Spring Feverish Rationalizations

We have been having incredible weather here. Or maybe I am not using that word correctly. It's probably credible weather for this time of year. But what it really is, is wonderful. I have sat outside on the deck every day, starting on Saturday. Probably Monday was the day I sat out the least because I had a sort of spring cleaning fever. I mopped the kitchen, entryway and my bathroom and mopping is the chore I hate the most. I got a bunch of other stuff done too. So today (Tuesday), I decided I had earned a lazy sunning day. I had images in my head of spending the entire afternoon on the deck listening to the radio, drinking beer and maybe doing some crossword or sudoku puzzles. It seemed like a good plan. At one point, as I was sitting with my eyes closed, I started thinking that I should vaccum the library. Then I thought, "But the weather is so nice, I should do that when it rains." Then I thought, "I could do a blog post about rationalizing chores." Because at that moment, it seemed so obvious that I should just sit there and soak up the sun. But what happened was, I came in and cleaned out and closed up the fireplace:
I also ended up making the whole backyard area nice: tearing out all the dead stumpy stuff from the flower pots, bringing out the 3 flower pots from the garage - plants that somehow made it through the winter in there, and rearranging all the deck and patio furniture. I've always said that I was solar-powered and I maybe that's why I have trouble just sitting in the sun. It seems to give me energy and I need to move around. I did get a lot of sun and after the three prior days of already getting sun, I even used spf 30 on my knees, feet, chest, and nose today. I am loving all this sunshine (we hit 80° today) and feel so energetic, I'm going to go walk on the treadmill now.
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For XUP:
This is my latest incarnation of what to put on pasta:

No Apology

Many bloggers post apology blogs when they feel they are in a slump or have nothing pertinent to say, but I don't. Well maybe I did in the beginning, but who knows? cause I have no idea what I said two years ago. But I have noticed in the past two weeks that when I read a blog, even a very thoughtful or entertaining one, my brain just reacts with sounds like: Oooooh. or Oh! or Mmmm or yick. It's perfectly natural because I am in that crazy time frame: the cross combination of Spring Fever and March Madness. This is me:
I figured it might be hard to explain so I made that illustration. In my mind, it explains everything, no apology needed.
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On another note, I finally saw my old friend on Saturday night, the one that did this painting of Dad. I have four of her paintings. We lost contact for several years and a lot has happened in those years, but she is back in the area and had a showing Saturday night for Spring Gallery Night. It was ceratinly a unique atmosphere to reunite with an old friend. We had a lot of catching up to do. I imagine a lot of people have these exepriences where you reunite and wonder what happened. I certainly felt that. I will not lose site of her again. Because THAT would be something to apologize for.

Another Way To Kill Brain Cells

This afternoon I walked out to smoke and I was standing there enjoying my Camel Light and I thought, "Where was I? What was I just doing?" My brain felt woobly and floogly.
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Then I remembered that I had just spent 10 minutes of my life reading some entertainment website's comments on something to do with "American Idol":

And then I realized that reading those comments, which were either from brain-stunted 13 year olds or people from foreign countries who hate us and want to kill our heads, felt just like when you are partying with a friend and they talk you into taking several shots of tequila or some sort of schnapps or something and you kinda start to wake back up and think, "Why did I do that? What's wrong with me?" And you are filled with crushing remorse about all the damage you just did to your brain.

Diary of a Mad Man(iac)

I was inspired by Jazz's recent posts from her old journals. I do not have old journals. I have one diary that I kept in 1975. So it covers the last half of 8th grade, the summer, and the first half of 9th grade. It makes me laugh. I thought this entry was particularly stupid:
Here is the total of the entry:
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WOW!! (That's all I can say.) I had my date with KENNY tonite!! We went to see Tidal Wave & then we went and ate at PAPPY'S. When we got home --HE TOLD ME HE LOVED ME!!! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!! I hope he asks me out again!!! Dawn called me. She is BACK. (SHOCK!!) I hope her & Sandy get along good!! (But not too good.) Paula (Sandy's cuzzin.) is down for a week. WOW WOW WOW!!! I can't believe my luck --KENNY JONES!! Well I better go now. SEE YA!!
~
How stupid is that? "He told me loved me, I hope he asks me out again?" Whut?? That's the dumbest thing I ever wrote. And my grammar is appalling. Appalling! "I hope her & Sandy get along good!!" Oh my. That actually hurts my brain. And "we went and ate at" is hideous! And what's with the WEEEEEE thing? What the hell is that? And why did I never want my girlfriends to be friends with each other? Man, I was one pathetic puppy. I hope you enjoyed my August 10, 1975 entry. I may do some more later. Until then, WEEEEEEEEEEEE!

