Today is the day that I congratulate my youngest son for reaching his 21st birthday.  Hard to believe it’s been 21 years since I entered the hospital that day.  But there it is.  My youngest child is now a legal 21 years old.  Pretty wild and wonderful!

Happy birthday, Chris!

You know that CD swap thing I was just talking about?  Well, the next two entries in the collection have been made.

I did receive my choice of male teen idols from the 50s through today.  Buzz came up with some really good people that I would not have thought of, but they all fit the bill.  (Oh, and, embarrassingly, I found out that all this time it was *NSYNC who sang “Bye, Bye, Bye” and not the Back Street Boys - my bad!)

Then Buzz made his choice - some dance music in the vein of “Around the World” by ATC.  I finished that up this morning.  I think I did pretty well but dance music is not a genre known well to me.  It made me stretch my boundaries a little, which is never a bad thing.

This is all cool, and now it’s my turn to pick again.  I can’t think of anything right at the moment.  But it’ll be fun coming up with something.

Might sound crazy,
But it ain’t no lie,
Bye, bye, bye

I recently re-read my first ever month’s worth of blog entries.  They were almost exclusively about music.  Damn.  Where has my mind been lately?  I want to get back to my roots!  I want to talk about music!  I want to have been so inspired about music that I just can’t wait to spout off about it - not caring who cares!

I did have a really good couple of weeks working on a disc for Buzz.  You see, we have this private CD swap thing going.  It starts with one of us thinking up a theme and then the other one going and making a great disc with music that they feel fits the theme.

The first disc was Buzz’s choice - some great sexy music.  I threw that together in about 15 minutes and now wish I had spent more time on it.  The disc I did was great but I’d like to give it some more serious thought.
The 2nd disc was my choice - music about animals.  That took a little longer and resulted in some very interesting selections.
Then Buzz’s choice - make a disc with “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star as the inspiration.  Buzz says that this is one of his favorite discs.  Isn’t that nice?
Then my choice - music with background vocals that stand out for one reason or another.  (You see, I’m totally into harmonies and background vocals.  Sometimes I hear those more than I hear the lead singing.)
Then Buzz’s choice - the best of Happy Rhodes.  (She’s got so much out there and neither one of us recognize many of the songs by name so it’s hard to pick and choose which songs to listen to.)

That’s the disc I just finished making.  Only it turned out to be a 2-disc set.  With a caveat.  I didn’t include much from her album, Warpaint, because that whole album is worthy of being included.  And that’s the album with which we are most familiar anyway so this was the chance to let the rest of her fabulous songs shine.  It was hard to whittle it down to only 2 discs!  But it’s done.

Now it’s my choice.  I delivered the message yesterday.  And what did I choose?  Male teen idols from the 50s through to today.  (But it has to be songs I like.) The wheels are turning in Buzz’s head, I can see them.  I can’t wait to hear what he has in store for me!

Things are good.  Life is finally straightening out after several months of uncertainty.  I’m on vacation after 9 months of no break.  We don’t have to host the Memorial Day thingy, which is good.  We just did Easter, fagoodnessake!

I should be dancing around like my little friend Calvin right below this post.

And yet?  Not so much.  I’m worried about Buzz, I’m still skeptical that things will fall apart like they were before life finally got straightened out, and I’m not doing great physically myself.

So here I sit.  Feeling strangely feh.  Would you please come over and plant some pretty flowers in my flower boxes?  They are in desperate need of sprucing up and I can’t even pull the trigger on choosing flowers.  Feh.

It’s 5:00.  I am officially on VACATION!!!  Woo!!!! 

*dances jiggity-jig*

It has been almost 9 months since we had a real vacation (meaning more than one day off in a row besides weekends).  And let me tell you, we have been feeling every one of those 9 months these last couple of weeks.  Hot damn!  No work until June 5th - when we do go back to work, it’ll be a whole other month!! 

*dances jiggity-jig*

Can you tell that I’m happy about this??

You can tell it’s a bad day when you come home and drown your sorrows in a martini (stirred, not shaken) with five olives and you serve it with your dinner of not one, but two hot dogs.  And the clincher?  You put CHEESE on your hot dogs!  That’s right - a martini with five olives and two cheese dogs!

That is evidence of a very bad day!

