So much to say

Have you ever felt like you have so many different things to say that you don't know where to start? ...and perhaps it might be best just to remain silent rather than exert a whole load of effort on expressing something in words that only makes sense in your head and heart? That's me today.

Where to start, where to start... be forewarned, this is going to turn into a hodge podge of non-sequiters, I'm sure of it. I love the term hodge podge, it makes me feel like I'm 83 years old when I use it. If I don't watch it pretty soon I'll be busting out the hullabaloos and hoozywhatsits. Lord.

OK, let's get down to bidness. First, there are all the things that happened during the hurricane that seem like glimmers of a distant past, but in actuality occurred less than a week ago. Here's the list of those happenings:

• (Try not to laugh too badly) I decided after a couple of Red Stripes that late Sunday night was a good time to trim my hair and take a shower. I got out the scissors and a few snip, snip, snips later my lovely shaggy 'do was looking a lot more fashionable. Since I had the scissors at the ready I figured I might attempt to infuse a little sexiness into my being and trim my "other" hair, if you catch my drift. Everything was going fine until I snipped a little too closely and caught some skin in the tip of the scissors and watched a ruby red drop of blood run down my thigh. Snipped lip - ouch. Nothing major, but that stings, so I advise remaining stone sober when dealing with such delicate places.
  
• Tuesday morning we still had no electricity, and by then were dying for a hot cup of coffee. We decided to brave the wilds of no-power Miami and begin the Great Coffee Quest. For an hour and a half we drove around, dumbfounded by the lack of concern for the safety of others and complete void of common courtesy exhibited by the people on the roads. When there is a widespread power outage and you come upon an intersection where a traffic light normally governs the flow of cars you are supposed to treat it as a 4-way stop and proceed accordingly. This is not a difficult concept. It's really not. But for some reason the people here either can't wrap their brains around that idea or they don't give 2 shits because they blow through intersections, don't yield, don't look for traffic coming from the opposite direction, basically they don't concern themselves with the rules of the road, thereby endangering, well... ME. Not cool. I already live in da 'hood, that's enough risk for one person - I don't need to fear for my life when crossing 22nd Ave. So we were waiting to approach an intersection in heavy traffic and the police were making our lane merge with the one to our right. Seemed simple enough, people were doing as they should - taking turns, one car from our lane, one from theirs, etc. But then it got to be our turn and the guy in the next lane didn't let us in. Now you tell me how much time it saves you in traffic that's not even moving at a steady 5 miles per hour when you don't let someone in front of you. I'll answer that one - NONE, not a stinking second. Well, this pissed me off and I said quite loudly, "What a jackass." The guy looked at me (you see, we could make direct eye contact because his smooth move of not letting us in got him a whopping half a car-length further so at this point we were right next to each other) and mumbled something in Spanish. I couldn't muster any restraint and said, "No, I don't habla espanol, you jackass." I said that I didn't even know how to say jackass in Spanish and the man goes, "Jackass-o". For some reason that was the funniest thing he could have said at that moment and so from then on, everyone that's done something stupid and careless in traffic has been promptly called a jackass-o.
  
• The little kids from next door (4 & 5 yrs. old) were undoubtedly bored to tears and decided to get themselves into a bit of mischief to bide their time. I came out to roll the car windows up and saw them running out of our front gate. Strange, I thought, they always say hello if they come over. I put the windows up and noticed that the garage was open and figured I should shut it up for the night. Which is when I noticed the smell. The distinct smell of gasoline. And then the hint of motor oil, sprayable foam insulation, and diesel. Oh yeah, those little shits had a war with garage fluids. There's still gas and motor oil all over the floor because we don't have a hose that reaches far enough to spray it off. There are bits of foam insulation on the dryer, the floor, the man's tools, everywhere. I went next door and told their grandparents that they may want to wash the little ones up because they'd dumped out gasoline and oil and insulation all over our garage. They ended up having their gasolline soaked (and I mean soaked) clothes stripped off on the front porch down to their underoos and got a good spanking. I know they probably got into stuff over their heads and ran away when they realized they'd done bad stuff, but they never should have thought it was OK to come into our garage w/o telling us. Lesson learned, I hope. Now we have a hurricane rain-fed lawn that looks like a jungle because there's no gas left to fill the mower. And there's no way in hell I'm standing in line for 3 hours to get gas - that's the average here now.

I need a break. My tummy is growling and I need to get a snack before I go on. To be continued...