O.M.G. - You are gonna love this!

The new cast of the upcoming season of Dancing with the "Stars" has been announced!

Here it is:

• Ricki Lake (Former talk show host/actress)
• Rob Kardashian (Kim Kardashian's brother)
• Chaz Bono (Transgender advocate)
• Kristin Cavallari ("The Hills" star, pictured above)
• Chynna Phillips (Wilson Phillips)
• David Arquette (Actor)
• Elisabetta Canalis (George Clooney's ex)
• Nancy Grace (News anchor)
• Hope Solo (Soccer player)
• Ron Artest (Los Angeles Lakers player)
• J.R. Martinez ("All My Children" star)
• Carson Kressley ("Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" star)

Carson Kressley!!!  Can you believe it?  I adore him!  Yay for Carson!

And don't you love how Rob Kardashian and Elisabetta Canalis have to have someone else's name in their bio to explain how they got to be considered as "Stars"??

Looks like a good cast and I am excited about it.  Now we have to figure out who is going to be paired up with which professional dancer.

I bet they give that obnoxious pain in the ass Nancy Grace to Maks.  That would be hilarious footage to watch him yelling at her.

Rumor has it that Derek Hough is going to be back this season.  They will probably give him Chynna Phillips or the chick from The Hills.

Who in the world will they give to Carson?  Maybe Kim Johnson?  or Cheryl Burke?  Hopefully not Karina Smirnoff.  I won't be able to stand it if she yells at him.

Lots of stuff!

I have so many things flitting around in my head to tell you about and pictures to show you!

First up!

Just when you think you have seen everything, you haven't.  Check this out:  We were driving through a parking lot and saw this truck with shrimp decals on the back window and then saw the driver's door.

In case it wasn't clear enough, I got a much closer view below.

THE SHRIMP PIMP!  It's a Shrimp Pimp-mobile!!

When's the last time you saw one of those?  I'm gonna go out on a limb and say probably never.  Ha!

And now, let me share with you my latest project.  Do you remember a long while back I showed you pictures of the cute trivets I was going to make when I got enough metal bottle caps saved up?  Well, after having some family members here for a good long visit we accumulated a great supply of bottle caps.  Yay!!

Here is the little tub I have been collecting the caps in.  A varying assortment of beer, ginger beer, root beer and I guess some non-beer caps!

Next to the bottle caps you will see that I am using just plain #10 cotton crochet thread.  I have scads and scads of that stuff.  Small amounts of about every color under the sun leftover from other projects.  Just the right thing to use on this and turn a leftover bit of thread and a rescued-from-the-garbage bottle cap into something useful and cute as hell!

As I make up the crochet-covered caps I am storing them in a ziplock bag while I accumulate enough to put them together in some sort of cute trivet design.

And here are the first two I have finished!  They are going to be my sister-in-law's birthday present. She has the cutest 1950's all original kitchen in shades of blue and yellow.  It is bright, sunny and just as cute as it can be.  I wanted to be sure to take photos of them before I give them to her.  Shhh, don't tell her!

Aren't they awesome?  I am so excited to get even more made!  I have loads of cotton thread.  Certainly enough to make hundreds of trivets.  It's just the bottle caps that I have to keep stocked up on.  I have been picking them up off the street and in parking lots too.  Any that I find that aren't flattened out or too bent are snagged and taken home and washed.

If you look closely at the photos, you can kind of make out that there are different color caps underneath the thread.  I gotta tell you, this is shaping up to be one of my favorite projects!

And if that wasn't enough cuteness already?

I have some pics of the little mama kitty and the one remaining baby kitty that we have been fostering. The little boy kitten has already gone to his forever home and has been given the moniker of Ollie.  Very cute.

You'll see what I mean when I have been saying that the little mama kitty didn't appear to be any more than 6 to 8 months when she gave birth.  She had these babies on July 4th, so they have been with us for 7 weeks today.  And this is probably their last week with us (and together) as they will each be making their way to their respective new homes.  Awwww.

Check them out:

See, you probably thought this was the baby because she is so small, but nope.  That's the tiny mama!

Here's the teensy baby kitty hiding under the table so that I won't take her picture and steal her soul or whatever it is that baby kitties might think!

There she is again!  Hiding under a chair.

And here's the mama kitty with her savior and rescuer.  Isn't she precious?  Look at those stripes!

And here's the baby.  Awwwww!