The Freaky Creepy Demon Head

When My Sweetie goes out of town, I often make him some cute little cards that I secretly tuck into his suitcase or toiletry bag for him to find on his trip. So if I made something like this:

I would have to start with a picture like this:

And since there was not enough space for text on the original picture I would copy the strip on the right:

And then extend the canvas and paste it on the right:

But instead of just pasting the strip, I flip it horizontally so there is not a big shadow line. Then I copy that part and flip it and paste until I have enough area for my text. Last week when I did this, I saw this creepy demon face:

I have enhanced that picture so you can see it better, but I gotta tell you, it gave me huge heebie jeebies when I saw that random pattern. I mean yeah, I had had many beers and it was probably 3:00 in the morning, but still. I was like, "What? What the hell is that? There is an evil demon in my monitor!" I immediately deleted the whole thing and started over. And then to settle my nerves, I realized that it is March Madness and this is my teams's logo:

So I decided that it was not some netherworld demon trying to get to me through my monitor but rather a sign that Duke will win the NCAA tournament. I really like that scenario better.

You Gotta be Kidding Me!

Well, guess what happened again?

So now I feel like I can't even ask: Can you believe it snowed here? And on the first day of spring? Because at this point, it seems like it snows here every 5 minutes. And although it's still bizarre, it has become sort of commonplace. I think we have had more snow this season than in the 30 years I have lived here. It's crazy!

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We did have some really nice days between the snows. I even had a great suntan going on, and then, and THEN, it snowed again. Seriously, this is getting ridiculous.

Busting a Myth

I can't actually say that I know what my readers imagine a Dallas/Fort Worth suburb is like, but I'd like to describe my visit to the U.S. Post Office today (Friday). I think you will be surprised. This was not a Post Office in either Dallas or Fort Worth but in my little suburb.
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The first guy in line was a large Mexican man in a wheelchair. Behind him was a young black lady. On the back of her T-shirt was a biblical verse about victory. I found this particularly interesting, because behind that lady was a Pakistani Muslim family of three. The teenage daughter was wearing a head scarf, but the mother's had fallen to her shoulders. The little boy was sweet and gave me a big smile when I walked in. I wondered if they had read the biblical passage on the back of the black lady's T-shirt. I noticed the teenage Muslim girl staring intently behind me and turned to see that the lady behind me was Indian.
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Behind the Indian lady was a very short tubby white guy. He was followed by a girl that was a Pacific Islander. As a matter of fact my suburb has one of the largest populations of this particular Pacific Islander group in North America (Wikipedia). Our local grocery stores know this and we have very interesting food choices.
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So anyway if you thought my suburb was all white bread, Ken and Barbie, you were mistaken. When I was in the post office, I felt like I was in the United Nations. And I loved it.

I Got My Irish Up

I went all out yesterday. It was fun. This is some strange guy at the bar that was also into it:

What to Expect From a 3-D Movie

I went to see Alice in Wonderland tonight with my daughter. I had no idea what to expect from a 3-D movie. The reason I went with my daughter is because, like Johnny Depp, My Sweetie has eye problems and can't do the 3-D thing. Remember these magic eye things from the 90's?:

Well, My Sweetie has never seen the dinosaur (or anything else they have projecting out of those things) in his life. I never had a problem with those things because you are supposed to relax your eyes and after a lot of beers I find it very easy to relax my eyes. Sometimes I would walk into a room with one of those things and see it right away.
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I didn't know how the 3-D glasses thing would work. I thought maybe they pass them around like shoes at a bowling alley and I didn't want to get head germs from some stranger. (That's why I always have my own bowling shoes.) I thought about taking my own because for some reason I have lots of the paper 3-D glasses. Even unused ones. I guess my husband brings them home from work. But I didn't take any and I'm glad, because we got different ones. They were plastic and like real glasses. Well, like real cheap sunglasses. They even fit over your regular glasses if you wear them. My daughter turned to me and said, "Cool. These fit over my glasses." I hadn't thought of that, but had my "movie glasses" in my purse. I pulled them out and put them on, and sure enough, the 3-D glasses went right over them.
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Before the movie even started a message came up on the screen that said "Put on your 3-D glasses now." We put them on and some 3-D movie trailers came on and all I could think of was this:

