Fat Tuesday Randoms

Late this afternoon, I began to finally write a blog entry while I had a free hour, sitting down with a still warm churro(straight from the Mexican place in nearby Wakefield) in hand and a freshly brewed cup of coffee. A treat for me on a sort of treat-filled-day. I don't usually drink coffee at any other time of day aside from my hastily gulped cup-and-a-half in the morning here at home before work.
But with a warm-from-the-oven churro and a free hour and the nagging thought I had all day that I needed and wanted to blog again(after yet another long gap between entries), I felt I owed myself such an indulgence. Which seemed wholly appropriate on Fat Tuesday.

While indulging myself today, I didn't feel entirely at ease and happy though, since my daughter found out today, that she didn't get the summer job at the town beach she applied for a few weeks back. Which she REALLY wanted. It didn't help matters, either, that a mean girl-type "frenemy" of hers from school did get the position. If there were any way I could put my daughter in a safe little bubble to float through life--to save her from life's disappointments and let-downs, I really wish I could do it. Of course, I know there will be more disappointments and possible "mean girls" in her life to come, and all I can wish for her is the right attitude to keep on going.
After learning she didn't get hired, she was off to yet another rehearsal for a musical play she is in(Sondheim's "Into The Woods", in which she is cast against type as the Evil Step-Mother), and I could not stop thinking of how she was doing and hoping she was able to concentrate on her lines and keep her mind off the "job".
We'll talk about plans B,C, D and beyond, as far as summer employment goes, later this week. The kid has a lot on her plate lately, anyway, with homework and keeping up her grades in school, rehearsals for the play, rehearsals and performance for All-State Chorus in a week and then driver's ed classes at the end of the month(three weekends of 6 1/2 hour days for three straight weeks). Phew!

So..its International Woman's Day today--the 100th anniversary. 2011 is the Global Centenary Year for International Women's Day, which began in 1911.
And to commemorate the day,
I had my annual gyno exam today. ;-)

After the "feet-in-the-stirrups" fun, I hit the Whole Foods and Trader Joe's stores that are near my doctor's office. We don't have any near where I live, so it's almost like an event for me to shop in those food stores.
Don't laugh--there are people who drive miles to shop at some of these stores, as I found out while I was shopping in the breakfast cereals section in Trader Joe's. I overheard a man saying he drove in all the way from somewhere in Massachusetts to stock up on TJ's fare!
I have decided Whole Foods is a l-i-t-t-l-e too expensive for me. I cannot imagine shopping for the majority of my food staples there. I am definitely more of a Trader Joe's gal. In Whole Foods, I feel like I am in a museum or upscale boutique and the plethora of organic and "all natural" food and body care products is mind-boggling! The aisle with just organic chocolate bars astounds me, for example. Because this was my "treat filled" day, I bought some bars of Bubble Chocolate and Lake Champlain chocolate,
and also bought a five dollar bar of soap.
Which is pretty crazy, because we do not need soap. We already have bars and bars of it at home. Because I am a sucker for those fine triple milled , fragranced soaps, preferring bar soap always over liquid "body washes". So, I have bars of Italian and French soaps tucked away in my dresser drawers, but had to buy this one Pacifica lilac soap from Whole Foods. I could not stop sniffing the bar inside the box in the store, and even on the drive back home, I kept reaching into the bag on the car seat beside me to pull it out and take another whiff. I'm a lilac soap sniff-aholic. It's so true to what lilac really smells like!

On the back of the box that holds the soap, it reads:

The beloved lilac, fresh, green and jasmine-like, is blended with heliotrope and subtle notes of nectarine. A symbol of the first emotions of spring: love, innocence, and purity.

Pacifica's beautifully natural soap is handmade using a proprietary biodegradable, vegan, vegetable oil and glycerin soap base, ground almond meal and Pacifica's own perfume blend with natural and essential oils including ylang ylang and oakmoss.

