Chicks

 With the price of eggs skyrocketing, I have decided that we need chickens again. However, Farmmom was completely over the whole chicken thing when we stopped replacing last time, so this time we shall have chickens at my house. 

But I have dogs, and town is full of feral cats. With that in mind, we invested in a solid coop with a small run built in. At a later date I'll get a larger run that's designed with a knock-out panel to connect to the setup so that they have more room. 

There's only going to be a few of them, and they're only going to be outside the coop for cleaning it, for a significant period, because chicks. So for now, the small pen is fine. 

We found a coop that has a metal frame, which Farmmom and I both really liked, and it said it could accommodate six chickens. I knew it was an overestimation, but it really is fairly tiny. If you're looking to raise quail it'd be a great one for them, but they can also be raised in 50 gal fish tanks inside your house if you're desperate. Also, don't try to ship quail... we tried it years ago and couldn't get them to survive two weeks after arrival.

Anyway, chicks. We got the coop a while back, and I wasn't in a hurry to put it together because it was cold and I had time. Then I realized chick days at the farm stores usually starts in late February. So last week I put it together.

Folks, let me tell you this: If you ever try to build a 4-6 chicken coop from a box, just know, the directions are worse than Ikea directions and everything is in the three feet above the ground. So you're going to be kneeling or squatting, a lot. 

Leg day from hell. And if you're like me, you'll spend more time doing it because if it is possible to put something on backwards, you will. 

I wanted to take up therapeutic drinking. But I got it put together, all except the last two bolts on the last fence panel. Somewhere, I used long bolts where I should have used short bolts, and I wasn't taking the damn thing apart again to find them, so the bottom of the end panel will be held by wire or zip ties, whichever I lay my hands on first. 

I've got a home for the used bedding from the coop, so I don't have to deal with the dogs rolling in it if I tried to compost it myself, have it take up space in the trash can, or otherwise figure out where to go with it... because I know someone who is starting composting this year, and wood shavings and chicken poop are both great for that. 

I also invested in a panel heater. Given proximity to the house, and the number of times I've sent fire departments to structure fires that started because of heat lamps, and the tight quarters, I decided that a heat lamp was a bad idea. So, panel heater, which doubles as a brooder while they're bitty. 

It took entirely too long to find one of the chick waterers... I found four feeders before I found a waterer, and I'm pretty sure it might be the last one we have. I only need one, though, since it's not like when we were hatching, brooding, and selling chicks. I don't have four tubs set up for varying ages and splitting up broods when they get too crowded.

Today's task was to put the brooder in, and pressure test it overnight with a thermometer. We'll see how well it maintains with the temps in the teens that we're supposed to get. 

Also to clean the feeder and waterer, and the jars for them, those are now drying on a towel. Once they're completely dry I'll put the feeder base back together and go ahead and fill it and put it in the coop. That way whenever I get the chicks whether it's next week or the end of the month, all I'll have to do is fill the waterer and turn on the brooder, and they're set. 

I actually did the math (if you know me, you know that me mathing is an occasion in and of itself, I hate math) and buying a new coop, chickens, and feed for a year, the chickens will more than pay for themselves in us not having to buy eggs, at current prices.  

Another task for when I have the chicks, I will have to convince the dogs that they're our friends to be protected and supported, not entertaining squeaky toys. It can be done with controlled introductions, and I want to handle the things extensively anyway. It's just going to be interesting to train the prey response out of two very prey driven dogs. Wubba may not be interested in fetch, but chase is his favorite thing. I don't know how Scaredy Pup will do with them. He was intensely protective of Wubba when we brought him home, so I guess we'll see if the concept of "baby" crosses species boundaries for him, or if we'll be settling for him just not actively seeking to murder them because they make fun noises. 

Soon: Chicks. In a few months: Eggs. Enough for me and Farmmom, anyway. And Farmmom doesn't have to deal with chickens again, so it's a win all around.

Meditations on Dogs

 I have come to the conclusion that neither my own temperament or the universe will allow me to be without a dog, and given the last nearly two decades, probably two. 

