Squirrels

Squirrels etc

not my photo. But see, they can be all tame, and don't look
rabid, and so, my precious, truffles you will find.

So I had a silly epiphany yesterday when reading the news. The local news had some article about flying squirrels, and how they forage for truffles and it CAME TO ME. I could find myself a lucrative, entrepreneurial (is that even a word?) career.... ok so, truffles are NOT cheap right? But part of the cost is not just for the wages of the truffle hunter but the special pig, too. Well, flying squirrels are free of charge (and hopefully free of rabies and bubonic plague). So all I need to do is wrangle me some flyin' squirrel, tame it, and take it for walks. Little squirrel will find me truffles and voila, instant income! And I get exercise to boost! I found out dogs can also be trained to hunt for truffles. However, with my dog's affinity for the snack box (cat little turds), he'd probably hunt those over truffles, and my vision sucks, so how would I know the difference? 

My family prides itself in "jimmy-rigging" things, think Gypsy-style fixes for things. My mom's 64 Chevy Nova wasn't starting or something, so my dad stole some parts out of the aquarium, added some duct tape and voila! The car worked. Recently, while on a road trip, we had to stop for gas. At dark. With a sleeping baby. This meant opening the door, setting off the dome lights in the car, and waking the baby. Nuh-uh. Fat change in hell. I knew we would stop for gas about an hour before we did, so I had an hour to prepare. I was not going to tolerate 5 more hours of screaming, inconsolable child, so what could I do? Aha! Lightbulb moment! Eureka! I dug through my purse and found the perfect thing to just block out the light from the dome light.

So an hour later, we stop for gas and my hubby opens the passenger back door to check up on us and is all, "what the F*ck? Why is there a maxi pad on the ceiling of my luxury automobile? Eww! A maxi pad! In a luxury car!"  I had to calm him, I mean, geez, it wasn't used. And it blocked the light. I told him just that, and to just be proud my invention worked, our child was asleep, wasn't he? Hubby just shook his head and got in the call all silent-like. I noticed the next day, the maxi pad was mysteriously missing.

Aaaaand...moonshine. My area of the world was where all the Hollywood elite - or pre-Vegas mafia- who wanted to get toasted during prohibition, hung out. They had many secret speak easy places (complete with easy girls) and some moonshine distilleries. Yep. We had prospectors, moonshiners, we threatened to disband from the union and join the confederacy once... Anyways, so the moonshine distilleries could never seem to be found, and it is rumored there are still stills hidden in the forest. Again, a lucrative career, selling hundred year old moonshine to drink, if not deadly, or use to strip paint effectively.  Also, my mom laments something (that I kind of am intrigued and saddened by, too). She has misplaced her bathtub beer recipe. Apparently, if it is the early 70s, you're a hippie, and own a bunch of hops and spare appliances in the yard, you make beer. Yes, I'm intrigued...half disgusted by bathtub beer, but half..intrigued.