Effortless

+ I don't even have to do anything to piss people off it seems. Since I dropped caller id last year I tend to screen my calls (mostly because I don't like talking on the phone much). I don't actually receive many calls anyway, so it's useful. Grandma and my friend S. tend to prattle on into the machine, scolding me like I'm actually sitting here listening. Some days I am. Most days when I don't pick up on their rambles, I'm not here. I'm working, or out walking or running errands (or the volume is down). This is a morning where I'm listening to the machine, mostly because I forgot to turn it down. Grandma is going on about how she wishes so much that my family and I could watch today's Dr. Phil (I learn later it's about ego building). And then she cuts off with an 'anyway - '. I thought she was done. Then she calls back. "Annie? Did you hang up on me?! You could really piss me off!" .. I was nowhere near that telephone. So I call her back and lie and say I wasn't even IN the room. I was in the bathroom. Which she then found hilarious (even though I didn't even hang up on her. I never picked up). Oy vey. They think I'm never doing anything. If I'm never doing anything, how is it I get all this artwork done?

+ She always seems baffled and surprised (and mostly it goes over her head) when I explain to her that I "don't watch a lot of television". "Well, then what DO you do?" she asks me. "I read, I paint, I play games. I go out for walks. I just don't watch a lot of tv." "..Oh." Particularly through the day. I have a few favourite shows, and that's the extent of it. Her Dr. Phil and Oprah do not rank up there. Oy vey.