How to Lose 10 pounds in 30 Minutes

How did I grow up to be an idiot? I used to be a smart intelligent person. Then these smart phones and smart cars came out to make me feel super dumb.

My over 55 RV park has about 140 spaces, so when I say "neighbor" it could be anyone on the 140 sites. This is a singles park but there are some couples here but by and large it's solo individuals owning or renting here. There are about 110 owned sites and about 30 rented, give or take. Some are workampers too. This RV park is in a rural area about 4 miles from a tiny town which is a mile or two from the interstate which has a massive Walmart.

I don't know that many people here. Some are seasonal snowbirds that own lots here but only visit a few months a year. A handful are year round folks. Some are wonderful pleasant people and others are well, how to say it nicely? I guess some are not so pleasant. There. I said it.

Then there are travelers, folks that own lots here but continue to travel with their RV's so they are coming and going. Amazingly, many people own 2 RV's. One they live in when staying here and another one they travel in. Since I've been parked here cooling my heels and I dog walk and bike ride, I've come to know a few "neighbors."

An 84 year old neighbor told me she was out of cat food and wanted to know if I had any she could borrow and I don't have a cat nor cat food. I would LOVE to have a cat. I miss having a cat. My beloved cat was lost when I moved from the Caribbean to the USA. It still tears my heart apart.

Anyhow, I offered to ride my bicycle to the store to buy her cat food. She tossed her keys at me and said "Take my car, here's some cash, it's cheaper at Walmart, just make sure it's Meow Mix." Another park resident  was hanging around at the time, a neighbor who has Parkinsons disease and he asked to ride along too, since he has no car or driver's license. He knows the entire area better than I do as he has lived in Florida most of his life. We sometimes ride our bicycles together to the store. (Safety in numbers.)

Is it harder to run over two bicyclists than one?

I have this new smart phone that makes me feel awfully dumb. I was forced into it and not sure I like it at all. It's so dadgum complicated to make or receive a call. Also it's doesn't fold up like my old flip phone which I sorely miss. I could easily and quickly make phone calls on the flip phone. This smart phone is ridiculously cumbersome. The cell phone gurus are not addressing a segment of the population that wants SIMPLICITY.

Oops!

A few times I have almost broke the phone trying to fold it in half like my old awesome flip phone.

The other day I had an emergency and needed to make a phone call to get help. I flailed around for over 10 minutes trying to get the phone to work for me to make a phone call. I kept doing the swoops all wrong and it wouldn't let me dial out. Gee wiz. I've since discovered that many +55 people in the park have the same problem. You can't just pick up a smart phone and make a call in an emergency without doing 10 things to it first to get to the point of making a call. I am glad I was not calling about a fire or a heat attack. Ten minutes is a long time to fart around with a complicated phone to make an emergency call.

Who thinks up this stuff?

Why does making a phone call have to be so ridiculously complicated?

Mine was flashing up advertisements and weather crap and google asking me for the 100th time about my email and password.At some point I must have hit a wrong button on the side of the phone trying to get it to come on and work. It began taking pictures. I didn't want to take pictures, I wanted to call for help.

I don't want google to have my email and password and google retaliates by not letting me make a phone call in an emergency. I don't even pay for or have internet on the smart phone but it lets me hook into wifi which works when I am near the wifi spot. A few months ago when we were hit by that huge bolt of lightening that lit up our world and sent me levitating, I added this ap to my phone that tells me where the lightening is and I am so sorry I did that. It now alerts me constantly of lightening strikes up to 500 miles away. Good grief. I am trying to disable it and remove that ap, but I haven't figured out how to get rid of it or turn it off. It also flashes up advertisements.

When I accidentally took pictures, google appeared asking me to make recommendations for this RV park, because apparently google stalks me and my phone and demands I make a review on pictures I take. UGH! I refuse to answer google because I don't like these demands being made on me when I have more important things to do.

But I digress.

