How to Break Up with Your Internet Service Provider

 

Last week I finally--FINALLY--signed on with a new Internet Service Provider (hereafter known as the NISP). It took two tries. After receiving a "special offer" in the mail--okay, after receiving a hundred or so over the past couple years--I decided to give them a try. This was after repeated attempts to get my old Internet Service Provider (hereinafter known as OISP) to lower my bill by removing the monthly charge for a landline. ("Of course! I can help you with that!" one hour later: "I'm sorry, we're unable to separate your phone from your internet....")

Old monthly bill with OISP: $139

Current monthly bill with NISP: $41

(Boy howdy, that $41 was hard fought and has it's own story that involves me hanging up on the first representative I spoke to--after being on the phone with him berating me for half an hour. You don't need me to explain to you that's not the way to make a sale. Sheesh.)

ANYWAY, the only thing I had left to do was break up with my OISP. You know, call and cancel my service.

If you've done this before, you know that it should be a short phone call. "Yes, thank you, I just need to cancel my service...." But it's not. Because as soon as you say that--in the nicest way possible--you're asked why, and then you're directed to the "loyalty" representative who promises to lower your bill, wash your car, walk your dog, and maybe give you a back massage if you'll only stay with the company that has the "best" customer service and support. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

My NISP system was installed last week by a very happy dude named Michael who had a great work ethic and got it all handled in an hour, including pulling the ladder off his truck, climbing around in the garage, and other time-consuming tasks. It is indeed "faster and more reliable" (so far). I waved goodbye to Michael and my next thought was, How do I cancel my OISP without wasting time with the loyalty people? So (finally), here's how it went:

OISP: Good morning! This is Billie! How can I help you today?

Me: Good morning, Billie! I need to cancel my service today.

(After some preliminary identification verification)

OISP: Do you mind if I ask why you're canceling your service?

Me: I don't mind at all! I'm moving to Australia!

OISP: Australia! Wow! That's... a long way to move. What made you decide to move to Australia, if you don't mind me asking.

Me: I don't mind at all! My granddaughter just got a recording contract there, and since she's rather young, her parents were concerned about her moving so far away by herself. I'm footloose and fancy free, so I offered to go with her and live over there for a year or two. Should be fun!

(What was really fun was listening to Billie tap away on her computer, listing, I assume, the customer's reason for canceling service. She assured me right away that she could help me, waited for her computer to tabulate a closing bill, told me what that total would be and that my service would be canceled by the following day.)

OISP: Before I let you go, Ms. Murphy, do you mind giving me your granddaughter's name so I can look forward to hearing some of her music in the future?

Me: Oh, of course! You can listen to some of it now. She's done a few recordings and they're on YouTube. Look her up! Her name is Ellie Blue.

OISP: I'm writing that down....

The entire phone call took less than ten minutes. And yes, that last bit is true--my granddaughter's stage name is Ellie Blue, and she can be found singing on YouTube. (Note: If one intends to prevaricate, one should always have at least part of one's story based in fact.)

In all seriousness, I realize that Billie, the OISP, is out there working, hoping her day doesn't get too crazy with angry customers, hoping she can pay her bills or feed her kids or support herself through college or whatever it is she needs to do with her paycheck. I didn't want to waste her time anymore than I wanted to waste mine. Nor did I want to engage in that toxic back-and-forth that is sometimes required in these situations. So I just came up with a story that made it easier for her to do her job, and for me to do mine... which was get back to sitting at this laptop, making up stories. So there ya go.

The Care and Feeding of

 

Photo courtesy of Jeanette Ragland

If anything happens to me—and it won’t, I promise—but if anything happens to me, please take gentle loving care of Maya.

Let her stay in whatever safe place she finds, even if she stays there for hours. She will love that. Just curling up. Safe.

Take her for a walk every single day, even if it rains a little. (She has a raincoat.) She will hate that. The world, after all, is a very scary place.

But if you can, walk her before the first rays of the sun bring with them activity and noise and human interaction. Walk in the stillness of almost-dawn. She will love that.

