Volume Boost

Some songs sound best at full volume. One song I love to crank is Seal’s Crazy. How can you listen to that drum riff and not be happy?
There are car tunes I like to listen to while driving also. Head bobbing, bass blasting, dance in your seat tunes that make the time go by faster and make the traffic seem lighter are the best.
I also have these great tunes on my Zune to exercise with. Oops! I said the “e” word. I shall wash my mouth out with chocolate, then turn up the volume.

Heroes In History

Memorial Day. Check.
Wake up early. Check.
Great weather. Check.
Load car with barbecue supplies and lawn chairs. Check.
Sunscreen. Check.
Cub scouts with maps of Veteran tombstones to place small flags. Check.
Parade route spot reserved. Check.
Crete paper in red, white and blue woven through bicycle spokes. Check.
Go ahead, buy your favorite blogger a hot dog.
Or a new wardrobe.
Without the flag motif.

Loving Kali

It’s hard to lose a pet. It’s sad and sometimes you cry. It hurts in your heart. But guess what! The great memories also live in your heart. And they help ease the pain. So, keep remembering. Keep smiling as you remember. All the rest of your life.
“There’s a place inside the heart where love lives always… where nothing beautiful can ever be forgotten.”

Who Done It

I could never write a TV mystery show. I am sure there is a formula, but I am one that never figures out who did it or why. I’m always surprised by the ending. Worse, I don’t ever remember who did it, so when reruns come around, I am still surprised by who done it.
I think my brain only has enough room for remembering my address, the multiplication tables, and that Des Moines has the highest Jell-o consumption per capita in the US. Everything else, like solving a mystery show or remembering which fork to use at a formal dinner party gets pushed out.
I’m told that brain food from the fish or veggie food groups could help, but Cheetos and chocolate are all I have in the house right now. I’d run to the store and get some brain food, but I can’t remember where I put my car keys.

Taking Up Space

That’s OK. Go ahead and laugh. I can take a joke, even on myself. If you read yesterday’s rant you know my tirade was futile. This blogging software automatically takes out the second space after the period at the end of the sentence. Where does it go and why does it do that? Weird.
Another weird thing: A deer ran through the terminal at the airport today. How does that happen? Did he buy a ticket? Did he have to pay extra for no luggage? Did he call ahead and order the veggie meal? Was he charged the seat locator fee? Will Orbitz show up in the hovercraft and refund my airline ticket? Because, clearly, this deer paid less than me.
Tell ya what… give me back the spaces at the end of my sentences and we’ll call it even.

Breaking the Rules

Some things make us crazy. And if they drive us crazy, then they MUST be driving others crazy too, right? I’d like to think I’m not alone in my neurosis.
For example, it makes me nuts when people put one space after the period in a sentence. Two spaces is how I was taught and two spaces is the correct way it’s done. I get that texting and tweeting shortens the available space for communicating, but one should still follow the “two spaces after the period” rule. That’s just common sense. It reads better. It flows better. It gets more allowance and bigger dessert portions of chocolate and other simple carbohydrates.
I'm not a fanatic though. I can handle other writing mistakes like grammer errors, misspelled words, and even dangling participles. And Lord knows I've ended many a sentence with a preposition! I simply have no tolerance for people who use incorrect ending sentence structure. Use the ! or use the ; or even a series of symbols to end the sentence like @%#! Just be sure and use two spaces after. Thanks.

Make It Yourself

Whether it’s cupcakes for the school bake sale, cookies for your sick neighbor, or a casserole for a potluck dinner - you get more credit if you make it yourself. You can try to do the fake out and put it in your grandmother’s dish, but everyone knows you bought it. Instead, watch the Food Network shows that claim kinda homemade or use only a few ingredients. Those shows are a staple for slapping together dishes you are suppose to have made. But don’t watch the last ten minutes of these shows. They try to show you how to set the table to look like Martha Stewart has thrown up in your dining room. My friends don’t expect that. That, or they have learned to live with the disappointment that it ain’t gonna happen from me. It’s all about the food, not the utensils or landscape used in the gorging of the food.
This weekend is the perfect time to practice making a dish yourself. Surprise your mom on Mother’s Day by cracking an egg in a skillet and pouring a glass of OJ. Mom’s are suckers for anything you’ve made yourself. They’ll gush about it, even if most of it is egg shells.

