Yummy

While I was at the market I actually saw some beautiful eggplant and so I made this.

It was pretty good with a glass of pinot noir.

Finally

I have found a way to enjoy the supermarket.

Today I was about to leave and saw my brother walking in. He didn't see me.

I hid behind a pillar and when I saw his feet I charged out with my shopping cart like I was going to run him over. It was awesome to see the look on his face.

Carly(via Blackberry)

Overheard

In my room, this dark morning.

"I don't want to go to work todayyyy."

(Silence.....)

"...you are a big girl now and you have to go."

I was alone in the room, of course.

Ps to Scrappy - I was sitting at the head table and could NOT walk away to go get cake (while most of the coaches were giving awards to their own children - one even SAID "We let all of the parents vote and then we make it right." Aieeee. He then added "well, we always agree with the parents". Yeah, ok pal.)

Carly(via Blackberry)

Help

I am trapped in an unending sports banquet.

I must smile at people I'm really not all that crazy about.

I can not drink any more than the one glass of wine I had long long ago.

I am very sad.
Carly(via Blackberry)

Creating a monster

the guy who is going to do the addition on my house got me thinking about remodeling the kitchen a little (not the cabinets, jsut fixing the crappy walls, and replacing the lighting...

So my friend got a hold of me and we found the tile mural above (one on either side of my stove, with beige tiles filling in the extra space...)

and this

and of course... this would go nicely with a new tile floor in the kitchen....my linoleum IS 13 years old..

I think I'm going to be eating a lot of Kraft macaroni & cheese when I'm done.

A vid to replay a thousand times

Edit - OK, fine, go here and watch, while I try to learn how to use this Internets thing. This is a video featuring John Krasinski and George Clooney discussing their new movie, Leatherheads, which opens NEXT FRIDAY. (As in, the day I already have two places to be, and the day before I have 3 places I have to be. I can't go see it until at least SUNDAY, people. This really sucks.)

Hopefully this will work for you. Probably not.

Kudos to Give Me My Remote for her great site about tv and her unquestionably good taste in leading men.

how to

...freak out your paranoid family members:

1. Sit them down at a pc

2. Bring up Google maps

3. Type in their address

4. Look for "street view" and click on it. Look for a little gold person. If necessary, click on the gold guy.

By now you may be looking at a photograph of the front of their house. One that you can zoom in on.

Mine was taken in approximately September or October. Because I had a certain vehicle I don't have now, and it is showing in the photo, (license is blurred out) but I don't have the pink breast cancer awareness .magnet on the back of it.

Eggs

It's been a long afternoon.

I just realized I completely forgot about Top Chef. WTF? The show completely vanished from the list of things my DVR was supposed to record. #$%&*!

Then I just took a load of laundry out of the dryer. It's been in there a day or so since it dried.

At the bottom of the dryer I found a tiny, marble-sized ball of foil. With the remains of a chocolate egg.

The clothes? They look like the Pre-laundry basket of something who's enduring a very unfortunate ailment.

After looking through the entire basket, and using up half a stain stick, I will be rewashing those clothes next.

Happy happy happy. Oh yes I am.

There will be wine tonight, my friends.

Various bits

This and that...

• Mothers and their toddlers argue 20-25 times per hour on average, a new study shows. Sorry, Amelia.
• The builder came to my house last night, and we talked about ways to exponentially increase the cost of my addition. Joy, joy. Oh, and my 'kitchen light' is a hallway light. No wonder it sucks.
• Shamus is back :::::Carly glares at Shop D, wondering what his excuse is :::::::::
• Three blogs I check every day: perezhilton.com/ , bossip.com/ and lately, jezebel.com . I am not proud. Just honest.
• Maya Angelou is 80 today. Laila Ali, who is preggers AND MARRIED, ARE YOU LISTENING HOLLYWOOD, SHE GOT MARRIED FIRST... is 30, but today is not her birthday. So don't send her a card.
• I have, uh, NINE weeks to prepare for the 5K. It would be helpful to find my sneakers soon.
• I stabbed a bunny in the eye this morning at my house. OK, it was a white chocolate rabbit, and yes, I know that "white chocolate" is not chocolate. Don't want to hear it, thank you.
• My kid is sick. One of those random speed bumps that child free coworkers can be so pissy about. No, I won't leave her home alone in bed to sleep it off... Yes, I'm sitting on my couch most of the day when I work from home, but that doesn't mean I WANTED to do it today... I had plans for tonight, and now we can't go.
• (note to my boss and coworkers, I'm eating lunch....)

