Get Those Mother Effin' Snakes Out The Mother Effin' Saturn

Quiet weekend in Smallville...but, hey, that's Smallville.

On Saturday, Carlos was going to take our recycling, the garbage, and lawn and garden refuse, to the recycling center. See, they don't pick up our garbage and recycling at Casa Bob y Carlos because, while we live in Smallville, we don't live in Smallville. We are outside the city limits and, well, you take care of your own trash out here.

It's really not so bad. The recycling-refuse-garbage center is a hop, skip, and sashay down the road, so it's usually done quickly. And if we lived in Smallville, the plus of having them pick up our garbage would be weighed down by the excessive taxes one pays to live in the city.

There are hotel and restaurant surtaxes; entertainment taxes; tourism taxes. You get taxed for wearing white after Labor Day, or not having enough mint in the julep. So, we take the outskirts of Smallville to save a penny or two, and to be able to slip into a pair of eggshell shorts in October if we so choose.

So, now, back to Carlos and the recycling. He uses my car, Leonora, a lovely white Saturn--hmmmm, I wonder if I'm allowed to drive her in the city after Labor Day--because his car can't handle the bins and boxes and trash cans and clippings. He loads up Leonora and off he goes; quick trip and then back home to gather up the bundles of branches and sacks of leaves and lawn debris from the last yard duty session, and off he goes again. Without a hitch.

But, back at home, it is while he is cleaning out Leonora, getting rid of stray leaves, twigs, etc. that have fallen off the bundles from the back of the car that a tiny snake crawls from the leaves and slithers across his hand.

The scream was heard all the way into Columbia. Dogs everywhere perked up their ears. people thought it was a tornado alert.

Nope. Just Carlos and some mothereffin' snakes in the mothereffin' Saturn .

Some smelling salts and a large broom later, the little snake had slithered back into the yard and Carlos seemed to be coming down. That is until Round-The-Way-Gay Neal asked about the big snake in the car, because, if there's a small one, a big one can't be too far away.

Carlos fainted.

On Sunday, Carlos and I, along with Round-The-Way-Gays, Neal and David, went up to Charlotte for a CostCo pilgrimage, with a quick stop at Trader Joe's for some delicacies. We stopped in at Senor Tequila's--and you just know that name appealed to me--for an incredible lunch, and fun stories. It's a small place, but the waiters are cute, with sexy accents, and food is amazing, so it's a win-win. A little ceviche, a little Ropa Vieja--Spanish for "old clothes" though it makes a tasty lunch--and chiles and cheeses and tortillas.

Then it was on to Joe's for some curry sauces, swordfish steaks, wine--always wine--goat cheese....you know, the everyday staples. But if you've never been to Trader Joe's, you do not know what you're missing. It's like an upscale, gourmet grocery store, with incredibly reasonable prices, and new stuff every week.

It's a gem.

After stowing away those treasures, we went off to CostCo for our more mundane groceries. Carlos and I stocked up on industrial sized containers of bleach, laundry soap, enough Kleenex to last a year, and Oatmeal for the rest of the decade, along with fish and chicken and cheese and bread and and and....

David and Neal got a small sense of Carlos and shopping carts when he whizzed by them on the back of our cart, followed quickly by me, shouting, Stop! NOW!

I'm still looking for an adult sized leash to put on him when we go out in public, or, failing that, a life sized rubber snake to keep around the house.

You know, just for kicks.