I've realized about myself that when I suffer a sudden, unexpected loss, I want to get a dog. If I already have a couple I can generally control myself. This kicked me in the ass in 2019, when FarmDog crossed the rainbow bridge. 

She was ancient of days, and the bestest of girls, but her seizures had become untenable, and I had to let her go. I knew it was coming in a general sense, she was 16 years old, but the specific timing was... entirely unplanned.

Fuzzy Pup was entirely lost... he had never been an only dog. He didn't know how to be without the leadership FarmDog had provided. I had to sit with him to get him to eat, because he had always eaten second... and he was fourteen himself, he couldn't afford to miss too many meals. 

So I had resigned myself to intensive care of the geriatric Fuzzy Pup for a while. Then one day as I was doom scrolling on Facebook at work, I saw a picture of a puppy, and thought "I should get a puppy."

And all of a sudden it felt like someone had drop kicked me right in the chest. I struggled with it for a couple of months, but Fuzzy Pup wasn't coming around to being the only dog and I was legitimately worried he would pine himself to death. I couldn't have handled that. 

So I looked, and found a young pup at a municipal pound about an hour from me. I set up an appointment and loaded up the Fuzz Bucket to go meet him. 

It was love at first sight. He came barreling out of the kennel and bouncing up to sniff at my hands, and gamboled around Fuzzy Pup like he had known him forever. Five minutes in the yard, half of which was Fuzzy Pup making sure the puppy knew he was older and in charge in a very gentle way, and the other half of which was the pup trying to climb into my lap, and I knew he was coming home with us. 

 

He was lively, and bouncy, and full of puppiness... which was exactly what I thought Fuzzy Pup needed to pull him out of his funk and bring him back to the land of the living. Then on the way home, we stopped at the Old Homestead because Farmmom demanded to meet her new Granddog... and I discovered that while he may be very emphatically My Dog, the puppy was not a Farm Dog by any means. He was terrified of Farmmom and Farmdad, and I would eventually figure out, of everyone who was not me. Eventually we found a couple of people that he was ok with, sort of and we discovered that the car is a better introduction place than anywhere else. But that was later. 

 

 

For the moment I was working with him and trying to belatedly socialize a three month old pup that had been in the pound since he was a month old. I eventually gave up on any idea of him being a friendly dog... I would settle for him not injuring himself trying to run away from situations and hitting the end of the leash full speed. He got better at trusting me, and I got better at figuring out what was likely to trigger him, and we made progress. Teeny tiny baby steps of progress, but we made progress. 

 

 

 

Then in early 2021, Farmdad died. Another sudden, unexpected loss. Compounded by the fact that even at 36 years old I didn't know how to function in a world that didn't contain my dad. I guess it doesn't matter how old you are when it happens, you never know how to do it until you have to. 

I thought I had dodged the new dog thing, having identified the coping mechanism (not necessarily an unhealthy one, so to speak but uh... not really tenable, long term, if you have more than a couple losses in a decade... and the 2020's have served up entirely too many already) and figured I could satisfy both the urge to get a dog, which hadn't gone away for a few months, and the knowledge that I did not need another dog, by saying "let me know if they don't all find homes" to a litter of pitbull puppies from a dumped momma dog. They were freakin adorable, there was no way they wouldn't all find homes. In the mean time, Scaredy Dog had continued to adjust to the world by dint of not having a choice... he wouldn't accept food from anyone but me, so if I went places, he had to go too.

Then I got a call, "Come get your dog."

The universe, or Farmdad's disembodied spirit, or something, was looking out for me. If I had tried to choose the perfect dog for me out of that litter, I could not have done as well. I did not know how much I needed that last, unclaimed puppy, with the brown spots on his shoulder and tail, and the crooked tail from being born breech and having to be pulled. I did not know how much Scaredy Dog needed him. And I did not know how much I would appreciate the fact that he would have the benefit of Fuzzy Pup's example. 