Look at that little bundle of trouble!

And here's one more of the mama kitty sitting on a foot stool looking up at me. What a pretty, dainty little girl.

Spicy Scallops Recipe

Remember way back a couple weeks ago when I was telling you about the scallop debate?  Whether to buy the smaller bay scallops (imported from China AND raised in a "farm") or get the larger wild-caught U.S. scallops that were not exactly perfect for the recipe?  And I promised to post the recipe for you?

Well, here it is!

First off, this comes from a cookbook my mama gave me for Christmas back 1993.  It is called Accents of the Orient - Eastern Influence on Western Cooking.   Just in case you love this recipe as much as I do and you want to find your very own copy of this book.  Most likely you will need to check Amazon or a used book store as I can't imagine that it is still in print all these years later.


Spicy Scallops


2 Tbsp unsalted butter
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 Tbsp minced fresh gingerroot
1 Tbsp minced garlic
1/2 cup sliced green onions
1 1/2 lbs bay scallops
1/2 lb cherry tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup sake
1/4 cup whipping cream
1 tsp sambal oelek
2 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1/2 tsp Kosher salt


Heat the butter and oil in a large skillet over high heat. Add the gingerroot and garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the green onions and cook for 30 seconds longer. Add the scallops and cook until barely opaque, about 1 minute longer. Add the tomatoes and cook until soft, about 2 minutes. Stir in the sake, cream, and sambal. Bring to a boil; stir in the cilantro and salt, then serve.


Makes 4 servings. 
Their notes: Scallops are one of the sweetest of the sea's treasures, perfect for all kinds of quick dishes. This one is made with a creamy sauce flavored with spices of the East. Serve it over plain rice, with quickly sauteed green beans, snow peas, or spinach on the side. To complete the meal, add a salad of mixed greens.


**My notes:  See why you need the smaller scallops?  So they are similarly sized to the cherry tomato halves.  You know I never use the green onions, but I do everything else exactly as written and this is so delicious you will just love it.  I usually make jasmine or basmati rice and serve it with either the green beans or asparagus.  But the snow peas idea is what I am going to do next time.


Last time when I did this with the larger sea scallops, I cut them in half so that they would cook faster, more like the smaller ones.  It worked perfectly.


I hope you try it and let me know what you think.


¡Buen Provecho!

Dog Food and the making thereof

I have made my dogs' food for about 15 years.  Yes, that would be right because the 2 oldest are over 14 and have only been given store-bought food as an occasional treat.  Like you give your kids a healthy diet and throw in the odd outing to McD's for a junk fest.

This came about at the dawn of the internet age and I was doing some research and found some information on the horrible shit that goes into mass-produced pet foods and the problems it may cause in your pets.  The list of symptoms went on and on and read like my last dog, Sammy's, vet records.  I was horrified that all the health issues he had could have been brought on by my buying commercial dog kibble and I was unaware and apparently so were all my vets, as not one of them ever suggested this as a root cause.

That led to more and more research as to what goes into dog (and cat) foods and what alternatives there could be.  It took me back to when my first-born Sparky was just a small chubby baby and I had stocked the pantry with jars and jars of Gerber's in anticipation of his moving up to baby foods.  And then the news hit that there were recalls of Gerber's due to ground glass showing up in the food.

Now I may not know a lot about a lot of things, but I knew that ground glass was NOT one of your top nutrients for growing a healthy child.  So I went to the store and bought a baby food grinder.  Just one of the hand crank items that is easy peasy to clean and use and went to town making my own.

This is the same philosophy I applied to the dog food situation.  Make your own.

If you make your own, you can control the calories, the worthless fillers, the crap that doesn't need to be in there and provide a clean, healthy, nutritious chow for your dogs.  It costs so little compared to the bagged stuff, AND!  get this!

When you make your own and you don't add in a bunch of things that your dog's body doesn't need and only things it does need, most of the food gets metabolized and you have LESS WASTE coming through your dog.  Now, who doesn't want THAT for a side benefit?

I have 3 dogs.  A 14 1/2 year old Siberian Husky of about 40+ pounds, a just 14 year old Mini. Schnauzer of 20-something pounds, and a 4 year old pitty-mix of 75 pounds.  I make one big pot of dog food per week.  It lasts between 7 and 8 days for all 3 dogs.  The Schnauzer gets 1/2 cup per meal, the Husky about 1 cup and the big dog gets 1 1/2 cups all twice a day, double it for once a day feedings.

