I missed the venerable bday of lemon_says . Can't believe I haven't logged on and mrs__smith even told me about the karaoke (sp) party too! My memory is getting scary. Sigh, hope it was tons of fun which knowing lemon it was.

Here's a little Snoopy clip that I've always loved. I know it's Christmas but it's fun...

Hee, this scene has been amusing me all week. freakforolives and I went to a dinner party on Saturday night. It's an odd group of 4 couples, a church supper club that hosts each other over 4 months. We have some in common but not a lot overall. It's fairly obvious that we won't be spending much time together in the future after our 4 month obligation is up.

That's not what's funny. As we all went into the dining room to sit down, our hostess asked what we preferred for seating. I laughed and quoted a scene from the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice where Lady Catherine de Bourgh (paraphrasing here) chides one of the guests not to sit next to his wife. No, no can't have that. The hostess' face was blank and she quite obviously did not get the joke. So, you'd think I'd leave it at there. No, I turned to the guest on the other side of me and made the same joke in a quieter voice thinking surely they'd get it. Another blank face. My husband thought it was funny that I kept trying.

It was one of those moments when you know you should shut up but you hear yourself saying it anyway. Oh well, we're hosting in January so maybe I can find another obscure joke for the occasion. Hope is alive.

It is raining in Atlanta again. For those not in the know, we have had record rainfall this fall. I love rain but enough is enough.

Have 2 kids with strep throat. All 3 boys were surprisingly good when I took them to the pediatrician yesterday. All got checked and all got flu shots/mists. Finally! Can't believe 2 out of the 3 have strep and I'm currently eyeballing the third to see what develops.

Had to sew a small Christmas stocking for my garden club project this past Sunday night. lemon_says , mrs__smith , woohagand travellightwould've laughed their asses off at the 2 hours it took me to sew one little stocking. I had to sew and remove the embroidery thread upteen times. The actual decorations were okay but it took me forever to NOT break the thread, needles and to edge the stupid thing. In the end it looked pretty good at least for me. When my husband came upstairs, I informed him that I would not be sewing costumes for the children any time soon.

Three of my very good friends are going to dinner tonight but alas I am driving thirty minutes away in the pouring rain during rush hour traffic to another dinner. Oh well, it will be a good meeting and I get the chance to spend time with mrs__smith. Not too shabby.

Am about 100 pages into New Moon and must finish before movie starts. Dying to see it! Husband is enormously uninterested in teenage vampires although he likes to watch True Blood at times for the vampire porn. Hee!

This is long so under the cut...
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Okay, who thinks the RH's got together before the taping of the reunion show and made the conscious decision to NOT have any drama on the reunion show? I, unlike most people, don't think all of the show's interaction is staged. Yeah, a lot but not all but this show definitely was. I could so visualize the producers or Andy telling Dwight to stir things up when he came out. It was obvious what he was trying to do. And it didn't work which was totally funny. He and Lisa need to work things out. I agree with Lisa that it wasn't the right place for Dwight to critique her show at the show. He did need tact there.

I could have lived my whole life without ever knowing more about Dwight's penile implant. Really I could have.

My husband begged me to mute the tv when Kim was singing. It was far worse that I imagined. Kandi is a genius.

I hope Kandi's album does well since she is very talented and I've enjoyed watching her perform. I respect her the most.

If you don't watch Real Housewives, what reality show do you like and why? It can't be for the main reason like "I like Dancing with the Stars b/c of the dancing".

I am not for denying people the right to bear children, however, this woman should never be allowed to have kids again. This makes me sad and infuriated every time I see a search  like this where time and resources are wasted and authorities will doubt legitimate emergencies in the future. How can you blame them if they doubt you when people like her are out there? I'm surprised SC didn't burn her ass as I'm from there and we tend to be pretty hard core on crime.

There's been a lot of tragic news lately (in general not me specifically) so I thought I'd post something not sad. I have notice d that there is a plethora of memoirs out and I'm happy to say I don't give a rat's ass. Who wants to know Andre Agassi did meth and lied about it, didn't have a good marriage with Brooke Shields (yeah, you're divorced) and generally had a tennis obsessed dad. Who cares about Valerie Bertinelli's struggles? I will not mock Mackenzie's Phillips' memoir b/c it's a serious subject and we don't know what's truthful and what's not - I'll just point out that it's out too. Who else? How far behind can Jessica Simpson's be??