It’s a chore, I know, but please clip her little nails once a month. If you’re slow and gentle, she will let you. She will hate every minute of it. But she will let you.

Once a week—or maybe twice, if you don’t mind—please give her two small pieces of cheese. Or part of your fried egg. (No pepper, please.) She will love this.

Once a year—even though she’s almost always inside and never exposed and no one will ever come looking to see if she’s had her rabies shots—please take her to a soft-spoken, slow-moving vet to get her vaccinations. She will hate being touched by a stranger, just as most of us do.

On occasion, if you can, please take her out to the hills for her walk. Use the long lead so she can enjoy the sensation of running free, even though you will be on the other end, hurrying to keep up as she trots along the trail with wild abandon, unfazed by the scent of coyotes or bobcats. She will love this.

If visitors or repair persons must come, please shut her away in her safe place, preferably behind a closed door, preferably with a large, soft blanket to tunnel under, preferably with Charlie, her favorite stuffie. She will hate the intrusion, and maybe she’ll be reluctant to eat her dinner for many hours afterward. But I promise by the next morning, she’ll be okay again. If she ever misses breakfast, you will know that something is terribly wrong.

At night, before she goes to sleep, please rub behind her ears and massage her back and stroke her beautiful face and head. She will lie still, and you will never see evidence that she loves this, but she does love this. You will never see evidence that she loves you. But she does. Trust me. If you feed her treats and keep her safe, she will love you, even if you do nothing else for her.

And, if you’ll indulge me, I have just one more request for her if something should happen to me. Which it won’t. I promise. But if somehow it did…. Please keep her with her best friend, Maudie. Because as humans, we can keep her safe and keep her healthy, and she will love that. But for her to be truly joyful in the way only dogs can be, she will need her bestie by her side to let her know that she never has to face the scary world alone again.

And isn't that what we all need, really? After we are fed and safe? A friend to assure us that we will never have to face the scary stuff alone. We are fortunate, we are blessed, we are downright joyful as only humans can be, when we have a bestie like that.

Three trees and a dog

 

I park in the lot above the meadow in Bogart Park. It’s early and cool. As I step out of the truck, the quiet settles on me like the light embrace of a beloved friend.

This is how I know it’s October: The slight bite in the air. The scent of wood smoke that drifts down and hovers in the meadow. The tone of the leaves rustling; soft and lilting in mid-summer when the leaves are new and tender, it is a crisper sound now, as they dry and die and fall.

Maya alights from the truck eagerly, her nostrils twitching. She knows where we are, where the trail begins, and she heads that way at a trot before I’ve barely had time to close the door and hit the lock button.

Finding the trail, she pulls to the end of her twenty-foot leash and takes the rolling hills as if they are red-carpet flat, while I laugh, struggling to keep up as I tell her, “My, slow down, honey.” But she is thrilled to be out here, so I let her charge on, and my tempo increases as my boots kick up dust.

She slows when we reach the big hill. She doesn’t like this trail because she cannot see around the corners as we wind up and around on the climb, but she comes along beside me as I reassure her. Halfway up, she veers over to a single-track trail, a deer path that she has asked so many times to follow. Every other time, I have said no. Today I tell her, “Okay, My, let’s go your way,” and once again she is charging along. I gently slow her down; I have to watch her feet and mine for rattlesnakes, as it is still warm enough to see them out.

I know where this trail goes, and I know it will double the distance of our walk today. But it is a trail I have taken before with Sgt. Thomas Tibbs, and one I have loved—though not chosen—for several years.

We wind down to the far side of the hill, Maya surprised to find the trail opening up and skirting an expansive meadow. She glances often to our right where she can hear the penned sheep that sometimes graze here.

Then we come to the first tree.

 

A fire in the fall of 2016 burned much of this side of the hill down to rubble. Black ash is still visible in the soil along the trail. But look at these oak trees. Strong. Steadfast. Beautiful. How old is this one? How many fires have threatened it? Still it endures.