Fish and rain

The light and the dark sides of my brain:

I realized this morning when I was putting MORE ammonia reducing drops in the fishbowl that the reason they get so agitated when I do that is that they think they're getting FOOD. I don't think he's been feeding them. So sorry, Finn. Welcome to your new home.



I heard Purple Rain this morning on the way to work. Stop and think about the vast number of songs you have heard in your lifetime.

Funny, isn't it, how any one specific old song can take you so far back. PR was playing while I had that last horrible conversation with my first college boyfriend. (So cliche but strictly bad timing and the fact that I played the entire soundtrack every day of my sophomore year.)

When the song was over, we were too. It was LITERALLY half a lifetime ago but when I listened to that song today I could still feel it, the first time my heart got broken as something of an adult. Not talking about high school crushes here. This man was about to graduate and I wanted to build a life with him.

So it sucks - that moment when you realize that all of the dreams you had are crashing down around you because that other person just does not feel the same way.

No point in dwelling on it any more. Another song came on, and then another.
Carly(via Blackberry)

Tandem

So, I have this friend. I like him, but he's gullible. He's in his 30's and we call him The Kid and we regularly put one over on him.

Today at lunch we were talking about kayaks and someone mentioned a tandem kayak. The Kid asked what that was.

I was halfway to convincing him that it's a kayak where one person sits on a platform above the other. When I could see him start to think about the physics of balancing the weight, I burst out laughing and ruined all the fun.

Pretty much the highlight of an otherwise boring day at work.

Sunday Art a day late

This is just a small part of one of our windows. You wouldn't see it during mass unless you turned your head WAY around to one side; it's practically over the choir loft.

Why do I like this frame so much? I don't know. I like the flower vase, and that the stone arched windows that are quite a lot like the building I'm standing in. For whatever reason, on Sunday mornings when I'm waiting to sing something, I often glance over at this window; my eye is drawn to this segment.

If I ever had a garage, and converted it to a studio, I would want something like this in one end, where the morning sun could stream in and scatter the colors around the room.

(so, I guess that's #42 on the list of ways I would squander any lottery winnings...making a replica of this part of the window...)

Not already

Did you hear that primal scream just now? That was me; baseball season is starting already.

Happy Easter

One of the many I'll be singing AGAIN today.... one of my favorites.

I won't joke about cellphones and crying babies and people who only come once a year, but... Oy. I prefer the Tenebrae service, actually. All of the attendees really WANT to hear us sing.

Last night at the Vigil mass I was singing the communion hymn and I noticed the distinct draft coming up from the stairs - people who run out the nearby exit right after they receive communion let a blast of cold air shoot up at us. Yay. Thanks, see you next year. Um, find a church you actually like going to??

Love it or leave it

Love it

• new song -- I'm yours -- Jason Mraz apparently went to Jamaica, mon, but it's all good.
• Quarterly dividend checks are awesome. Just saying. Mad money for our Big Apple trip
• So is making the LAST payment on Thing 1's braces!!! (alas, Thing 2 needs them at some point...)
• J-Lo's babies are cute. So there. Good thing they look like Momma.

Leave it

• It's still COLD. The e-bunny will freeze
• I thought I killed my daughter's new puffy down vest because I don't HAVE tennis balls to stick in the dryer and what could that possibly have to do with it? Sigh. It still amazes me, all of the things I just don't know.
• Forgot that I put eggs on to boil... um, they are DEFINITELY hard boiled now. For sure. Doesn't really matter. We don't actually eat them... they sit out on the kitchen table for a few days. One of those stupid things to fight about, ya know? Seems like a waste to me.
• No new episode of Lost until April 24? Bastards!

As if I don't have anything else to do

The fish saga continues. No, he didn't die (even though I figured out that "Ted" was named after Ted's Fish Fry that we used to go to - not funny, that Mr. Carly).