I spent quite a bit of time researching dog foods and typing up recipes and put them all in a binder.  But what has happened over the years is that I have settled on a recipe and vary it up a bit each week.

Write this down and follow it and I swear you will never go back to store-bought kibble for your doggies.

And I am sorry I am not going to be able to do this in a traditional recipe format, I have too many sidenotes to do it that way.  Here goes!

Natural Dog Food Recipe

6 pounds lean meat (either ground turkey, beef, chicken or whole chicken pieces)
3/4 cup canola oil
4-5 cloves garlic (there are TONS of people on both sides of the "can dogs eat garlic" debate, I come down on the "yes they can" side.  If you don't, then leave it out)
10 cups of chopped, shredded vegetables (sweet potatoes, carrots, broccoli, cabbage, green beans, kale, spinach, celery, cauliflower, bean sprouts, red peppers, beets, lettuce, tomatoes)
2 or 3 cans of kidney beans (sometimes I use lentils, too)
1/2 cup molasses
3 cups raw rice OR 32-42 oz. dry raw oatmeal

Optional: you can add in eggs, crushed shells and all.
Also a doggie vitamin for good measure.  Recipe for a good supplement powder to follow, if you want to make your own.

In a really large stock pot brown the meat in the oil.  If you are using whole chicken pieces rather than the ground, start by boiling it instead.  Then add the oil and the rest of the ingredients to the chicken and the stock, after you have taken the chicken out and deboned it and returned it.

Now that you have the meat and oil in the pot, add the vegetables, the balance of the ingredients and a quart or more water.  You will need more water if you choose rice and less if you do the oats.  Also if you use rice, turn the heat down and let it cook till the rice is tender and the liquid is absorbed.

If you use the oats, add the water and then cook just a few minutes stirring well so that it doesn't stick like crazy and turn off the heat while it continues to absorb the liquid.

**My notes:  What I have found is that my dogs can't tolerate white potatoes, corn, peas or other starchy vegetables.  They get horrendous gas.  My Husky can snatch up a mouthfull of food and spit out all the lentils whole with not a toothmark on them.  Don't ask me how she manages to do that little trick!

Dogs don't need extra salt added, so do not add any.

Here is the recipe for the Healthy Supplement Powder in case you want to make your own to sprinkle on the food:

2 cups nutritional yeast
1 cup lecithin granules
1/4 cup kelp powder
9,000 mg. calcium or 5 tsp of ground eggshells
1,000 mg. vitamin C powder

Mix well and sprinkle 1 tsp. on each dog's meal.

When you gotta go, well, you gotta go!

Reading the news this morning online and in between all the important and urgent life-changing articles is one that I HAD to click on.

Was it about the Republicans and the whole passel (passle, pasell? how do you spell passel?) of wieners they are trotting out as possible Presidential candidates?

Nope.

Was it about Big Tobacco and lobbyists?

Nope again.

It wasn't even the one about the Real Housewives of whatever and the husband of one of them committing suicide. (I read that one yesterday)

No, the must-see article was about Gerard Depardieu.

Remember him?  This is a photo of him before he got older, fatter, and not just fatter but rather bloated looking.  Nowadays he looks more like this.

Anyhoo, the article was not about how much larger Mr. Depardieu can continue to get, but this:

Seems that he was on an Air France flight that was delayed.  And we all know how much fun THAT can be.  So they have hundreds of you crammed in to a small space and making you sit there and wait.  And while you wait they ply you with drinks to keep your mind off the fact that you are sitting in a sausage-shaped tin can waiting.  Waiting and breathing recycled air.

After a good amount of waiting and an even larger amount of libations have been served the flight finally takes off and the good Mr. Depardieu needed to go relieve himself.  Which is exactly the position I would find myself in.  And being a 62 year old man who hasn't had to ask permission to go pee for the past, oh say, 61 years, he attempted to get up and go to the toilet.

The air hostess/bar maid/stewardess person told him the plane was still climbing to cruising altitude and he would have to sit back down.  He tried to explain his predicament and was told essentially "tough shit. go sit down for 15 more minutes".

And being the grown-ass allegedly drunk Frenchman he is, he took that news in the manner you might think.


He unzipped, whipped it out and proceeded to piss on the carpet of the main cabin of the plane.