Even at eight weeks old, that pup was nearly fearless, and he knew already that Scaredy Pup wasn't. He was about three months old when he started meat shielding for Scaredy Pup. Wubba (one of his actual nicknames) would put himself forward when rude people wanted to pet strange dogs, and let Scaredy Pup hang out in "place" between my feet, where he felt safe and I could explain that the brown one is Not Friendly. 

Between Wubba's assistance with interposing himself between Scaredy Pup and the world, and his example of approaching the world with a curious mind instead of a frightened one, we made more progress with Scaredy Pup. More slow, slow progress. 

 

 

Let me tell you, I have learned more in the last three years about training dogs than I ever knew before. I had never had a collie type dog before, or a dog that was just fearful of the world. I had had people tell me that they wanted me to train their next dog, before, when they had met FarmDog or Fuzzy Pup... and when Scaredy Pup came into my life I thought I was pretty knowledgeable, in a general sense. I knew I couldn't train a perfect bird dog on the first try, and I didn't even want to try to tackle a herding dog, but I felt like I knew what I was doing with household pet dogs. Early on I thought I might have just forgotten what puppies were like... it had been over a decade, after all. Then I figured out that he was just unique in my experience. I learned to use new tools for his own safety, I researched, I put hours of work into just getting him to Chill. Out.

 

I couldn't do it. Not to the level that I wasn't still concerned that he was going to have a heart attack in four years. So I asked my vet for medication. And that has helped... the medication with more work, and nothing awful happening, has helped more. 

 After three and a half years, last year Farmmom finally got to see Scaredy Pup play. She finally got him to take food from her hand. She has gone on the majority of trips with us, and in the car he would take treats, and limited affection when I was driving, but if she was facing him, he noped out. 

Last October I nearly cried when Wubba and Scaredy Pup were wrestling on a visit to the Old Homestead with some of the Blogorado attendees there.

 

Wubba showed me that I wasn't as big of a failure as I sometimes felt, when Scaredy Pup would have a meltdown in a place that I couldn't stop and work him through it... when I had to just choke up on the leash and march him out of the area, or stick him in a corner and finish what I was doing at arm's length. Wubba reminded me why I love pibbles. Wubba and Scaredy Pup together helped patch my heart when Fuzzy Pup left me too.

Wubba and Scaredy Pup have come on every trip I've gone on since I got them. They are quite familiar with riding in the car, and hotels. As a matter of fact, they have their own suitcase, a nifty little travel bag that came with food bags and wheels, and lots of pockets. However, given that they are now 70+ and 80+ pounds I'm considering upgrading their bag to a carry on size and investing in one of the larger dog food transport bags intended for week long camping trips.... The current bag is limited when it comes to trips any longer than three days. 

They also have a cooling solution for the car, when I have to take them but can't kennel them in a hotel room on warm days. That one was spendy, but well worth it.

Wubba has had some solo adventures too, to keep him from picking up Scaredy Pup's attitudes. He had a grand time playing with children at little league baseball, even if he was sad that I wouldn't let him chase the ball. (Unlike FarmDog, Wubba has zero interest in fetch. Chasing the thrown thing is fun. Knocking the thrown thing around is fun. Picking it up and bringing it back? Not so much. Scaredy Pup is my fetch dog, and he's not nearly as fanatic about it as FarmDog was.)

 I don't think I can live without a dog. I'm pretty sure the universe won't let me, not for long, but hopefully I have a long, long time before I have to face the prospect again.  Before I have to live without these faces in my life.

Oy Vey.

 Well. Today I was yelled at for not blogging much anymore, and just as I was thinking to myself "but I don't have anything to write about!" someone piped up with a couple of things that I could be writing about. That I kind of do write about, but in blurbs on Facebook instead of here. So, fine, here I am.

A lot has happened since I last sat down at an empty page on this blog... Losses, gains, pain and joy. 

I might tell you all about all of it someday. Not today. Today, I am just making the blank page no longer blank. 

Today I am hoping that whatever creative spark existed in me once upon a time, it hasn't withered and died under the weight of life and the world. 

Today, I am making another track in the world in the hopes that someday, it will matter to someone, as the tracks left on my heart and in my life by those I care about have mattered so much to me. 

