I confess.....

Paja, I think most people enjoy the poop in the back of your truck. It brightens their day. I think that is why so many smile and laugh when they see it.

The first poop standup comedian?

Or is that plural?

Or is it really standup, come to that?........

Is it always the same poop, or do different iterations manifest?

Oh the poop is different iterations. The iterations change fairly rapidly in the Summer and fall but eventually it freezes and if I haven't unloaded the current truckload, it is freezes into a mass that can't be unloaded until spring. It is just about time to start unloading now, but after the visit to DBG it will get filled up again. Without lots of poop, there is no way anything would grow on this rocky mesa I live on.

Hey Kyla, I have lots of agastache and salvia seeds I can share.

DH called me Wednesday afternoon and said "Dear, I need you pick me up, I fell off my bike and I think I sprained my ankle really bad." So I went down and picked him up off the side of the road and drove him to the urgent care. They decided to take an x-ray and he had broken both of the bones in his lower leg, including an impressively long spiral fracture in the tibia. So we put him back in the car and drove to the hospital where they bolted his leg back together with a couple of metal plates. He's home now and hobbling around on his crutches. Yesterday he felt pretty bad but today he's feeling better; good enough to do a load of laundry while I was running errands. At least my employer has a good family sick leave policy so I was able to take a few days off to take care of him.

It might take me a while to catch up with all these threads :)

So sorry to hear about your DH but happy to hear about your company's family sick policy. Hope DH continues to improve.

Oh wow Kat that sounds gruesome! But glad he is doing so well with it! Ah, youth! lol!

thanks for seeds offer........ ;-)

Oh gosh, Katlian. When it rains it pours. Rather a dark viewpoint, sorry. I'm glad he is doing well and can help around the house! One of my tai chi friends broke his leg in three places while skiing. As luck would have it, he is a union electrician and must stand on ladders for hours sometimes. It has taken awhile, but he is back to work. He sets off airport alarms now! One thing he had to learn was not to rush his recovery. That's the really hard part for active people.

Oh dear. Good thing you took it seriously and got him in right away.

Sorry about your DH Katlian. Glad it isn't worse and that he had you for a ride.

I confess I did not know how much information is in produce stickers. Someone in Women of the Dirt sent out a quote from a health newsletter they receive. I don't know the name of the newsletter or I would credit it.

"I always assumed the stickers on produce were put there for store cashiers so they can type in a numbered code that automatically enters the price of the produce item. But that's just one use for the code.

According to the website Ideal Bite (idealbite.com), the code also reveals some very useful information

* Conventionally grown produce has a four-digit number on the sticker.
* Organic produce gets a five-digit number that begins with a 9.
* And produce items that are genetically modified also get five digits, but they begin with an 8."

Interesting. I wonder if they can also tell the point of origin for the produce in case of a recall. And do all stores use the same codes?

I am virtually certain that all stores use the same codes, but I don't think the code tells where the produce is from -- or we would have known where those toxic tomatoes and jalapenos came from a lot sooner. Having a place code on the produce is a terrific idea, but probably won't sell unless consumers get on their high horses. American manufacturers have even fought having to put country of origin on their food and I think have gotten out of doing so in some cases. Europe is very strict about having food marked with country of origin.
IMHO we need to do more of that in the US.

Oh Katlin. That's awefull. I'll keep my fingers crossed for a speedy recovery and that he fells much better soon.

Thanks everyone, he's doing much better today. He's feeling so well that I came back to work today and got chewed out on the phone by a lady to whom I had accidentally sent the wrong information. Playing nursemaid for a few days was better, at least he's polite.
"Yes, I confess, I screwed up" I told her, but she still had to scold me for a few minutes. Geez, even lowly government workers are human too.

Here's one of the fluoroscope pictures, there are about 3 inches of metal plate that extend beyond the top of the picture

I'm glad he's doing better. And you are seriously lucky. My guy reverts to a cranky 5 year old when he's not feeling well. Some people just don't seem to understand that all of us make mistakes. It's not on purpose.

Yikes, even the picture looks painful!

He did quite a job on his leg, Katlian.

I've always thought a full admission of "screwing up" should bring an end to any scolding. If anything more should be said it should be constructive. Punitive environments result in people not admitting when they mess up. The corresponding growth of a general lack of trust that kills productivity and makes a miserable environment.

Thanks for the info on the produce sticker. 9's and 8's are important to know.

I am not looking at th at picture but am sending my sympathies.

Katlian, public service, working with people, is the hardest job! I totally sympathize. There are some folks who are simply impossible to create harmonious relations with no matter how much you individually carry of what should be a joint effort...... learning to let all that go fully is a real skill. I am still working on it myself, even with tons of practice, LOL!

Another teacher was supposed to teach my Thursday class for me while I was gone but he just plain spaced it out. He apologized to me, of course. So, I gave a free class to my students as compensation but one woman really let me know how angry she was and quit the class. I was sympathetic with her about being put out and finally asked if there was anything I could do that would bring her back. There wasn't. I felt bad but none of it was my fault. Just one of those things. I told her if she ever changed her mind I would be happy to see her. But, I'm not so sure that I really would! l.o.l.

