MY HOROSCOPE PART 2

After finding this strange one from the Statesman last week (previous post).....

The very next day, this is what the Statesman had to say.....

You walk with confidence, smile with intrigue??????  This is the same paper that was just telling me, the previous day, that my life of mirrors was just an illusion!!  

So, did the Statesman people find different experts on different planets to write these????  Maybe on altering days???  I would think that a newspaper/magazine/kindergarten newsletter would use the same sources for "topic specific" information.  Wouldn't you?

So, to further my investigation into the weird, degenerate, sadly-cosmic horoscope world (wink wink!), Daughter also showed me the current Chronicle horoscope for my chunk of the year (if I choose to accept it!!).  

If I thought these two above were weird, well, .......

I don't even know what to say about this one.  And who is this Brezsny person?  I'd like to meet him (before he sues me!).  Seriously, "soul pit located in the tear duct of the eye"?  "Send my soul flying through my soul pit."  "Stored up tears"????  (I have NO stored up tears - I use them all!)  "Pour them down like rain"??????  Wow, really?  This one makes the Hall of Mirrors thing look like a Miley Cyrus song lyric.  

Soooooo, I think these horoscope-writer-people are just strange individuals, like me, who have too much to say, but have a better vocabulary than me.  They have no additional connection to the universe, no greater insight into our daily lives, no more of a cosmic glimpse of things to come, than we do.  I just hope that other Leos out there aren't going to worry too much about their crying, or their tear ducts, or their soul pit.  I'm going to be worrying/thinking/obsessing about those things enough for all of the Leos out there!  I'll keep the Leo people posted.

THIS is why I've never read horoscopes.  And, I've picked now to start.  Hum.

MY HOROSCOPE

I don't pay too much attention to horoscopes.  I think those people who write them are like the people who work for Hallmark and write greeting cards.  The horoscope people, however, are messing with people's lives.  They should know that, and I hope they take their job seriously - WAY more seriously than the Hallmark people, except maybe the sympathy card people, they should take it seriously.

I don't read the paper during the week.  I just don't have time.  But I do read it on the weekends.  And I usually like to read the horoscopes, ALL of them, because I think they are funny.  I like to pick my own out of the collection of twelve.  I don't always like the one they assign to me.

But TODAY, those horoscope writers really OUTDID themselves for the LEO month.  Here is what my horoscope said:

"There will be a funhouse effect on your day.  It's like you wait in line to enter a hall of mirrors.  And while you're inside trying to find your way out, you may wonder why anyone would pay for such an illusion."

I mean I couldn't even make up something like this!  Wow!  I have no idea what it means, but I've thought about it all day long.  I stayed away from mirrors though.  I don't think I brushed my hair until 4:00 this afternoon, and then I tried to avoid the mirror - just in case the mirror thing meant something.  You never know.

This is just deep, man, you know, I mean, like, really.  Like really!!??

Maybe I should be finding some message in this.  Do you think?  I could use a cosmic message in my life right now.  I just don't know.

I'm definitely going to read my horoscope tomorrow though.  Hopefully it will say something like "Your luck at the lottery is definitely improving", or "That home in the mountains is definitely in your future".

We'll see.  Still going to avoid mirrors for one more day.

HUSBAND'S MAN-CRUSH

Here's Husband and Willie a couple of weeks ago.  Story to follow........

I've mentioned Husband's love of Willie Nelson before.  He's been a Willie fan for a billion years.  Husband and I grew up in a small town seven miles up the road from where Willie grew up.  Willie was always a common, everyday, conversational topic while we were growing up.  Not to mention a reason for drinking Lone Star, tequila, playing pool, dancing, boating, water-skiing, drinking, playing pool, drinking, etc.  You get what I'm sayin'.  Small town Texas.

Then Willie started having these 4th of July Picnics in the 70's, damn him!  And, of course, what you did at these was drink, dance, get sun-burned, drink some more, dance some more.  And have a great time.  The 70's.  We had fun doing anything in the '70's.

