It's A Coincidence I Tell You!

It is only a coincidence that--not having blogged for nearly a month now, there is a tiny spider building a swing bridge across my monitor screen at this EXACT moment!

I'm a Pistol Packin' Mama!

Mr. Sweetie and I took a one-day trip to Canada last week. The plane left at the ungodly hour of 6 A.M. (!) so we had to be at the airport an hour ahead to check in for an international flight.

For those of you keeping score, the distance from St. Paul to Canada is just Not! That! Far! Physically, culturally, Canada is like the third Twin City. Anyway, we pulled into the airport at 4:45 and were inside three minutes later. Piece of cake, right? Except.

Minnesota is Northwest Airline territory. 99 and 44/100% of all flights out of Minneapolis are Northwest. Which is in bankruptcy. With its mechanics on strike. And its flight attendants about to go. So, even though there are A LOT of people in NWA uniforms at the airport at 5 a.m., none of them are working.

Which means that even though we got to the airport check-in line at 4:50 A.M. (!), we still had to wait in line for HALF AN HOUR!!! to get checked in. And we didn't even have any luggage.

You know what? Airline travel is really like riding a bus these days. We got upgraded to first class (Thank you, frequent flier miles!), all that meant was slightly more room, and two bags of peanuts for what should have been a breakfast flight. And since those British terrorists have ruined it for all of us, we couldn't even buy breakfast and bring it on the plane ourselves.

But--lest I sound grumpy and dissatisfied--it was a great trip. We went to Canada for a reason (that's for another time) and it was a glorious day, our business was completed in a VERY satisfactory way, and we returned to the airport with plenty of time to eat, buy souvenirs for the kidlets, and be together.

Most excitingly, however, my purse got pulled out of the x-ray machine, and handed over to a TSA guy for personal inspection. I was pretty certain there was nothing of any interest in there, so I was interested in what they were looking for. My wallet came out--it's a big thing, with a compartment in the back where I stored my iPod. My glasses case came out--it's a solid clamshell sort of thing, and the inspector opened it outward, with his face turned away--I almost expected fake snakes to come popping out. I had a digital camera, some assorted papers, and I was cleared to go.

Very nicely, the TSA inspector offered to show us what had prompted the search, and he turned the monitor around. Inside my backpack style purse, my digital camera had tipped up against my wallet, which was made opaque by the shitload of change I had in the change compartment. It really looked like a handgun.

I'm more dangerous than I ever knew!

The Lessons Of The Sleeves

I never imagined how hard it would be to be a mother. The way these kidlets are central to my heart was something I had expected--what I am constantly surprised by is the way that I am so fiercely protective. It causes me a literal physical pain when I see my darling, my wonderful, my so painfully fragile little ones confront the hard things in life.

When the Pony was a tiny little baby--about four months old--there was nothing she hated more than sleeves. She'd lie on the changing table, smiling and happy, until it was time to put her arms into sleeves, and then she would cry and cry and CRY.

I was rather proud of myself for persisting. I was even able to say to her "Honey, if sleeves are the worst thing that happens to you, you are one lucky girl." I'm sure she understood me, right?

But still! Every hard lesson comes at a price--paid by me! I want to keep them safe, even more than I want it for myself. But you can't.

I mean that. Literally. You can't.

The other day, the Bunny was taking a shower. I was in the very! next! room! when I heard a blood curdling scream. The shrieking! The decibles! It was unbelievable! It was the kind of sound you'd expect to hear when a knife wielding hocky mask wearing psycho rips aside the shower curtain. The sound when a face pushes its way out of the wall and intones the warnings of an oncoming hell.

It was, in fact, the sound of shampoo in the eye.

I guess, if life is safe, the little things feel as invasive as the truly horrible things feel to the average person. This, my chickadees, is the lesson of the sleeves.

Now Improved!