Today, for today, I am back. We shall see if the muse has abandoned me for greener pastures, or if she's just been testing her check liver light in the back of my mind for all of these years.

*Ahem*

*Blows dust off of keys* hmm. Appears to be working.

So. Alas, I haven't had any new stories to share that didn't involve work and incidents which were either under investigation or identifiable if someone local happened to stumble here, so I haven't been blogging. Most recently my spare time has been taken up with rebuilding a fence, putting together a honking big round pen, moving horses, and simultaneously thanking the weather gods for moisture and cursing the rain that makes said round pen an unusable muddy mess.

However, as most of my readers still dedicated enough to check on this blog probably already know, LawDog has published a couple of books containing the blog stories, with the second one going live as of yesterday, and waving the best-seller flag whilst still in pre-order. (Told ya so.)

Now, I'm notoriously bad about remembering to do things like go back and do reviews of books even when they're authored by dear friends and I thoroughly enjoy them. But, when the first book went live I duly hit up the Amazon website to post a review after I read it.

Because LD is a beloved friend, kin, family that I chose, blogdaddy, and other adjectives expressing love and admiration, I watched the reviews roll in with a certain sense of pride, and frankly curiosity.

And then I noticed something odd.

Mine was gone.

I looked. I went to my Amazon profile which apparently forgot that I ever posted a review on anything, ever... which could be understandable as to the best of my recollection I probably haven't posted a review to anything else, ever.

So I sent a message to Amazon support, along the lines of "um... wha happened?" thinking it was some sort of website error. The matter is escalated to a special team. I finally get an email back informing me that my review was deleted, advising me thusly:

"

Hello, I hope this e-mail finds you well. This is Mervin from the Communities Team. We are unable to post your Customer Review for "The LawDog Files" to the Amazon website because our data shows elements of your Amazon account match elements of other Amazon accounts reviewing the same product. In these cases, we remove the reviews to maintain trust in our customer reviews and avoid any perception of bias. Customer Reviews are meant to give customers unbiased product feedback from fellow shoppers. It is our goal to provide Customer Reviews that help customers make informed purchase decisions. Therefore, any reviews that could be viewed as advertising, promotional, or biased will not be posted. This includes reviews by more than one customer in the same household. To learn more about this policy, please see our Customer Review Creation Guidelines (http://www.amazon.com/review-guidelines).

We'd appreciate your feedback. Please use the buttons below to vote about your experience today.