Yesterday I went to PetCo. The young woman there who "helped" us answered most of my questions by paraphrasing "I dunno". Do we need a filter? Welll, probably not. Should I put something in the water? Oh, I don't think you need to do that. I wanted to dunk her in the tank to wake her up.

She was pretty blunt about Ted being on his deathbed. Way to be nice to a ten year old kid, beeyatch. He came home and put his head down on the table and cried. "He never even made it into my room." (Ted's been on the kitchen table.)

So while we were at the store we bought Finn, to make up for what we thought would soon be an empty tank. Yes, not being content to cause the impending demise of one, we brought home a second victim. Kid decided that all Ted needed was a friend.

We dumped in Finn and his water (OMG, the water went in the tank and FINN STAYED IN THE BAG. I HAD TO SHAKE THE POOR LITTLE BASTARD OUT.) Then we moved the tank onto Kid's dresser.

I'm thinking the 1" of foam on the surface today is either medicine that was in Finn's water, or they're getting a little too much light even though the shades are down, or... I don't even know what... but Ted is looking pretty damn good this morning. Swimming around midheight in the aquarium. WTF? I am soooo bad at this!

Kid is convinced it's an easter miracle. I'm not sure God listens to prayers about goldfish. Does he? is that the problem? Kids with sickly fish are jamming up the lines? We could have whirled peas if we all stopped buying goldfish???

This Fish

So in lieu of an actual status report, I will provide an update via song, with apologies to Faith and all of the songwriters in the world who posess actual talent at writing lyrics...

This Fish (tune from This Kiss, as recorded by Faith Hill)

(v1)
I don’t want another headache
I don’t need another kid to cry
I don’t want to learn the hard way
Poor fish: oh, no, goodbye

Tries to swim up to the surface
Sinks right back down the bowl!

(chorus)
It’s the way he's floating
He's flopped over like THIS
It’s the lack of motion
It’s a sickly fish
It’s that pivotal moment
It’s impossible
This fish, this fish (so flushable)
This fish this fish

(v2)
Ariel said to Nemo
How do fish die overnight?
All I wanted was a goldfish
With a small bowl, air pump, fake plants

Drive me off to the pet store
Mommy has to buy some more...

(repeat chorus)

You can feed him in the daylight
(But not too much or he will die)
You can feed him in the nighttime
(Not too much or he will die)
Feed him in sweet slow motion
Smelly flakes fall from the sky

The Fish is floating, you overfed him!

(repeat chorus)
This fish, this fish (it's criminal)
This fish, this fish....

The photo

here it is... not the perfect portrait, technically, but one I would never throw away. This is the picture I mentioned the other day.

I took a day off from work today, because all of the singing I will do this week means I need a bit more rest than is usually possible in my frantic life. I feel out of sorts, as though I've forgotten something important that I was supposed to do today. It's driving me crazy.

My kid's $50 free fish

And yes I did use distilled spring water, Pol.

When we put him in here and turned on the light he freaked out a little. I gave him some food and said Good Luck.

This morning he's still hiding most of the time.

Now I'm going to have to get him some friends, I suppose
Carly(via Blackberry)

I give him a week

So the cherry on top is that some teacher gave my kid a FISH.

In a bag.

I was at choir, trying not to smite my nemesis, who frankly sounds a wee bit like Kermit the Frog. (We are in church. Think Kumbaya, Carly.) I came home from a LONG rehearsal, and found Squirt. Oy. He already has a name. Dead fish swimming, folks. The name ain't gonna help.

The fish can't stay in the bag. (I assume.)

I don't have a fish bowl. I have various bowls that I don't think would work. I have no fish FOOD. I have no fish-pertise in any form.

I wanted to dump him into this big glass candleholder that was vaguely fishbowl shaped but, I could not figure out if I could just POUR the whole bag in. It seemed like I would end up bonking his poor little fish head on the glass, no matter how gently I pour.

While the stupid boys of the household who brought this to my home fish are off to Walmart, I have the bowl in a dish, but I just went over to check on it and he was kind of stuck in a corner. Great. So I have a fish that wants to be sushi.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not) he freaks out whenever I go over and peer at the bag to see if he's gotten stuck in another corner again.

Poor Squirt.

And no, I haven't had any wine yet. I have to deal with the fish first.

Idiot magnets

I am busy punking people at work today.