The Sheraton Hotel is coming down this week. It was an odd little hotel, perched on the edge of I-94, surrounded by a Target, grocery stores, car lots, and dollar stores. Coincidentally, it was not close to anything you'd want to get to from a hotel. It was only about three stories high and never seemed particularly elegant.

I drove by this morning, and the demolition had begun. A few walls had been knocked down, exposing the interior.

I had thought it might look like a dollhouse--all the little roms with the outside wall removed. But it didn't. It looked so desolate: the wall that still stood had curtains still in the windows, as if there were still people staying there. There couldn't be, of course, so the curtains in the window were just like a sign of gross abandonment. The piles of rubble added to the moonscape.

There was a machine doing something, and casting water mist into the air. The morning sun was throwing rainbows over it all.

The old hotel never looked so good.

Bumper Stickers In The Neighborhood

There are a number of rental units on my block, and sometimes all I know of the people in them is based on what they have used to decorate their cars. Sometimes it seems that the bumper stickers are all that are holding the car together, but being in an educated state, no one puts just anything on their car. They all express their owners' personality. Here are two of my favorites:

Darwin Loves You

This one makes me smile. Minnesota's not likely to become a state that teaches Creationism, or Intelligent Design, so I can just smile, secure in my sense that that is one battle I won't have to face.

I (Heart) Scrawny Pale Guys

And who doesn't?

All The Small Things

Life has been chaotic recently. Lots of stuff combining to make daily living more difficult than usual. And, of course, that means more for me to whine about. You lucky readers!

The shower.

For starters, the shower is about 14 years old, and the fixtures weren't highest quality at the time. They were good quality, and a good value, and apparently had a life span of exactly! 14 years! The initial symptoms were a lowering of water pressure, and a tendency for the spray to angle off in different directions. The terminal symptoms were a failure of most of the jets, and a spiritless drooling of water from the edges. It was like trying to shower under a teething baby, with an occasional loogie hawk for variety.

So--time for a new shower head.

But! It couldn't be easy! Because! In the intervening fourteen years, brass bathroom fixtures have become passe. Dated even. Restoration Hardware doesn't even carry ANYTHING in polished brass anymore. The local home stores had only a couple of chintzy pieces--nothing that was a well made or acceptable as what was failing back at home.

Time for a special order.

So--Mr. Sweetie and I went to Home Depot (TM) too look for a showerhead. Preferably one with a modicum of antique charm for our 115 year old house. We found one--with holes like a watering can and not nipples like a power washer--and ordered it. "It should be there by Monday" I was told by the nice lady who took my order on Thursday.

Nope.

By Wednesday--with no showerhead--I called. "Yes, the one warehouse was out, so they had to ship it from another warehouse. What can I say?" It arrived on Thursday--so not the 3 days later I had been expecting. Mr. Sweetie and his plumbing buddy the Bunny went up to install it. At 9 p.m.

Yup--you guessed it. The parts didn't fit each other, plus the design was so bad that the water actually backed up out of the showerhead itself and ran back out the arm and down the wall. You couldn't actually get anymore water out of it than we were getting from the one we were replacing.

So--return badly designed showerhead and back to special order. Wait a week. Again. In the interim, the old showerhead was so useless that we took showers in the bathtub. Huzzah for bathtub faucet with telephone style hand shower!

Meanwhile.

Meanwhile, construction continues on all the street in our neighborhood. Old lead water supply lines are being removed, and new curbs and sidewalk being installed. Then streets being paved. No street parking allowed, and a ginormous trench built at the end of the driveway so off-street parking is not an option either. We found ourselves parking farther and farther away, climbing over piles of dirt and holes in the sidewalk to get to and from the car. Complicated by the fact that you never knew from one day to the next what street would be totally blocked by enormous excavations--heavy construction equipment, seven foot high dirt piles, with correspondingly deep holes.

Into all this disruption, it becomes obvious that it is time to replace our disintegrating concrete front steps. They have always been an eyesore--too large for the scale of the house, and resolutely charmless. Many many, MANY years of temporary patches and repairs (going back easily 40 years or more) have finally failed, and so Mr. Sweetie got himself a rental jackhammer and took them down.

