Hills Home Delivery: Day 1

Oh dear god what have we done to ourselves.

freezer packed with food
Our first delivery from Hills Home Market

One of Meghan’s friends raves about a grocery delivery service called Hills Home Delivery.  After listening to their sales pitch, trying some sample food,  working out the costs, and checking reviews online, we wanted to give it a try ourselves.

Our first delivery came tonight.  This is several months worth of beef, chicken, pork, sausage, fish, and veggies, packed into a freezer in our basement.  There’s a turkey and some cookie dough, too.  Not pictured is several shelves of dry goods: pasta + sauce, flour, sugar, paper towels, and toilet paper.

This isn’t completely new to us, Meghan already buys her coffee and a few other things from Amazon, but wow that’s a lot of food all at once.

The delivery guys were friendly and professional, and pretty darn close to on-time. (Ten minutes late, but our delivery was scheduled for 5:30 pm — it’s night-time dark already, and rush-hour traffic is in full swing.  I don’t consider that ‘late’.)

On paper, this looks like we should be spending the same or less on food than we’re spending now — and we can cut out a bunch of time at the grocery the store.  We’ll just need occasional trips for fresh things like dairy, eggs, and fruit.

Best response ever

Us: We are going to the Bookstore! Do you guys want to come?
Children: NO! (They didn’t even look up from their computers.)
Us: If you’re sneaky, you may get to see your Christmas presents!
Beta: I don’t want to see them. If I do, they’ll turn into underwear!
Us:
Beta: I know that’s not true, but I don’t want to risk it.

On Terrorism and Politics

Regardless of who sets the stage, it takes a conscious decision to play the part.

[After the latest round of terrorist bombings in Paris, people are alternately blaming Presidents Obama and Bush for setting the stage for the attacks.  ISIL may have been created as a response to the invasion of Iraq, and ISIL declared their responsibility for the Paris bombings, but the core of every atrocity committed in the name of ISIL is an act perpetrated by a thinking individual that could choose a different path — but didn’t.]

I Am a Turd Burglar

I am my dog’s personal turd burglar.

Most nights I take Butter, the dog, for a walk around our neighborhood.  It’s good for her and it’s good for me.  As a responsible citizen I clean up after her.  I wouldn’t want to step in another dog’s waste, after all, so I don’t inflict it on my neighbors.  I wish everyone else were so considerate —  most are, not all, but that’s a different topic.

Butter isn’t very regular.  Some days she craps three or four times in the span of our walk (about 45 minutes to an hour), other days there’s not a single bowel movement.  If I could choose which days would be more feculent I would pick garbage night so that I wouldn’t have to carry the bags very far, but I don’t get to choose so sometimes I wind up carrying around a lot of purloined stool.

She pees a lot too, but that seems to go alright because I don’t hassle her about where she makes water and I certainly don’t go back for it.  But her manure is fair game for pilfering, and it’s mine, all mine.

I think Butter has a vague idea that we do our business in the bathroom instead of outside.  I find the dichotomy interesting, actually: a dog’s bathroom is outside, in the open.  If a person made them defecate and urinate inside their house, and other people found out, that person would be considered weird (and probably a bit filthy) and no one would want to go visiting at their home.  The flip side of that coin is, if I am caught soiling the ground outside I could be arrested for disorderly conduct and possibly charged with other offences — even if I do it in the bushes and offer to scoop everything into this nice little baggy I brought with me.

When it comes time to make doody I imagine Butter’s internal monologue goes something like this:

“uhh… hold on… ohohohoh uungh… ahhhhhhhhhhhh

“oh I feel better, time to kick it away and clean up —

“why is he yelling at me to stop?  Doesn’t he like clean —

“ugh no he’s fiddling with the rustling things again.  He’s going to —

“oh gawd yeah he’s picking it up again.  Why do you have to make it weird?

“dude.”  Looks at me reproachfully.  “If I drop a deuce in the house you yell at me.  I do it out here and you insist on bringing it all the way home with us.  What’s up with that?

“gawdammit everywhere I sniff it smells like my poop now.  How can we search for everyone else’s scat if all I smell is my own?

“You’re a moron, did you know that mister?”

And so it goes.  From her perspective I stalk her in order to plunder her excrement and keep it for myself.  I think I confuse her a little, but not too much because she’s not that smart.

Humans, on the other hand, supposedly are smart.  We recognize that dogs are a paradox.

She might be the smart one, though.  After all, she gets free room and board, and a personal turd burglar.