound through my kitchen, down the hall and into my office. Cringing I walked into my office to find Smelly chewing on a decimated bag of flour. He was completely white. Normally he is only partially white. (Smelly is the one with the Dalmatian in his bloodline) I looked around for Stinky. All I found were white paw prints leading out of the second door of the office. So I followed the prints. They led me down the hall, into and out of the bathroom, through the family room and into Smelly’s box.
 Smelly was in the box, covered in flour, and he would not look me in the eye.
 He knew he had done wrong.
 He also knew a bath was in his future so he slunk to the back of his crate, trying to escape the inevitable.
 It took about an hour to clean up the mess and the dogs, but I was laughing the whole time. Why they would chomp on a bag of flour was beyond me, but it was funny.
 What was not funny were the times (yes, multiple times) Stinky showed up smelling like a skunk.
 For some reason my Rat Terrier loves to chase and pester skunks.
 He doesn't find the skunks at home. He finds them at my parents' house. My parents do not live in a subdivision. They own property a few miles away from me and their place has a country-esque feel to it. It is far enough out that they get critters around their house that would not live in a neighborhood- aka skunks.
 One day before Smelly joined our family, Mom and I were outside at her house working in the garden. While outside, we noticed a gosh-awful smell wafting our way.
“Gah, what is that smell?” Mom said.
“Smells like a skunk to me,” I replied.
“Quick, get in the house so we don’t get sprayed,” she ordered.
She then yelled to my dad, who was walking from his barn with Stinky trailing behind him, that a skunk was around and for him to be careful of the critter.
 Dad is bit hard of hearing and refuses to wear his “ears” (aka hearing aids) and therefore, didn't hear a bit of her warning.
 Mom and I hurried inside the house and were commenting about the smell when dad walked in. He was laughing and telling us about how Stinky had cornered some animal in the barn when my mom yelled at him...
“Get out! You smell like skunk!”
Dumbfounded, Dad turned around and headed back outside.
(That was the day we realized Dad was not only hard of hearing, but he had lost all sense of smell too.)
 Turns out the animal that Stinky had cornered was a skunk. The skunk got a direct hit on the dog and the dog brushed up against Dad, contaminating them both.
 Mom made Dad strip on the back porch. (I covered my eyes, cuz who wants to see their dad in his skivvies.) Then she told him to go get a bath.
 She then ordered me to “Bathe that animal immediately!”
This wasn't my first time to get the stench of skunk off my dog.  So I whipped up my “skunk-de-stank” recipe and went to work on Stinky.
 He smelt so bad I nearly vomited while cleaning him up.
 After bathing him 4 times with my recipe he smelled tolerable. (Or I had just gotten used to it.)
I however, smelled like skunk.
My clothes smelled like skunk.
My hair smelled like skunk.
My shoes smelled like skunk.
I wanted to kill Stinky.
 After bathing myself 4 times and borrowing some of mom’s clothes, I loaded up Stinky to go home.
 Quickly I realized it was time to pick my daughters up from school so instead of going home we went to school and got in the pick up line.
 It was a warm day so I had the windows down while I waited.
The pinched look I got from the teacher directing traffic should have clued me into the fact the smell was lingering.
 “How could you do this to me!” were the first words out of my oldest daughter’s mouth as she climbed in the suburban and immediately rolled up the window.
“I am sooooo embarrassed!!” cried the other one as she closed her window too.
Yep, I had gotten used to the smell.
“Stinky got into it with a skunk," was my reply.
“You should not have picked us up with him smelling like he does" whined the oldest.
“I washed him 4 times, bathed myself 3 times, and trashed my clothes and my shoes!” I yelled. “I had to borrow an outfit from my 72 year old mother and I am barefoot while driving! I did all this so you two wouldn't have to deal with a skunk sprayed dog!”
“You should have let Grandmother pick us up. She would never embarrass us.”
My mother? Yeah, right.
 Stinky didn't complain though. He just jumped into my lap with his tail wagging and licked my face. He appreciated me.
 Too bad my teenagers didn't.
 Because three weeks later Stinky had another direct hit from a skunk and guess who had to clean him up?
 Yep, by that point, I was used to it.