I cannot wait to use this in the shower, but a part of me just wants to keep it in the box and on hand for when I need a lift. I don't know why I enjoy simply smelling this bar of soap. But, as it turns out, it isn't just me--I stuck it under Mr. F's nose when he got home and he had the same reaction. Surely, one of the most heavenly scents in the world is the scent of lilacs, and this soap captures it perfectly.
I have been having "celebrity-themed" dreams lately. Sunday morning I woke up, remembering a dream about me sneaking in late and inappropriately dressed for a yoga class(I tried to pull on a tank top and yoga pants at the back of the class before the instructor noticed). The instructor was....Martha Stewart! Because I was having a difficult time putting on the Martha-approved uniform of black tank top and yoga pants, I looked around for a dressing room so I could change in privacy and I could see three to four different doors leading to other rooms, all partly closed, and all were occupied by other women. There are certainly some inadequacies-as-a-woman issues in that dream, I just know it.

Here's my other dream of note: last night it starred...Bono (from U2, if you are wondering which Bono). In this dream, I was seated in a club--an actual bar/club I go to, but of course, it wasn't quite the same in the dream. It almost had the look and feel of being in someones panelled basement rec room. It was loud and crowded, with everyone in the place seated at round table, facing a stage where there was a PTO-type Mom up there addressing the crowd. It might have been some kind of fund-raiser. But I wasn't paying attention. Instead I was thinking and talking about food and I started to tell the people seated around MY table about Greek Meatballs(keftethes), and there was Bono(!) asking me about these Greek Meatballs and how he would love to try my meatballs and did I know the recipe. And I wrote it down in green marker on a piece of paper and gave it to him and he seemed very excited about it.

I can understand that I dreamt of food and meatball recipes, since I am giving up meat for Lent. We are in no way religious in this house, but for some reason R had said a few months ago, that she was going to give up eating meat for Lent. I thought she had forgotten about it, but she brought it up again last week, and it looks like I'll have to join her, since it'll be that much easier cooking if we are all on the same page(mr. F will just have to go along with the menu). We don't eat much meat as it is anyway, and luckily, R likes bean dishes, and veggie burgers and omelets...so...it is do-able. But, I just know one of us is going to break down and sneak some meat at some point in those 40 days and I have a feeling my downfall will be bacon. But, we are up to the challenge.

But I can't understand why Bono would show up in a dream of mine, though. Martha, I can see--she was on Conan the other night and I kind of like the old girl(although in real life, I know she would simply frighten me if we were to meet).

One more random thought, about another indulgent treat today:

I finally had my day off, sitting in the sun! Usually, in other years when we have had milder winters, there has always been that one glorious February day when it got warm enough on our south-facing back porch, where I would get to sit outside(wearing a light jacket, still) on a chair for the first time(since the fall) with my lunch and my dog lying at my side, luxuriating in the warmth of the sun. But this year, with a harsher winter and colder temps, and snow still covering the back deck, there was no day in February like that. This year, it arrived, finally , a few weeks later, and at least it was on my day off. I kept saying to myself that in ten minutes, no more, I had to get up and go inside and take care of some house chores, but...I just.. could... not do it. I felt drugged underneath the rays of that sunshine. I heard woodpeckers hammering away on trees(a true sign of early spring), happy bird song(in fact, these last few days, I was surprised to finally be woken up by birdsong once again), and noticed little pointed green shoots of tulip and daffodil bulbs poking up in places in my yard where I saw nothing just few days ago.

*Update: Oh good heavens! I just noticed that I mispelled the title to this entry as Ramdoms instead of "randoms"(corrected now). I truly feel I have lost my writing skills(not that I had that many to begin with--I know my grammar has always been b-a-a-a-d, the more often I take these extended breaks from regualr blogging. It isn't always like riding a bicycle.

Happy Birthday...

...Jonathan!
Yep, it's Jonathan Richman's 59th. And I know I am repeating myself by featuring this video of him on the Conan's old "Late Night" show, but it's a favorite of mine(the song, performance, Conan's show) so I had to do it again.