It was just like looking through the old View Masters, except the pictures were moving. I really loved those View Masters when I was a kid. I'm not sure why, but we never had any. I guess when wish list time came around we didn't think of those, but when we visited friends that had them we loved them. My cousin Ann used to get annoyed with me because as soon as I got into her room I would attack the View Master.
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If you came to this site looking for information about 3-D movies and you have never looked through a View Master, I can't help you, because that's exactly what it's like. Except for the movement and the things coming toward you. I liked the butterflies. It seemed like you could almost reach out and grab one. Not that I've ever grabbed a butterfly.
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Anyway, if you don't have any sort of eye problem like Johnny Depp and My Sweetie, you will get a real kick out of a 3-D movie. The only downside was I couldn't see my food at all. I ordered a southwestern chicken salad and have no idea if that's what it was, but there was some sort of lettuce and I got a few bites of avocado and one time tasted cilantro. But other than not being able to see my food, the experience was good and Alice in Wonderland was a fun movie. And I could see my beer just fine.

~ ~ ~And Happy St. Patrick's Day!~ ~ ~

Dad's Legacy

Dad. Puerto Vallarta, 1996.

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Dad and my step-mom were not married for a very long time and I was legally an adult when they married, but I still call her my step-mom and I still call her kids my step-brother and step-sisters. I love them all.
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I am in contact with some of them on Facebook and recently my step-brother moved from Colorado to Hawaii. I don't know what he does for a living, and I was curious about how he went from there to there. It must be quite a weather and wardrobe shock. I asked him how he ended up in Hawaii and this was his response:

How did I end up in Hawaii, well I think it has everything

to do with what a wise man once told me.

Your Dad, [Dad's Name], once told me that

it doesn't matter how educated you are,

but rather if you are willing to get up and

go to work every day, and work, you will be successful.

So I give your dad credit for the advice

that let a high school dropout work his way

to a life on the beach in Hawaii making six figures possible.

It's as simple as that.

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I told him how touched I was and asked him for permission to quote that on my blog. He said:

No, I don't care if you put it on your blog,

it's part of a legacy of a great guy.

~
Dad really was a "larger than life" type of person and if everyone's life were a novel, Dad would be a major character in enough books to fill a large home library. But lately, now that it has been over 11 years since Dad died, I was afraid that maybe people were starting to forget about him. Apparently I was wrong.

Friday Funky

WHAT WAS I THINKING?
I found these old pictures the other day and have no memory of wearing my hair like that. What's worse, I suppose, is that I must have paid someone to do that to me, because I've never styled my hair that way. My best guess is that these pics are from 1993 or 1994 (and obviously around Halloween because the porch has Halloween junk all over it). The event was a patent awards dinner for my second husband.:

My daughter and I saw these and were laughing (gagging) together, but we could not agree. She thinks the angle of the first two pictures is the worse and I think the angle of the last picture is worse. And yes, they are ALL horrible. Sort of fitting that it was Halloween.

Where Things G(r)o(w)

Every time that I start to run out of hair pins or clips, I am baffled and ask myself, "But where did they GO?" I do not throw them away. I don't take them out and set them down at the bar. Hell, I don't even take the clips out of my house. But over time both things begin to dwindle until I have to buy more.
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When I was a kid, a stand up comic explained what happened to paper clips. He said they grow up to become wire clothes hangers. Because you always have plenty of those. After giving that some thought, I figured this caterpillar/butterfly effect must also apply to my hair pins and clips. After trying to figure out what they morph into, I finally figured it out. These:

become these:
And these:

become these:

It makes perfect sense. And if you are a guy reading this and think it does not apply to you, maybe you can think of a guy thing that you use a lot that unexpectedly disappears when you want to use it. I'm sure there's something.

Whoa! That's Me!