The last oak we pass before taking the steep trail back up toward the parking lot boasts a picnic table beneath it. Maya waits patiently as I snap a photo… and I imagine myself sitting down with a book or a notebook and a snack, whiling away a few hours in the shade… in the quiet… in the solitude.

 

Maya does that all-over dog shake—as Frost’s “little horse” did when the poet stopped to watch the snow fall in a similarly hushed and serene place.

I, too, have promises to keep.

So we tackle the last arduous climb, then pause briefly in the shade to catch our breath before heading back to the truck and civilization.

There is another way I mark the path into October, and that is by the shorter days, the diminishing light. At one time, October was my least favorite month. As the darkness came on, my spirits would flag, my anxiety rise, often leaving me depressed until January.

No more. The cure for darkness is light. So I will be out here as often as I can be, letting Maya charge up the trail (as long as it’s safe to do so), pushing myself to walk farther each time, to take the longer route, the steeper trail, to hear my heartbeat pounding, to know that I am still alive, still surviving, and will be when the light returns once again in spring.

A Friendly Murder

 

No worries, dear Reader; I refer in my title to a “murder” of crows.

It all began when I read about an experiment conducted with crows in order to determine whether they would recognize individual humans. Not only can they distinguish one human from another, they also, it turns out, are capable of holding a grudge for a prolonged period of time. You can see the results of that experiment in this short video here.

Following that, I found another video which demonstrated how crows either believe in a barter system or are simply and sincerely grateful when humans offer gifts. In return for food, they will eventually offer gifts. You can see that video here.

Jenny the Cat perches on my kitchen table every morning (after her early morning patrol of the perimeter of the property), watching the “big squawky birds” and making that adorable chittering sound cats make when they watch birds. The crows come by every morning about 7:00a.m. to eat the snails and slugs from my neighbor’s yard, and we watch them hop around, squabble over territory, and steal from each other, shouting epithets in crow-speak. I decided, after seeing the two above mentioned videos, to enhance the entertainment value for Jenny and possibly make a crow friend or two myself by feeding them peanuts. (I purchased peanuts in the shell from Chewy.com that are intended for animal consumption. Never feed your local wildlife human food, please.)

That’s when the fun began.

It only took one day and the tossing out of a couple peanuts for a couple of crows to become curious, swooping down and strutting around the peanuts, tilting their heads and eyeing them suspiciously. Then one guy grabbed a goober, flew up to the neighbor’s rooftop, and began pecking away.

The next morning, both crows were there at 7:00 sharp, waiting. I threw down a couple peanuts and retreated to the house. They flew down, each taking one, and flew off to eat them.

That was three months ago.

Now every morning there are no less than ten crows waiting—not so patiently—at 7:00.

"Caw! Caw! Caw!"

It’s like Trick or Treat; I count the number of crows and dole out that same number of peanuts, lobbing them out into the street, then returning to the house to watch the birds at the buffet.

So far, not a single one of those ungrateful bastards has left me a gift. However, Jenny’s enjoyment at their antics nearly matches mine. Here’s what I’ve seen:

Like humans, there is always a bold leader, first to fly down from his perch on the street light and grab a peanut. Conversely, there is the last guy, a small crow who looks on nervously, not sure if it’s safe to descend, often waiting until it’s too late to get a peanut. Because there is the one guy who is never content with just one. He picks up one in his beak, then hops quickly to another peanut, trying to cram that one in as well, often dropping the first peanut in the process. Most days, he is not satisfied until he has somehow shoved two in this beak, at which point he flies to the peak of the neighbor’s roof and drops them, frequently losing the extra one as it rolls down onto the ground. Greed is not an attractive look for anyone, and “Hey, Pal,” I tell him, “you can’t take it with you, can you?”

At any rate, I am still waiting for the day when I will come out in the morning, my fist full of peanuts, to find one of them has left me some shiny trinket. (I guess that’s my own form of greediness, isn’t it?) When that happens, you’ll be the first to know. After Jenny, of course.