Management hid plastic eggs with candy and prize slips inside, scattered by the dozens around our work area.

Well, some people went around and stripped the floor bare before 8:30 a.m. Greedy. Uh, it's very small denomination gift cards, folks. Are we in THIRD GRADE?

So I managed to get my hands on a few (from the bin out by the elevator where everyone returned the empty eggs) and then type up some slips like "sorry, all the prizes were taken by people who get to work earlier than you do" and hid NEW eggs in my friend's cubicles.

Also some jokes... "this is worth one dress down day on the saturday of your choice" and a satire on our potential offshoring of some jobs. That one could have gone either way, but it turned out that people laughed.

My last one was given to people very critical of our CEO , mr X - it said "Just ask yourself, 'what would X do? " ) a la WWJD .... this was inspired by someone ranting about how by doing this game we are celebrating Easter, even though we aren't supposed to celebrate religious holidays, and what we really need is Jesus in our building (... cue me, late for a meeting oh dear....)

Later in the day the admin sent out a note saying "there are still two gift cards that haven't been found" and about 20 people went crazy, looking. I just wanted to say "Go back to work. Quit ravaging the potted plant outside my office. Don't you think anyone looked there? It's 3pm. Get a life."

It's Learning Fair Day

...so of course I was up until nearly 11:30 last night. And you know I didn't drop right off to sweet dreams of puppies and rainbows....

because the Famous Person costume wasn't done even though I thought it was; we had to find a LOGO, and when I printed out the logo it wasn't the right color, of course. Not what I was in the mood to hear.

Also one of the posterboards wasn't done(every year these teachers say "All of the Work Will Be Done In School" and every year my stomach knots from the very first moment I hear that right up until the last extra assignment); yesterday one of the teachers was actually shopping online while one of my kids' entire class was still working on their unfinished projects. Um, walk around and help maybe?

The first outburst of tears was at 9:25 and there was more than one. We had to redo part of a poster because my daughter doesn't understand timelines. Trying to explain to her that because the teacher said "increments of ten" doesn't mean put ten lines between each year you have an event for...very frustrating for us both.

Oh, and I had to bake too. Not sure how the peach cobbler came out. Not sure if I care, but thanks to my belles who bailed me out.

I had to go to the market after picking them up from school; we needed to buy stuff for the STATE FOOD project. At one point I literally looked around the produce section and wondered if I could lift my shopping cart and throw it over there in that big empty space by the potatoes. Because I knew that I was screwed, for the rest of the day.

If I were a matchmaker

...I would like to track down a couple of people and introduce them.

Let me digress. I write this blog as a source of personal expression/entertainment/distraction/ etc. There are a couple of people I KNOW read it, and will stay with me no matter what random topics I stray to. So, a little bit, this blog is for them too, as a "hi" tool, because I try to comment on some of the things that are actually going on in my life at various points in time, or make little jokes that only they will get.

Now, I am happy to have visitors who don't know me. But also slightly mystified about the whole idea that people (including ME) will go and read a blog written by someone they've never met. Then we all click away, on to the next one, usually without commenting. It's all very curious to me.

Wondering who was visiting and what brought them to my blog keeps me awake at night. No, I'm kidding. It does make me grateful for SiteMeter . Without Sitemeter, I would have stopped blogging long ago because no one was listening, or so it seemed. With sitemeter, knowing that someone in Australia or Asia has clicked on my blog makes it fun. Even if they didn't comment.

I find it VERY bizzare that TWO consecutive people, who visited my blog within about 10 minutes of each other, had each googled Woodchuck Beer and found an old post of mine. Somewhere in Wichita, and somewhere in Martinsburg WV, there are two people who really need to sit down and have that beer together. Call me. We can make this happen.

Two points to be made here

1. I **DO** read something other than Perez online.


2. My new governor is hilarious.

Blurb and Slurp

...kind of sounds like a cartoon on one of those cable channels... but blurb.com is another website that lets you publish your own book. Something like mypublisher.com, which is focused around photos much like the various photo services (winkflash, shutterfly, snapfish... why do they have cutsie stupid names?)

Blurb, however, can apparently "slurp" your blog in and make a book out of it. (As if for a second I would want this entire blog to be in hardcover format...) It has many other "text" -focused project suggestions.

