I Hate Rip-Offs!

 We're having quite the sweep of temperatures in Central California.  Nothing to keep me home all day, but the afternoons have been getting toasty.  The mornings ... oh how I love the 4:30 mornings at a cool 66 degrees.  We spend at least 30 minutes every morning just soaking it up in the dark.

Jonathan on the other hand, LOVES the heat.  This is where he spends about half the time now ... sleeping, like the old man that he is.  It's easy to put his head back to sleep, and he doesn't fall off the perch.

Don't get too close however, or he will use this beak to bite your finger off.  He always recognizes my voice, but his eyesight isn't good at all.  You can see he's been chewing on the sticks to keep his beak in shape ... breaking off pieces so it doesn't grow too long.  Yes, that's his tongue with the black spot ... normal in bird-dom.  Unlike other animals, birds don't have saliva, so they require lots of water.  He looks pretty good at 50 years old ... very soon to be 51.

My day started with lots of frustration.  I had an eye appointment at 8:00 to get a new prescription for glasses.  I got this appointment year ago.  The sweet new very young girl from Thailand took me to the back to get my eyes dilated.  Wait ... don't you do the eye tests first?  "Oh no ... you have to make another appointment for that".  

Ummmm that's why I made THIS appointment.  Here's where I got mad.  This is the HEALTH appointment she said ... and the GLASSES appointment is separate ... so they can charge my insurance company TWICE.  Needless to say, I wasn't the least bit happy.  That's a big fat rip-off.  

I went ahead with the HEALTH part ... she dilated my eyes and did one test.  The doc came in and took less then 3 minutes to look at my eyes and say ... YUP ... everything looks fine.  I wasn't the nicest I suppose, to which he responded too bad.  That's how we do it ... and he walked out.  

Well too bad ... when the gal asked me what day would be good for the next year's appointment, I said none because I wasn't coming back.  So now I have to make ANOTHER appointment to get new glasses.  I'm calling Costco!

I was SO mad, which truly doesn't happen all that often any more ... that I decided I needed some awesome food to soothe the savage mind.  There's a creepy little place outside of town ... mostly boarded up with steel bars on the windows ... but with a Carniceria sign out front.  It MUST be good, yes?

I walked in to see a dirty concrete floor, two shelves in the middle of a tiny room with maybe six cans of Chile verde sauce next to two packages of tortillas ... and a broom laying on the floor.  A few feet away was the meat counter ... maybe 8 feet long.  One side had meat covered in plastic wrap and the other had containers of food.  

Am I too early?  No he said (at least he spoke English) as he threw pans of food into the warming trays.  I'll have three chicken street tacos and a big fat chile verde burrito.  I deposited $22 and walked out the door.  Looks good, yes?  Tastes good?  That would be a no.  I don't know what kind of sauce that was on the chicken, but two of the tacos ended up in the trash.  Oh my great Aunt Suzy ... they were terrible.

I cut open the burrito to find lots of meat, beans and rice.  I tentatively took a taste.  Okay, this tastes like a burrito ... and it was good!!  It didn't make up for the eye doctor rip off, but it helped, and I have enough left over the two more meals.

By now it was all of 11:00, so I headed out of town in terrible holiday traffic ... but that's a story for tomorrow.  When I returned, Mr. Cooper, Kitters and I wandered through the back yard checking the tomatoes for any sign of red.  Nothing ... but WAIT ... I check them every day for missing pieces of leaves ... and what should I find but black dots.  

You know what that means ... there's a tomato worm on here somewhere!!!  I looked and looked at every single little branch until ..... THERE YOU ARE, YOU LITTLE STINKER.  A big rock took care of that!!  As I walked around the back, I saw MORE black spots.  I went branch by branch for a good thirty minutes before finding YET ANOTHER!  

I dropped the rock from an even higher elevation because this one ate one of my green tomatoes.  The worms are no more and I am NOT sad about it.  I'll be checking a lot more often now.

I finally tore out the zucchini and the yellow squash.  They weren't doing anything anyway.  Next will be the cherry tomatoes.  They haven't produced anything in two weeks and I'm tired of watering them constantly.  And so .... almost .... the end of my gardening career comes to an end.  Thank goodness, because I doubt those little tomatoes would survive my forgetfulness when it comes to giving them a drink.

In the meantime, pray for RED tomatoes!!!