Regarding Dolly: An Update

 

Just a quick post here to honor a dog and her human.

Three years ago, in August of 2021, I took my neighbor Linda on a day-long jaunt to find a dog. Her beloved pug mix, Abbey, had passed away some months before, and she and her husband were feeling the absence of a dog’s magic in the house. You know, that quality they have of somehow brightening everyone’s spirits. So Linda asked me to help her find the right dog.

We went looking for “a younger dog” and came home with a fourteen-year-old. Yep. You can read that story by clicking here.

Linda and her husband Bob took that old dog that had been uncared for (and unbathed) for so long, and they scrubbed her up, brushed her out, gave her warm, soft bedding, and started feeding her cooked chicken breasts every night. I kid you not. (Thus the roly-poly Dolly you see in the photo above.) I remember Linda telling me at the time that they were committed to giving her a great life for whatever time she had left, whether that be days or weeks or months or—if they were lucky—years.

And years it was. Nearly three exactly. Dolly passed away this week at the age of seventeen. Seventeen, y’all! And that dog…. Boy howdy, was she a happy girl in her last days! Oh, not at first. She was quiet and reserved and withdrawn (and very wary of Bob). But her humans were patient. And they had chicken. And daily love and encouragement. And that dog finally began to respond, so much so that she found her happy feet. I will never forget stopping by one day and Linda telling me: “Every evening after dinner she goes into the den and dances around.” Dolly might have been too old to do zoomies, but she was never too old to dance.

A good lesson for all of us who are easing into the silver muzzle stage of life, I reckon.

On Not Being Okay

 

Last week I posted on Facebook that I was not okay. I am grateful for all the friends and family members who checked in on me—called, sent a text, sent a private message, sent chocolate…. Okay, no one sent chocolate, but getting those check-in messages was just as good. Better, actually.

Here’s what was going on:

I felt overwhelmed.

When I feel overwhelmed, it’s because things feel like they are spiraling out of my control.

When I begin to lose control over the order of my life—the daily routine, the peace and quiet of the household, the general welfare of my dog and cat—my anxiety begins to skyrocket.

When my anxiety skyrockets, I become paralyzed. I find myself functioning robotically to take care of the necessary things—pet care, etc—then becoming immobilized and simply sitting for hours at a time, heart pounding, breath shallow.

This anxiety is rooted in childhood trauma.

I was an extremely sensitive child. (I still am that child.) And I was shamed by my parents for being so. I’m not trying to vilify them here; they thought that telling me to “stop crying" and "stop being so sensitive” and making fun of me for doing so would help toughen me up to deal with the real world outside. What it actually did was further isolate me, make me feel that my being “different” from others was wrong or bad, something I should be ashamed of choosing for myself. And all of that led me to become quiet and shut down… for which I was further shamed.

I learned to speak only when I absolutely had to. I learned to hang in the background, not assert myself. I learned to be invisible.

The more I controlled these things, the safer I felt. The calmer I felt. In those days, the calmest I ever felt was on Saturday mornings, leaving the house when everyone was sleeping, riding my bike around the quiet neighborhood in the hush of early morning. I was a little girl out alone, and I felt safest there. (You’re already nodding your head if you know me well—this is me now on a hike; I feel safest there.)

Until I started seeing a therapist last year, I was wholly unaware of what caused my anxiety. I mean, when I was feeling anxious, I could generally track it back to what triggered it, but I had no idea why it kept resurfacing. I kept confusing anxiety with fear. It’s the same autonomic response, right? Rapid heart rate. Shallow breathing. But I am not a fearful person.

One day my therapist said, “So, as long as you can control things in your life—your environment, your routine, your interaction with people—you feel safe. Because when you were a child and a teenager, you were being bombarded with stimuli that traumatized you, and you had no control over it. You couldn’t advocate for yourself, and you had no adult advocate. So you lived with trauma. Now, you keep that trauma at bay by creating an environment in which you are in control.”