So, to recap: no shower*. No street. No sidewalk. No stairs. Construction everywhere. Fine film of dirt settling on all horizontal surfaces.

What would you do in these circumstances? That's right--re-decorate a bedroom! Remove all the furniture, take apart the window to repair and paint, remove all light sources and ceiling fans! Paint the room--and halfway through find out that the Bunny (whose room it is) has buyer's remorse and doesn't want to change after all!

So--half the stuff in her bedroom is now in her sister's room, where Bunny is also sleeping. The rest of the stuff is in the hallway. The walls are edged, but only half painted. The room is a hangover-inducing mix of blue, pink and green.

So! How is your summer?


*Okay--I must give credit where credit is due. Mr. Sweetie installed the (second) new showerhead the day it arrived--one week later--and it is wonderful. It pays to buy known brand names. Thank you Kohler! And Mr. Sweetie!

Requiem for a Goldfish

The goldfish died.

This is the sort of trauma that afflicts almost every child who is given a "starter pet" like a goldfish. When I was a kid, the school had a fundraising "fair" and one of the dependable games was a ping pong ball toss into a square filled with small fishbowls, each with its own Real Live Goldfish. A goldfish was the most prestigious of prizes to bring home, and I remember the year we came home with two of them.

Unusually, one of the two was not gold, but black. Predictibly, we named the gold one "Golde," but in a nod to our Broadway ambitions, the black one became "Tevye."

They lived in a little bowl, and I remember some nonsense about dissolving "oxygen tablets" into the water to make it habitable. They did not last very long, probably, but as every parent knows, once something has a name, it's as real a pet as the old dog that's been around for years.

As a parent now, I marvel at the brilliance of ping pong ball toss as a revenue raiser. Even today, those little goldfish cost about twelve cents each. Ping pong balls can't be too expensive, right? (I looked them up, and they aren't--$1.59 the dozen) and after the capital expenditure of a bunch of little fish bowls (which can be bought from Michaels for about $3 each, and that's retail!). You never won the bowl, just the fish, which you carried home in a plastic sandwich bag. Sell tickets for a quarter a try, and you're in clover!

So--the Bunny wanted a fish, back when she was about 4, and we got a goldfish. Based on our joint nostalgic memories, we also bought a large glass fishbowl, and took it home.

Mistake. Surprise, surprise.

Goldfish, I learned, are not really very nice fish. They are very dirty--they poop long orange strings of poop. They seem to shed scales or something, and a fine black crud soon lines the bottom of the bowl and the water clouds up.

To properly keep a goldfish, you need a tank. With a filtration system. Which means a pump and some sort of filter, which you change. You need to change 20% of the water weekly, vacuum the gravel to keep the silt down, and you should really augment the tank with an aerator. Failing to do these things--EVERY WEEK!--results in a foul smell eminating from the water and polluting a surprisingly large area.

So, we got a tank. And the goldfish--which was silver and thus named "Luna"--was happy. Too happy. She grew. She rapidly outgrew the little tank we had gotten her. We had to upsize. But a six gallon tank only holds six inches of fish, and Luna soon outgrew that. Over the next five years, we upgraded until we had a twenty gallon tank and a filtration system with both a mechanical filter (meaning the water ran through what looked like a pot scrubber) and a bio-filter, which used some sort of organic matter (don't think about it--it's bacterial) to neutralize the ick generated by the fish. We ended up with a filter that was designed for a 30-40 gallon tank, because the fish was just that dirty.

Luna got huge. And the larger she got, the more apparent it was that goldfish are carp. Shiny carp, with glittery scales, but still carp.

But the Bunny loved Luna, and took excellent care to make sure that she was properly fed. I got to do all the cleaning--no surprise there. And Luna thrived. For five years. Sure, I got casual about cleaning the tank, and there were emergency rescue events where the water was so bad that Luna was gasping for air at the surface, and I had to do massive make-up cleanings. But she still thrived. And grew. And grew.