Random Tuesday Re-Entry

You know you have been away from blogging for too long when you dream about writing a blog entry!
Last night(or early this morning?), I dreamed I was watching a chickadee in a bush in my front yard. Then I noticed a larger bird perched on a branch next to the smaller bird. First I thought it was an American Bald Eagle and was all excited, but then it morphed into an osprey(which is kind of like an eagle)--then two ospreys--just hanging out in the bush with the tiny chickadee. And in the dream, I was thinking I should blog about my up-close encounter with this magnificent bird.
Then I woke up.
And it took me a few moments to realise that I hadn't yet writen a blog. It was just a dream. Actually, I knew it was a dream in the dream, but the going-to-blog-about-it seemed real.

So...here I am and ready for a Random Tuesday, after being away for two weeks.
It just happened. I had lots to say, if I wanted to, but was feeling both non communicative and slightly depressed over various things beyond my control.
Politics.
Rush Limbaugh (ggrrrr.....)
Earthquakes.
Human misery.
The unfairness of it all.
Add to that my own petty little problems.
And there was no way I was going to publicly moan about my own petty little problems while there were other humans going through far worse at the same time.

But now I am ready to write down some petty little random thoughts for the day:

**I saw Sherlock Holmes in the cinema on Sunday and you know, I thought I was going to like it more from what I read of the reviews and because I generally adore Robert Downey, Jr. in movies(turns out I preferred Jude Law much better in this one). But it was just.... okay. Holmes and Watson were turned into action heroes, Rachel McAdam's red lipstick and artfully applied smokey eyeshadow never smudged nor budged, and the end of the movie has it already set up for a sequel(ala "Pirates of the Caribbean").

* * It only occurred to me last night why a woman was carrying a Danish flag into the the bar up the street(I passed it on my to the cinema) on Sunday. It was a Minnesota Vikings fan going to watch the game and cheer on HER team(Vikings= Danish--get it?!). Duh. Here I thought there was some kind of interesting multi-culti thing going on(like they were going into the bar to watch an international pre-Olympics speed skating event on the bar's TV) and it was just a plain ole' American football game. (can you tell I am not into football at all?).


**I have not eaten any sugar(except one slice of cake my sister brought to me at work one day last week and I could not resist) for over a week. At first it was difficult, but now I know I can easily make it until February 1st, and even after that date, I think I have rounded a corner where I will be more conscious of what I eat and that I'll be eating far less sugar(and processed stuff like tortilla chips and salty snacks)

** Why couldn't my daughter take after her father instead of me in mathematical matters? She is struggling with algebra this year in school and it reminds me so much of how it was for me back when I was in high school(actually...I started to lose my grip on math as far back as the fifth grade when long division was introduced). She has exams this week and today is the math exam...please, please... let her do well.

**What are those Harajuku Lovers perfume bottles that look like dolls? I have seen them on line and in the stores and I just can't get my head around the fact that there is a perfume bottle inside that hard plastic shell. Funny, but they remind me so much of these Avon "It's A Small World After All" kid perfumes and bubble baths I had when I was around seven years old(I had a kimono-wearing Japanese one and a beret wearing French one), but these things are geared towards teenagers and young women, not kids under ten. I am just old , so can't understand, I suppose. And as much as I love perfumes, I am not even tempted to sniff these. I refuse to spritz a giant doll's head(or neck).

** It is just now sinking in that there will be no more Conan! I (and Mr. F) have been watching him for years on late night(last few years we taped and watched the show the following night at a "more-agreeable-to-a-40-something" hour). The last show on Friday had me choked up, but still laughing. The only consolation is that maybe...just maybe, we'll now get a chance to "bump into" him in Westerly(the furthest south-west corner of Rhode Island)where he has been spotted before(at a certain breakfast restaurant, in particular where he ordered the coconut pancakes...and this was well before he got the Coco nickname). Conan's parents and I think, sister, have homes just over the border in Connecticut and when he visited in the summers and weekends(easier when he was based in NYC) he would slip in to Westerly sometimes. And with him having the summer off...he might just be around on this coast again.


*sigh* Don't stay away from our TVs too long, Conando.

** And lastly, I still have five of those yellow ranunculas blooms(arranged in a smaller vase) left after 2 weeks..a little faded and getting ever so slightly crinkly, but still looking pretty jaunty. Just like me? ;-)