Back to the borrowed car and fetching cat food with  neighbor "P". I approached the car discovering that the little old lady is so tiny that her seat was all the way forward with a pillow jammed in it so she can reach the pedals. I couldn't even begin to slither into the driver's seat until I had figured out how to move the seat, remove the pillow and WHEW I was able to get in, start the car and get going with "P" my co-pilot. We stopped by my RV to get my purse and phone, then stopped by his RV to get his empty water jugs so he could buy drinking water.

We headed for the store and he was giving me short cut directions to Walmart. At the massive crowded parking lot he suggested we use the handicap parking since we were in a car with a handicap tag dangling from the rear view mirror and well since we are both handicapped, it seemed like an OK thing to do even though this wasn't our car, it did have the required handicap tag.

He said "I will call you on the phone when I am through shopping and tell you where I am at or you call me when you are done."

Twenty minutes later, I was approaching the self serve checkout because the lines were way shorter than the cashier checkout when my phone began ringing. I tried to answer it but I kept doing the buttons and swooping wrong and the phone call rang and rang and while I frantically tried to answer it went to voice mail just as I said "HELLO!" I could at least see the name of "P" my co-pilot was calling. A nice Walmart employee walked up to me asking  if I needed help with the self serve check out. I guess she figured if I couldn't answer my phone after playing with it ringing endlessly,  I probably couldn't do self serve check out either. (She was right!)

I was grateful for her help and thanked her over and over. She got the cat food beeped into the system, bagged, tagged and back into the cart. WOW. Such service!

I pushed my cart of cat food out the door because I knew there was a bench outside and I figured I could sit on the bench and try to figure out the phone. Well there was "P" sitting on the bench with his water jugs and phone. Whew!

At the car, we couldn't figure out how to unlock it. Oh dear me! I've always owned old simple cars and my former motorhome was a 1994 with a simple key that unlocked the door and let me open it. Well this newfangled car apparently didn't open with a key.

The two of us spent another 5 minutes figuring out how to unlock the car. At least we got the two front doors open, but we couldn't get the back doors nor the hatchback open. That is when we noticed the tags on the car had expired 2 years ago.

Oh my gosh!

We were discussing the expired tag, the fact we couldn't figure out opening the hatchback when suddenly a cop car drove through the parking lot just a few feet from us. We fell silent. My friend suddenly blocked the tag with his body. Maybe the cop wouldn't notice.

We were kind of temporarily frozen in time. Is this just a very bad dream?

I could imagine the cop asking me for license, registration and insurance. Me saying well here is my license, but it's a "borrowed" car, I was just fetching cat food for a little old lady and I had no idea her tags were expired and who she is insured with or where her registration is.

I could just see me sitting at the jail with a my smart phone, too dumb to figure out how to make a phone call and get help.

Some axe murderer might ask me "What are you in here for?

"I'm in here for buying cat food with expired tags."

That poor cat.

He would be starving and nobody would ever know whatever happened to me, the borrowed car and the two small sacks of cat food.

We waited and watched while the cop car went up and down every aisle in the parking lot.

Oh good grief.

Eventually he left. We timidly climbed into the car, said our prayers then drove home ever so sedately while nervously watching for cops. I think I lost 10 pounds of weight in pure sweat just trying to return the car and deliver the cat food.

I asked the little old lady if she knew the tags were expired on the car and by the way had she paid her insurance lately?

She said you know I recently spent two days on paperwork and one of those was catching up my insurance bill, so yes, the car is insured. She was pretty sure she had new stickers for her tags, maybe in her wallet. The day she paid for them it was raining and she didn't want to stand in the rain putting the stickers on the tag and then her boyfriend died and his funeral was in another state and a few weeks later she moved from her RV on one side of the park to a mobile home on the other side and somewhere in the move she was pretty sure the tags were somewhere... laying around.

Somewhere.

I offered to go put them on her car but she said well, let's do that another day... after I find them. My cat is hungry and thank you for fetching the cat food. You bought his favorite! He will be so happy!

Life is goof.

So there you have it!

How I lost 10 pounds of sweat in 30 minutes of chaos.

I am exhausted.

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