Then, one evening, the Bunny went into her room to get her pajamas, and there was Luna, lying peacefully dead at the bottom of the tank. The Bunny cried, and refused to go back into her room. It was time for the inevitable, if long postponed, pet funeral.

But--oh my God--can you really flush a five pound fish? This fish was so big that if you had pulled her from the lake you could have kept her. Many a lake cabin meal was made from fish smaller than Luna. She had outgrown all the aquarium nets we had ever gotten, and was nearly big enough to need her own casket.

And suddenly, I couldn't do it. I--who had stayed with both my elderly dogs as they ended their lives. I--who had dealt with the three parakeets who died within weeks of their acquisition. I--who had respectfully buried bettas and guppies and mollies in the garden. I--who had dealt with the wild rabbit that decided to die underneath my roses.

I--got creeped out.

I mean, she was huge! An enormous fish! A fish outside the parameters of pet sized, and well into sport trophy size. I just couldn't do it! There is a reason I don't fish! Or even eat fish! Especially not fish that lie there and look at me with their damned lidless eyes!

Bless his heart, Mr. Sweetie--the lad who spent all his summer childhoods fishing in the lake with his brother--he took care of it. I think I owe him one.

Adventures in Linguistics

Acdording to an exhibit at the Duluth Zoo, there is actually a thing called the "House Mouse." They are noticeably smaller than the fancy mice sold as pets at PetCo and PetSmart. The ones in the exhibit were actually tiny, only about an inch long.

So, if there is, in fact, a subspecies called the "House Mouse," what do you call them when they are in your house and you have many of them?

"Hice Mice?"

GnomeMania

Mr. Sweetie had a Boys Golf Outing weekend last weekend, where they played 90! holes! of! golf! On sort of spur of the moment, I took the kidlets up to Duluth.

We had a lovely room in a functional hotel--nothing special, but the view was lovely!

So, what do you do in Duluth? with kidlets who are 12 and 9?

You go to the aquarium, of course! Since we don't technically have an aquarium here in the Twin Cities, Bunny wanted to see the one in Duluth. It did not match up to her experience at the Shedd in Chicago. Are we surprised? No.

It was a very nice facility. You enter and are greeted by a two story wall of water, which really says it all, doesn't it? The Great Lakes Aquarium is dedicated to the ecosystems around Duluth. Which makes sense, of course, because then it is unique and educational.

But.

The ecosystems around Duluth are all freshwater. Freshwater fish, they are not so much to look at. Can you say carp? Walleye? Sure, there are trout, but they look mostly the same dull green as all the other fish do. Remember those days when you were about 5, and your parents took you up to a rental cabin on a lake in Wisconsin, and your dad would defy all the basic assumptions about a vacation and would get up at about 4:30 in the morning to go fish? And when he came back--just as you were waking up--he'd invite you down to the fish house where he would hack off the fishes' heads and gut them, and the smell was just soooooo bad? Guess what he was catching?

That's right. Carp. Walleye. Trout. The Great Lakes Aquarium is dedicated not so much to fish as to dinner.

We were more impressed with the Duluth Zoo. In the great tradition of the great zoos of the world, this one was started by a guy who acquired a tame deer, and decided to reach for greater things. Which it does surprisingly well, after setting your expectations incredibly low. The entrance is shabby, with a ticket sales booth that looks like it travels with the carnie and is otherwise used for selling cotton candy. The main building is a bit dark, and the exhibits are not immediately on display. In fact, you walk down some stairs that remind me of my old elementary school, and into a room that--if it weren't a zoo, you'd think was a pet store. There are rabbits, and geckos, and fancy rats, and gerbils and guinea pigs. Except there are fewer of them than there would be at PetSmart.