That one seems to be a bit of a good ridance one Roybird. And I agree that taking responsiblity should stop scolding. I'm always amazed at a couple of my coworkers who will never admit that they messed up or even that there might have been a better way to deal with it. And they wonder why the supervisisor has these long talks with them.
Sheesh.

That is one style of communication you can use with people like that, roybird. Say the exact opposite of what you mean and exaggerate it to the point where it is moderately obvious that it is false. I believe Seinfeld hit the subject in his TV show.

Sorry, I guess that's gross. I've never been very squeamish about stuff like that and I forget that other people are. My mom was a nurse when I was growing up so I guess that rubbed off on me.

I didn't think it was gross as it had no obvious body fluids, lol! Just it looked painful. I have given myself permission not to look, if it looks painful, is all. ;-)

I didn't think that was gross. I thought it looked cool. It is so great how we can get put back together! It was not a picture of pain but of technology. Though I'm sure it does hurt. Dparsons, I know what you mean about the exaggerated sympathy bit. I worked in retail for several years. I made up a poem;
Oh, I would buy it if it came in blue.
And, if it did, I would sell it to you!
This a sad song of deep regret and lamentation, as I'm sure you can tell.

LoL roybird. I can identify with being harassed about it coming in blue. I worked retail bicycles for a dozen years. I got really irritated with a guy one day who kept droning on. There were no other customers in the shop so I told him "I'll be back in a minute" and went into the repair area out of sight. I didn't go back. My boss complimented me on the technique as he had dealt with the guy too.

I don't think the leg photo is gross either.

L.O.L.! The merry world of retail. I worked mostly with women's clothing and shoes. It was sometimes very fun but also very difficult, as one might imagine.

I wouldn't want to sell Women's shoes. I can just see me out there saying "you know that heels really are bad for your posture ..." I know that doesn't work in regular retail, but with sports clothing and equipment we had an obligation to recommend proper fit and ergonomics so that our customers didn't hurt themselves. Bicycle shoes were actually easy because I could legitimately take all the customer's ideas on shoes and respectfully put them as a 2nd concern and recommend finding a shoe that fit their feet first. You don't want to spend 3 hours in shoes with a rock hard base that don't fit. If they found more than one pair that fit then they could apply whatever other criteria they wanted.

I worked in a really good shoe store that sold very few high heels and lots of cool boots and sandals and so forth. " On Your Feet " in Santa Fe. It is locally owned. The shoes are expensive but I am still wearing some that I bought there12 years ago!! Doc's, Dansko and Mephisto. I adore shoes but nowadays I'm wearing North Face and Vasque most of the time. Clothes are another story. I learned to say, " I like the color. " when asked for an opinion. Ha!

That is one of the few comments you can make on clothes - whether the color is good on someone. I'd be wary of saying "it makes your butt look really big" or something similar. I found it rather challenging to sell skin tight lycra clothing to women. I found it best to be indirect on fit and desirable clothing features, and tried to educate them so they could make a good assessment.

I can just imagine trying to sell bike shorts to women, it's probably as bad as selling swimsuits. I have bike shorts but I always wear other shorts over them. You have to have just the right body shape to look good in them and I certainly don't have that shape.

Its good to be out there on the bicycle getting some exercise. I still take the line on wearing clothing for function and not worrying about how you look. All bicycle clothing looks funny on anybody who wears it. Once you get past that reality you're OK.

I used to live on Lopez Island, which was a bicycling mecca in the summers. The locals became quite weary of them, mostly because of clumps of bicyclists in the middle of an intersection perusing maps without noticing they had stopped traffic in four directions, stuff like that.

I spent a summer in Colorado and realized it must have been worse than usual that year as I drove up from the ferry. Someone had posted an enormous homemade sign proclaiming "MacKay Harbor is a Spandex Free Zone!"

But I have done a lot of bicycling myself. Without ever wearing spandex.

Rude cyclists have always bothered me too. Spandex doesn't give you the right to be rude and ignore the rules of the road.

What in hoot is 'conventionally grown produce'??? I think it's kinda sick to call the chemically manipulated veggies 'conventional' if that's what they mean.

Any suggestions for a better term? Some of the more accurate ones are not especially palatable and aren't favored by people who are trying to sell food to earn a living. I like the term "Manufactured Produce" as it captures the divorce from the normal growing of biological organisms classified a plants, but it probably won't show up in any stores.

'Manufactured Produce' is a good name. I think they should be called 'Veggie Flavoured Preservative Organisms' but it will never happen.

Of course not. They don't actually have that much flavor.

You beat me to that one mulch.

Hmmm. Maybe that is a new market. We could go into business flavoring fruits and vegetables so that they are tasty. Add a little sugar to sweeten them up. Color them all sorts of wild colors. Imagine chocolate flavored bananas selling for $4 a pound just like Coco Puffs.

Sorry, the biogenetics people beat you to that one, Dparsons. They are working on all sorts of appalling ideas.

Yes, but chocolate bananas are not in the stores yet, and its is a battle of the marketers. Food value is irrelevant here. If we are in first we get the larger part of the market.