Boy howdy.

Yes, I understand—as I discussed with my therapist—that we cannot control everything that happens in our lives. Some weeks are like last week—things breaking, service people in the house to fix things, financial worries, pet worries, pressure from others to “just make a decision,” the hopeless desire to never let anyone down….

Last week was a perfect storm of unpleasant events happening. So I felt out of control of my life. So the anxiety swooshed back in hard like a tsunami.

So what did I do? I rode it out. I saw it coming on the horizon and I ran for higher ground. I didn’t quite outrun it, but some folks were close by with life preservers and ropes and that-feeling-you-get-when-you-eat-chocolate, and I survived it.

For a while, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. But the truth is, I just had to be reminded: “Breathe, Kay.” I did. I’m back. I’m okay now. If you’re not, you can always call me. I have time for you. I can find a life preserver. Maybe even some chocolate.

Happy Birthday to Me?

It was supposed to be a birthday present to myself, a road trip with my sister who needed a change of scenery, and a relaxing day for chatting and visiting our father's grave. And honestly it started out that way....

Even though an hour before we were scheduled to leave, I received a call from a woman who was trying to re-home a dog. She asked if I could "come today" to meet her, as she was going out of town.

Well, what the heck, it was essentially... sort of... on our way down to Corona del Mar, so yeah, we'd hop off the freeway and meet the dog.

Except when we arrived at exactly the appointed time, the woman responded to my text saying, "I'm across the street at the grocery store. Be there to meet you in a minute." Which she was... sort of... after she unloaded her groceries while I stood in the sun and waited for her to meet me at the gate to her apartments... only to find, when she arrived, that the dog was, um, not quite "as advertised." I'll leave it at that.

Back on the road, my sister and I chatted about dogs and our kids and our grandkids and our childhood as we motored along Highway 241, a toll road cut through the hills between the Anaheim Hills and the ocean (because of course I have a Fastrak transponder on my new truck, so we could easily cruise the toll road). In no time, we were pulling into Pacific View Cemetery and strolling over to Dad's grave.

It was a pleasant visit. We left flowers on his headstone and sang a duet of his favorite song, "Danny Boy." Then it was back in the truck and a short drive down Pacific Coast Highway (with views of the ocean we hadn't seen in a while) to our destination: Las Brisas Restaurant in Laguna Beach. I dropped Peg at the entrance so she could get us a table, and I went looking for parking, which I readily found, pulling into a spot where someone had just pulled out. I knew the routine: Slide the Visa card into the slot and hope I'm not paying a fortune for the hour or so we'd be eating lunch.

Lunch—was fantastic. Great food, a terrific chocolate mousse cake, which we debated about getting because, with the dog stop in the beginning of our journey, it was getting on toward afternoon, and we knew we had to beat the traffic home, but once we ate it, we both agreed it was worth sitting in traffic for. Little did we know....

We also drank lots and lots of chilled water. Here's how our very slow and often inattentive server offered that:

"What can I get you ladies to drink? We have water or Evian, iced tea, a glass of wine...."

"Oh, you have Evian? We'd like that."

We did indeed like it. So much so that we ordered a second bottle and shared it. We might have enjoyed it less had we known that the chilled glass bottles of Evian he brought to the table and poured into our wine glasses with a flourish were $12 a pop, adding a whopping $24 to the bill when it came. Yikes! I know, I know; a fancier person would have expected that. My brother would have asked the price of the fancy water first. But he's fancier than I am. Whatever. It's only money. And I can be that cavalier about it now, because someone else ended up paying for it. But I'll get to that....

We headed home. Thirty minutes into the drive, my sister told me she needed a pitstop. (All that expensive water, you see.) But we were back in the canyon, driving the toll road. There was nowhere to stop. And she was getting desperate with every passing minute.

"Just pull over," she said. "I'll find a bush."