Really?  Can you imagine yourself in such a position?  What would you do?  I mean, really, if you have to go, what are your choices?  My guess is that he and his 62 year old prostate could not physically wait another 15 minutes.

The article does not say whether the authorities were called upon landing, or if he was charged with anything.  If it had been a US airline, you can guaran-damn-tee there would have been hell to pay. Stupid Southwest has kicked people off for wearing short skirts.  Imagine what they would have done if someone had shown their schlong!

While I don't agree with pissing in public and then the rest of the people having to smell it the whole damn flight, there has to be a better solution.  If the airlines are going to shove liquid refreshments  at us to keep us still and happy they have to know it is going to have to come out and be prepared for the consequences.  It takes forever for them to get the carts up and down the aisle to serve the whole plane something and by the time they get to the end of the plane, those in the front are already getting antsy and wanting to get up to relieve themselves.

It's a sticky situation.


Bahahahahahahahaha!!!!

Sorry, I just had to say that!

o.m.g. & w.t.f.??

So, the other night it was about 11 p.m. and Sparky and I were watching some shows we had dvred earlier. We were also doing the After Dark Kitty Roundup.  Everyone was in except Stanley Manley.

That's Stanley up there with his one blue eye and his one green eye and his spot on his nose.  He is quite the looker, he is.

Stanley was just chillin' on the front porch and observing whatever goes on at night in our front yard.

When all of a sudden we heard a loud dog barking right up against our front door!  This doesn't happen at our house.  Our dogs never and I mean NEVER go out front.  And we knew Stanley was out there so we were up and Sparky hit that front door like a shot!  I was right behind him.

And we found Stanley up in the flower beds with a pack of 5 large feral mutt dogs clamoring for him.  They quickly realized we meant business and they took off.  We could see them running down the street into the night.  After grabbing up Stanley and pitching him inside we surveyed the area to see what we could see.

I went inside and we checked Stanley over to see if he had any wounds or anything and he seemed to be all there.

The next thing I did was to get on my neighborhood HOA yahoo group site and make a report of the pack of dogs.

In the morning I checked my email and had damn near 20 responses of people who have seen these dogs doing the following:

A. Chasing an early morning jogger (reported by the jogger)

B. Chasing a cat

C. Chasing our neighborhood deer

D. Catching and killing one of the fawn

E. Killing a cat 2 streets over

F. Just this morning, mauling a cat who later died at the emergency vet's office

Now, I don't know about you but this scares the hell out of me.  We have a LOT of older residents who are not-so-swift, shall we say?  We have a fair amount of feral cats that have all been caught, neutered, vaccinated and returned to their locale.  And additionally, we have a lot of early morning walkers, joggers and some are with and without dogs. What I am saying is there are a ton of slow moving and unsuspecting potential victims of this pack of dogs.

Our neighborhood is older and established and has a lot of great hiding places for wildlife.  I have seen many a deer, possum, raccoon, and foxes.  We also have hawks, buzzards, owls and all the smaller birds.  But a pack of dogs that seem to have teamed up and gone feral?

The local Humane Society is right across the road from us.  And people gather up their unwanted pets and take them over there thinking they can just drop them off.  That's not the way they work.  You have to call ahead, you have to have an appt., you have to be there between certain hours and you have to pay or they won't take these poor animals.  And do you think those people are going to make the appointment and take the pets back home and care for them until the appointed day and hour?

Of course NOT!  They come across the street here and dump them in the green space and think they will fend for themselves.  Like a German Shepard or pit bull has ever lived in the wild and will recall how to find food, shelter and defend themselves.  It is interesting that domesticated animals that have no idea how to find food and all that will instinctively band together to form a pack and try to survive that way.

I am scared for my little old neighbor who walks all up and down our street every day looking out for all of us.  I am scared for my around the corner neighbor who has taken in so many abandoned little dogs and cats and walks them every day.  And the little kitties who are just trying to keep body and soul together till the end of their days?  Well, this is horrific for them.  They have no safe place to get indoors.

Everyone has called Animal Control Services, but they are so under-staffed who knows when they will get there.  And when they do?  No one seems to know where the dogs are denning up during the day to sleep to even find them.  This is not a good situation and I don't see a good outcome for those dogs at all.

Have any of you dealt with a similar occurence?  I am not sure what to do except to warn my neighbors with small pets, children and the elderly.