Every once in a while I think about making a book with some of my own photography, and essays on what each of the photos mean to me, and why they are "special" favorites. I've thought about doing this as a scrapbook (old school, not digital). I might start that someday (those of you who read regularly can finish the sentence.... AFTER PTA).

One example of a photo I'd include is one of the first pictures I have of myself holding my daughter. I'm standing there in a giant terrycloth bathrobe, holding her not-all- that- tiny- almost- ten- pounds- newborn body up against me, cuddling her, with her face close to mine. We are in front of the living room window, not really noticing the camera, and I am looking out at the sunshine of a late fall day.

It was after the end of a long pregnancy, a seemingly even longer labour, and the end of worrying about whether I would ever become a mom. I'd lost a pregnancy before I conceived her, and that baby would be celebrating a birthday right about now. The shamrocks and green carnations remind me of that loss, but this year, it doesn't seem to hurt as much. It finally feels like someone else's life.

The picture embodies one of those happy moments I carry with me.... that moment when I said "it's a girl? really?" in the delivery room. I may have made some choices (or not taken action, and made choices in that way) that I wish I could reconsider, but being a Mom has not EVER been something I regret doing. I already knew that, on that September day.

Tenebrae

Our choir sang tonight; every year we do a special performance on the evening of Palm Sunday which is an adaptation of a Tenebrae service.

It's one of my favorite times to sing, because we do very complex pieces that we start practicing right after Christmas and not to brag, but we do them really well. Ok, that's bragging.

I still feel like the new kid after five years; many of these people have sung together for 30 + years. They are awesome, and I continue to learn more and more about reading music and singing.

(Pange Lingua was my favorite this year:

Pange lingua gloriosi Corporis mysterium, sanguinisque prestiosi, quem in mundi prestium fructus ventris generosi Rex effudit Gentium.

Tantum ergo sacramentum veneremur cernui et antiquum documentum novo cedat ritui praestet fides supplementum sensuum defectui.

The verses correspond to Sing, my tongue, the Savior's glory; but the arrangement we use is very different. It's nothing like the melody of what you might sing in English. It's also much much slower, four part harmony, very meditative, and monklike. Click on the link above, to see the music and hear a midi approximation of the sound. )

The service itself involves readings and progressively extinguishing candles until the church is in complete darkness. The last song we sing before darkness is "God so loved the world". Unlike some Tenebrae services, we don't stop there. In the dark we sing "Because He Lives" and slowly the lights come back on. It's a beautiful, hopeful ending.

I've been sick (hasn't everyone?) and I am happy to report my voice is fully back (as good as it gets, hah) and the singing went very smoothly for me tonight. My goal is to conserve my voice this week. I'll take Thursday and Friday off and sleep in, and recline on the couch sipping tea.

Now if only I could push a certain Icky choir member over the rails so he would stop trying to conduct us all... sometimes he gets started and I just hold up my sheet music so I don't have to look...

Warmup

It actually wasn't freezing out today. Nice. I left the house in a nice wool jacket and didn't need a scarf, gloves, etc. Yaaaaaaaaay.

Malls make me tired. I don't think I have that girly shopping gene. Partly because it's frustrating to find anything that fits me right now. Where the fuck are the women who have my waistline but legs 4 or five inches longer??? I have always had a problem buying pants for work, but now it's maddening.

Walking around a mall for 5 hours makes me especially tired(didn't help having two teenage girls talking 75 mph the entire time. Oy vey.) Walking out of the mall and waaaaaaaay out to my car made me cranky.

Time for a quick rest, then dress rehearsal for tomorrow night's performance. It's that time of year. Tomorrow is Palm Sunday so I sing morning and evening. Then Wendesday through Sunday I need to sing each day. Hope my voice holds up, it seems like it will but my son is catching another cold so I have to stay away from him.

Haven't You Always Wanted A

MONKEY???

Who says money can't buy happiness? Or at least, a funny silicone potholder. Get it here.

I really wanted this fountain but they didn't have one in the store so I settled, big time, for this because my previous one (much plainer) met an unfortunate demise, when the cord was behind the toaster oven at the WRONG time.

