This is Your Brain on Drugs

Sorry ya'll, but this is just too funny to let pass unread.

Dinner with Meme

I have the coolest supper club. We not only eat the most amazing food, visit the most amazing homes and laugh ourselves silly into the wee hours of way-past-our-bedtimes...we have these great conversations, too. There's this Question of the Night thing we do. I didn't realize this, but there's an equivalent in the blogging world called the meme. (Learn something new every day). This past week, the supper club's meme was "What was your first car?" which turned into "Tell us about every car you've had since you turned 16." Now, I must warn you, I'm the kind of gal who thinks a car is pretty much a mechanism to get from Point A to Point B, although I wouldn't turn down a red convertible if you offered me one. I once dated a guy who drove (he told me many times) a carefully restored, mint-condition Camaro. He was extremely proud of this vehicle. But when he drove up in it on our first date, I was apparently not as impressed as he would have hoped. He kept hinting around...so, what do you think of my car? And I think I said something about it looking very clean and asking did he recently wash it. (I know, catch a clue right?) I guess he was intrigued by my "feigned" non-interest in his car, and so he spent the next year of our relationship trying to "educate" me about cars. Yawn. In any case...I'm not a gearhead or whatever they call car people. But this dinner conversation was incredibly interesting to me, because I never realized how much of a milestone a car is to a person - myself included. There's always a story about where you were in life when you got the car, who you had to share the car with, what the car's name was, who helped you buy it, why you chose a certain make and model, how the car treated you and how you treated the car, how it made you feel about yourself.... It was all very telling about our personalities, our hopes and dreams at different times of our lives and how The Car is more than just transportation (OK, I'm finally getting it Mr. Camaro!). What was your first car? Mine was a Pontiac Sunbird - black interior and exterior...in Florida. Thaaaatttt's right. (It was implied at dinner that someone probably paid us to take the car instead of vice versa). It was ugly and it was hot, but I loved that car because it was MINE. And there is nothing like driving over the St. Johns River bridge at sunset with the radio blaring, the windows down (AND the AC on - sorry, Mom) in a car that is YOUR VERY OWN. You can't beat it with a stick shift.

Dreamy

I have a recurring dream. I guess you could call it recurring...I'm always dreaming about a house. The house is always different, but all the houses have a few things in common. They are always HUGE with a spectacular view and many, many bedrooms. It's like my great-grandmother's house where I grew up, in that all the bedrooms are connected. In old houses, you had to walk through the "front" bedroom to get to the "back" bedroom. Our old house only had three bedrooms, but the houses I dream about have countless bedrooms. Here is the weird part. (I know, dreaming about houses is weird enough...I am an HGTV addict. Maybe that has something to do with it.) The houses I dream about are usually in major need of remodeling. They are all grand, old gorgeous things decorated in Brady Bunch-esque '70s decor. Which is, of course, hideous. You know, paneled walls. Golden Harvest shag carpeting. Scratchy tweed furniture in rectangular and square shapes. The houses are never mine. I'm usually walking through it trying to decide whether to buy it or not...trying to see the potential (great view, lots of bedroooms) behind the remodeling nightmare. What does it all mean?? It's starting to make me crazy. Last night, I dreamed about the same type of house, except it belonged to an old friend of mine, whom I'm not in touch with anymore. This time, she was about to remodel it. So today, thank you God for the internet, I researched the meaning of my dream. Dream interpretation? Completely uncredible and unscientific I'm sure, but worth a look-see if something is driving you nuts. There must be a reason I keep having this dream, right? The dream dictionary gave me this:

To see a house in your dream, represents your own soul and self. Specific rooms in the house indicate a specific aspect of your psyche. In general, the attic represents your intellect, the basement represents the unconscious, etc. If the house is empty, then it indicates feelings of insecurity. To dream that you are cleaning your house, signifies your need to clear out your thoughts and getting rid of old ways. You are seeking self-improvement. To dream that you are in the bedroom, signifies aspects of your self that you keep private.