My cats have not been outside since this happened and not for the foreseeable future.  And I was looking into putting something out front for the deer as a water source for them, but I think I better not.  As much as I want to help them through this drought, it would be easy for the dogs to use it as an ambush location. And that would just kill me.  Dead.  Good Lord, this is just horrific.

Any ideas?

List of Six

I just got an email that talked about the List of Six.  I am over 50 flipping years old and am just now being told about this! What gives?  Why am I always out of the loop?

Apparently there is a List of Six things that you are allowed to be as snobby about as you want to be.  But only six.  After that you are just being a snob and no one wants to put up with your triflin' ass.

This article gave examples of the perfect cup of coffee, hubcaps, head-turning boots, whatever floats YOUR boat.  You are allowed six items to be that particular about and the whole world will be with you and support this.

So of course I had to start thinking about what my perfect List of Six might be.  And as they love to say on DWTS, "here in no particular order" is my list.

1. Vosges Chocolate Bars

Have you tried these?  Oh. My. Freaking. Goodness.  The absolute BEST chocolate bars made.

The very first one I ever tried is the Red Fire Bar.

It's like letting all the best things about Mexico melt on your tongue at the same time.  Deep chocolate, vanilla, a little cinnamon, and then different types of dried chiles that wake up the back of your throat. Lordy, lordy, I don't even know what to tell you about this one.  It is still my favorite, even after trying so many others.

My second favorite bar from Vosges is the Mo's Bacon Bar.  Chocolate, applewood bacon and alderwood smoked salt all combine to make the perfect taste experience ever.

Until . . . . .  My sister bought me a box of Vosges Mo's Bacon Chocolate Chip Pancake Mix!

I know, right!!!

Some warm pure maple syrup on top of those babies and you will want to sit right up and slap your mama.  It's like a bit of heaven on a fork.

So yeah, I am gonna be a snob about the Vosges chocolate.  Check out their website to see all the outstanding flavor combinations and giftie stuff they have.

2. This one is going to be completely different, but I am going to be a pushy advocate here.  I have become extremely selective about how things are packaged, where they come from and how those companies choose to treat their employees and Mother Earth.  So if I have a choice of a product that is inexpensive but bad environmentally produced or an alternative that is much more sustainably produced and more expensive I am going to support the sustainable one.  Less often due to the cost, but enough so that they know to keep doing what they are doing.

Case in point; I was looking for some bay scallops for a recipe the other day.  Bay scallops are the cute smaller ones about the size of mini marshmallows, not the big ones you want to wrap with bacon.  The store I was at had 2 scallops, the big ones and the little ones.  I needed the smaller ones for my recipe (which I need to share with you) but on the sign in the scallop bin in the fine print it said 2 things that got me. 1. Farm Raised and 2. Product of China.  Ewww and Ewwwww.  There was so much wrong with that product there was no way in hell I was going to buy it.

If you don't believe me just go google factory farming of fish and seafood and see what you think.  Then think about doing that in China.  They are willing to put melamine in the baby formula, put almost nothing in their cheaper drugs so essentially you are wasting your money and NOT getting well by taking them, and to top it all off these scallops then have to be shipped all the way across the world to get here.  That sounds safe and appetizing, doesn't it?

By the by these farm-raised Chinese bay scallops were going for 5.99 per lb.

The other scallops that I ended up buying claimed to be wild-caught from the U.S.A.  They were 15.99 per lb.

I consider the extra $20. I paid for those 2 lbs. of scallops a bargain.  And if it meant that I couldn't afford the difference, then we would have had beans and rice instead.  Be selective and never settle for an inferior product.  I promise you won't be happy with it anyway.

So that is my number 2.

3. My Teva sandals.

I used to be a shoe-holic.  I had so many pairs of shoes it was crazy!  Like more than 100 crazy.  That's how crazy I was about shoes.  Love the shoes!  I still love shoes.

But if I look at my life on a day-to-day basis and what I do and where I go and what I wear to these things, I see a pattern of wearing the same 7 or so pairs of shoes on a more consistent basis and the others less often.

And I said to myself the other day, "Self, if you could only have one pair of shoes for the rest of your days, which ones would they be?"

My Teva sandals.  Hands down. Number one choice, no debate.  Love the Tevas!  Other than dressing up, there is nothing you can't do in these shoes.  Nothing.