One particular Picnic at Bryan/College Station in 1974 almost caused Husband to not be husband, however.  We were getting married in four weeks, and wedding invitations hadn't gone out yet.  (The internet wasn't around then to tell us that we were ALREADY two or three weeks late sending them out so it really didn't matter!)  Husband went to the Picnic with his buddies, anyway.  I stayed home and did the wedding invitations.  And cursed him for three days.  There were tales of drunken escapades while he was there, still to this day those tales exist, but I IGNORED them.  I don't think we talked for those next four weeks though - until the night before the wedding - when we both decided that we just needed to get married and get the hell out of small town Texas and on to the big city of Austin, then we'd work it all out.  Which we did.

Then the next summer, right before our one year anniversary, we did it again, in Liberty Hill, with life-long friends.  Well, let me tell you it was HELL.  HELL.  There were tears, yelling, broken fingers, yes, broken fingers, SUNBURNS, mud, mud, sunburns, torrential rains, and mud, and peyote-eating people sitting next to us who were having "visions".

We almost didn't make it to our one year anniversary, needless to say.  Even after we almost didn't make it to our wedding day either.  ALL because of Willie Picnics.  That was the beginning of my lack of enthusiasm for Willie Picnics.  I'm the kind of gal who likes to go camping if there is air conditioning.

Those 4th of July Picnics continued into the '80's, however.  And the '90's.  And are STILL going on, of course.  I stopped going to the Picnics many years ago because of the bad sunburn part.  And the long lines to the port-o-johns.  And the fact that there were port-o-johns NOT bathrooms.  And the mud.  And the too many people part.  And the drunk people stepping on your stuff, and the sober people stepping on your stuff, and the naked people who you never wanted to see naked and wish you hadn't, and mainly the sitting in the sun part, and the no ac part, and the long day part.  And there's no TV.

Husband loves ALL that stuff, though.  The stuff that turns me off about those Picnics.  And, luckily, he has friends and children who love it with him.  Wife bailed.

God love that Willie-man.  I love a guy who never gives up.  Willie's definitely one of those.  So is Husband.  Determination & dedication are his strongest assets right now, believe me. 

I have so many pictures of Willie picnics over the years but I haven't found them all yet.  This one is from ten years ago, July 4th, 2000, at South Park Meadows in Austin (long before it was a shopping center).  I love this picture.  I love cute Husband in it (in the middle), Son on the left, looking like oh shit they are so not playing my kind of music here.  And Husband's good, good friend on the right.  They had a great time, even Son.

Here are a few other pictures of this year's 4th of July Picnic at The Backyard.  Husband is lucky enough to have some wonderful friends in the music business who made sure that he was taken care of for the day.  Daughter did an even better job of taking care of Dad.  And she was awe-struck by what she was a part of.

Husband bought this hat in the '70's as well.  It's had a hiatus for many years (you can figure out why!) but he brought it out of retirement for this year's Picnic.  He texted me that he was a "camera magnet" with it on!!  I just said hum really?  I told him it looked like he hadn't shaved since the '70's either.  He had the fur trimmed up a week later!!

....and a few more pictures from this year's Picnic.  Husband likes these because you see the BACKS of everyone on stage, hence, he was BACKSTAGE!!!!

I plan to send out similar pictures of Husband and Willie next year.  That's my plan.

JEEZ, LUCI, ONCE AGAIN !

This cat!  What can I say.  She provides A LOT of writing material.

She's been pissed at me for a few days.  She has a new sleeping spot on the bed and I DON'T LIKE IT.  So I've kept pushing her off the bed, for three nights, all night long.  I'm getting maybe less sleep than she is, but I'm trying to teach her that she can't sleep there.

And if any of you have cats you know that you can't teach a cat anything?  So, well, that's my point.  I haven't slept.  She manages to sleep - anywhere she wants.  Even where I don't want her to sleep.  So who is learning the lesson here?  Urggghh.....