Let's be honest. Guys do this all the time. One of the advantages of having a small hose (or, okay, whatever size it is) attached to your bladder is that you can drain it standing up. Women can't. And some people would be shocked at the thought of a woman squatting behind a bush. But let me tell you, as free roaming children at a very young age, we did what was necessary so we could still wander and explore (and probably get into some kind of predicament). As adults, my sister and I both went on trail rides on our horses along riverbeds and on isolated trails. I still hike in wilderness areas—where no one has thought to install restrooms. So yeah, it wasn't really a big deal.

I followed the turn-off for Santiago Canyon Road, found a spot to pull over, and Peg walked off into the bushes and relieved herself. We were back on the road in under ten minutes. Easy peasy.

Except....

I merged back onto the toll road to find that apparently a few thousand of our neighbors were also heading in our same direction, so five lanes of flowing traffic became two lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic, the long back-up occurring when both those lanes had to merge into one to join the 91 freeway. We were now rolling slowly, averaging 15 miles per hour.

I'm a California native. Generally speaking, traffic like this isn't an issue for me. I simply sit in the comfort of my Ford Maverick (with excellent lumbar support) and enjoy the scenery (if there is any). But on this day, I had left the house at 8:30, taking Maya out before I left. Confident we'd be back by early afternoon, I hadn't arranged for my dog wrangler to come over and let her out. But now, since it was already 3:00p.m., far past the time Maya should have had a potty break, I called the teen wrangler's grandmother to ask if she could pick the kid up and have her do me that favor.

"Sure," was the immediate answer. Then I remembered: I'd locked the house up tight before I left. Damn.

The next call was to my next-door neighbor, Gus, who told me when I moved in, "Hey, I have a key to your house" (from the previous owner). "Do you want it back? Or do you want me to keep it in case of an emergency?"

Thank goodness Gus has a key, I thought. But... that was eight years ago. When I called, Gus couldn't remember having a key. Or our conversation. "Even if I did have one," he said, "I would have no idea where it is now."

Sigh. Poor Maya! She would have to wait. A much longer time than I anticipated....

About this time, Peg started patting her pockets, scanning the floorboards, and asking, "Where's my phone?" I couldn't help her look. I had to keep my eyes on the car ahead of me so as not to bump.

"When did you last have it?"

"I don't know," she said. "At the restaurant maybe? I might've left it in the restroom. I took it out of my back pocket and put it on the toilet paper holder."

Brief aside here: This is not the first time I've been with my sister that she's left her phone in a public restroom.

Since my phone was synced with my car, I could call Las Brisas without too much distraction. The very kind hostess searched the restroom and their lost and found box. No phone.

I tried calling Peg's phone to see if it was in the truck and she just couldn't see it. We heard nothing, and about that time traffic cleared, and Peg said, "Maybe it fell out of my pocket when I got out to pee."

Oh, lord.

We'd finally made the transition onto the 91 and traffic was moving along at 70 miles per hour. We could be home in another hour or so. I could let Maya out. My shoulders could go back to their normal position instead of hovering around my ears with worry about my poor dog.

But what else was there to do?

I took the next ramp off, crossed back over the freeway and got back on in the opposite direction. We breezed back to the Santiago Canyon Road exit, I pulled up to where I'd stopped to let Peg out previously, and she got out to look. She was roaming through the brush, eyes on the ground, when I called her phone to see if we could hear the ring.

Boy howdy, did we hear it. Or at least I did.

"Peg, come here."

Her phone was in the passenger seat. She'd been sitting on it.

If only there hadn't been all that traffic noise earlier when I called it. If only we'd pulled over and stopped for a minute, had her get out and look. If only we hadn't stayed to eat that indescribably delicious chocolate mousse cake.

Wait. Scratch that last bit. I will never regret ordering that cake.

Back on the toll road with my apologetic sis, I inched into traffic again. Now, however, the traffic was worse. So when I say "inched," I literally mean we were moving at zero miles per hour. The line of traffic stretched endlessly before us. I took deep breaths to belay the worry about Maya. When you're in a situation you can't control, you only make it worse by getting angry or upset. Wise words, no? Yeah, it's only taken me about 70 years to learn that lesson.

