Monica Kochelee

The past few nights, after dark we have been hearing what my husband is convinced are gunshots.  We live in a rural area, and I don’t think that they are gunshots - no one would be shooting after dark!  I think one of the neighbors just got their hands on some illegal fireworks and have simply been having a good time setting them off over the past couple of nights.  At least that’s what I HOPE it has been!  Fortunately they stop by ten pm, so we don’t lose too much sleep - I’d be very annoyed if they went on much later than that - I am an “early to bed and early to rise” person!

The local newspaper ran a short story, contributed by some readers about a couple from Maryland who go to the grand openings of Chik-Fil-A restaurants around the country. (For those of you who may not know what Chik-Fil-A is, it is a fast food restaurant that sells chicken products, no beef products. Their advertising campaigns involve cows encouraging people to eat chicken.)   Their chicken sandwiches and nuggets, and their fries are very tasty, and I can understand people wanting to get free food from the restaurant, but this couple has gone to extremes!

They camp out in the parking lot the night before so they can be one of the first 100 customers. Chik-Fil-A gives out “free Chik-Fil-A for a year” coupons to their first 100 customers. This couple has gone to eighteen of these grand openings in the past year, and have decided that they can’t use all the coupons, so now they just go for the fun of it and give the coupons away.

I don’t understand what is so much fun about camping out in a parking lot to be one of the first 100 customers to get free food if you then give away the free food! I’m udderly confused.

Not long ago there was a knock at my door.  When I looked out through the window to see who it was, I saw my girlfriend Alice standing there.  I was very surprised; I haven’t seen her in about six months and we have been playing telephone tag for a very long time.  I wasn’t expecting her, but was very glad to see her!

When I opened the door, we exchange hugs and kisses and I led her into my living room.  She asked “do you notice anything different about me?”  I looked at her really hard and noticed that she seemed prettier than usual.  I said “you have new glasses!”  She said, no, that’s not it, look closer.  I could NOT figure out for the life of me what was different, but I KNEW she was prettier than I remembered.  She laughed and said “I had my nose fixed!”  I said “WHAT!”  She laughed and said “I had a nose job; you know, a rhinoplasty, nose surgery, nose job!”  I was so shocked to hear that!  When we were kids she always told me how much she hated her nose, but we were such close friends that I never even paid it any attention.  Well, it seems that a while ago she slipped and fell in her kitchen and broke her nose!  Her doctor suggested that she take the opportunity to have a nose job!  So she did, and she looks so much prettier than before and is delighted with her “new look.”

Well, we did it!  We drove 64 miles one way to buy a pair of those crazy Z-Coil shoes!  I thought my hubby was planning to buy a pair, too, but when we got to the store and he saw how ugly they were he would not even try a pair on to see how the felt!  I really thought it was too bad, if he had at least tried on a pair and someone someday talks about those shoes he could say “oh yeah, I tried on a pair of those once!”  But he had this look of disgust on his face that would not come off. 

Well, the shoes ARE ugly, but they are comfortable.  So I bought a pair of them for myself.  I NEED a comfortable pair of shoes, I am going to be working in a job where I stand up all day long, and I’m not used to doing that.  So I want the most comfortable pair of shoes I can find!  They cost me over $200, so I sure hope they are worth it and make my feet “happy” when I’m working in them!  If they do, then they will be worth their weight in gold!

When I was a little girl I loved the Nancy Drew Mystery Books.  My sisters and I had a huge collection of them.  Now that I’m thinking about them, I wonder whatever happened to them!  But I digress….  When I had my first son, I thought he would enjoy reading the Hardy Boy books.  So I bought a bunch of them, pretty much as many as I could find.  Well, he never read a single one of them.  And neither did my younger son.  So I have a ton of Hardy Boy Books that have never been read.  Just taking up space on my bookshelf, collecting dust.  From time to time I think about getting rid of them, but being the pack-rat that I am, I am SURE that at some point in time there will be a male relative who wants them!  Maybe I should pack them in a plastic storage box and put some desiccant in the box and store them in the basement.  I could use the shelf they are on the the media room for something else!