Cars and garages and cats, oh my!

[captainsblog]

Since all of my topical humor posts seem to be going over like the proverbial Leds Zeppelin, I'll just get back to dancin' with the stuff I brung with me from home and heart.

Emily has finally resumed driving lessons, of sorts. The night I got back, she apologetically asked for a chance to drive to the market, as we'd run out of dog food while I was away. That was her first time behind a wheel since returning from NYSSSA. She'd been out one or two times before tonight, but she wanted to hang her signs for the garage sale tomorrow, so I took her through the neighborhood as we hole-punched and tied-down and made fun of the really crappy signs some competitors had put up.

Ah, the garage sale. As of 24 hours ago, it was off again, as the kid had done virtually nothing all day yesterday to make signs, price merchandise, get selling help from her friends, or otherwise show any motivation at all. Within seconds of that reading from the Book of Threats, she did more to prepare within a few hours than she had in the more than three days since I got home.

The only other detail was getting her change for the till. Mr. & Mrs. Spastic managed to miscommunicate about this trip to a bank, and by the time I got to my own bank a bit past 5:30, the ATM was running but the branch was closed. Likewise, two other ones on the way home, but we remembered that the other supermarket in town, a/k/a It Which Must Never Be Shopped At, had an in-store Key Bank- supposedly with longer hours.  I rolled into it at precisely 6:01, just as the last customer was being shooed out. I was unceremoniously ejected, even though the whole staff was still in there counting out drawers, and while the store staff graciously filled my change order, I don't have any accounts or goodwill with them. I'm a Key Bank customer, admittedly involuntarily (they're one of the few banks here to offer health savings accounts), and I had a long and spirited discussion with the "branch" manager, through the locked gate, about the meaning of customer service. If I'd shut my door on a client, or if Eleanor had refused a Wegmans front-end customer, for the sin of showing up a minute past closing time, we would have been fired. It was clear that he didn't "get it"- that the "rule" about the closed gate didn't excuse the rudeness to a customer in need.

The other interesting aspect will be how the animals will react to being left Home Alone while Emily conducts commerce outdoors. To make it easier on the dogs, we plan to shut the drapes in the living room, but that, in turn, will just be a new game for the kitten to play. Already, Zoey has discovered every pull cord on every drape in the house, and The Wand Game is also one of her favorites, as she tries to adjust the blinds over the bed after I feed her in the mornings.  She's also shown a marked preference for collard greens- I passed on telling the joke about "because she's black" but heard it from someone else today- and in something of a breakthrough, she actually has spent time sleeping on the same bed as her big sister cat as well as the dogs.

For now, though, she's using one of the living room chairs as a jungle gym. I'd best be off to finish wearing her out; we have an economy to stimulate tomorrow!