Best regards, Mervin V." Um... what? The only possible other accounts that may have reviewed that product would be dad's, and the only similarity would be saved shipping addresses. So, off I go and click the "No" button under "Did I solve your problem?" I wrote out a screed on my cell phone, whilst sleep deprived and sitting in a Burger King with Farmmom on a run for... I forget what, but we needed something so we went to get it in the town that has a Burger King, and decided that we wanted some of their breakfast croissants, which top the list currently for fast food breakfast-like objects in reverse order of flavor comparison to cardboard. I took screen shots on my phone of the itty bitty text window all the way through my screed, but I'm not motivated enough to reproduce it here. Luckily, when I went to copy/paste their response into this post I discovered that they had included the text in their email, so you get it anyway. " I received an email telling me that a review I posted had been removed because of similarities to another account in my account. The only thing I can think of is similarities in shipping addresses between my account and my father's account, because we buy things for each other and ship them directly. So, is it Amazon's policy that anyone who ships gifts to someone else cannot leave a review? I assure you I am a real customer, I bought the book, I read the book, and I left a review of the book. I was not paid to leave a review nor am I a bot or a review farm. Right now, it looks a lot like my review was removed based on a policy that would basically prohibit family members who may live in the same household, but maintain their own Amazon accounts, or anyone who may send or receive gifts from anyone with an Amazon account, from posting a review. And if my review violated this obscure and apparently arbitrary policy, why was it allowed to go live in the first place? I have the email that told me it was live, I saw it on the product page. I wouldn't have even known it had been taken down, that I had violated this policy, if I hadn't been enthusiastic enough about the book to go back and see what other reviews had been left, because I did not receive any notice that it had been removed.... So please tell me if it is Amazon's policy to remove reviews based on a similarity to another account without discussion with the account holder or any opportunity to address any apparent similarities and verify that the account is, indeed, a legitimate account and not a review farm or other sock puppet enterprise? Right now, I am severely disappointed in Amazon's review process as a whole, and wondering how many legitimate reviews have been arbitrarily deleted from your site... undermining the whole review process just as much as anything your policy is apparently intended to prevent. Please explain to me exactly what made my account "similar" to another account, because I am currently highly unsatisfied with the explanation I have received so far!" Well, apparently it is, since the next communication I got was over a week later, and went as follows: "Hello, We reviewed the information you provided and have determined that your review was removed in accordance with our guidelines. Our data shows elements of your Amazon account match elements of other Amazon accounts reviewing the same product. In these cases, we remove the review to maintain trust in our customer reviews and avoid any perception of bias. Once a review is removed because it does not comply with our guidelines, the reviewer may not submit any new reviews on the same product. To learn more about this policy, please see our Customer Review Creation Guidelines (http://www.amazon.com/review-guidelines). We cannot share any further information about our decision and we may not reply to further emails about this issue. Review Moderator Amazon.comhttp://www.amazon.com" So. Basically the same message, with no explanation of what elements are causing my review to be deleted, which would render reviewing the guidelines utterly useless, because I don't know which guideline has been violated, so I don't know what area would need adjusting before my opinion on anything for sale at Amazon would be "allowable." Screw them and their review process. I am entirely thrilled for all of my friends who are enjoying publishing success using Amazon's platforms and I wish them many years of high rankings and lots and lots of money, but given my experience the review system is, as LD would put it, a load of bushwa.

Sorry about the font weirdness, but Blogger doesn't appear to like copy/paste from Gmail and I'm not patient enough at this point to track down the obscure setting that will straighten all that out.

Unforseen Perils of Night Shifting

I've been on straight nights for over a year now. The initial problems were more to do with diet than anything, honestly. I could shove down enough caffeine, sugar, and b12 to stay awake, and I figured out how to sleep during the day, but I had a lot of trouble eating right. I'm... better, not great but better about that now.

One side effect that I didn't foresee was the schedule enforced hermitage becoming somewhat my idea.

Back before college, while I was working road construction, a friend and I went dancing at one of the bars in the town north of here every Thursday night. It was the highlight of our week, and it was a blast. I still remember it being a nearly obscene amount of fun to go there and dance amongst as many people as could pack into the tiny bar.

Now, the thought of doing that gives me a mild case of the willies. Hell, at work I occasionally get claustrophobic and cranky when there are too many people in my fish bowl, though it is a tiny room and six people in it is way too much. Add in my dislike for having people hovering behind me and I start to get a little twitchy.

I've come to realize fairly recently that I've got a bit of social anxiety now that I didn't used to have. I was never the life of the party, and I was always sort of nervous around new people but I had learned how to stomp on that and be friendly, meet new people, be sort of gregarious. Pretty sure I've lost most of that, in purely social situations.

I'm not running in panic from the idea of meeting new people or being in a place where there are more than five people present, or anything. I just... get tense. I realized not long ago that I recognized the feeling I was having when meeting more than one new person, especially off of "my" territory, and it was that dumb junior high "but if I open my mouth they'll know I'm a dork" feeling.

Even Blogorado, thinking back. I love my tribe, of course, but I couldn't stay in the house for very long if there were many people inside. I'd be in there and visit with people a bit and then I'd go out to the shop, where there was room to breathe... and I'd relax.

It isn't an anxiety attack, or anything close to that severe, it's just a tension and a low level but constant desire to go back to my nice safe cave. When I actually do something social, if there are more people there than I expected, I want to call the whole thing off and go home.

I know what's caused the uptick, I think. I'm pretty sure it's just sensitization from not being social very much. Which is easy enough to fix if I can manage to make it work with a few friends that are still local, and don't get screwed up by being the one who's working when I'm not.