Shopping Cart Whisperer

Be it the big box store or the grocery, I always seem to get the cart with the squeaky wheel or the lopsided handle. Sometimes you can prop the droopy side up while walking through the aisles and the squeak almost goes away. But if you don’t load the cart with enough weight throughout, you must hold up one entire end of the cart while trying to walk normally to avoid the racket. On those days I usually abandon my list, grab whatever is within arm’s reach, and head directly for the checkout lines. I then wheel the cart out to put the groceries in my car, and as soon as I lift my bags out of the cart and am focused on getting them in the trunk, the shopping cart becomes incredibly light and begins to roll and pick up speed across the parking lot. My purse is still in the front of the cart, so I drop my bags (eggs crash to the ground first of course) and take off running in the direction of the unmanned, runaway cart. I inevitably stumble and fall, scraping my hands and knees, and watch as my cart hits the vehicle patiently waiting for my parking space. Depending on how much of a hurry this person is in and how much blood is involved, I either get a sympathetic nod from the driver of this now dented vehicle because they've been in my shoes before too, or I get a hand gesture too vulgar to describe here. Either way, I wish there had been a class on handling such life issues in school.

First, You Get a Hug

I have a friend whose only purpose in life is to love people. She’s good at it. Her mere presence emits love and compassion. She’s exactly the person you want a hug from when you need encouragement.
We are both directionally challenged. We get lost every time we are together, but laugh it off because we always have a story to tell before the ride is over. Detours on unrecognized streets bring us wonderful adventures we’d otherwise not run into. It would drive others insane, but this is how we roll.
My friend was going to go away this weekend for a fun visit with her sister-in-law. Instead, she will go tomorrow because the family was in a car wreck. The sister-in-law has broken bones in her arms and legs. Her husband may not wake up. One daughter died within hours of the accident. There is concern of spinal cord damage with another daughter.
How does one function after such a tragedy? It’s hard not to focus on the sadness and despair of this situation and become immobile. My friend knows that there is nothing she can do or say to change what has happened, but just by being there handing out hugs, she will make it bearable for her sister-in-law.
My friend called me to help her with directions to the hospital in this unfamiliar town. After much frustration with the many zigzag turns of bad directions on my part from an internet site, she phoned the hospital and got the two turns from the highway to the hospital down. My role is to bring humor to my friend - to help break her free of the numbness and incessant thoughts; to give her an outlet for anger; to provide an escape from reality for a moment. So far, thankfully, that has come naturally for me.

Cinco de Mayo

Today is another one of those holidays where folks don’t get off work, but eating with abandon is encouraged. And today features my favorite food group: Mexican! This past weekend there were celebrations in the park for that with food and fun for all ages.
Also in town this past weekend were Bob and Liddy Dole. They come every year to kick off the lecture series at his Institute. She spoke of how since Clara Barton founded the Red Cross, she was the only other woman to head it up. She explained how she took no money for her first year to show her civic responsibility in volunteerism and support of the President. Without missing a beat, Bob Dole said, "I wish you hadn't done that - we could have used the money!" He went on to thank everyone for making him a 6 term senator, "well", he said, "not everyone here voted for me and I'll talk to you in the parking lot after the lecture!" They were delightful together!
And now I’m off in search of margaritas, enchiladas, and chocolate covered pralines. Olé!

No Purple Allowed

My brother has an intimidating appearance; that is, until he smiles and opens his mouth. He’s one of funniest guys I know and all heart. But his shaved head, handlebar mustache, big physique, and just the right look on his face would scare anyone – including teenagers. If they got out of line, he’d give them a stern talking to, then make them dig a hole and fill it in. And they'd do it for fear he'd eat them if they didn't.
My brother and sister-in-law are taking the nephews and other youths on another church mission trip this summer. They are fun chaperones, but the kids know that if they break a rule that they have to answer to my brother – worse than facing their own parents.
At the last planning meeting the “No Purple Allowed” rule was explained. The boys will be sleeping in the blue room. The girls will be sleeping in the red room. There will be no mixing of the people in the blue and red rooms at any time. In other words, no purple allowed.
It’s just one of many of the trip rules, but knowing my brother is on the other end of breaking the rules helps the rest of the parents sleep well at night!

Shopping or Root Canal

I wasn’t born with the shopping gene. Growing up, my mom would tell me in the car on the way to the mall that I needed to buy dress pants so what color did I want? Did I want zipper or button up? Did I want back pockets? Did I want front pleats? I shouldn’t get any that said “dry clean only”. By this time we were at the mall and she’d pull up to the curb and say, “You’ve got 10 minutes to find and try on the pants you just described. GO!” And ten minutes later she’d come in to pay and we’d go home. No window shopping, no people watching, no food court visits.
I adopted this method of shopping when I left home. Now, years later, I cannot shop with others. I don’t understand their meandering, sales searching, or buying bargains for stuff they didn’t need or want before they got there. And they don’t understand how I can purchase an item minutes within walking into the store without looking in six other stores for the same item.
I like my way of shopping. It leaves more time for eating chocolate and other simple carbohydrates.

May Day

May Day! May Day! No crisis or imminent danger today; Just remembrances of May Pole dances in my elementary years. Memories of a school gymnasium full of kids in our Sunday dress, maypoles with colorful ribbons, and ten minute choreography routines we performed for our parents. It was a happy, innocent time, even though there was no cotton candy, no fried food on a stick, no chocolate nor other simple carbohydrates to be found.