It's Always Something and Nothing's Ever Easy

“It’s always something and nothing’s ever easy.” I seem to be saying this on a daily basis lately. It just really is always some problem that lands in my lap. Then when I try to do something about the problem, it never ends up being as easy as it should be. I’ve come to accept this for the most part, but man, some days seem to lay it on pretty thick. Today was one of those days.

I could talk about several little things throughout the day, such as the heavy fog on the way to work, getting food on my pants, breaking an expensive necklace when I leaned over to get something in my car and it caught on the parking brake lever, and other such headaches, but I want to focus on the worst part of my day, which involved Walmart and my purse.

I simply needed a few toiletries at Walmart. It was supposed to be a quick trip in and out. I had a few coupons for specific brands, but I didn’t think that would matter much. I went to a fairly new Walmart and when I walked in, I quickly realized that it was organized in a much different way than I was used to. I headed to where I thought the makeup and hair stuff would be, but found garden supplies instead. I headed to another side of the store and found electronics and pets. I finally found what I was looking for, but every attempt to get through an aisle was made more difficult by the two or three carts and people in my way.

Once I reached the items I needed, I then had to find the brands that matched my coupons. And of course someone always needed to get by me or look at the same items I was looking at as I was trying to do this. I was getting hungry and irritated, but I was still okay, because I knew I had some leftover homemade vegetable soup at home waiting for me. I just had to get home.

Next, I went to check out. It was then I that I discovered I had dropped a $1.00 off coupon somewhere in the store and I accidentally ripped the barcode on another. The barcode thing meant the cashier had to key it in, making it take longer. I finally left, loaded up the car, pushed the cart into a corral, and went on my merry way. Vegetable soup, here I come.

About 15 minutes into my hour drive home, I remembered that I still had my phone on vibrate and decided to turn up the ring volume. I looked on the passenger seat for my purse, but it wasn’t there. I was on I-75, so I couldn’t thoroughly look in the back until I reached the next exit. When I was able to stop at a gas station, I looked everywhere, but it was no use.

My purse was in a shopping cart in a Walmart parking lot 15 minutes away.

Panic mode set in. I decided to call the store, but I didn’t have their number or my cell phone. I went inside the gas station and asked for a phone book. The new Walmart wasn’t listed, so I had to call another Walmart store and ask for the number, but I didn’t have anything to write it down, so I had to ask for a pen and paper. I then called the right store and answered several questions, including my name, address, what the purse looked like, where I left it, etc. I waited several minutes while they searched for the purse. I prepared for the worst and wondered if a surveillance camera would be able to catch the person who stole it. I was definitely kicking myself for being so forgetful.

The woman finally came back on the phone and let me know that it was there. Whew! She told me to go to Customer Service to claim it. I jumped in my car and headed back to the store. When I arrived, there was a line at the Customer Service Desk, so I waited as patiently as I could. When it was my turn, I asked for my purse. The employee asked for my name and address and then used a walkie-talkie to call someone else. He told me to go to Register 12, so I went there. At that point, a woman asked me for my address again. I told her and she said that my name and the description of the purse matched, but the address was different on my license, so they couldn’t give it to me.

“Oh, that’s because I moved a while back. I changed it with the DMV, but they didn’t give me a new license.”

“What was your old address?” she asked.

I told her my old address, but she still wasn’t convinced. She went into an office and asked someone in there if I could get my purse. She came back out and asked for my date of birth. I told her and she went back in.

I don’t think I need to tell you how irritated I was getting at this point…and I am not easily irritated. I was so hungry I was getting the shakes. I just wanted to get my dang purse and go home, but I was being treated like some sort of criminal. Why would someone pretend to be me to pick up my purse? Why was my PHOTO ID not good enough? I know I look like my license picture. I appreciated the extra security measures to make sure not to give my purse to some random person who might have spotted it in the parking lot, but c’mon, let’s use some common sense here.

She came out holding my purse and said they would let me have it back. When at last I was reunited with my purse, I checked to make sure it was all there. I then checked my phone and saw that I had missed a call from my husband. I called to tell him I was going to be about two hours later than usual and then started my hour-long drive home all over again.

At least it would have been an hour if my low fuel light didn’t come on and I didn’t have to stop and get a gallon of milk at a separate store, because Walmart was too far away for cold groceries and I forgot to get milk at the gas station. Then when I reached in the cooler to get milk, I saw that the sell-by date was four days away on all of them except the milk in the very back, which was 14 days away, so of course I had to take a bunch out to reach the new milk and put it all back.

When I finally reached the back door of the house with armloads of things, I almost stepped on a bloody, severed mouse head left by my thoughtful killer kitties.

Like I said, it’s always something and nothing’s ever easy. So the next time you’re having one of those days, just say this little phrase with a chuckle and realize that you are not alone. It happens to all of us.