I'm taking an unexpected vacation next week. Nothing bad, just it was pointed out to me that my vacation hours were maxed and strongly suggested that I take some time so that I wasn't *not* earning vacation, and it happened to fit into the schedule for next week. It's one of my short weeks and if I'm gonna take time off I'd rather kill one of the four day weeks but such is life. I didn't have any plans though, so I'm gonna try to get a few projects accomplished, do some day walking and soak up some sun, and maybe get some social time in, with bonus points if I manage to convince a friend to haul his boat up to the lake so I can get social, water, and sun time all at once. And I'll work on the whole being social thing, as I can, because I'd rather work on it now than wait until the hermitude is much worse.

Now that I think about it, I really need to get my fishing license for this year. Haven't even managed to go fishing yet this year, which is a tragedy, but one I can remedy.

He Did It Again

By now, all of you who still bother to check back in here probably know about the passing of Gay Cynic. I haven't talked much about it anywhere, because I just can't find the words.

The last few years we've lost entirely too many people we care about, in this neck of the woods, and I think I just ran out of ways to say that I'm sad and I miss them.

Tonight, though, I went on a wander through blog archives, which reminded me of a story about friends, and I wasn't sure if I had ever told it before... so I went digging in my own archives to see if I had. Of course, me being me, it wound up being more of a sentimental trip than I had originally intended... but I tripped over a comment that Ray left on a post back in 2010 during another spate of losses.

See, in amongst the quirky wit and the flamboyant style, Ray had a very definite knack for being able to say the right thing, at the right time. It happened then, and reading his words this early morning in the Long Dark Tea Time of the soul made it hit me all over again how lucky I was to get to know him, and how much of a blank spot he's left in the lives of so very many people.

Since I can't say it any better, I'll let Ray say it again:

"That some folks pass through our lives all too briefly is one of the rougher things we face...and sometimes its hard to remember the joy and wisdom they brought in the sorrow of their final passage." - Ray Carter, aka Gay_Cynic

Truth. Hard as it is, I promise I'll try to remember the joy, Ray, and wherever you are I hope they appreciate what they've got now, because it is definitely a loss for the rest of us.

Adventures In Air Travel

So, Darlin Man and I have created a bit of tradition by managing to spend New Year's Eve together, usually at the home of friends. This year, it didn't look like he was going to be able to get the time off, so I was kind of bummed. Then Farmmom stepped in and decided that my Christmas present this year would be a ticket to go see him instead, so that's what I've been doing for the last week.

This isn't a post about that trip, though. Or, not all of it. Just the return leg, and the interesting people I got to encounter on it.

My flight was out of Birmingham, to Amarillo, with a brief layover in Houston. So I show up at the Birmingham airport needing to check my bag. I was already checked in thanks to the wonders of living in the future, I'd done it on my phone earlier that day, and gotten my seat assignment on the tiny plane changed to one of the onesies seats on the left side of the plane, too. That will become important later.

So, I walk on up to the counter and there's no line, which is a nice change from the outbound trip, and the gentleman behind the counter asks me "You're not from around here are you?"

What gave it away? The lack of an Alabama Drawl, the fact that I'm not wearing any red whatsoever or the fact that my bag already had a sticker on it from the outbound flight?

Anyway, he's being chatty and we're waiting for the machines to do their thing, and he's making small talk. You know, the obvious questions: Where ya headed, What brings you to Alabama, etc etc.

During the course of this conversation he pops out with "So, you want a boyfriend in Alabama? I'm single, he he he."

Nawwww, really? No way.

I steer the conversation away from that field since he's got control of my bag already and I'd like for it to end up in the same spot as me. When he asks me what I do, I tell him I'm a dispatcher for the Sheriff's Office.

"Oh, really? What's the worst call you've gotten?" Ugh. So I tell him the most annoying calls are actually the non emergency ones, trying to move on from the "I'm a complete stranger TELL ME YOUR TRAUMA" question, and toss out a brief funny story about a lady who called 911 four times trying to get me to fix her phone because it would only dial 911 (failing to pay your bill will do that) or call her family to fix it.