So today I was watching her.  She usually hates when she sees me taking her picture, usually chatters at me, which I assume means jeez mom just leave me alone!  But, today she was completely ignoring me, so it allowed me to take these pictures.  OK, I was WAY, WAY far on the other side of the room and she couldn't lunge at my face, but I got the pictures!!!

Every time I open the curtain on this window, she treats the wooden, Mexi-cat, as a real, living thing.  It freaks her out at first.  She stays as far away as she can, glancing at it occasionally when she thinks it might be moving toward her.....

Ignores it for a bit.....

Finally, she slowly scoots closer, realizing that, oh yeah it's not real ha ha duh!

Then, she hears me.  I'm glad she couldn't reach me!

(I need to wash the outside of this window, don't you think?  These pictures would have been way more impressive if that window was clean. Putting that on my to-do list right now.)

Anyway, she finally gives up......

She's still not talking to me today, though.  We'll see where she sleeps tonight.

Maybe I'll choose a different place to sleep.

COOKIES OR .....

I realized tonight that my THIN MINTS Girl Scout Cookie stockpile was looking a little low.  I don't have many "sweet" addictions.  Mine are more like Lite beer and cheese enchiladas.

BUT,  THIN MINTS are my weakness.  And I hate that you can only buy them once a year, for 2 months.  You can stockpile them, however.  BUT, they only sell them once a year, that's my point.

So, knowing my love for THIN MINTS, Husband always tries to keep me in supply every year.  He feeds my addiction.  I don't eat more than one or two a day,  but I WANT THEM THERE EVERY DAY, GODDAMNIT!  Sorry.

Sooooo, here is my last reserve.  MY LAST, until February of 2011!!!!!  Four packages.

I keep them in the freezer because they are just simply THE BEST when you eat them FROM THE FREEZER.  Plus I guess it keeps them fresh or whatever.  (That other sweet stuff you see in the freezer picture is Husbands - not even of interest to me!  Well, maybe the Orange Sherbet because I love the packaging, but...)

Anyway, FOUR little packages of THIN MINTS, that's all I have left.  Did you know that there are 16 cookies in each package?  And there are two packages in each box you buy.  You are buying 32 cookies.  They don't tell you THAT on the front of the pretty, green box.

So, here's my figuring.....  I've been eating ONE A DAY for a while now, not realizing the desperation, panic I was creating for myself.  But with only four packages left, 16 X 4 = 64, I have to NOW restrict myself to... not even one every other day... but ONE EVERY THREE DAYS!!! Just to make it to February 2011.  I can do this.

Do you think you can buy THIN MINTS on ebay?

THEY GROW UP SO FAST

It's been a year........  A YEAR !!!!!!!!

Just a year ago we were moving Luci home from college in Galesburg, Illinois.  Oh, and Daughter too.  Forget Daughter....... Luci was just a baby.  She resisted most of the three moving days.  Not helping.  Wreaking havoc.

Sleeping....

And refusing access to THE Knox College bag (which we needed!!)....  My Innskeepers Coffee, coveted bag, was already called into service, by god, so we needed the Knox College bag too.  Just, LUCI GET OFF!  How cute is she, though!!!  Really.  (I loved her!)

We made it home, 400 hours in the car, in-car litter boxes, potty stops (well, not really for her), biker-dude-look-outs at the hotel so we could sneak her in (a definite Thelma and Louise few hours), power outages, and DALLAS at rush-hour!  But, we made it.

Here's Luci now.  A year later...........

Our household & world has not been the same since.

Pancho says it best.........

If you only knew what a year it's been!

DEAD PEOPLE

I have another great book to suggest.  I just read it, AGAIN yesterday, for my fourth time.  It's that important to me.  I've bought it for at least 6 people as gifts.  Plus I have 2 copies on hand, just in case I think of someone else, on the spur of the moment, who needs a copy.

It's by the brilliant Marion Winik.  I have read everything she has written, most, a couple of times.  And I can't wait for her to write something new so I can buy it, lock myself in the bedroom, and read for sleepless hours.