Photo copywright poecrastination 2015

Road Tripping

 Every summer of my life my family has hit the road for a vacation. We have gone east then we have gone west but rarely ever north and never south. (We live in Texas, the only place south is Mexico and we are too chicken to drive in Mexico).   

 We have been doing this my whole life, so you would think by now we would have ironed out all the kinks associated with long distance car travel.
 Not so much.
 Each trip has it’s own unique set of issue that throw a wrench into our well laid plans.
 We have experienced every possible problem to connected to road tripping. Faulty car batteries,  flat tires, crappy hotel rooms, food poisoning, leaky ice chest, sick kids, sick dogs, you name it, we have been through it. In my family we suck it all up until we arrive at our destination.
  Sometime our problems start before we ever hit the road.
  There was one year Mom had my niece, father and I plant annuals in her garden before getting on the road. We dug holes for two hours in 90 degree heat and 90% humidity before getting into the car for a 9 hour trip to Florida.
 I was furious at my mother for going to Lowe’s before a trip and buying so many plants. Her reply to my anger was “they were on sale and if they are not planted they would die and money would be wasted.”
 My niece and I swore we would never go on another trip with her if we had to do that again.
 Three weeks later we were back in the garden sweating it out, planting annuals before a 18 hour road trip to Colorado.
 Once we all get on the road things settle down into a calm routine.
 Until someone has to pee.
 Growing up my father trained my sisters and I to "hold it" for hours. Dad would make the ten hour trip from Houston, Texas to Greenville, Alabama with only one stop.
 “The more we stop, the longer the trip will take" was my dad’s mantra.
 So my sisters and I learned to avoid drinks on long trips. (Sure we were dehydrated when we got to Grandma’s but hey, we cut 30 minutes off the trip by only stopping once!)
Well, now I’m the driver and Dad is in the backseat and let me tell you, revenge is sweet.
 “Uh, Sal can we stop soon? I need to use the bathroom” says dad.
 “Sure,” I say as I breeze past the last exit with a service station. “we will stop on the other side of this bridge.”
 The bridge I am talking about crosses the Atchafalaya swamp in Louisiana. This is one of longest bridges in the United States. It is a  20 mile stretch of nothing but trees, water and alligators, plus the speed limit is 55. It takes a minimum of 30 minutes to cross provided there are no accidents, slow drivers or state troopers on the road.
 Dad knows this bridge. He has been taking the same route for 50 years. He knows how long it  will take to cross,  He also knows how often he stopped when I was growing up. He says nothing to my announcement. He just exhales, closes his Sprite and tries to get comfortable.
 Oh yeah, revenge is so, so sweet.
 My nephew has a disgusting remedy to the stop-the-car-the-kids-have-to-pee problem of road trips. His answer...the pee jar.
 Yup, my nephew packs an empty pickle jar inside his vehicle for those inconvenient times his young children have to go. His son thinks it is fun, his daughter has a different opinion.
 Where did he get this idea you ask? From my family of course!
 When my preschool aged nephew was traveling with us and had to go while we were driving Dad would say “use the pee jar.” (Now please understand, those trips were in the 1980‘s and car-seat and seat-belt usage were suggested, not mandatory.)  So my nephew would pop out of his seat, stand up aim and fire. His mother would then close the jar, tuck it away and re-belt him in his seat. (I was a teenager back then then so I was left gagging from the smell and deaf from having my Walkman turned all the way up to drown out the sound.)
 The pee jar was good enough for my nephew back then, so it is good enough for his kids now. However, he does pull off to the side of the road for his kids to use the jar. Their total break time rivals a Nascar pit stop during the Daytona 500.
 Speaking of race cars...
 Going the speed limit on road trips with my family doesn’t happen. We are a lead footed crew on the interstate and we have the traffic violations to prove it. (My brother-in-law has a special mount on his dashbord for radar and laser detectors.) You think the hefty fines would have caused us to ease off the accelerator by now. Nope, we just know where the speed traps are.
 Why do we go so fast?
  Because the real adventures begin when we arrive at our destination and we don’t like to wait... and people need to use the bathroom.


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