"Oh, yeah, I bet that's annoying, but what's the worst call you've gotten?"

Grrrr. I said something to make him leave it the hell alone and started tapping my fingers on his counter.

"Well, for me, (I was in the military, you know) the worst stuff was always kids. I still wake up in the night sometimes." Yes, you could hear the parentheses in his speech, though at the end of the conversation I was pretty sure he couldn't have spelled parenthesis.

"Oh, yeah, it's a shame there's such a stigma in our armed forces, and EMS and Law, too, about seeking help for mental issues."

"Well, I was Special Forces, so I can't just walk up to you and ask for help, you know. Top Secret, and all that."

"Well, I'm not a mental health professional, so that's probably a good thing. Oh hey I think it's finally spitting out my boarding passes, so you can help this nice lady over here."

"Your flight isn't for another hour and a half, so you don't need to be in a hurry!"

"But I want to be. Better safe than sorry, and all that. Have a nice day."

I was texting Darlin Man about it once I got through security and secured myself a coffee and a cinnamon twist. He replied "Tell me you got a picture." Of course I didn't get a picture, I was too busy trying to get away from the guy before he asked to take me away from it all to his palatial swamp shack.

I'm pretty sure this dude's military career, if any, could have been filmed and marketed as Earnest Goes to Bootcamp... He didn't even tell me a branch, just "I was in the military."

I know several people who were actually in the military, and some who are. For the most part, probably thanks to the rivalries between the branches, they will tell you what branch they were in when it comes up. In certain cases, MOS trumps branch, they might tell you they were EOD instead of telling you a branch. And I know people who's job in the military actually was "go kill that guy/destroy this shit and then get out." Those people don't bring that up in casual conversation with strangers, generally.

Anyway. I got away from Earnest Joins The Special Forces, and got on the plane, only to discover that my flight attendant was an older lady who had a profusion of bone white hair, with a sort of Halloween wig that you've taken off and put on too many times kind of frizziness to it. Which, fine, you do you, but she was not prepared to take any shit off of anyone. Some guy in the first couple rows was messing with his phone during the safety lecture and she waved her little brochure in front of his face, and then she physically sat another guy up in his seat so that his seat back would be in the upright and locked position for take off.

I kept my knees and elbows tucked when she came by with the drink cart, and made sure to be very polite.

In Houston I was left to myself during my hour and small change layover, but once my flight was called and I lined up to board I found myself with a young man (early twenties maybe?) velcroed to my backpack. I mean he was "Can I smell your hair?" close. I shifted around a bit, but he was always right there, so I resigned myself to being uncomfortable because we're all in line and want to be on our way, and got on the damn plane.

This is the flight that I'd changed my seat assignment to one of the onesies seats on the left side of the plane, and if you'll remember I said it would come up later. I just casually noticed while I was stowing my crap for take off that the young man was roughly in the area where I remembered my previous seating assignment being. It wasn't important yet, but an hour and twenty minutes later after we landed, it sort of became that way.

See, I got off the plane and hit the bathroom, dug out my keys so that I could get my car, put my sweatshirt back on under my coat because it was fifty in Houston and twenty in Amarillo (grumble) and went to get my bags. Halfway to baggage claim, I realize that too-close-kid is behind me again.

At the carousel he positions himself behind me and to my left, so I move. And he follows. We did this dance three times before I said fuck it and turned sideways to the carousel and stared at him until bags started coming.

I was *really* tempted to yank my bag off the conveyer and onto his foot.

Did I have "Be creepy and weird" tattooed on my forehead when I wasn't looking?

Side note: on the last leg, they advised us that our Captain was named Morgan, and I'm pretty sure he had a bet on with the crew as to how many passengers he could make puke... he did quite a bit of the gain altitude, then level off quick for that fast elevator floaty feeling, and waggled the wings (at what I don't know, passing owls maybe) and managed to come in beautifully for landing, and drop the last foot or so like a rock... Like I said, I'm pretty sure he had a bet riding on how many folks he could make puke.