My cashier helpfully told me that fountains drive her crazy, because they always make her want to pee. Um, just guessing, but that's maybe why you're in retail, honey. When I have thoughts like that I blog them, I don't say them to people I don't know.

(Insert brief pause here, while I am begging forgiveness of Marco, Poly, and other SMART people who can tell far too many Customers From Hades stories)

I also (see: shopping as therapy) bought a Yankee jar candle because when I'm in B3, they leap into my cart. I was having fun windowshopping for my fantasy condo (none of my immediate family members except Suzy would be allowed to visit) and then I spied another school mommy.

SO, ...I hid.

Because, PTA stuff can get wonky on you out of nowhere (you can't please all the people all the time) and because I had a monkey in my shopping cart.

I may need to take a sharpie and darken his eyes and nose. Just because, that's who I am.

Top Chef on tonight! Yay!

By the way

The sun is out. The sun is shining! It was vaguely warm today! I can't really contain my glee at all of this. It actually looks like spring.

My windows are SO dirty. Crap!

How come I say at EVERY pta meeting "please run any notes by the principal before you send them home" and some people still don't? (Because nobody wants to hear "NO" ?)

How come a day goes by so quickly when I'm home but not when I'm at work? Why am I using up SO MUCH of my vacation time already?

How come every time I see person X (who I only see once in a while) and she asks me how I am, something stupid falls out of my mouth? (today I might have used the word "offshore" in a sentence. Did I really need to tell her that?) Or is it just that I get a complex that she's only asking to be polite and all of that?

Today was a bad math day, because the consultant teacher didn't meet with my kid after school, so we had the deja vu of the bad year where we did math homework at the kitchen table EVERY DAY from the time we got home until dinner time.

I am happy to say that today is the first day in probably almost 2 weeks where I don't feel "sick". Could be the wine I drank last night. Perhaps. My voice, however, has not gotten the memo and is still all sorts of funky. Which did not stop me from talking to a couple of the other parents. All. Damn. Day. Long. You know, where you're almost watching yourself saying "shut up! shut up already! why are you going on and on?"

... which is kind of where this entry is headed, so.... adios

Report card

So apparently I am "loose", which is a good thing, according to the Kid's friends that I drove. As in, not uptight.

Funny because I'm so tangled up about so many things these days, it's not even funny.

Monday musings

EDIT: Top Ten Messages Left On Eliot Spitzer's Answering Machine
(from Late Show with David Letterman: LINK )
10. Hey, what's new?
9.It's Barack Obama. Remember our conversation about being my running mate? Nevermind.
8.Ralph Nader here, glad to hear I'm not the only politician who has to pay for it
7.I'm calling from the 'New York Post.' Would you rather be known as 'Disgraced Gov Perv' or 'Humiliated Whore Fiend'?
6.This is John McCain, if it makes you feel better, I once got caught having sex with Lincoln's wife
5.It's Dr. Phil, call me if you need any horse**** advice
4.This is Senator Larry Craig. Do you ever go through the Minneapolis airport?
3.It's Wolf Blitzer. Call me if you ever want a hot Spitzer-Blitzer three-way
2.Paris Hilton here. I would have done it for free
#1 ... It's Arnold Schwarzenegger. Thanks, I'm no longer America's creepiest governor

I can't wait to hear Letterman's top ten list about Elliot Spitzer hiring a hooker.*(#3 is my favorite) Somewhere, Monica Lewinsky is updating her myspace page. I'll leave it at that.

I don't want to go to the PTA meeting tonight. Buckle up! Three to go!!!

I have to chaperone a FIELD TRIP tomorrow, people. Three teenagers in my car. I have already been instructed to act cool. As in, I can not be myself and grunt "Eh eh eh" in a Fat Albert voice when One Republic's song starts. I probably shouldn't cuss either. It will be a long day.

My southern belle friends are bailing me out big time with a recipe for my kid's state(Georgia) for the Learning Fair. Because it's not enough to write a paper and make a poster and make the bottle person of your famous person and then dress up like that famous person (or another one if you picked cross gender for your bottle person - heh) . You also have to make FOOD for the other Mommies and Daddies who are all turning out that evening to admire one another's projects. I mean, our children's big projects. So, maybe peach cobbler or red velvet cake.

