Wait Until You Hear This One

Hubby and I have found a place that makes the most fabulous pork chops in our new neighborhood, and this has become our Friday night treat...until we grow tired of it.  I've never seen pork chops as large as these, and they are smothered with chopped garlic and a special sauce.  I've tried my best to make it myself, but there's a secret ingredient that mine sorely lacks. Neither of us can eat both in one sitting, so one pork chop becomes Saturday's lunch.

Saturday was food shopping and cooking, and food shopping has become a nightmare.  Just when I was becoming used to the quirky ways of my new supermarket, they decide they are going to change things around....just about everything.  Boy, have they been busy in these past two weeks, and I am glad they are trying to restore some order to a store that was sorely in need of new owners, but, I felt I was back to square one, racing around, back and forth, forever looking for items that I needed. What I had planned on taking no more than 30 minutes took nearly an hour and a half...

...which meant that I got a late start to my cooking.  I hadn't eaten before I went shopping, but wanted to get some meals on first so it didn't carry me late into the night.  Finally, I had a chance to sit, and boy, had I ever worked up an appetite.  I'm sorry, but these pork chops have to be eaten by hand to get the full effect, so I'm munching away, hands all gooey with sauce and full of garlic when my phone rings.  First reaction...my son. He's got a knack for calling at these inopportune times.  So I decided to let it ring and call him back.  Besides, by the time I got my hands cleaned off, it would already be too late.

Wait.  What's that? The alert that someone has left a voice mail?  Son doesn't leave voice mails, must be hubby.  He does, and no one else calls me.  I've never been a phone person.  Finally, my curiosity got the best of me.  You will NEVER guess who it was...  

...my ex-landlady.  After all this time, she is once again trying to draw me back into her family problems, not back to the house, of course, but someone she can rant to.  This was the best.  "Hello, Mary, I was wondering it you could give me  a call.  I know you guys had someone who used to come to the house and do repair work, and I need someone to go over the house and put a lock on.  Al (the guy upstairs) and his brother busted the lock and the house has been sitting open for three weeks now. I'm down in Florida and can't do anything about it."

Does she really think I was born yesterday? She has a son, an uncle, a daughter, and a male friend who does household repairs who are supposed to be taking care of the house. What happened to them?  And who's going to pay our guy if he goes over there? Who would let him in?  Does she expect us to run over there?  I no longer have a key.  She is in Florida.  And who is going to stop them from breaking the lock the moment he leaves? To top that off, most likely it's a crack house now that no one is there to monitor.  Why would I put a friend in that position? Something fishy about this one, that's for sure...and I am not about to find out.  

That was one message I gladly erased. I know what she really wanted was someone to lend an ear, but that's not going to me. I've had two months of peace.  Why would I want to return to the madness?  After all, I'd say 15 years of it was enough.