DID I "DING" ?

 Among all the strange and different things that I encounter up here in the UP one of the most annoying is The Man's "Dinger". ( Oh, get your brain out of the gutter I'm not talking about THAT !)

The house we live in is set way back off the road so as a matter of security The Man has attached a motion sensor to one of the trees along the driveway. Every time something passes in front of it a LOUD "Ding Dong" is heard in the house. It's a great idea for places that don't have deer, turkeys and sand cranes that are constantly walking up and down the road. It is also not on a timer so there are nights when the damn thing is ding donging every half hour. There are even times when a tall blade of grass or a low hanging branch with cross the beam and set off the noisy thing. I do like it when it goes off around ten in the morning because then I know the UPS man is delivering something.  

Today as I walked down the driveway out to the mail box I kept getting small pieces of gravel in my shoes. I'd stop to empty one shoe and then three steps later I'd have to stop to empty the other shoe. It was quite annoying so on my trip back up the drive to the house I just sucked up the discomfort of walking on pebbles until I got one nasty little piece of gravel that was cutting into my foot so much that it was really painful. In my frustration I stopped dead in my tracks to get the nasty little bugger out of my shoe.      YUP . . .  you guessed it, I stopped right in front of the "dinger".  It only took me a second or two to get my shoe off and back on but when I returned to the house and asked my usual silly question of, "Did I Ding?" The Man informed me that not only did I ding but I ding donged several times. I can't imagine what he must have been thinking when the alarm went off and on and off and on but I did come to the realization that if I am ever being chased by a bear or fall flat on my face in the driveway The Man will totally ignore all warning signals. 

Speaking of warnings signs . . . This morning on our way into town we passed the Dollar General Store and there were no cars in the parking lot. This is unheard of. The dollar store is THE place to be and on any given day the parking lot is filled with pick up trucks a beat up cars.  (Not a single Bentley or Lamborghini in the lot, never mind a Toyota.  Up here EVERYONE drives a Chevy.) Anyway . . .  The sight of the empty parking lot caused me to wonder if Armageddon had come and gone while we were asleep and we were the only living souls remaining on Earth. Fortunately by the time we got to the one traffic light in town there were other cars on the road with us so we knew all was well with the world.  Maybe the Dollar Store lady just slept in this morning.