What I'm Currently Faving

First of all, thanks to all of you who offered opinions yesterday on laundry room decor. That was fun for me. Let me know if I can ever return the favor. I think I know a color/theme, but I'm keeping it under wraps until the big reveal. Fun!

And for the record, I like the wrinkly Rupert, too. Which is a sentence I never, ever expected to say for any reason whatsoever in my life, but there it is: "I like the wrinkly Rupert."


Each Friday, Susanne at Living To Tell the Story invites us to share a list of ... join me now, Julie Andrewses: a few of our favorite things.

If you are new to this blog, the joke is that I hate musicals, and one of my blogging buds, Dena of Green Acres made me this button during the height of Musical Madness.


Back to Friday's Fave Five. And the categories this week are:



1. Favorite Food: Fresh green beans from the garden of my friend, Cindy.



When I was a kid, we ate our haricots vert (ooh-la-la! Honh, honh, honh!) after they had simmered for hours with ham and potatoes, and then we put butter all over them. Now I like them a little crisper and greener so that you can actually tell they're beans and not just a conduit for "seasoning," otherwise known as "fat and starch."


Honh, honh. I make zee joke.

2. Favorite exercise: Ball Hamstring Curl. This exercise is kicking my derriere.

(Image from Fit Sugar)

But it's so worth it because now I look like this:









3. Favorite movie I've seen lately:



There is one spot that contains bad language near the beginning of the movie; after that, it's a clean, funny movie. I love Ricky Gervais AND Greg Kinnear (a Hoosier). Ricky Gervais plays the museum curator in Night at the Museum, and he wrote or produced or somethinged the BBC's "The Office." Greg Kinnear is rottenly cute as he was in Sabrina. No one does "the cad" like Greg Kinnear.

4. Favorite gift-blessing of the week:

These beautiful hand-crafted cards from my blogging friend and Co-Lid, Linda at A Merry Heart, given to me for no reason at all except to bless me, and I promise you, I appeared to be very blessed as I opened the box and saw the sweetness. Even my 22 year-old girl said, "I want to make these!" Thank you, Merry Lid!


5. Favorite song this week and maybe one of my all-time favorite videos ever:



Have a wonderful weekend; I'm going to Lake Tippecanoe with my girlfriends!

Need Advice On Laundry Room Decor, No Quilts or Chickens, Please

This morning I spent a bit of time (like, 15 years or so) scraping a wallpaper border off of my laundry room walls which I applied about 8 years ago when we first built our addition.

I remember that I had this whole 'nother house built (we doubled the square footage) and ready to move into but had nothing for walls or furniture. So I think I bought this border for about $5 and stuck it up in about 10 minutes. It's supposed to be some kind of quilt design, which is fine if you like quilts, but I didn't necessarily like quilts; I liked $5. Hindsight: a bare wall would've been fine for a while.



Yes, those are decoupaged chickens on my ironing board door because I owned backyard chickens at the time. Here I am owning a chicken because I know you think I make this stuff up:



I also know that you were just about to suggest a quilt and chicken motif, but sorry, been there, done that. Anyway, here's what I'm working with now. It's kind of ... neutral.



Therefore, I am ready for vivid color. Here are a few pictures I "borrowed" today to offer to you to help me choose a color scheme. Tell me what you think:

1. You know I have a fondness for Frenchie Damask stuff.


2. I like this, but not the doors.


3. Wowsers.


4. I like this, but I wouldn't have that same floor or those pics of someone else's sons on my wall, of course.


5. This is reminiscent of black and white stripe, of which I am fond.


6. And I am really liking this color.



So what do you think? Remember the room is very small for vivid color, but I'm still going for it.

Now, please take the redecorating questionnaire:

1. Is it OK that the color scheme does not match any of the rest of my house (autumnal colors and black) if no one ever sees this room but Zoe and me?
2. From the content of my blog (not necessarily the current color scheme) what color would you say best describes me? Why? Keep in mind that "chicken" is not a color.
3. Do you like Rupert Everett better before surgery and all wrinkly, or after?

Thanks to a Friend, I Have Seen the Future, and I am Depressed

This is one of my best friends, whom I shall call "M," except her real name is much cuter (and longer) than that, and it sounds like "Madwoman," which I often call her.
Amongst M's personality traits is a devotion to truth and knowledge. In a practical everyday way, this dogged determination shows up in the form of helpful email links but also in the debunking of urban legends by her checking with Snopes to see what's what. So, for instance, if I get a message forwarded from someone which claims that sleeping with a fan blowing on you all night will kill you, I just wait a couple of seconds to see if a follow-up message from M appears with the text, "False. [Inserts Snopes link.]" And this pretty much happens daily. Because people are not going to be fooled under M's watch. It's a mission.

And if you say to her in a nonchalant way, "Gee. I wonder [fill in blank with something like "Has Rupert Everett had plastic surgery?"] she gets her phone and Googles whatever topic you just wondered about and tells you the answer. Because people are not going to be befuddled under M's watch. It's a mission. Because, you know, knowledge and truth, etc., etc.

Two quirky traits we share are that we count a lot [random things, like number of steps from here to there or how many seconds at a red light] and we each fear that we will be detained somewhere like a doctor's office waiting room or the airport without a useful endeavor to pass the time, like debunking people's emails or having a book to read. She likes Sudoku; I like crosswords. We both have Yorkies, except hers, Petey, pictured at left, is a gigantic Yorkie who backs up into you to give you his version of "the cold shoulder," but it's actually the cold backside.