Google her if you don't know her.  God, I LOVE GOOGLE!  I mean what can't you find out on Google.  You can find...... oh, sorry.  Anyway.....

Marion Winik has had an amazing life - both happy, and, tragically sad.  I came to sort-of know her as a parent at our children's elementary school.  She lived in Austin for many years before moving away.

This book, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead, dedicates a short chapter to each of the people/others in her life who have passed away, and left an unforgettable mark on her soul.

A warning... get a highlighter when you start the book.  You'll need it.  And a notepad.

I started my own list of "the dead" after I first read the book.  I'm working my way through writing a few words about each of them.  And I hope they're getting a laugh from what I write!!  If people would just stop dying for a little bit, PLEASE, then I could catch up!

I have a couple of entries on my list who I never actually knew, but felt I should have and desperately wish I had, and who have left an empty spot in my life for a few reasons.  Not like a Martin Luther King or Mother Theresa thing, but closer to home.

Anyway, NOT WANTING TO BE MORBID!!  The book is NOT like that.  But it certainly makes one think about how various, maybe plain, low-profile, everyday people in our lives have an impact on us, and maybe we don't see it at the time.  And then there are those people who you never really cared much about, but after they were gone, you missed them.  Those sorts of things......

And you will smile and laugh, too.

TEXAS SUNFLOWERS

We have an old barn in the back, back, back part of our yard.  There is a family of red foxes who live there.  And, a deer family.  Not a dear family.  A DEER family.  It's a barn.

I don't go back there, to our back, back, back yard, too often.  Mainly BECAUSE there is a family of red foxes and a family of deer that live there.  We have an agreement.  We don't mess with them.  They don't mess with us.  We love watching them play, though.  I'm sure they love watching us do the same.  Probably not as much as we enjoy them.

There are also a ton of sunflowers that have decided to bless us and grow there.  I love looking at them from my kitchen window. And, yes, I know, from visiting Iowa and Illinois, that what we call sunflowers are just a a tiny, annoying weed comparatively. They are OUR sunflowers though, damn it, and they stay with us from June through September when everything else in this state has dried up and is screaming for water.

During a lull in the rain today, I decided I wanted some of the sunflowers IN the house, so I ventured "out there".  HOWEVER, I realized immediately that it would be a battle of major determination with the swarms of mosquitoes to get there.  I made it, though, fought the mosquitoes fiercely and heroically, and managed to clip a few sunflowers before they won the battle and I ran, screaming, back to home base.  I'm sure I was screaming "truce" or "timeout" while running.  STOP IT wasn't working.

BUT, I made it back with FOUR beautiful, brilliant, bright yellow & brown sunflowers.  Texas Sunflowers!!  I put them above the kitchen sink so I could look at them, and the still blooming sunflowers in the back, back, back yard at the same time.  I'm not going out there again without one of those beekeeper's suits, though.

(I love that you can see my Guardian Cat Angel in this picture.  She has watched over us for about 15 years.  We have some rough spots in our life right now, but who knows how rough they would have been without her.  Thank you Melissa H.)

Or, actually, maybe I'll go back "out there", to the back, back, back yard, once these fade away.  Mosquitoes or not.  I can fight the fight.  It's worth it.

Because how can looking at these things NOT make you feel better.  Just Wow.

READ THIS BOOK!

I'm probably the last of my friends to read this amazing book.

I've picked it up at the bookstore a dozen times.  I've read the jacket.  And thought, nooooo, just not what I want to read right now - not really wanting to read about Jackson, Mississippi in the 60's - I knew that story.  I thought I did.

I succumbed to friend-pressure, however.  I bought the book.  Then it just set on my bedroom shelf for a while.  I didn't want to tackle it.

A dear friend happen to ask if I had a copy because she wanted to read it and wasn't really sure she wanted to spend the money on buying it.  I brought it to her and said please read it.  That I probably wasn't going to read it anyway.