Today is Blog It Forward™ Day in the old blogiverse!  My mentions for BIF today are:

• Dana from Pretty Purple Princess.  Dana is really a beautiful light shining in the world today.  She’s a great mom and a great friend to a whole lot of people.  Her outlook is so uplifting and optimistic.  You can’t help but to feel better after reading her posts day after day.  She even got me to post about all good things that happened to me last August!  Given my situation at the time, that was pretty remarkable! 

• Keith from A Humble Beginning.  I’ve “known” Keith ever since the beginning, I think.  And soon we’re going to meet him IRL!  Keith is a great music lover.  He has eclectic and very interesting taste - and has shared many, many songs with both me and Buzz.  (And we truly appreciate them!) Plus, he’s got great taste in spicy cooking!

• Anji from Anji Patchwork.  Anji lives way across the world from me so I don’t always get her most recent pings when she updates.  Bad timing!  Anji is a very kind-hearted and friendly writer.  I always enjoy her posts about where she lives and things she’s seen and done around her home.

• Janet from Fond of Snape.  What an interesting and fun woman!  Whether it’s Led Zeppelin or Harry Potter or Don the Vampire or her latest tattoo - there’s always something wild and wacky lurking around the corner with Janet.  I’ve had the pleasure of swapping music CDs with her and having lots and lots of e-mail conversations with her.  She was always a great contributor to my MOTD (Man of the Day) entries, back when I did them, that is. 

So there you have it, folks.  My four entries for Blog It Foward™ day.  Go read them, if you don’t already.  You’ll be glad you did.

This is a soap post.  I don’t know why - these things just pop into my head.

When I was very, very little, I only remember one kind of soap in the house - Cashmere Bouquet.  But I think we might have used Jergen’s, too.  It’s what you did back in the 60s.  When I got to be a teenager and those things mattered so I noticed, we were using Dial.  I used Dial until I met Buzz, who used Safeguard.  I switched to Safeguard because I really liked how it smelled and felt clean.

At the age of 40 or so, I started having dry skin problems.  The dermatologist made me switch to Dove, which we used until yesterday.  We ran out of soap and the only kind in the house was Ivory, which is what is in the guest bathroom.  But since there were 8 bars of soap in there that no one will probably ever use, I thought it might be handy to just use one of them.  After all, Ivory was one of the soap choices I had from the dermatologist, too.

Talk about night and day!  Ivory is not one-quarter moisturizing cream (although, it is 99 44/100 pure) so it is a clean clean.  Solid, no film, just clean your body and get on with life, clean.  It also smells just the way that Ivory soap has always smelled.  It is a truly old-fashioned clean smell.  It was a very comforting experience when I first used it.  It’s not something I used as a child but I’m betting somewhere in my experience either a grandparent or a favorite aunt and uncle used it, because it is a familiar smell.  And it smells like simpler times.

*Click to enlarge the “Ivory Soap Fable"*

Now I am in no way the picture of fitness or health but some things just make sense to me in my head.

Several years back, I gave up margarine and switched back to butter exclusively.  Why?  Have you read the ingredients in margarine??  It’s frightening!  So I figured that a little bit of butter, made from milk, would be better for me.  I cut way back on the amount but stuck with the real thing.

So I got a chuckle when I saw the latest tip from RealAge:

Refuse to give up your margarine? It may leave you breathless.  Even adults can develop asthma, and loving your margarine may increase your chances, according to recent research. So toss the tub and enjoy a little pat of butter now and then. Better yet, switch to olive oil. Not only might it help keep your lungs clear, but it’ll improve your sauces and sautés, too.

I think that if we all stopped to think about what we are ingesting and in what amounts, we could all be healthier and live longer lives.  It’s that “amounts” thing that I struggle with.  Oh, and Oreos.  I struggle with those, too!

Have a great day!  And toss the tub - enjoy a little butter today!

I woke up fairly early this morning, but I had gotten 8 hours of sleep and I was OK with the hour.  I got up, made coffee, fed the cats and scooped the cat boxes.  That took 20 minutes.  Then I poured myself a cup of coffee and started on my latest book - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.  I got lost in it immediately and read for an hour and a half or so.  Then I got up and made myself a grilled cheese sandwich for breakfast - ‘cause that’s what I wanted to feed my rumbling belly!  And sat back down to read some more. 

Then the garden started calling me.  I stepped outside and found that it was cool with a breeze but no rain.  It’s been raining for a week so it’s perfect weeding time.  I went back inside and donned my Official Gardening Uniform for Cool Days™ - sweat pants, undershirt, fleece hoodie and baseball cap.  I grabbed my gloves and tools and set out with a reasonable goal - delete everything that is over 6” tall and not the remains of a spring flower.  Simple enough, right?  Not a lofty goal by any stretch.