Adorable, Furry, and Deadly

Our cats are serial killers. Don’t let their cute, furry faces deceive you; they are assassins, plain and simple. I don’t know if it makes it better or worse, but their killings are done out of their great love for us. At least that’s what I read online when I asked why my cats keep bringing me gross, dead things. In fact, the better we treat them, the more they seem to repay us with severed mouse heads, plump moles, and (our least favorite), the birds we used to be able to feed and watch out the window before we rescued the murderous kitties.

Zinni with another victim

Apparently, there is nothing you can do to really stop this behavior. Outside cats are natural hunters. Sometimes they eat their catches, but it seems they leave most of their victims for us to enjoy. They appear to take great pains to place the “treats” where we will either step on them on the way out the door or at least notice them. They seem to arrange them in an almost artful way at times. Occasionally, they even stand by the door and meow until we go look and they can show off their skills. We are supposed to make a big fuss over every tiny animal corpse. “Oh, thank you, kitties!" we say, "Mmm…delicious!” Then we have to dispose of the nasty things without the cats seeing us and before they start to smell and attract flies.
This is getting old.

I mean, mice are pests. I think they are kind of cute, but they are also problematic. They have destroyed many things of ours. For instance, we lost a good sweet potato crop last year to mice, and our air mattress, which we had stored in the basement, had an inch-wide hole chewed in the side for a mouse nest. We are fine with the cats getting rid of mice. We don’t even care if they eat them. We just don’t really want whole mice and mice parts (such as a lovely pile of mouse guts) to greet us nearly every day as we walk out the door.

This past weekend, they killed five rodents and two birds. I threw them all out in the field by our house. This morning, I found two more mice placed side by side. I muttered “Gee, thanks again, kitties” as I rushed to my car, late for work. When I came home, there were two more small moles added to the carnage. I am not sure if they were the same ones that I had thrown out in the field or new ones, but I had four gross tokens of gratitude to dispose of after a long day of work. Then I reached the step by the back door and saw the final touch…a bloody, severed mouse head. “Kitties!” I yelled, “This is getting out of hand! Enough is enough. I don’t want any more treats! This is disgusting!” I don’t know if I hurt their feelings. I don’t even care at this point. It is beyond disturbing.

What makes their killing sprees even more disturbing is when I see the way they kill things sometimes. I have seen them catch a mouse or a mole, only to let it go so they can chase it again and torture it. “For crying out loud, kitties, just kill it or let it go; don’t traumatize it for an hour.” They don’t seem to comprehend my words of advice.

If I ever see one of them with a bird, I chase them and make them let it go, and so does Kevin. We have saved a few birds’ lives this way. I even tried using collars with little bells on them. This is supposed to scare the birds and let them know the cats are coming. My cats are so stealthy, however, that this did not stop anything. Then they both lost the collars (along with the engraved metal tags with our information). “Safety collar” just means “your cat will lose this collar within a week or so.” Perhaps the cats didn’t really lose them, but took turns taking them off of each other so they could be better killers.

I guess I will have to get used to this unpleasant display of affection, as it shows no signs of slowing. I can’t believe they find so many mice, but we do live out in the country, with plenty of places for small rodents to hide. I’ll just have to remember that they love us and want to feed us like we feed them. That almost makes up for the feeling of nausea every day.

So, how about you? Any serial killer pet stories to share? I’d love to hear them.

Pet Photography

I admit it: I love my cats, Zinni and Cali. They both just showed up as strays and we took them in. We thought we were doing them a favor, but they make our life more interesting and keep us entertained with their antics and distict personalities. I could share many stories, pictures and videos that would make me look like a crazy cat lady (and may do so in the future), but for now, I just wanted to share some of my favorite recent shots.

It was a nice spring day and I wanted to try my hand at pet photography. Yes, pet photographers exist and some actually make good money. I love animals and taking pictures, so this may turn into a future hobby/part-time career someday, but for now, I just practice on my kitties for fun. Here are the best ones (and I apologize that I am still loving the overused sepia tone...it just makes everything look better to me). :)

Cali in the grass

Nice tongue!

Can you see me now?

Zinni looking intense

And now not so intense...

Stopping to smell the flowers...before attacking them.

Link to My Yahoo! Page

Well, I was going to repost some of my favorite articles from my Yahoo! site on this blog, but haven't had the time to move all of that over here yet. So, until I do, I thought I would just give the link to my Yahoo! Contributor Network page, which has titles and descriptions of all my published work for them thus far. If you're looking for humor or recipes in particular, you can search my content on the right-hand side of that page. You can also filter it by type.

I started this blog a month ago with the intention of writing on a regular basis again, but got it in my head that I had to move all the old stuff over first before posting any new work. Since I didn't have the time to do that, I felt restricted from just freely writing any new posts, which was not my intention when starting this. So I think I need to ignore my initial plan and start over.

