Camel Back

When you're carrying an armload of groceries and someone says, "Here, take this box of straws." and you can't hold it all, you never drop just one thing. Usually, it all goes flying.

Detroit Rock City

I had fun commenting about my first rock concert on 17 Seconds, a really neat music blog, by Ed, a teacher in Scotland and also a worldwide music aficionado.

I hope no one minds, I'm going to copy it here and fire up a meme:
"What was your first concert like?"

(Adam and the Ants was my) first concert without parents. First was really when my dad took me and my brother to see the KISS Dynasty tour at the Pontiac Silverdome in '79 for my brother's birthday. I helped him with his Peter Criss makeup and it looked awful. We were not the youngest kids there by a longshot. The stage was so far down it was more like a movie. It was so loud the seats were thumping and we kept tearing bits of paper off our popcorn bags to try to make earplugs but it didn't work very well [unsic]. My dad bought us some for $5 each. KISS' first song didn't sound very good and the audience started chanting "Bring back Cheap Trick! Bring back Cheap Trick!" This went on for a few minutes. I couldn't believe it. Well, Cheap Trick were really great and everybody loved "Live at Budokan" and it's much easier to recreate a live album onstage than a slickly produced one. But KISS won us over, I think Gene Simmons blew flames or something. I think I remember Space Ace came down on ropes or a platform or something and my favorite song was New York Groove. Also, we lost the car and had to walk for miles through closely spaced lines of traffic and wait two hours for everyone else to leave so we could find it. Not a good time for my dad who had to do all this while listening to 2 kids whining "I'm tired!."

Tag, you're it! :)

If You Can Dodge an Oven...

My son Z just told me about his dream: He dreamed he was in a baking contest. He baked muffins then frosted them white and sprinkled nuts on top. Then he rode a conveyor belt into an arena where everyone threw their muffins at each other!

"_______ City"

Circuit City is changing their name to "The City". I always liked the name "Circuit City". I imagined in five or ten years I'd be visiting their showroom to look at row upon row of shiny new robots.

Why are they doing this? Maybe electronics don't have circuits anymore and this name is now as cool as "Analog Town"? ("Chip City" would soon lead to a common nickname along the lines of Taco Hell and Burger Thing...)

Is it to save us the trouble of uttering one extra syllable? Just like Prince's symbol, it won't work: "You're going where?" "You know, to the store that used to be called Circuit City." See, that's 14 extra syllables right there.

Well, as confusing as it will be for customers, it will be great for the employees. "I've been City Manager for about five years. I think I'm ready to run for mayor."

Go for it! : )

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Mashup I am not going to make: "Proud Mary" and "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt"

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Funniest thing I heard "today": I was driving my son to school Friday and he said "Mom, the city finally did something about all the potholes. They turned them into bumps!"

Mmm, Candy

Tastes exactly the way I remember eating crayon tips!

There's a whole blog about candy called Candy Blog. Very cool!
Found the link on The Velvet Blog.

Cartesian Product

This post was supposed to be good. I jokingly said my 100th post would be good and that tripped me up a little this week. I wanted to write something important, with sentence structure and everything. But now I figure I'd better just show up.

A while back, like two years ago, not handling transition well, I remembered a book I read in high school about a guy who threw away every idea he had so he could rethink and reorganize his beliefs. I found Discourse on the Method and started reading it again. I saw the first thing he put back was God. That helped me the most. Then after four pages of "if I smoosh it flat is it still a ball of wax?", and putting aside any nominalist vs. realist debate, I just wanted to scream in the book's ear "Dude, it's wax!". And then the book fell apart in my hands.

But it's been helpful to turn things over and look at them, to notice the silly things I believed when I was six. To put things out there and question them. To say to myself, what kind of mom are you if your kids are so lacking for attention they sneak up and pull your grey hairs out? {FLIP} Are you kidding me? My kids are so loved. {FLIP} Well, you could do a better job with their haircuts. {FLIP} Okay.

Sometimes all you have to do is write something down to see if it works. T or F, Sweetheart of America = Anchorman Gravitas.

I realize I don't believe that people are fungible, interchangeable like mushrooms. I think we all have special skills that should be prized and that what we have in common is our kindness, loyalty and willingness to show up.

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Mashup I am not going to make (contributed by Z): "Horse Racing Song" (William Tell Overture) and "Take A Chance On Me"

Songs From the Brood

One of my most favoritest people had her baby boy last night! This reminded me of songs I used to sing to my babies:

"...There's a shadow hanging under me, I'm twice the woman that I used to be, Oh I believe in pregnancy."

Dat Da-Da Da-Da Dat-Da, Dat Da-Da Da-Da Da, Dat Da-Da Da-Da Dat-Da... "Formula!"

"Shake your bootie, shake your bootie, shake your mitten, shake your mitten, shake your bonnet, shake your bonnet"

"One way, or another, I'm gonna find ya, I'm gonna gitchee-gitchee-gitchee-gitchee!" : )

Safety Note: You don't actually shake their head when you say "shake your bonnet", you just ruffle it gently. ; )