Me no read memoirs!

Hee, hee. My dad is a curmudgeon these days. His bday is coming up this weekend so I called to ask what he'd like as a present.

Dad:  I don't know. I'll have to get back to you.
Me:  How about world peace? 
Dad: Screw you!

It's all in jest b/c we have a very good relationship. It was pretty funny at the time.

So I'm faulty about posting these days but the funny thing is I walk around all the time composing posts in my head. Negative ones, positive ones, things to ponder and so on. Just haven't gotten around to doing it. Also, I've been reading a new author and have been engrossed in her books. Karen Joy Fowler is easy to read and I'm actually reading every word and not skipping guiltily to the end as I often do the last few years. Every so often I get a perverse joy in not reading or seeing the latest IT movie or book. I like the fact that I'm not lemming-ing it up. Like, I've never ever seen Titanic with Leo Decaprio and I never will. Just because. My best friend joined me in this boycott and we both laughed wildly when someone gave it to me as a gift one year. Not at the gift giver but at our inside joke. I appreciated the gift giving in itself.

I also love reading a book long after it was a hit movie. 'Course sometimes I do a flip and do it the other way around. This fall I finished
The Devil Wears Prada and I've seen the movie like 5 times. The book was a good read and to me very different than the movie. The book is darker and more realistic. After finishing the book, my friend K and I went to see the Anna Wintour documentary, September Issue, and I scoured the film looking for likenesses. Supposedly the DWP book is fashioned after AW. I saw elements and truly suspect there is a darker side to AW than shown. Has to be. I did feel sorry for her in the film - seems lonely personally.

Back to Karen Joy Fowler. I refused to read her hit The Jane Austen Book Club when it was out but caved and watched the movie since it came on direct tv so why not. Liked it a lot, yes schmaltzy but fun. I finished the book last week and liked it even better. Got another of hers the other day Wit's End and have been devouring it. I plan to read her others too. It's been a long time since I've whipped through one author at this pace. I was going through the Charlaine Harris books but needed a break from death and mayhem. Been enjoying my little book vacation.

Hope this post finds you well and your life good or at least tolerable. Forgive me for not responding to all the lovely comments in my last post. I SWEAR I will start responding back soon. In the mean time, let me know if you are reading something fun or even not so fun. What would we do without books??

I went outside this afternoon to get something from the car and heard the unmistakable sound of an ice cream truck trolling the neighborhood. This one was unusual b/c it had a loudspeaker that blared "Hello, ice cream." Hadn't seen one of those. Anyway, my first thought was "ewww an ice cream truck". Then, I always get a pang of sadness since the sound used to be the most fantastic one in the world when my brother and I were little.

My grandparents lived in an old part of Columbia, South Carolina. My father and aunts grew up in the neighborhood going to the schools down the street their entire lives. We spent summers and holidays and school breaks at their house. The house was on a circle and you couldn't see all the way up the street from their front yard. We'd be playing outside as usual and hear the ice cream truck going down the main street. We'd break speed records getting in the house to beg for money to go get our treats. I used to like either the Nutty Buddies or the Mickey Mouse ears ice cream pops and my brother loved the cones with the bubble gum at the bottom. He got a kick out of them every time since he thought the gum wouldn't be there that particular time.

It gives me pangs b/c this is a piece of childhood my kids have never had. Nowadays, my friends and I talk about you just don't know who is driving those trucks and what the heck they are serving. I really don't know if there are more pedophiles or if we just hear more about them. My grandparents and parents didn't even come out of the house to watch us go get our ice cream up the street. That was the kind of times we lived in. Nothing bad ever happened and maybe someone was looking out for us.

My kids get ice cream at Bruster's or from our freezer. It's a safe and enjoyable treat and that's how we have to live.

I think Doritos are crack for me. I gave them up for years and now they are back. Must stop - send help!

Also, we need more people in the world like this 22 yr old young man . He ended my day on a good note. A hero indeed.

Remember in Sex and the City when Carrie and Stanford were giggling over her Voque article and Stanford said, "Judgey Wudgey was a bear!" They were trying to act like they didn't judge people and then cracked up b/c they totally judged people.
 
