Everyone has a birthday, even if at times they’d like to pretend they didn’t. Whether getting older is good or bad all depends on how you look at it. As of yet I’m undecided, but my husband seems to think it’s a blast. It’s his birthday today. That’s right, on this day 48 years ago the world became a better place.
Happy birthday to the best husband in the world.
We finally got around to cutting the grass. Yeah, that was last week really, but I’m only getting around to announcing this exciting news today.
We went to my favorite store, Home Depot, and stood in front of the lawn mowers for forever discussing which kind of mower to get. We were considering getting the cheapest gas one when my husband spied the manual push mowers. “Maybe we should get that,” he suggested.
I didn’t tell him this, but I was thinking the same thing. I actually researched these mowers online to find out if they really work. I research a lot of things online. Like yesterday I found out all about the angler fish, because this knowledge will really help me move ahead in life.
Frankly, we need all the exercise we can get. When you sit around writing on the interwebs all day, you need to get up off your squishy behind and push a lawn mower designed in the 1800s. So we got an old school push mower against the advice of the Home Depot employee who was hovering over us the entire time.
The best thing about having a manual lawn mower is watching those little blades spin. There’s something so satisfying about it. The worse thing is that it stops abruptly nearly impaling you through the chest with the handle every time even the smallest little stick gets stuck in it.
I’m sure my husband is loving the new purchase because anytime I notice that he is cutting the grass I get all jealous and have to do it too. He’s hardly doing any mowing at all. Yard work is fun, even in Florida heat.
Note: Here a joke courtesy of my father …
How do you say cut the grass in French?
Mow the lawn.
Note 2: That picture up there is an affiliate link in case you want to buy a manual mower of your own.
Did you know that I used to have a radio show? It was wonderful, of course. Isn’t everything I do just wonderful? Don’t answer that.
I was a college student with a plan. The plan was mainly to “borrow” CD’s from the radio station, copy them onto cassette tapes, and then return them. I’ll probably get arrested for admitting that, but I’m hoping the statute of limitations has run out. I mean I was in college like one thousand years ago. The only remaining evidence of my crime is this confession, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who did a lot worse in college. Are those enough justifications for you?
The show radio was called Juice Up with Lovelyn and Kate. I was Lovelyn and Kate was not Lovelyn. Every good radio show has to have a theme of some sort. Our theme was that we talked as little as possible on air. Do you want to know the name of the song we just played? Well, too bad because we’re going to play ten songs and maybe only mention one of them by name.
We also probably confused the audience because we played a variety of music. We weren’t an indie rock show, jazz show, or classic hip hop show. We were an everything we like show. Everyone from John Coltrane to Biz Markie to Liz Phair to Al Green were featured. No wonder Juice Up didn’t last long.
I mention all of this because the other day my husband told me that someone causally offered him a job as a radio DJ at one of his gigs. When I heard this I was incredibly jealous. “How come they didn’t offer me that job?” I asked, “I have experience. No one ever offers me radio jobs.”
“Maybe because you weren’t there,” my husband replied.
So all of this has got me thinking. Now that I have some space to record and a fancy USB microphone (here fancy means something cheap from Best Buy) maybe I’ll start a podcast.
You’re probably thinking that my podcast will eventually disappear into the ether just like the weekly Nebulous Mooch videos, but there was a reason for that. My laptop is too slow to edit videos … and my camera broke … and I didn’t really have any place to record them … and I started thinking that if I’m going to be putting my face online a lot I better start wearing makeup which I haven’t gotten around to purchasing because what do I really know about makeup (there should be some kind of punctuation there, but I’m not worrying about that. This is jazz, baby.) … and the dog that I don’t have yet ate my hard drive … and I’m full of excuses. Videos will be returning shortly though and they’ll maybe even be a podcast.
We just moved into our house last week. Actually, I like to refer to it as our echo chamber because we have so few things that every noise we make bounces off the empty walls like a tennis ball. That’s good because now I have all the room I could possibly want to polish up my moves for the next So You Think You Can Dance audition. Tweet Boogie is still my favorite dancing instructor. Hopefully, I’ll have my respectful slow grind together soon.
The downside to not having any furniture is that there isn’t anywhere for anybody to sit. We’ve picked up a few odds and ends that my parents were kind enough to give us: a sofa, a bookcase, a green thing. That’s pretty much it though.
We’re in no hurry to get furniture because we’re not really sure about what to do with the space yet. I haven’t lived in a place with this much room in a long, long time. 1067 square feet may be small potatoes to you, but when you’re coming from a 331 square foot cottage this is a mansion. I’m taking time to enjoy it before we clutter it all up.
There’s still a pile of boxes to unpack in the kitchen. I just haven’t had the time to get to them yet, and even if I did I don’t have anywhere to put the stuff they contain. I’m hoping that if I ignore them long enough they’ll unpack themselves. Perhaps a small unpacking elf will show up in the middle of the night and clear them out for me. Or maybe the neighbor’s cat will make himself useful and come in here and unpack some boxes. That would be more helpful than pooping in our front yard and strolling up and down the street like he owns the neighborhood.
Photo by dno1967b
It started with an odd feeling in my vocal cords and by mid-afternoon I couldn’t speak. For the first two hours it was big fun, but now it’s just tiresome. You might not realize this, but I have a lot of really important stuff to say. It kind of sucks when people pretend they can’t hear my whisper over the blaring television. Don’t they realize that what I’m saying could change their lives?