So the other day, I received this graphic from M, sharing straightforward, albeit depressing info about aging. Why she forwarded this, I did not know, unless she was compelled to make sure we would not be under any false presumptions that aging might be ... bearable. Because people are not going to wear rose colored glasses under M's watch. It's a mission.

Read these stats, and then I'll tell you why it's depressing.


It's depressing because I don't know about you, but by these determinants, I'm already old, and I have apparently been old for many years! This is my life on a graph, people! I mean, all that's missing is "1 hour per day plucking chin hairs and looking for the rheumatiz' medicine."

So I have Madwoman to thank for this, who just had to make sure I was in the know about Expectations vs. Reality regarding growing old. Wouldn't want to be wearing rose-colored bifocals, that's for sure. Makes me want to give her the Petey back-up!

Does this graphic represent your life at this point?

As The Bradys Taught Us, "When It's Time to Change, You've Got to Rearrange."

It was time. The cappuccino machine was great, but I couldn't take the dark colors one more day. I still have that template in case I ever want to resurrect the machine, but this feels like I've opened the top of my imaginary Hollywood convertible and let the sun kiss my face and wind tousle my ... bangs? Now that's happiness.

Besides, I've always wanted to change with the seasons, and now I'll be able to easily. And originality? Perhaps overrated. So what if other people have this design? It makes me happy. Floral print, high heel, red nails, Hollywood wave happy.

OK, so the clip art is not classy.

Hello, McFly, have you noticed the content of this blog? Not so classy. Maybe klassy on a good day.

So I'd like to hand a big thank you to Chelsea of Aqua Poppies for this design. She is obviously classy.

And now I leave you with two awesome things.


1. My contribution to Internet Cafe today, where it appears as though I have merely repeated my newspaper column, but upon further inspection you will see near the end of the column that there is a picture and note I could not publish in the column which adds quite a little punch to the whole thing. Thus I dared to call it "awesome."

2. The Bradys singing, "When It's Time to Change." This will be in your head all day once you listen. You're welcome.

A Kickin' Monday Morning To You, Brought To You by Benadryl

Good morning. Or good whatever hour you're here. What's up.

Look at these chips. Have you had them? I'm not a ketchup fan. I don't eat my fries w/ or put it on sandwiches, but when I served as Snack Queen at SERVE this year, I put these chips out amongst 400 other bags of various flavors, and these things flew out of the bag and into the tummies of the kids like they had wings. So I tasted them and loved them, which, since I don't like ketchup, made it a "whaddya know" moment. So now I'm searching for them to share Tuesday night when the kids come back to the house for the Crazy Love study. Just wondered if you've tried them. I've heard they're really popular in Canada. ? Seriously, that's what I heard. Canadians, what say you?

By the way, this is what's known as a "kickin'" Monday morning post, I believe, because it's so exciting.

Over the weekend I once again blew up like Mrs. Puff on Sponge Bob. Contact dermatitis causes my eyelids to swell, and I itch with an itch so deep I wish I could scratch my optic nerve. So I've been on massive amounts of Benadryl for 72 hours, which might explain this high-energy kickin' post. I have resorted to putting Preparation H on my eyelids, which I don't recommend unless you have this condition or are stung by a jellyfish on your eyelids or someone has lit your eyelids on fire.

Also, Saturday morning when I first woke up, as I headed out the bedroom door as quietly as I could so that I would not wake the Jorge, I fell and slammed into Zoe's big old wire cage and scratched my back, thereby totally waking Jorge with a flourish. I shall blame this mishap on Benadryl, as well.

Later on Saturday, we crammed all five us into the new CRV and went to The Runner's Forum in Indy to have Kristin properly fitted for cross country shoes. She ended up with the Brooks Defyance. I guess that's the cool Beyonce way to spell Defiance.

Somehow, Jorge was coerced into buying everyone lunch AND Cold Stone Creamery dessert within a two hour period. So you can imagine, then, that the two hour time-slot cost us a lot of dough. Good shoes = $ + Teenagers eating out = $. In a new car = $$. I think Jorge was numb and on auto-pilot after this credit card experience. For Jorge, spending a lot of money is the organic Benadryl.

Zoe had a trying weekend because of being sore from her shots. Saturday morning she acted paralyzed but wasn't. I tried to put a warm, wet cloth on her as per Vet's advice, but she was not having any part of that. I was able to give her 1/4 of a little pink baby Aspirin. We could not pick her up at all over the weekend without her yelping, which made us feel terrible. So she wanted up on the sofa, and we got her there, but when it came time to jump down, she could not do it and looked panicked, so I built her a ramp of 5 throw pillows to climb down. She looked like a spoiled princess stepping down from the throne. And you know she is not spoiled.

Bridal Shower on Sunday:

This is my friend, Diane, whom I have written about before, and her daughter, Ann, who is to be married August 1. Diane is still battling cancer, and by battling, I do mean fighting the fight of her life. They are such lovely girls, Diane and her Ann.

Here is the beautiful bride-to-be with her gifts.



Here is an interesting centerpiece I thought I'd share with you, but the pic is terrible. There are small bowls of goldfish between glass platters holding the sweets.



Here's a close-up.



This pic cracks me up because Ann is telling her mom that they cannot move into their apartment until August 10. Apparently, Mom thought it would be earlier than that. Surprise, Mom!



This is Ann opening our gift, cannisters. We are so happy for you, Ann!



What did you do this weekend? I hope you did not fall down nor have your eyes swell up nor spend too much money, as I did. Ever had ketchup potato chips? Ever write a random post?