4. Giant screen t.v., cable and dvr.

Oh please!  I know it makes me look like a wiener that watches too much mind-numbing t.v.  But have you met me?  I can't imagine any person that loves their t.v. as much as I do.  And t.v. combined with a great cable package with a dvr?  Well, you have just hit the motherlode!!

I can think of many, many things I would, and do, give up to keep that t.v., cable, dvr combo going.

5. Customer Service.

I am fanatical about great customer service.  If you as a company don't care enough to put your best people in the front lines dealing with your customers, you don't deserve to have my money end up in your profits.  That's it.

Treat me with respect, consideration and above all, do what you say you will do.  Have some integrity, for heaven's sake!  And I will be a loyal customer forever.  But you fuck me over and treat me badly (speaking directly to YOU dickweeds at Home Depot) and that's it.  We are done.  I will never, never darken your door, I will never drop another penny into your coffers and I WILL tell every single person I ever come in contact with about your shoddy excuse for customer service.

Oh hell, now I have gone and gotten on my high horse about the jackwagons at Home Depot again.

I treat my clients with the respect that I expect to be shown and can't imagine why it should ever be otherwise.  And this is why I am happy with T-Mobile.  They are always, and I mean ALWAYS, great to deal with.

Yay T-Mobile!!  (boo, hiss on the Home Depot)

6. My Borsa Bella Bag.

I have shown you my Borsa Bella bag before.  (Good Lord, that was alliterative!!)

This is the fabric I chose.  It's called Kleo Pink.  Isn't it gorgeous?  I have the larger Kindle DX and so I have the larger eReader bag to house it.  In the front zipper pocket I have room for the headphones, the little reading light, the charging cord and any other little things I need to have with my Kindle.

If you have an electronic device of any kind , an iPad, an eReader, a laptop, whatever it is, if you want to carry it around with you safely and in style you should have a custom-made Borsa Bella Bag.   I truly love my Borsa Bella bag.  Enough so that I called Melissa and had her custom make a particular bag with a certain fabric and do custom monogram on it for my mama for her birthday.

So go check out Borsa Bella Bags and tell Melissa I sent you.  She had a deal on facebook for a while that if you liked her page she would give you a code for a discount.  Check it out and see if it is still running.

Okay, that's my List of Six for today.  I am sure if I made it again next week it might be different.  Maybe not.  But it's a woman's perogative to change her mind.  Just ask Bobby Brown!

Please do share your List of Six here, I would love to see them.

No regrets

No regrets, that's a great motto.  If you have to live your life by a motto, try that one.

Recently facebook has exploded with those silly-ass nostalgic "remember back when in your home town" pages and people have just gone fucking NUTS posting memories.  How many of those pages are you a member of?

I am in 4 of them in addition to the 2 pages for my high school.  This is a lot of reading to wade through, people!

And then?

Then someone had the idea to put up a memorial page for my high school.  O. M. G.!  You would swear that my home town was empty there are so many dead people listed!  I got out a pad of paper and started making a list of all the people (okay it's really 2 lists, one of my graduating class, and the other of people I knew who were from other classes) that I knew.  I guess I will stick it in my annual and keep adding to it as I have to.

Since I joined facebook a few years ago I have reconnected with a lot of wonderful people that I never thought I would see again.  I moved away right after high school and then a few years later we left the country and started traipsing around Latin America and changing addresses every 18 months to 3 years. Do you even know how many people drop you like a hot potato if you dare to move and force them to change their entry in their address book?  People are weird, is what they are.

So even those that I had tried to stay in touch with ended up getting lost to me through the '90s.  When classmates.com came out I joined that and immediately got hooked back up with some great friends.  It was a great resource for its time.

Facebook does that same job even better.  (as an aside I think the Google+ will be even better)   And I have been re-introduced to some people and it has made a huge difference in my life.  And I am now going to try to not be all maudlin and such, but still let everyone know how much I appreciate them.

Here's the deal:  on the memorial page listing all the dead classmates?  There is a friend who just passed away last year.  I remember vaguely seeing her name listed within the high school list of "potential fb friends" and saying to myself "oh yeah, I need to remember to friend her".

Well, it's too flipping late.

Shame on me for not being more aware of that little voice and just acting on that thought at that time.  I am not being presumptious and thinking my presence in her life could have changed anything.  But I appreciate so much the small kind gestures and words from my friends and let's face it, a missed opportunity is a missed opportunity.  Sometimes they don't come back by, you have to get your piece said when you can.