Deeeeeeeeep, huh? They didn't have a dictionary entry for decor or Brady Bunch-esque, what are the odds? But perhaps that has something to do with getting rid of old ways, since I was a child in the 1970s. I need to improve something about myself that is hanging on since childhood. (Don't we all?) I don't know what the friend thing was about...except in my dream, I was annoyed that she saw the potential in something that normally only I would have been sensitive enough to appreciate. (Did I mention that I'm full of myself in my dreams, too?) So, apparently I'm haunted by a deep (and private) need for self-improvement coupled with an insecurity that someone is going to remodel my psyche before I get the chance. Either that, or it was the two very large margaritas I had last night.

This is Why I Don't Cook Breakfast

And what is sadder still? I actually cooked another batch. And it was burned too. I didn't have the heart to take a second picture of the slightly-less burned bacon and burned freezer biscuits I served to my children. This is what happens when Daddy has to work on a Saturday! My brain just does not function at an acceptable level until 10 a.m. Is that so wrong?

I complained bitterly under my breath that I am incapable of making a decent breakfast when Big Stuff piped up, "Don't say that, Mama! It's not that bad. In fact, it's sort of good (as she eyed the bacon suspiciously.) I'm going to eat it." Man, I love that girl.

Jump!

Well, summer's going real fine, thanks for asking. I must admit a small letdown, as we took our vacation tres early this year, and I'm already scheming about where to go on our next summer vacation. But there's still plenty of good stuff going, no doubt about it. Tonight's excitement was Cutie Pie trying to bribe Small Fry to learn to swim via a three-day old chocolate milkshake from Chic-Fil-A squirreled away in our freezer. "Come on baby, just jump in...it's all for the chocolate milkshake now. Come on, on the count of three. One...two...three..." Annnnnddddd nothing. "I'm not doing that, daddy," she says, very matter of fact. For an outrageous daredevil who hasn't figured out that she's not invincible, she sure does have a healthy respect for that pool. Which I'm plenty glad of, believe you me. BUT the crazy thing is, during "learning" as she calls it, she has been known to step right off that bottom step as soon as I turn my back...but to swim INTO my waiting arms??? Well, that's just out of the question. It's so her, though. She will do it on the day, in the hour, on the minute that she's ready to do it. Our job is to wait patiently. And try to bribe her with milkshakes.

Post update: Two days after this post, Small Fry jumped like a wild woman into the neighborhood pool, unprompted and unassisted. And then proceeded to do it about 50 more times!

Pictures Worth a Thousand

I've been away. I do so love to go away! This time I went to a magical place called: The Beach. They have the best stuff there! Sand, waves, sunshine, birds, shells, crabs, clams, M&Ms, books, stars, outside showers, long walks.... I like this picture of a mess of clams we dug up from the marsh... because when I look at it, I can smell them. It's weird. I also like this picture of baby toes in the sand because when I look at it, I can feel the sand on MY toes. And in my bathing suit. And in my bed sheets. And in my hair. You can never be free from sand at the beach. But it's OK, because it reminds you: I'm at the BEACH! I'm AWAY! And you feel smug and superior to all those poor saps back at home who have no idea what they are missing. I also very much like this picture of the sunset over the salt marsh, which was the view from our back door. Sure, it looks like a boring picture of a daily occurrence that you've seen a million times but when I look at it...I can feel the heat of that sun, which spent all day gathering itself oppressively outside our door. I can hear the tide coming in and feel the wind rushing the sun down: C'mon, it's time to go now! Bye! Bye! I can't see them, but I'm pretty sure a thousand little crabs have rushed out of their holes in unison to wave a one-claw salute to the sun: See ya tomorrow, See ya tomorrow! And behind me in the house, the sliding glass door opens and closes, opens and closes and there is the sound of children running back and forth between the sunset and the loud ocean on the other side of the house. They are tired and bickering and at their wits' ends, but there's "one more thing" (there's always one more thing!) that must be done before crawling into sandy sheets and literally passing out with exhaustion. Maybe a ghost crab hunt out on the beach or one more round of ice cream cones. One more book. And every parent in the house has got his or her mind's eye trained on the hour after this one, when we can go outside with adult beverages, listen to music from "back in the day," look at the stars and talk about what our lives were like before we knew each other and before we knew these strange creatures called Our Children. Yep, pictures are indeed worth a thousand words!