It's after you get outside that the zoo surprises. There aren't a great number of animals and exhibits, but the ones that are there are well done and interesting. The peafowl wander the zoo freely, and were ganging up on the prairie dogs while we were there. One male decided to show off for the lone female peahen, and opened his fan tail and rattled it at us all. The grounds are quite expansive, and there is room a lot of future development there. It beats the heck out of the Como Zoo.

However, the most successful part of our trip was the aquisition of a miniature gnome. He is about three inches tall, with a red cap and a suitcase under his arm, and he became the focus of many many photographs.

Which I shall not post here. Yet. For some reason the computer is not recognizing the memory card. But when it does...

PREPARE FOR THY GNOMISH OVERLOAD!

So...Chicago!

So--the trip to Chicago was a two-fer: we went to see the King Tut exhibit for Father's Day. We took the train down all day Saturday, went to the Shedd Aquarium Sunday morning and King Tut in the afternoon.

Because the Bunny is all about trains, we took the El the 10 blocks from our hotel to the Museum Campus, then walked over to the Aquarium. The El is amazingly quiet, but hardly posh. The stations in particular are subject to peeling paint and rusted metal. Of course, the low point of the day was on our return to the hotel, when the train we planned on riding to our stop unexpectedly! turned! left! It wasn't supposed to do that!

We made it back to the hotel, however, and had dinner at The Big Downtown, a restaurant that has trolleys and minature trains running in the bar. The food was amazing and excellent, and we ate ourselves very full, and went back to the hotel.

The next morning, we had about 4 hours to fill before we had to catch our train back, so we went to the planetarium. Of which we used to have one here, but no longer. This time, we took a cab, to save time. The cab drove us down Michigan Avenue, along the beautifully landscaped parkland that lines the lake shore. I was just about to say "this is a much more attractive route than the El" when a jogger crossed in front of us. He was tall, rangy, rather older than I am, with stringy muscles like beef jerky. He had on tiny nylon shorts and no shirt--but a heart rate monitor strapped below his nipples.

He looked like he was wearing a bikini top but had forgotten the top part. Remember Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics? She used to appear on stage wearing electrician's tape to stay "decent." This guy kind of looked like that, without any of the bodaciousness.

Maybe it wasn't such an attractive route after all.

All We Need Really Is Love!

I'm still marinating in U2 music, and it still surprises me on a frequent basis. Just now, I'm listening to a live performance with B.B.King of a song my U2--"When Love Comes to Town."

It's a terrific song, so beautifully suited to B.B.'s voice and his band plays horns in the back, giving the entire thing a decidedly non-U2 sound. And B.B. King's guitar sound is so distinctive, and SO iconic, I assume it takes a real degree of chutzpah on U2's part to play with him.

And then, I saw the video of the rehearsal. Bono is showing B.B. King around the set up on stage and sketching out what they will be doing. And, bless his heart, B.B.King is nervous! Who'd have thought? Bono is talking about what key they will be in, or something, and B.B.King (the man is a GIANT! and not just figuratively!) says:

"I'm not so good with the chord thing."

He's practically scufffing his toe in the dirt, he looks so abashed. Bono hastily says:

"Oh, don't worry. Edge will do THAT."

How revealing! Even B.B. King needs love too!

Casey Jones: Our Hero

We are back from a long weekend in Chicago. We went by train, because the Bunny loves trains. Turns out, we all love them. What a great way to travel! It took eight hours from Saint Paul to downtown Chicago, which is what it takes to drive there--with none of the hassle, tiredness, or bad food that comes with a car trip. Restrooms are always available, and they're so tiny and cute! We ate in the dining car, and had lovely meals. Dinner was excellent, far better than the HoJos on the tollways. Naps were had, kids could walk up to the loounge car for snacks, or just to stretch their legs.

We are dreaming of a longer trip, now. One that requires a sleeper car. Glacier Park is potentially do-able: board at 10:30 at night, arrive the next day at dinner time. And no one is pissed of because SOMEONE can't read a map...

AMTRAK--thousands of marriages saved! Why not yours?

