Breath

Dogger was completely out of dog food. I was reduced to using the freebie bags of puppy chow I got at the dog fair and while those little bags may represent a full meal for a puppy, the look Dogger gave me when presented with same told me that she felt that the contents of those freebie bags did not indeed represent a full meal for her.

My response was that at least she had something to eat and not only did she have something to eat it was actual dog food to eat and not my other option which was feeding her cat food and lieing about it. Or even worse, not feeding her at all. If she gave me dirty looks when her rations were cut, I bet she would have really laid it on thick if they had been absent altogether. To add insult to injury, I was running out of homemade dog treats too.

I spent my lunch hour shopping for replacement food and store bought dog treats before Dogger put any real thought into her Oliver Twist routine. While I was trying to find the dog food section, I walked past a Rice-A-Roni display.

I found where they hid the dog food and went about checking ingredients to make sure that the melamine was way, way, way down the list of ingredients. I found one where there was an acceptable distance it and the fly ash and headed to the checkout . On the way I walked past the Rice-A-Roni display.10 for $10. That’s a lot of Rice-A-Roni. You could treat all of San Francisco

When I was growing up my Mother had made it often and it had morphed into comfort food. In the early 90s the makers of RaR were experimenting with selling it by the tub and letting the consumer make their own suggestions about serving size. I guess somebody somewhere had felt tyrannized by leftovers or felt creatively stifled by too small servings the manufacturer made available.

The RaR made me think of the grocery store down the street from my college apartment and how I used to walk down there and get my little groceries and go home and make my dinner in my kitchen . For me, RaR tastes like independence...But ten boxes would taste like anarchy, so I picked up two boxes and took on a very devil-may-care attitude about hurrying back to work after lunch.

There may be light at the end of the washing machine tunnel. I called Frigidaire and told them my tale of woe. They told me that their machines do not leave the factory with epilepsy and they should not shake like mine have. They asked me to remove the kick plate in the front and check if there were two bronze colored braces in the front and if so to remove them as they being in place was what was causing the shaking. They are supposed to be removed when the machine is installed and anyone who reads the installation manual would know that. She seemed genuinely shocked that four different Lowes installers as well as the appliance department manager were not familiar with the manual.

I tried to remove the braces but they are really bolted down good and I’m not mechanical enough to get them unbolted. Broskey is going to come over to muscle them out of the way. When the machine is working, I am going to be calling the Lowes help line again and I'm going to make sure Senior Management knows why they had to bring me two machines out to me and how they broke one and almost broke a second and how exactly how it is that five separate Lowes Employees charged with installing my machines had never read the manual. “Professional Installation” my ass.