Since I got the local Meals On Wheels route, I've eaten lunch afterwards at the same place every Friday, except that one Friday that I HAD to have Mexican food. Last Friday, for some reason I happened to turn my head to the side while I was flossing my teeth. I nearly fell out of my "seat" when I saw a face there. I had never noticed that the black tiles in the bathroom were reflective:

More Time = Less Productivity

These are my wet clothes that are currently in the washing machine and will have to spend the night in there:
Our laundry room is next to the master bedroom and I don't want to take a chance on waking up My Sweetie just because I forgot to put these clothes in the dryer. Besides, the dryer is full of my white load.
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I got up almost two hours earlier today than I usually do because I had to get a roast in the oven and I hardly got any of the stuff done that I had planned to do. I've been noticing for some time now that when I get up earlier, I get less stuff done. I have a few theories on that:
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I think that maybe because I seem to have all this extra time that I tend to move alot slower. I guess I lazily saunter about thinking, "I got up early. I have all the time in the world." Or maybe I'm just more productive when I feel a time crunch? I have always been pretty quick and efficient when I'm in a hurry.
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I don't know exactly what it is, but it happens every time. Now I'm going to have all this stuff to do when I wake up. I guess from what I have learned, I should sleep very late. That sounds like a plan.

My First Oscar Win!

Every year My Sweetie and I compete to guess the Oscar winners and every year he beats the crap out of me. But not this year. We started out tied, and then he pulled ahead after "best animated feature" was announced. I had picked Fantastic Mr. Fox over Up, which was kinda stupid, but it is what it is. As soon as he took that first lead, I thought, "Okay same as every year, here he goes." But it was not to be. I pulled right back up to our tie with "best sound mixing." I had The Hurt Locker and he had Avatar. (Also I may not have these in the exact right order.) My Sweetie pulled ahead again with "best art direction" as he had picked Avatar and I had picked Nine. I came right back though with best original song. I had picked the one from Crazy Hearts just because I think T Bone Burnett is cool, while My Sweetie had gone with the song from Nine. And after that he never beat me again. Altogether, we had 8 where we picked the same winner and 10 where we both picked the wrong folks. But I pulled ahead on best actress. My Sweetie went with Gabourey Sidibe and I of course picked Sandra Bullock although I had been second guessing it all day (thinking they might go with Meryl Streep). And for my last and final win over My Sweetie I picked The Hurt Locker for best picture and he had chosen Avatar. It was fun finally winning after all these years, but what really happened was My Sweetie's luck finally ran out. Of those 10 we both missed, he usually got about 4 or 5 of those. Categories like: Documentary Short, Live Action Short Film and Animated Short Film. He always just guessed and got lucky. Not this year.

The Martin Scorsese Curse

We went to see Shutter Island tonight and some frikkin bisch from hell sat near us and wafted stinky perfume on us throughout the whole movie. It was horribly distracting although I tried a million different things to try to get past it. I've even changed clothes since I got home and it seems like I can still smell it. The last Scorsese film we saw was The Departed and that ended up horribly with a family in front of us with a horde of loud children - at a movie with sex, drugs and violence. What is it about Scorsese films that brings all the freaks and losers to my movie theater? I guess we will just have to rent the next one.

Friday Facebook Funny

My Mountain of Mistaken Memory (Redux)

Pikes Peak

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I don't know what happened with that last post. I started out to tell a simple goofy story and went all over the place.
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So while we were in Colorado and saw Pikes Peak, I kept telling everyone that there was a Pike in my family. I was wondering aloud if I was related to Zebulon Pike. When we got home, I called Mom and asked, "Do you think we are related to Zebulon Pike through Granny Pike?" Mom was all, "Huh?" She asked me who was Granny Pike. I told her, "Granny PIKE! We went to see her alot when I was a kid." Mom told me we had no Granny Pike. I was very confused.
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I've often astounded family members with my specific childhood memories from a very early age. I've remembered all sorts of details that surprised my parents, my brother and old childhood friends, so this Garnny Pike thing was very confusing. And then I remembered.
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I had a good friend that had a Granny Pike and I often went with her to visit her grandmother from the age of 9 to the age of 11. Somehow her Granny Pike, became my Granny Pike. How stupid is that? Now I wonder if my friend might be related to Zebulon Pike.
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So that was my original story. Sorry for the weird soap opera ramblings in the last post.