Roll Over Nietzche, Tell Kierkegaard the News!

I've been reading my favorite theologian/philosopher recently: Anne Lamott. You've got to love a writer who says about a particularly bitter break-up that "we said words that perhaps Jesus would not have said."

Her most recent book is "Plan B; Further Thoughts on Faith" which follows the same vein of overtly religious essays I loved in "Traveling Mercies." As I read "Plan B," much of it was familiar, because I had read many of them when they first appeared in Salon. This left me free to read for the subtleties, the nuances I had missed when I read them the first time.

Some of those nuances are new, because she did revise those essays before they were collected in the book. Some of them I missed as I was reading for plot and for her humor. Some nuances are simply invisible when read online. I firmly believe that reading online is a manifestly different act that reading a book, even if the content was identical. Online there is the (rarely resisted) temptation to open new windows, to run audio and maybe even a game of solitare or something. There is something that makes me hurry when I read online, a sense that there is so much content out there, just a click away, and that time is short. It's like gulping down a cold drink on a hot day--you're already taking the next mouthful before you've swallowed the first.

Anyway, this time around, I'm seeing how important it is to her to be tender with herself. The message comes through in essay after essay, especially in her colege graduation address. This is the only life we have, and we need to appreciate the things that matter. Society tells us that we should be productive, rich, we should strive for prestige, or power over others. Anne reminds us that those things are never as fulfilling as we think they will be.

I struggle with this regularly. I always thought of myself as ambitious: someone who wasn't going to settle for anything less than success. I thought I would work my entire life, and would push into the highest levels of whatever I decided to do.

The plan was put into motion when I was accepted into Yale Law School. I chose Yale over Harvard so that I wouldn't tie myself into knots over my grade point average. Yale Law School doesn't calculate grade points or class rank. We graduated in alphabetical order, which meant I graduated second in my class.

Then, I got pregnant. I thought I was just getting ready for a change in my legal focus, that I was bored with doing the same old things. No, it was hormonal, and THAT was a permanent change. Despite all my vows that I would not let motherhood change me--I was changed. Profoundly and permanently I was changed. By the time I was pregnant with my second child, I was seriously struggling wih depression; depression that I believe was triggered by hormonal changes from pregnancy. It was not post-partum depression: it did not pass on its own. It took several years, multiple therapists and more than a single antidepressant to get me back to feeling like someone I could recognize again.

Now, as long as I take my meds, I feel pretty good almost all the time. Once I got the right combination of medications, I suddenly experienced what it was like to be happy. Happy! I had forgotten what that was like! It was such a precious gift, to actually find that i could enjoy my own life. My children were a source of joy, not just an enormous obligation that I feared I couldn't meet. It's still amazing to me: that I have such a wonderful and kind husband, that I have such bright and delightful daughters, that I don't live with fear.

I'm still amazed, daily, that life can be so good. It seems that, after such pain--and it was deep and unremitting pain--such a gift that I've been given; a second chance at life. Isn't that enough? Isn't it enough that I'm no longer half dead, that I'm able to live?

But I don't--at least, not when asked. For me, alone, I am so amazed that I am still here that there is nothing to do but just be grateful. Anne understands that. It is important to be present in your own life, and present to those you love.

Depression makes it hard to be present for those I love, even well managed depression. I still have some seriously bumpy days, and what my family needs from me is not easy for me to give. Emotional support is not something of which I have vast reserves, and I fiercely believe that I am needed to provide stability and support for my family.

I shudder to think what would happen to my fragile state if I tried to add employment to my mix, and I do feel significant cultural pressure to become an economic engine. What I keep asking myself is...why? Why is it not acceptable to simply be grateful for what I have and to tend to my patch of the world? I don't have those answers, but when I read Anne Lamott, I realize that someone else is also asking those questions, and I am not alone.

Is This Seasonal Affective Disorder?

Weather around here. Is. Nuts.

Truly.