The voice of mine is not really right. This "cold" thing is not at a good time for me. I have rehearsal Thursday (not likely I'll be able to sing by then but our snowbird is back from Florida so we have to go through all of the songs again FOR HIM TO LEARN HIS PART.... grrr... so I can cruise that evening. Because, I've been showing up since January, y'all.) I have another rehearsal saturday night because on Palm sunday we sing in the morning at then again in the evening.

After the Learning fair I have a rehearsal. This is the "bring food, water, and sleeping bag" rehearsal as we have pieces to run through for the remainder of the week.

Then I have to sing Thursay, Friday, Saturday (Easter Vigil, I am almost definitely going to have to do a short solo psalm since there are several) and then Easter Sunday. None of us will want to look at each other by then. Yay, happy Easter, can I please go home now? I will be hoarse.

Good times.

Quiet day

Today I didn't do much. Still sick, didn't get up early or venture out anywhere. Cough, cough, cough, nothing yielded except aching ribs. It's not like strep throat. It's just like someone spilled motor oil on my voicebox. Tickling, weird feeling all day long.

Worked on this for a while today. Finished the boooot and the lobster. It was actually FUN to work on. I haven't touched it - literally- in years. I think I started this about 14 years ago. It probably takes about 5 hours a square. I have about 35 left (there are squares at the bottom for my name, the date, etc.)

(35 x 5 ) / (7 * 24 - PTA - work - sleep) = I'll never be done

I used to do counted cross stitch every summer when I was young. We didn't really have the money to do "stuff" like go on vacations or go to camps. So I hung around, read a lot, and sewed. I have a couple of pieces stashed somewhere in my hope chest. When a good friend of mine got married I made her a piece with a country mailbox (on a post) overflowing with flower blooms, and it had a "letter" with her married name and the address of her new home. Something like this:

Great sketch, eh? I know. It took all of 3 minutes. Which means I lose 63 minutes of my sleep tonight for no good reason at all! Good night!

Randomocity

Thoughts drifting through my cold-medicine foggy brain:

• "Penny, I'm on a booot!" I keep quoting Desmond. For no apparent reason. Well, the way he says "boat", actually.
• Hm. American Idol is on nowadays. Don't care.
• My daughter just texted me that she wants a 4000 Pineapple? Dunno. Sorry Johnny but she does NOT want to wear a CBH Tour shirt. It freaked her out a little.
• More construction-y builder guys looking at my basement foundation, addition blueprints, etc. Today's contender said "well I would put a dumpster onsite for this project" and let me tell you, that put him #1 on my list (when he said that yes, I COULD put stuff in)
• A $4k swarovski pineapple. Oh.
• My only excursion out of the house today was because of The Learning Fair. (cue cursing) We needed books about Norman Rockwell's LIFE. NOT his paintings. Did you know he dropped out of school at 14? Great. Give my kid ideas.
• I have to dress my other kid up as Hank Aaron for TLF. I'm thinking of just printing a t-shirt saying "755 - no asterisk".
• He'll fail, won't he? But I do like this shirt.

Couch time.

Worth a try

I am going to take Suzy's polaroid camera and take photos of the way various things that are around the house and the way they SHOULD be. Freshly washed jeans should not be thrown on the floor of your closet when I built another closet so that my coats wouldn't be in your closet.

Or I will put cartoons on everything. A sketch of a towel, wearing sunglasses and a bikini, with the caption "Yes, I can take the heat! Dry me on the high setting so that I don't smell bad!"

Or maybe I will skip that plan and just leave a note.... "Gone to Vegas....seeya."

745

I am going to write up a numbered list of the things I repeat over and over.

Instead of yelling "SHUT THE D O O R" I can calmy say "842". They don't listen anyway. Actually I'll just skip the list and start saying random numbers like the on Lost.

This morning I am eating breakfast and looking out over a river at a mountaintop. Well, yes I'm in the parking lot of a fast food place, but you have to focus on the positive, right?
Carly(via Blackberry)

Crank me

The house whine list:

• I am sick. Very Sick, as in, I am so groggy that I was on the couch yesterday and Paula Dean was making a burger or sausage patty between two GLAZED DONUTS, with an egg and two strips of bacon added on, and I was too weak to change the channel.
• My cable phone is dead, possibly from the water lying about in my basement. (Water which will yield me an interesting crop of mushrooms, no doubt.)
• One of said basement walls is slowly buckling inward. Our yard is clay which presses against (my) basement walls and over time causes damage.
• I have somewhere else to be in 43 minutes and CAN'T wait for the repair guy, so I did a "come home NOW" phone call, which is always so kind and considerate.