Except that I forgot who I was talking to.  Me.  I don’t exercise much at all and none of it involves bending or kneeling.  So after about 5 minutes of pretty good weeding in about 18 square inches of garden (remember this is the first time this year I’ve weeded!), I modified my criteria.

“OK, now anything over 12” tall is history!”, I confidently vowed to myself, and attacked the next few square feet of garden. 

Then I tried to straighten up and couldn’t really do that well so I modified my criteria once again.  “That’s it - all you giant thistle weeds who are over 18” tall - you are OUTTA HERE!” And with that, I made my way about halfway down the front of the house. 

That’s when I stopped to come in for a uniform change.  The sun had come out and it was very, very sweaty under that fleece hoodie!  NOW I remember why the garden looks like it does and how much I completely hate to work outside! 

So now my baseball cap is off, the hoodie is back hanging up, and I’m sitting and typing in an undershirt and sweat pants.  What is my motivation to get out there are tackle the rest of those foot-and-a-half tall weeds?  When I could stay in here and pour myself another cup of coffee and see what’s happening in my book?

Thus my dilemma.  What would you do?

This is a bathroom post.  I apologize in advance.

Today I went into the ladies’ room.  There are three stalls in this particular one.  The first was ocupado and the other two were empty.  I headed for the third to give Stall #1 Person some space, ya know.  As I walked past Stall #2, I looked at the floor and saw the very corner of a Nabisco product right in the entry of the stall.  You know the famous corner of all Nabisco products?  The triangle with the weird symbol (which probably means something underground and sinister or else represents some ancient all-men cult-type group who originally came up with the recipe for the original biscuits, or something).

I tried to place this odd piece of foil.  I thought it could have come from a Nutter Butter vending pack, or it may have been from Swiss Creme cookies.  I couldn’t tell.

And then it occurred to me that someone at some point during the course of this day, took their pack of Nutter Butter Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies (or their pack of Swiss Creme cookies - not sure which) into the bathroom with them, opened it with a mighty tug at the corner of the package, and then headed into their stall to sit there and enjoy their tasty treats while otherwise engaged.

Ew.  Just ew.  Who does this kind of thing??

And with that, I head into my weekend.  Yay!  Hope you all have a wonderful time this weekend, whatever you are going to be doing.  Ta!

This was amongst a bunch of photos that my very good friend, ls, sent to me.  I love the texture in this picture.  You gotta love Photoshop, no?

*Click to enlarge*

It’s from somewhere in the galleries of www.worth1000.com but I could not find it to see if there was more to credit.

No matter how you feel about our current commander-in-chief, you should still find this funny.  Courtesy of my friend, Beavis.

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So, Dick Cheney is briefing George Bush in the Oval Office.
“Oh and finally, sir, five Brazilian soldiers were killed today in Iraq.”

Bush goes pale, his jaw hanging open in stunned disbelief. He buries his face in his hands, muttering “My God . . . my God”.

“Mr. President,” says Cheney, “we lose soldiers all the time, and it’s terrible, but I’ve never seen you so upset. What’s the matter?”

Bush looks up and says, “How many is a ‘Brazilian’?”

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Ba-dum-ching!

There are some classic “mom” things with which I suffer.  Most of them are no longer relevant, as my children are all grown.  But as they were growing up, I remember saying things like, “Get down from there before you break your neck!” (I don’t, however, remember ever saying, “You’ll shoot your eye out!”, a la Christmas Story.)

One of the ones that still remains raced through my mind at 3:45 this morning.  Our youngest was supposed to come by last night, put some things away that he had in the foyer, drop off the van that he borrowed and go back to his apartment.  When I got up to go tinkle at 3:45, I looked out at the foyer.  The things were still there.  The thought that raced through my mind?  “Where is he?  Is he lying dead in a ditch somewhere??” (He wasn’t - the van was in the driveway and he was sacked out in his old bedroom.)

But why do such clichéd phrases spring to mind in a moment of real panic?  Why?  And why a ditch?  Is it because that’s just so desolate and sad a place to make your final resting place?  Hmmm.

The last two days, I have had an overwhelming craving for Oreos right after lunch.  Not just any cookie - not just chocolate.  It has to be Oreos and it has to be double stuff.

I mean, I’m nearing the take-a-hostage state if I don’t get me some soon!