I just need to get writing again. I miss it and people keep asking me why I haven't been writing anything lately. I will try to get on here and do something worth reading on a semi-regular basis. We'll see how that goes. I may post favorite old pieces sporadically as I feel like it. Again, bear with me as I learn how to do this whole blog thing. I think Yahoo! will still publish photo slideshows without much hassle, so I may do that and then link them to related blogs. 

Anyway, here is the link to my other writing site: http://contributor.yahoo.com/user/80963/rita_oakleaf.html

Thanks for reading, friends!

My First Blog Post!

Well, hello there. Welcome to my first blog post. I can’t believe I put off trying to start a blog for almost eight years simply because I wasn’t very tech-savvy and thought it would be too complicated. Then today I managed to set one up in about ten minutes and customize it in about thirty minutes. I’m kind of kicking myself right now for waiting so long to do this. I mean, I’ve had an outlet for writing since college when I started a weekly humor column in the school paper called "Rita's Ramblings," but I’ve never had one on the internet that I have had complete control over other than notes on Facebook and a couple of posts on MySpace before I quit using MySpace.

Even way back in college I had people telling me I should start a blog, but kept putting it off. Maybe I didn’t like the sound of the word “blog.” It makes me think of a frog sitting on a log in a bog. Am I the only one? It’s just not that appealing.

So I just wrote my little humor column until I got out of college and then took a break from writing. Eventually I came across Associated Content. They paid me $7 for a recycled humor column called “The Pros and Cons of the Decorative Towel Set.” I was hooked. I wrote many articles there and became part of a great community of writers. There were many talented humor writers that I enjoyed following. We read each other’s work and left funny and thoughtful comments. My family and friends read my articles there too.

I rarely published articles for pay, because I wanted to retain control over my content, but I did make about $1.50 for every 1,000 page views. In a few years, I only made about $200, so it wasn’t really about the money. I just loved writing there and enjoyed participating in the community. I saw no reason to start a blog when I already had a publishing platform that worked for me. Things were going swell. I was hitting my stride and even received the honor of being named “Most Intriguing Humor Writer” in 2010 by my peers.

But things weren’t always peachy at that site. Yahoo! bought Associated Content years ago and had slowly been making changes. This created many frustrating glitches that caused many good writers to leave the site. I held on, thinking it would improve. I had more than a hundred followers and all of my content was there. Then one day Yahoo! rolled out a new name, “Yahoo! Voices.” With this name came more rules and regulations. When I tried to publish an article typical of my style of writing, it was rejected. I was told it was “too long for online attention spans.” It was actually shorter than most of my previous articles. I hadn’t even asked for payment for that article and they still rejected it. Others complained in private messages about similar rejections.

I had already been feeling less motivated and didn’t have much time to write anyway. Most of my favorite writers had also left the site or were essentially booted out. The worst part was that we couldn’t really tell our followers why we stopped writing. We were unable to publish an article just to say why we were being rejected. Coincidentally, “Yahoo! Voices” had silenced many voices with its new restrictions. I'm not saying I will never publish there again, but I'm not real excited about it, either.

Months passed without me publishing anything. This was stressful. I had many ideas, but not much time. I also feared putting a lot of work into writing something that would not be accepted. Yahoo! killed my desire to write humor or anything else. So I worked my 40-hour-a-week desk job, drove my two-hour-a-day commute, ate some dinner, watched TV and went to bed. I became increasingly cranky. I think it was because I was missing my creative outlet and my hilarious friends that helped take the edge off of a hard day. I’ve had an eye twitch in my left eye for three months now. I kid you not. My eye has been twitching every day since December. If it is stress-related, then maybe writing again will be the cure.

Meanwhile, friends and family were questioning why I wasn’t writing anymore. I would give them the shortened version of “Yahoo! stinks and I’m too busy,” and they would ask why I didn’t just start a blog. When I finally made up my mind to start one, though, I realized I knew nothing about it. I tried researching which site was best and everyone had something different to say. It was all very overwhelming.

It did seem like most people thought Blogger was one of the easiest to use, though, and since I’m not familiar with HTML coding and other such computer-geek wizardry, I decided to go with the easiest and simplest blog site. So, here I am, starting the blog I should have created years ago. I would have just called it “Rita’s Ramblings” since that was where it all began, but that was already taken, so I called it “Rita’s Rambling Reflections” instead. I don’t know how often I will publish, but I feel energized already, knowing that there is now a way for me to publish my thoughts without anyone to tell me how to do it. I promise future posts will be more entertaining and less negative than this one was, but I felt I had to give a little backstory.

If you have any tips for this blogging newbie, feel free to comment or e-mail me. I would love to hear them. Thanks for reading, friends!