When I expressed my frustration to my husband he suggested that I stop trying to talk and start writing things down. Write things down?!! What does he think I am–a writer? I have way too much knowledge to drop. A pencil and a piece of paper will never be able to keep up. So I’ve nixed the whole writing it down idea and continue to try to talk. Mostly it’s just a whisper, but every now and then my full voice will break through.
My father thinks that if this continues I should go straight to the hospital. I think that would be a waste of time and money. They’d probably just hand me a pencil and paper and tell me write stuff down and rest my voice.
This is day three of not being able to speak, and I’m wondering how long one has to have laryngitis before they are officially classified as mute.
Finally after months and months and months of struggle, we bought a house!!! I’ve been sitting here trying to think of something clever to say about it, but I can’t. Now we just have to think of something to name it and make a plaque to hang by the door. I was set on Rupert the House before, but now that we have a house I don’t think it looks like a Rupert at all. I’m thinking Bernice Littlefield might be a better name. What do you think?
So I was supposed to close on a house, but since the title company and the closer can’t seem to get their acts together it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen today. This is killing me. Even though I don’t follow schedules when I make them, I really like to have one.
So it looks like I wore my closing outfit for no apparent reason. It’s a closing outfit because it’s not shorts and a T-shirt which is my I’m-working-today uniform. Since I’m wasting a perfectly good closing outfit, I had my husband take a picture of me so you can see it. I think the shirt says I’m a responsible human being while the pants are say that the weather is a little chilly today.
My husband apologized for his poor photography skills. “I think my nose is too big for taking pictures. Cameras are made for people with petite noses,” he said. I wonder if his nose was also the reason my face looks so lumpy in this picture.
I read a book the other day called A Good American. When I say the other day I really mean I read the first 200 pages over the course of a week and the last 200 pages over the course of 24 hours. Why do I always put things off until the last minute? A good American would never do that. A good American would wake up early so she could get in some target practice at the firing range before work, drive her SUV to the office, put in a good 8 hours, come home, eat pizza for dinner, and then sit back on the sofa to watch the game with a cold beer in hand. After the game she’d read the entire novel in one night before heading off to bed. Not me.
A Good American opens with a quirky young German couple, Jette and Frederick, falling in love and immigrating to the US via New Orleans of all places. Eventually they have children and settle in a small Missouri town. The story focuses on the Jette and Frederick’s struggles to fit into their new surroundings. Frederick has an easier time of it than Jette, but he is obsessed with the idea of being a good American. So much so that he makes a huge sacrifice to prove that his is just that.
A Good American tells a multi-generational tale of a family as they experience the joys and pains of small town life.
Did I like it? In short, yes. It is an easy read that doesn’t get bogged down in irrelevant details. There was an incident towards the end of the book with the pastor in town that seemed a bit ridiculous to me, but it was the only part that really annoyed me. I don’t want to tell you what it is exactly because I don’t want to ruin the story for you. Other than that it was a good story and in my opinion worth a read.
If you want to find out more about A Good American, they’re discussing the book at the BlogHer Book Club.
Disclosure: I was totally paid to write about this novel. I just wanted to let you know. Being paid didn’t affect how I felt about the book. If I thought it sucked, I would tell you.
So a giant meteor exploded over Russia last week injuring like a million people and blowing the glass out of every building in the country. Yes, that’s not exactly accurate, but if you’re coming here for your daily news you’ve got a real problem.
Then an asteroid passed only a few feet from the Earth nearly knocking the planet off its axis. We escaped catastrophe by the skin of our teeth. (I never really got that saying. Do teeth have skin?)
All of this seems to be evidence that the end of the world is near. I’m sure this was mentioned somewhere in Revelations or by Nostradamus or my Magic 8 Ball. So you know what this means, don’t you? It’s time to prepare.
You may be thinking that I sure do seem to spend a pile of time preparing for disaster. Hey, I live in Florida and there are lots of disasters here–hurricanes, tornadoes, palmetto bugs landing on your head. I have to be ready for all of these events because they could happen at any time.
How can you prepare for the Earth to be struck by a fiery asteroid the size of Texas? Easy. I stopped in at my local Oh-No-Is-This-Really-The-End-Of-The-World store at the mall and picked up a few of the necessities just the other day. Here’s what I suggest you pick up.
Once you’ve got all the stuff on this list I suggest having them on at all times. The Russians got no warning about this meteor strike. You just have to be ready.
If you are lucky enough to survive an asteroid strike, you’ll have me to thank for it. After all thanking me, grab a sack and start gathering up some asteroid debris. I hear the pieces of that Russian meteor are selling for $2,200 per gram. Heck, even if most of humanity has disintegrated into a heap of ash you could still do with a a little extra cash in your bank account.
Photo by andrewsrj
I checked the local SPCA website yesterday only to discover that Spooky the cat wasn’t listed. Frantically, I scanned the recently adopted section and there he was. Spooky was adopted on February 9, 2013. I am so happy I can’t even begin to tell you. I was afraid that I would have to adopt him to make up for talking so much smack about him.
I don’t know how he managed it. He must’ve tricked his new owner by dressing up as a Great Dane and hanging out in the dog section. Great Danes are popular at the SPCA. When one turns up they only last a day before they get adopted.
Good for Spooky. I’m glad he managed to find someone with a bigger heart than me. Now I can check out some of the other cats the next time I visit the shelter instead of spending all of my time trying to befriend Spooky.
