Love is in the Air

New things!! You know the drill. . . click here for Glitter and Grunge. And here for The Primitive Gathering.

Once, Twice, Three Times a Post-er*

For my regular readers or those who follow this blog, you may have noticed that sometimes I publish a post, then edit and re-post, and possibly even edit and post a 3rd time--all within a few minutes. Yes, I know there is the draft application where I'm supposed to make all the changes and then post the final version. But it just takes me several tries to get to the final version. I can work on a post in the draft section, get things just so, then hit "Publish," and suddenly it's as if a million mistakes or awkward phrases spontaneously generate, and it's all I can see. I try to convince myself that no one will notice that I spelled "intimidating" without a "d," and that it totally changes the meaning of the sentence. The readers will figure out what I meant, right? My rational side tries to convince my semi-neurotic side that it's okay that the picture posted in the wrong place. Who's going to care?? I try to tell myself that it's the nature of the blog world to be fresh, that things in blog-land are supposed to be spontaneous; and of course, everyone understands that a spelling error or dangling modifier will crop up occasionally. It's not like we're being graded, right?? But somehow I just can't help myself. I have to change it. I just have to.

My apologies, but it really speaks volumes about my personality, which borders on OCPD --Obsessive Compulsive Posting Disorder. I seem to be plagued by this weird blend of obsessive perfectionism, poor spelling, woefully inept computer skills, and fear of commitment. (And sometimes, Blogger has some serious spacing issues which, to this former graphic designer, is akin to scraping fingernails on a chalkboard. Seriously.) The condition is quite disabling and it is no small wonder that I manage to post at all. I'd find a 12 step program for the problem, but sadly, it probably wouldn't do much good anyway -- there's just no telling how long it would take me to complete the program, having to repeat each of the steps at least eighteen times.

Again, my apologies. . . and until there is a cure, or my family forces an intervention, quite possibly you may be reading the 4th generation of this, and every other post.

*[Apologies to the Commodores too. ~cn]

Hooga Chakka

This is the stuff of nightmares. Someone should have hassled the Hoff. . . I'm just sayin'. . .

Preview of Coming Attractions

Stay tuned. . . .

Dropping Everything

"I am so busy doing nothing... that the idea of doing anything - which as you know, always leads to something - cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything."

Jerry Seinfeld

*****************

Just a quick, drive-by hello! I really need to get a grip on myself--Monday was such a packed-full day that I thought yesterday was Friday already. Guess my body lived an entire week in one day. Yikes, at this rate I'll be 80 years old by next Wednesday.

:-)

First Offense

Recently The Pioneer Woman posed a question asking her readers to comment about their worst year in school. Here's mine:

First grade–by far.

I was painfully shy, very small for my age, and absolutely terrified of the teacher. "Mrs. Ratchet" was 100 years old, at least, and had blue hair which matched her blue legs; and I remember being horrified and strangely curious about the odd tangle of lines that made up her legs. (BTW, poetic justice– after bearing 4 children, I now have a varicose vein or two of my very own.) Mrs. R. would sit in a rocker for story time and assemble all her wards on the floor around her as she read. She smelled like moth balls and wore black pointy shoes just like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Anyway, not only did this teacher look nightmarish, but her very presence was terrifying as well. She was terribly intimidating and would stealth around the classroom, meandering in and out of the desks, armed with her weapon of choice . . . a red ballpoint pen. Not only did she delight in marking our papers with it, but she would also wield it at random upon unsuspecting students –any lapse of attention from a student or aberrant behavior would result in a swift and firm smack on the top of the head of the offender. I was so frightened of her that I literally could not do my work in class and sat trembling for the better part of the year.

I distinctly remember one particular incident involving the little girl who sat next to me. Apparently Cheryl (who resembled the SNL character Mary Katherine Gallagher) must have suffered allergies and was forever blowing her nose. Rather than disposing of the used tissues in the wastebasket, for months she discreetly stashed them inside her desk--probably afraid to leave her seat. I can still see the veins popping, the tissues flying, and the red pen flailing when "Mrs. Ratchet" finally discovered the stash in poor Cheryl’s desk. :( I am almost certain that Mrs. R. was a distant relative of Attila the Hun.

Woo Hoo!

Updates at SpookyTimeJingles!! Click here for spooky, and here for jingly/Valentine-y.

And be sure to check in with all of the other artists there--things go really quickly.

Chickened Out

[Another article from my "Weird and Wacky Local News File." This story, which ran earlier this year in our local paper, had my germ-a-phobe Spidey senses in major overload. So if you're not eating breakfast, enjoy the wackiness.]

***

Theft: On Sept. 8, a resident of Madison Boulevard was inside her home when she heard a knock at her door. She went to the door and upon looking outside, she saw her neighbor running through the yard with her three bags of frozen chicken. The woman had placed the chicken on the front porch to let them thaw. Deputy Scott P. was dispatched to the scene, but the neighbor already had left in her car. As Deputy P. spoke with the victim, the suspect drove back home. The deputy confronted the 23-year-old woman, but she denied stealing the chicken.

***

[For the record, I have had bacteria "on the brain" lately. Last night I helped my Littlest One upload photos of her science project. You haven't lived until you've seen what millions of Staphylococci bacteria look like, given a tasty environment and free reign to grow with abandon, then magnified 18 million times. I saw, up close and personal, pictures of 16 different petri dishes filled with the most disgusting specimens of bacteria collected from a variety of common everyday surfaces, all of which I will never be able to touch again. Ick. . .





But I digress. Back to the original point . . . thawing chicken on a porch?! Okay, obviously the victim has never seen a single episode of Dateline where they show you how quickly microbes develop on unrefridgerated thawing food. Maybe she never helped her Littlest One photograph, upload, edit, and identify 16 slides of petri dishes filled with all sorts of deadly bacteria lurking on every surface imaginable. Maybe she never read the warning label on raw chicken which clearly states in large, foreboding letters, "Do not thaw at room temperature." I'm pretty sure a porch counts as "room temperature." And room temperature on a porch in the middle of September in Georgia is bacteria heaven, especially for raw chicken.

And for that matter, why on earth did the thief knock on the victim's door before fleeing the scene with the thawing loot? I know that criminals are typically not the smartest bulbs in the pack; but come on, if this would-be thief was up to no good, what was she thinking? Could it be that she is a fair-minded criminal who likes to give her victims a fighting chance before taking off with the stolen goods? Perhaps it was a just practical joke gone horribly wrong. Or maybe she was just a good Samaritan trying to avert an all but certain gastrointestinal crisis for her neighbor. ~cn]
FYI~The article is here.

A New Year, A New Start

Isn't it great that each year we get a fresh new start, a clean slate? Just when my "old slate" was definitely in need of a good cleaning, along comes December 31. . . the little ball drops, and then . . . Bam . . . clean slate, no elbow grease required! 365 brand new slates, just waiting to be filled. I'm excited about all of the possibilities that come with a new beginning. :)
Wishing you a year of filling your slate with blessings and joy. Happy 2009!!

(And, btw, this new little snowbunny is available at Glitter and Grunge.)