My Mountain of Mistaken Memory

That's a picture of my daughter at a ski lodge in Colorado. I wanted to use the one of her playing in the snow with Pikes Peak in the background but for some reason, after spending what seemed like 4 hours looking for that particular photo and finding every other photo from that trip, I couldn't find that one. But I love this picture. She's wearing her Snoopy sweatshirt that says "Wild Child." I thought that was such a perfect shirt.
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Thanksgiving weekend 1987, my first husband, my second husband-to-be, Kate and myself went on a road trip to Colorado to visit my second husband-to-be's sister who was my best friend. Confused yet? Anyway the sister, who deserves a whole paragraph to herself lived in Colorado Springs.
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I can't think of a good pseudonym for the sister because her name is too interesting to match. She was strikingly gorgeous, with a sort of mint green crystal-colored eyes. She had a Master's Degree in engineering. She was an artist, played guitar, piano, and sang like an angel. She also could fly an airplane. I think she wore a size 2. She was also very athletic and ran marathons, played softball and was quite competitive at mixed gender fun sports like bowling and pool. And she could sew. You are probably just as confused as I am that she and I became best buds.
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Anyway, the four of us drove up to the sister's house in Colorado on Thanksgiving day. The driving part went very well because I had come up with a great driving rotation plan. All three adults alternated driving. The rotation went tlike this: Driver moves to passenger seat, backseat rider sitting next to three-year-old becomes driver, passenger seat person moves to backseat. It made brilliantly perfect sense. The person who had just driven needed to relax (passenger seat) and the person that had been in the backseat "entertaining" the kid was ready to drive. That was quite a crazy trip because we ran into some sort of highway bandits on a long deserted stretch of empty Texas highway. I don't think they were expecting someone like my first husband though. It was one of those deals where they feign car trouble and we stopped and it was all blizzardy. My second husband-to-be, being a meeker sort and very bright, picked up on something right away, and after telling my first husband, who had a child in the car, got his own hackles up, and we made our escape.
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We got to the sister's house late that night and had a fun party time. I guess we left the next day to drive up to the ski place. I had no interest in skiing. I had a bad skateboard accident in college and equated that in my mind with skiing so Kate and I spent the afternoon in the ski lodge while my two ex-husband's, my ex-best friend (the sister) and her guy pal went skiing.
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I am having a hard time telling this story because there is a lot of story to this story and yet nothing so far has anything to do with the story that I am trying to tell.
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Hmmmm. I had just typed some very deep stuff right here, but blogger blorggled on me and I am going to take that as a sign not to post that stuff. Anyway, I got way off track and the original story about my mistaken memory was light and goofy and I'll tell that part tomorrow.

Monday Musings

Money: I booked our trip - flight and rental car - for our May beach trip and it was $80 cheaper than last year and we will have the rental car an extra day than last year. That seems strange to me. I thought the cost of stuff was going up?
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Word Fusion: I am constantly fusing words together because my brain thinks of two different words at the same time and today I said "mirffed" because I was thinking "irked" and "miffed."
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Chili: I've been making chili with ground chicken for several months now and I like it so much better than beef. I wish I had thought of this years ago.
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MOW: My route is so great and easy and logical now that I'm uneasy, thinking maybe I'm being punked or something.
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Time: How is the year 1/6th over already? Didn't it just start?
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Exercise: To kick off my annual plan to start exercising I've come up with a slogan: Operation Beach Butt. Because a good slogan is all I need, right?
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Sheets: Why would sheets that have fit so well for almost a year suddenly be too small for the bed? Did the bed grow or did the sheets suddenly shrink?
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Humidity: It's always so dry here in the winter and I am always running two humidifiers and cleaning them and keeping them filled, so when I decided to do all that carpet steam cleaning, I thought it would help, but the humidity gauge didn't go up one point. But the carpets dried pretty quickly. Where did all that moisture go?
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The Olympics: I really loved watching all the exciting competitions and there will be lots of things that we will always remember, but I'm looking forward to getting back to all my favorite shows. And that closing ceremony was dorky as hell.
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Happy Monday and Happy March and Happy Musings.