I had an unusual experience yesterday at lunch with a close friend of mine. We were catching up over quiche and salad and lovely teas when she asked me if I was judging her on a particular subject. I was caught completely off guard. I had been listening to her and thinking about what she said and how yummy my bacon and cheddar quiche was. No thought of any kind of judgement in my head. I reassured her that I wasn't judging at all.

I've been thinking about it off and on ever since. I don't judge except about fashion and manners. Those subjects encompass quite a lot but everything else is fair game. I don't want to give the perception that I do judge b/c it isn't true. I'm talking about reasonable things here not smoking crack around your kids or sacrificing your pets. I like to judge fashion b/c it's fun. I'm the first to admit I don't have a lot of money to spend on it but I try to dress as nicely as I can and to be somewhat in voque. I like to dish on those that do have money and can afford a stylist if they can't do it themselves. It's my guilty pleasure.

My biggest grievance in life is bad manners or lack of manners. It probably makes up 95% of what I do carp about. I truly believe that the breakdowns in societies are due to this one abiding subject. But, in most everything else, I don't judge.

Do you judge and what topics do you go after?

My husband, freakforolives  , says that I attract all the nutbags. His word not mine. I prefer "nutball" or nutter". My middle son and I went antiquing this past Saturday. We were in a thrift shop/consignment store looking for a table. I found one buried under a large bookcase (yes, a bookcase) and lots of knick knacks. I didn't want to touch all of it for fear of breaking things so I asked the owners if they could remove the items so I could check it out. It's the kind of store that has hundreds of things all piled on top of each other. I wasn't gonna take a chance on moving stuff with my 4 yr old in tow.

A man and woman came over to help me. On the way to the table, the woman sort of cackled and said to the guy (didn't catch his name) "I don't know...she didn't beg hard enough". I ignored her and spoke to my son instead b/c what do you say to that? When we reached the table and they started taking the stuff off, she said it again. I pointedly ignored her.

What a weird rube. I didn't feel the need to reply. I figured the silence was enough.

I nicked this unashamedly from curt_holman ! 


 

I am a President of one. My term as school Parent Teacher Organization President begins on Wednesday. Actually, it started unofficially in the spring. I wanted to be called a Chair but apparently I've been promoted to "President" on the handouts to parents. I have no recruits, no volunteers at this point. All of the fundraising chairs of our biggest events have left the school for various reasons - children aged out, going to new schools, etc. This makes me very nervous. I am chairless. New word btw. I am calling it the Rebuilding Year.

I do not have hobbies. Don't knit, not crafty although I do them with the kids, don't draw and I don't bake. My God given talent is organization and delegation. I excel at it. There was a movie a good number of years ago called Grand Canyon with Kevin Kline (remember him ?) and Sigourney Weaver. SW played the wife and she was a super organizer with post it notes, plastic bins and an army of lists. The friend I went to see it with remarked that it was funny how they'd written a character about me. Now I don't recall everything about the character so don't go run watch it and think it's all about me - just the organizing bit. I'm good at volunteering and taking charge of things. I'm not very good at following, however I can do it if need be. I've always loved the saying "Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way". I believe it.

I have to go in on Wednesday morning and speak to a chapel (church school) full of parents and I'll be nervous as hell since I haven't spoken before a large group in years. I'm going to carry a clipboard so I have something to clutch and basically be the school cheerleader. I keep telling myself that we will get the volunteers and if we don't we won't do the events. Easy to say hard to believe. But, that's what I'm going with this week.

Went to trivia tonight and the annoying mom who-talks-too-much-and-won't-let-anyone-else-talk was there. I usually see her once a month at our supper club so I suffer through it, however, she chose to come to trivia tonight too. She was a round table down from me so I didn't have to sit across from her. Plus, it was pretty loud and I couldn't hear all that she said. She act true to form and came around to my side of the table to chat with those next to me. She carried on into the start of the trivia round and I made the shhhing sound pretty loudly. She also got it from others at the table so she scooted back to her seat. It also helped that she wasn't stellar at trivia and couldn't contribute much to the conversation on that end.

Now, I have to figure out how to deal with the One Upper in my life. Annoying the sh%t outta me. I never heard of this person a year ago and now she's in every social group of my life except my mom's group. If she joins it, I may have to put a hit out on her or commit hari kari. Gaahhhhh!