Couple of weekends ago, it was pushing 100 degrees. Not long after, we had a weekend where it was struggling to get out of the 50s.

There's a diagnostic code for this, and it's called "bi-polar disorder."

No, it does not have anything to do with the North Pole. Santa Claus is just fine.

It's The End Of The World As We Know It!

From Salon:

Following a hip replacement, doctors have told John Cleese he can no longer do his Monty Python "silly walk." (ContactMusic)

Oh, the horror...

Guess that getting old isn't for sissies.

More New Toys!

I am such a spoiled girl! Really! Because I got a great new toy--my new cel phone.

It is tres slim!



It is beaucoup sleek!
Eh bien, it is..comment on dit?... it is pink!


The phone is pink.

The carrying case is pink.

The automobile charger is pink.

The Bluetooth earpiece is pink!

Plus, all the pinks are shiny pink!

However, none of the currently programmed ringtones are by Pink. You'd think that would have been a gimme.

Gittin' Bloggy wit da NYT

Total cultural geek that I am, I get the New York Times movie and book reviews delivered to my email. Today come the long awaited, oft-delayed review of The DaVinci Code, and readers, it was worth the wait.

Not the movie, silly. The review.

Who knew that the Gray Lady would sink to being snarky? Can one even be snarky when you have to refer to everybody and Mr. or Ms.?

Apparently you can. And A.O. Scott did.

I wish I had written these lines:

He [Tom Hanks character] is summoned to the crime scene by Bezu Fache, a French policeman who seems very grouchy, perhaps because his department has cut back on its shaving cream budget.

...albino monk, whose name is Silas and who may be the first character in the history of motion pictures to speak Latin into a cellphone...

Through it all Mr. Hanks and Ms. Tautou stand around looking puzzled, leaving their reservoirs of charm scrupulously untapped.

...not even a glimmer of eroticism flickers between the two stars. Perhaps it's just as well. When a cryptographer and a symbologist get together, it usually ends in tears.

I will give Mr. Brown this much: he's good at names. If I ever have twins or French poodles, I'm calling them Bezu and Teabing for sure.

Mon dieu! Ze movie, it is merde, but the reviews sure are fun to read!

Fashion is a Cruel Mistress

Mr. Sweetie and I were headed somewhere after church last week, and had to stop for some gas. In front of us at another pump was an Asian woman in what had to be a red Corvette. She was dressed up in a black suit with knee length gauchos and some really rocking black and white pumps.

As an avid fan of Go Fug Yourself, I was trying to imagine what Jessica and Heather would say about this outfit. I imagined they would be as dismayed at the return of gaucho pants as I am, but would heartily endorse the shoes as cute, if a bit too white to wear with the dark suit.

So there I was, having an imaginary conversation with my invisible internet friends, when the woman turned around. She was wearing her suit jacket over...

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

No, I lie. There was a shoestring running between the sides of the jacket, presumably to keep the whole thing from flying open in the spring breeze.

It was an outfit that you might expect Mariah Carey to wear at an awards show, to assure that her presence was noticed. Not what you usually see in Lutheran Land on a Sunday morning, where our breasts stay inside from the cold. I can only imagine the discomfort of wearing a shoulder belt.

Too Much Information

Last night the Bunny got caught up in watching something on TV, and could only make a bathroom run during the commercial. She ran past me, muttering to her self "Oh, bladder. Oh, bladder. My bladder is experiencing difficulty."

I'm betting on at least a 780 on her Verbal SATs.

OMG! It's Beautiful!

Now we are really grown-ups. Today our furniture arrived from the Swanky Furniture Store. MAN it's great.

This was the great leap of faith--this was where we had to trust in our ability to accurately imagine large pieces of furniture based on small photographs and fabric swatches.

Coupled with our faith in the ability of a paint sample to accurately match the fabric swatch once the paint was on the wall.

But we did! It does! Even the dog likes it!

And in the nick of time too--Mr. Sweetie's mother comes to visit tomorrow.