Maybe I'll just go bang my head against that basement wall first.

Only one

...bead of sweat rolled down my face, but at least I did SOME time on the treadmill today. I put some bouncy stuff on my iPod because that cheap dvd player I got last year after the Friehofer's has died on me.

Those Black Eyed Peas, they kept telling me to pump it, louder, and all of a sudden, I was running and thinking "Woah... wait, I remember doing this." Apparently two hours after lunchtime is a great time for me. Who knew? Jogged about a mile at a rather slow pace, but... I moved. I broke a sweat. And I do mean A single drop of sweat.

Only 89 days until my race. I seriously have to get moving consistently.

A professional dancer tried to kill me

Last night I was at a black tie dinner. It was a big family shindig of sorts, because one of my extended family was being honored as a "person of the year" by this group. As part of the festivities he sang a duet with my daughter, so that rocked.

So I got to meet a young up and coming politician from this area who had no interest in talking to me whatsoever, because I am not a rich old man who will donate to his campaign.

My son wanted several items. There was a basketball signed by a pro - $900. Um. That is not a typo. So. No. Then he wanted a stereo. $150. The problem was that he just wanted to buy SOMETHING. Finally we found a silent auction item that was a gift card and a sports tote bag and that made him happy.

Later in the evening during the live auction he wanted to bid on a tour of one of the local tv stations, and immediately after his first bid he was outbid. He wilted and was devastated. The lady bidding against him noticed and told the auctioneer, "stop, you're giving it to me for what I just bid and I'm giving it to this kid. No more bids." He blinked, and then did exactly that, so it was awesome. I missed all of this. Arrrgh.

So then my son spent about 20 minutes talking to this lady and she could not stop laughing because my son is pretty hilarious when he's happy and excited, and he was over the moon about what she had done for him. He has always been pretty personable and converses easily with adults. (But it was very cool, a photographer took his picture during the cocktail hour, and asked his name, and he said "Uh, you better ask my mom." My kid is smart.)

Whenever I go to a dinner like this I buy the stick-on nails that have a french manicure design. I can't be bothered to go with the "real" acrylic nails - plus they are insanely expensive. Usually no one is the wiser. The press-on ones look nice, at the end of the night I take them off and I can go back to all of the typing I do on my blackberry and computers and not be aggravated by long nails. Last night they weren't staying on really well - the water in the restrooms was scalding hot and I washed my hands and then they felt really loose. It's hard being gorgeous, y'all. Costs too much money to do it right.

Right after dinner, but before the mad rush for the chocolates table (it is covered in desserts donated by various restaurants in the area) a professional dance team performed to one song. They were quite good, fun to watch. Apparently they compete and have titles and so on and... I didn't read that part of the program. But they were great.

Later in the evening they paired up with other people at the event. They guy danced with my sister in law, and then she pointed him at me. Oh, crap. By that time, over the course of the evening I had two glasses of champagne and at least 3 glasses of pinot grigiot. Ooops.

So this wonderful unsuspecting man is trying to lead me through some ballroom dancing, and I can feel him trying to give me cues by the way he's twirling my hand in his, and giving me nudges on the waist with his other hand.

There were just a few problems:

• I can't dance. Don't know how.
• I can't dance. I am not a quick study.
• See above, my alcohol intake was perhaps 500% of his.
• Every time he changed his grip on my hand to lead me into a different step, I had this momentary panic that one of my nails would pop right off in his hand.
• He moved FAST. I could barely keep up, and could not actually breathe.
• Family members laughing and pointing at me
• Nervous laughter on my part, due to all of the above items. Pretty much constant.
• I can't dance!

I was winded, because this guy really moves around, and from all of the laughing. It's not fun dancing backwards in high heels. Later my brother in law and I danced to songs like "Knock on wood" and yes, I am old.

Good times....I am sore today. I think I pulled muscles I didn't know I had. No, wait, I am old.