I am going to make this claim right here, right now with all of you as my motivation; I am going to do my level best to let people know how much I appreciate them being in my life and to not waste that chance.  And I am going to start with you!

Yes, you.  Thank you for being here.  Thank you for checking in with me to see what drivel I have come up with to talk about. And especially this summer when I have been so sporadic with posting.  It truly does my heart good when I see that I have comments and some of you have come by and given me something to think about.

Life is good.  And it is better when shared.  So again, thank you for coming and sharing in my life. I will try to keep up my end of my relationships so that I am living with no regrets.

In other news . . . . .

I am so sorry for the delay in posting anything.  But I gotta tell you, after the horror of the last post I just could not figure out a decent way to segway into another topic.  If and when anything happens on that issue, I will be sure to let you know.

So today I am going to ramble on about a few different topics, but first!

Fun with the Obits!

Yay!!!  There were some doozies in this week's obits.  But the first one we are going to talk about sparked a little ruckus in my very own kitchen.  Here's what it said:  "Juan M. is loved and will be greatly missed by his wife of 49 years and 11 months, Teresa S., 4 sons, 8 grandchildren, 1 greatgrandson and well as numerous loving relatives and friends."

**49 years and 11 months??!!  You know good and well someone had already gone to a lot of effort to plan a huge shin-dig for this milestone, right?  So I commented that if I were Teresa S. the beloved wife I would not only be sad but more than a little bit pissed off right about now.


This sparked a whole conversation about how you always read about women passing who have been predeceased by their husbands for years and decades, but men?  2 seconds after the wife dies they are back on the market and have a new wife right away.  You know what I am talking about?  You see it all the flipping time.


Here is where the controversy comes in.  Mr. Big Ed (evil husband) chimes in and says "Well, you don't have to worry about that!"  


Me:  "Really?"


Evil Husband:  "Oh yeah, after 30 years of marriage, who would do THAT again?"



insert 30 seconds of crickets chirping and it slowly soaking in his brain that he actually said that out loud. 




Evil Husband:  "Um, what I mean to say is that, you know, 30 years is enough."


Yeah, like THAT was so much better.  Another short time to let that soak in and then he comes up with this gem:


"What I am trying to say is that after 30 years of you, how could anyone else compare and why would I even bother!"


Whatever.  You know the "he needed killing" defense?


Back to the obits, and not Mr. Big Ed's.

An interesting one began this way "Rick lost his life to lung cancer, on the island of Kauai. He was there accepting a job to teach arts and craft."

**Ok, I have questions.  Did he know he had lung cancer before he moved to Hawaii to teach?  Was he diagnosed after the move?  Did he not want to come back home to the loving family here in Texas to spend his remaining days?  The family did write a very loving and beautiful tribute to him so I don't think there were any hard feelings.


And we have a tie for Most Interesting Way to Say Your Loved One is Deceased.  I will quote the opening to both and let you be the judge.

1. "Lights must have dimmed at chic tourist spots and fine dining establishments around the globe on July 26, when Mary Jane passed after a long illness. She was 85. The fashionable redhead was an enthusiastic world traveler who was always the center of attention, livening up any gathering with her stories and opinions, facts and wise observations, gained from her globetrotting and life experience."

2. " 'O-75' The final bing ball of the final bingo game has been called as the final child of Daniel and Louevie Ophelia was called home on July 27, at the age of 96. She joins her parents, her brothers; Major, Homer, John, Douglas and her sisters; Robbie and Louise as she passes into the hands of the Lord and eternal rest."

**What say you?  Weren't both of those awesome?


Sadly, we are still following the trend towards more and more deaths due to complications of Alzheimer's.  There were no other small children or babies listed other than the one I shared with you on the last post.  My heart still breaks and I still cry every time I think about it.

New topic!

Anyone watching summer t.v.?

Big Brother started up and I was so excited to get to see Evel Dick again and then *poof* he was gone!

Hell's Kitchen is on and it has got to be hard to find that many annoying cooks.

Weeds and the Big C are back on Showtime and both are shaping  up to have a great season.

Entourage is back for it's final season.

Celebrity Rehab is on and good Lord!  What a bunch of idiots!

I hope things are well with you and you are enjoying your summer (or winter if you are reading from the southern hemisphere!).