Tuesday - People who get on my last nerve

Oh, the list is long. Who to choose? Or is it whom to choose? I think I'll stick with who.

I just ran down the list in my mind and it occurs to me that a lot of the people on it are generic, or on TV, or imaginary acquaintances. (I don't imagine them well enough to be imaginary friends.) And some of them are people I have only heard about but haven't met. Like my friend "S" (can't think of an appropriate fake name for her right now) will tell me about some new person she met, and she'll say, "Oh, you would love her!" and I say, "You know I hate everybody and she would be no exception" and "S" will act like I'm kidding, although she knows better.

But this one is way worse, my friend John (that is his real name) always says I remind him of his cousin (whose name doesn't matter) and he seems to forget that every other time he mentions her name, it's to mock her or lambast her or use her as a bad example. So in this instance, I'm not sure if it's John or his cousin who gets on my last nerve.

For today, I believe I will choose every employee at Circuit City, because even when it's not busy there, it takes forever to buy anything because Everything is a Problem.

So, the Chicken Update. I saw Bjorn (Not His Real Name) and Maggie (Nuh-uh) arriving home yesterday, and I started to plan the best way to let them know about the demise of their last chicken, since I realized I didn't know the full extent of their relationship to this chicken, because they have known that chicken a lot longer than they have known me, so for all I know they were really close or something.

It made me think of this story about the three-legged pig. A man was visiting a farmer, and he saw a three-legged pig in his yard, and he asked about it, and the farmer said, "That pig? That is a really special pig. He saved the lives of my whole family a while back. The house caught fire while we were all asleep, and that pig broke into the house and ran around and made a lot of noise, and woke us all up. That is one smart pig."

So the visitor said, "Wow, that's amazing. How come he has three legs?"

The farmer said, "Well, you don't eat a pig like that all at once, son."

So anyway, back to Bjorn and Maggie and the chicken. Bjorn forced my hand when I saw him checking out his trash can. He must have wondered why it was out by the road, since they haven't been home to put anything in it. I walk-ran out, trying to appear casual, and said, "Oh! I put that out for you. It, er, um. It's the Final Resting Place of your Final Chicken."

He took it pretty well. He did open the lid and say a quick goodbye, but there were no tears or anything. Then Maggie came along and I told her too, and she said that chicken hasn't been quite right ever since Old Man McGreevy's dog chewed up her leg a while back. It seemed to have done some psychological damage and the chicken became kind of a shut-in. And an elderly lone chicken shut-in is a pretty pitful character, so although they will miss her, it was probably Just As Well.

And then I said we should order some baby chicks and build me a chicken coop, and Bjorn said, "I probably already have enough lumber out behind the barn," and Maggie said, "I like to have Barred Rock hens and a Rhode Island Red rooster, and one rooster can handle 25 hens" and there you are.

We haven't worked out the details of the farm stand yet. But I'm saving up the hair from the bathroom drains.