She brought it back to me with a sticky note (love those things!!) that said I LOVED this book.  And she told me how much she loved it.

So, I picked it up on July 4th, determined that I would read it. I spent the next three days consumed, addicted, obsessed with this book.  Friends told me that they stayed up all night to finish it.

I didn't just stay up late to finish it.

I stayed up late to READ it. Wanting to absorb so much of what the book had to say.  I read, and re-read many, many pages.  Dog-eared pages, highlighted pages.

It makes us, almost 50 years later, think about what we consider our conscience - what we consider our belief system, what we think about as our acceptance of others.  And DO we really think everybody is equal?

Different things to think about now, in 2010, but the same.

Read the book.

ORGANIZATION - PART DEUX

So, this is a follow-up to my last post...

In my organizational, or WHATEVER, brain set I'm in right now, I was going through magazines tonight.  Additional magazines, that is, that I found in, yet, ANOTHER pile.

But, I found this funny Tina Fey ad.  I found this JUST TODAY.  Yes, it was an old magazine, but I just saw it today.  I love Tina Fey.  She makes me laugh and she's smart.  That's pretty much all it takes for me.  ALL my friends have the same qualities.  I love my friends.

But anyway.... The picture was in a Real Simple magazine and it was an ad for a major credit card company.  I don't understand that but I guess Tina did.

Just funny that I find this picture WHILE I'm trying to organize my "stuff".  (My 18-month olds never set still long enough for a picture like this.  Wonder how much they paid him.)  AND I was listening to Tom Petty when I saw the picture.  A sign!

I LOVE her sticky note system, don't you?!  God, I love sticky notes.  And I like the sitting under the desk thing too.

I found my label-maker tonight.

And it has tape in it.

So onward and upward!

ORGANIZATION - WORKIN' ON IT!

I've never been a very organized person.  I try to be.  In my head I am.  In my head I have all these "magazine quality" organizational methods.  In real life, not.

I saw a quote from someone associated with The Container Store (angel's sing at the mention of those words) a few years ago.  The quote was "Organization works if you do."

Well, I don't, apparently.  Not hard enough.

I'm very organized at work.  In my disorganized way, that is.  In other words..... I know where "stuff" is ALL the time.  If you give me ten minutes.  But if anybody else had to find it.... that might be a problem.  I could walk them through finding it.  Just probably not more quickly than I could drive in from, say, Canada, to find it myself.

Ten months ago my personal life got a major hit.  Husband was diagnosed with a debilitating disease.  I don't talk about this part of my life here.  I just bring it up because ten months ago I really let things start piling up in our house, more so than usual.  All of a sudden the mail increased by 1000%.  Companies, people, organizations, were wanting to contact us, and they wanted to do it by mail.

Sooooooo...... my solution to "stuff" is to buy more plastic storage bins to put the "stuff" in.  This is my favorite style & size.......

Unfortunately, that attractive, inviting, EMPTY, plastic storage bin quickly turns into this, in my house....

And this..........

So I've been going through all the "stuff" for a month or two.  Plug in a movie, or a past episode of True Blood, or Dexter, or a Meg Ryan movie, and I'm good for a couple hours of sorting that "stuff".

I'm on vacation for a little while and I started my first day off sorting, AGAIN.  Here is the sad, pathetic, disorganization of my life, TRYING to get organized...........

And more........

And more...........

And, then here's my closet, where I try to hide things that I don't want to think about organizing, like shoes.  Luci likes my closet too, and has spent many hours closed up in here, unknowingly.  She does her best, on those occasions, to REorganize my closet herself!  (That's a whole different blog we'll get back too some other time!)

I'm sharing too much, aren't I?

WELL.............  I've made progress.  Here are the files I've started and I'm proud of them.  I especially like the WTF! file that I created for the "miscellaneous" "stuff".  (OK, it could stand for "Where's The Fun" - just not for me.)  You can't buy those files at The Container Store or Office Depot!!

I think I'm probably going to need more than one of those files.

Organization works if you do.  Right?