So I tried to relax into my Zen mode. We would be home when we arrived home. I would practice patience and deep breathing until then.

Which is when, with a loud thump, my truck was rear-ended, and all my meditative energy exited the vehicle as I did, right in that long line of equally frustrated motorists.

I marched back to the car behind me, looking first at the damage to my beautiful new truck. The right side of the license plate was crumpled. Slightly. That was it. The driver of the car that hit me was a kid, twenty years old. I told him, in my sternest Mom/Teacher voice, to get over to the emergency lane, which meant both of us shifting over two lanes. The cars behind us had seen what happened and let us over.

I took a photo of the license plate of his car, then one of his driver's license.

"Let me see your registration," I told him.

"It's not my car," he said.

"Who is it registered to?" I asked.

"It's not registered," he said.

Then suddenly he was on the phone with his father, telling him what happened in the profoundly mortified voice that only a young man who has previously believed himself to be badass has when he has to call his mommy or daddy and admit to being a dumbass. Deepening his humiliation, I'm sure, was the fact that his buddy was sitting next to him in the car. Nothing worse than looking like a dumbass in front of your bestie.

But Dad had a plan.

"Will you take cash?" the boy asked, his father still shouting instructions on the other end of the line.

We both looked at my license plate again.

"I don't know," I said. "How much does it cost to replace a license plate?"

"Um...." the kid said, still dazed and confused.

His pal was on it, though, showing me his phone when his search turned up the answer. Fifty bucks.

"Okay," I said, "do you have fifty dollars cash?"

"Um... I have Citi Bank...?" the kid replied.

Once again, the coherent passenger was on it. There was an ATM twelve miles from our location. I tapped the address into my phone.

"Follow me there," I told the driver. "Meet me in the parking lot or I'm calling the cops."

Yep, I said "calling the cops." What was it the Apostle Paul said about 'becoming all things to all people'? I learned this as a teacher. Talk kid talk to kids. And I was still using my your-behavior-was-inappropriate voice with him.

It took us an entire hour to drive those twelve miles. But that young man followed right along behind like a baby duckling, pulling into the parking lot and jogging for the ATM. Moments later, he handed me three twenty-dollar bills.

"The ATM only gives twenties," he said.

"I don't have change for you," I said. Okay, yeah, maybe I had two fives in my wallet in my purse in the backseat of the truck, but I wasn't going to fetch that for him.

"No, it's fine," he said, handing me the money and looking like he was about to cry.

I took the money, showing him my phone as I deleted the photos I'd taken of his license plate and driver's license.

"We're square," I said, and I held out my hand. We shook on it and departed.

By then, it was 5:00p.m. We hit the freeway again, and I finally arrived home after 6:00. Maya had been without a potty break for nearly ten hours. But she hadn't had an accident in the house.

Who's a good girl?!? It has taken me years to get her fully housebroken as she was so used to having to do everything in her small kennel. My poor girl. What a good, good girl.

DENOUMENT (if you're still reading, and if you wandered off, I still love you, you tried, dear soul, to get through this interminably long, self-absorbed rant):

I don't really care about my license plate. Anyone who's bought a new car knows it's only a matter of days or weeks before somebody bumps, dings, scuffs, or otherwise mars it. I got away easy. I took the kid's money to teach him a lesson. And besides, check this out:

Final total for our back and forth on the toll road:               $22

Really expensive fancy water:                                             $24

Parking by Las Brisas with a view of the ocean:                   $ 1

Yep, a dollar. The meter still had time on it when I parked.

Really expensive fancy chocolate mousse cake:                  $13

All that adds up to fifty bucks, plus I got ten more for the inconvenience of having to go to the kid's bank. That equals what he handed me in cash. The way I figure it, Peg and I had an adventure, no one was injured, we enjoyed a great lunch, saw the ocean, and most important, we sang for Dad. All things considered, we had a blessed day. True story!