Grover just came downstairs with a very important question. Important to her, anyway. She wanted to know what will happen when The Fuzzbucket barks her fool head off at Santa coming down the chimney. Hmm, good question. Seeing as Fuzz's crate is in the same room as the fireplace, she would most likely create quite a racket upon the arrival of the jolly old elf (or anyone else for that matter). We never had that problem with Wondermutt because she was housebroken and sleeping upstairs with us by the time Grover was old enough to know about Santa. Luckily, I have to answer questions like this on a regular basis so I came up with a good answer pretty quickly. I told her that Santa uses the same magic he uses to come down chimneys to take care of barking dogs. She looked at me quizzically so I kept rolling. I told her that I thought his "magic" in this case was dog biscuits... just like the UPS man brings when he delivers packages to our house. Grover seemed satisfied with that answer (it probably helps that the UPS man was just here with a delivery yesterday). I'm just glad she still believes in Santa.

This morning a sign went up announcing the impending construction of a Walgreens drug store a few miles from my house. Not surprisingly, the location is right across the road from a CVS Pharmacy, which got me to wondering. Is it somewhere in the Walgreens corporate bylaws that all new stores must be built directly across from a CVS? See, Walgreens is fairly new to our area (within 2-3 years) and almost every new store that's built around here is across from a CVS - if not directly across the street than at least kitty corner to it. I'm not kidding! I can only think of one Walgreens at the moment that is not located in the immediate vicinity of a CVS. I saw a new store going up yesterday on the other side of Raleigh that sure enough, is on the opposite corner from a CVS. A CVS that got its front window run through by a tanker truck a few months ago, now that I think about it, but I digress. Now, relatively speaking, CVS is new to the area as well (within the last 10 years) but when they moved in, they didn't build right across from an Eckerds or Kerr Drug or whatever our prevailing pharmacy chain was at the time.

I suppose it's just good old American capitalism at work and it will succeed in this case because not only is the new Walgreens going to be on the right (as in no left turn required to get in and out) side of the road on my way home from just about everywhere, but the CVS is painfully slow at filling prescriptions and I've been waiting for a viable alternative. The only reason I haven't changed pharmacies is because the location is semi-convenient and it has a drive-through (key when you are filling a script for a sick child that you don't want to get in and out of the car). Plus, a lot of Walgreens are open 24 hours and that's definitely a bonus.

Next post, maybe I'll complain about the new Wal-Mart that's going up (Wal-Mart is to Poppgrrl as K-Mart is to Rain Man) but my immediate task is to go sit in the carpool line to wait for Grover.

Here's a prime example of how Ollie makes me smile. We just had an extensive conversation about "boobies" in which she informed me that I am not allowed to touch mine because I am not a kid anymore. Okay, then.

And yes, I realize this is largely a rhetorical question. But specifically, I'm speaking in the arena of environmental responsibility. I finally watched An Inconvenient Truth last night and was literally frightened by the information former VP Gore presented. I think this movie should be required viewing for every American citizen. If the impending climate crisis doesn't move you to make at least one change in your life to protect this planet for future generations, well then, you're an idiot. And speaking of idiots, let me elaborate on the title of today's post. The front page story of today's News & Observer notes that after recent water restrictions and some early conservation success, water usage rates are rising again. WHAT??? We are in the worst drought in 100 years in the Southeast, city drinking water supplies are dwindling to under 2 months worth, area lakes and ponds have long since dried up and water usage is going up? WTF? We don't have city water but we are still trying to conserve water by taking shorter showers, not letting the faucets run if we're not collecting water, not washing the cars (well, that's not new) or the dogs (although I've almost reached my limit of dog stink and I don't think I can spray them with Febreze). Even Grover and Ollie are doing their part - which mostly consists of "Mommy/Daddy, you're wasting water!". But then there's our neighbor who was burning leaves in his front yard last week. Did I mention there's been a ban on open burning since October 15th? Moron. I couldn't think of a nice way to tell him that if his fire got out of control and burned our house down, I would physically harm him, so I opted for silence. However, if I see him doing it again, I will just have to say something.

Okay, enough ranting and raving. I'm going to go do something positive like retrieve my happy and smiley 4YO from preschool. She aways makes me feel better. If you are not an idiot (and you must not be if you're reading my blog) and would like to take steps to reduce your own environmental impact, click HERE to calculate your carbon footprint and then visit the "What You Can Do" page. Or go to www.climatecrisis.org and click on "Take Action".

Peace out.

The other morning on a local radio station, the news guy did his strange news story and it happened to involve a bar in Madison, WI and a jar of pickled sausages, although I forget the details. Thus, conversation ensued between said news guy and the dj's about the omnipresent jar of pickled food items in bars and I thought of Pickled Pete for the first time in years. Not that there's anything particularly interesting about that, but it made me laugh.