I wish I could live on vacation

...but then, who doesn't? I guess I'd forgotten how relaxed one can feel after getting away, fah, fah away, for 9 days. WHY have I waited more than 3 years for this??? You can bet I won't be waiting 3 years til the next trip! I know everyone is waiting with baited breath for my vacation blog, but I'm still way too depressed to be back to write anything awesome right now. Suffice it to say it rocked and I loved it and I can't wait to go again. Here are some highlights that Babs may or may not have covered in her top 10 list:

1. We are all still friends.
2. We all touched base yesterday, in fact, as we're suffering severe separation anxiety.
3. My real life needs to be revamped so I don't dread coming back so much.
4. Alaska is much more beautiful than I ever imagined.
5. I love the ocean now. (I know, I know)
6. Let me be more specific and say that I love the ocean where it is not hot. I am still not interested in sweating on beaches, no matter how clear the water. But ON the water? where it's cold? Love it.
7. I sleep a lot better with my friends than with my cats.
8. Beware the kitty scorned. Or left for a week with a petsitter. Just, beware.
9. My shower at my house is HUGE, and I never knew this before.
10. I can't think of one negative thing to say about the trip, and that, for those of you who know me, is amazing. NOT to say I'm a negative person; just that I am a worry wart. And my trip, once I got on the boat, was worry-free. NIRVANA, people.

Ok, much more later. I am working on organizing my photos, but I'll try to post a teaser now; behold a photo of one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my life, Tracy Arm, Alaska:



More to come soon. Sit tight!

On facing your own mortality

This really isn't as grim as it sounds. I don't think. I've just been having deep thoughts about health and life and vacations and children and work and Italy lately. So naturally, this lead me to think about death. Have you ever thought about it? I mean, really thought about it? Beyond what you learned in church, or college, or whatever? Really now -- what must it feel like to just not "be" anymore?

I have thought a lot about this, myself. I thought the first time it hit me (no pun intended, I SWEAR) was upon impact in my car accident, and then the second time, a week later with the blood clots. You can probably see why from these photos i am finally posting.





Yeah. So anyway.

Upon deeper reflection, I realize I have thought about death and even felt the possibility of death many times before the accident. I have this thing with water, you see. It's a love/hate relationship. I can't officially swim. I do not like "Murky" water (oceans [yes i know], rivers, lakes] because I read too much damn Stephen King when I was a kid. However, I do enjoy floating around in clear water like bathtubs, swimming pools, and spas. And I have this weird thing where I like to hold my breath and put my head underwater and just veg out, completely relaxed. I think because of my fear of water as a child, I would do this just to challenge myself, to prove that I could. Is it just me, or is it incredibly peaceful under water, where you can hear nothing but the beat of your own heart? You are not weighed down by gravity. You just are. I have imagined what it would be like to drown. Like, would it be peaceful, or would it be awful, like that panicky feeling you get when you can't hold your breath any longer? My mom actually had a near drowning incident when she was a little girl, and she has said that once the panicky part goes away, rather quickly, you feel nothing and it's very peaceful -- until someone pulls you out.

So my accident. I was knocked out upon impact and do not have any memory of the actual crash or the pain or the airbags going off or the sound. Apparently your brain erases stuff like that and it's often hard to remember details around a trauma or accident. But I do remember the moment I woke up and how I felt. The blankness, the utter blankness. You don't remember anything, it's like you've been under anesthesia -- you just open your eyes and there you are. I imagine that's how death must be - you just open your eyes and you're somewhere else. And for some reason, that really comforted me, realizing that even if you were to die in a violent accident of some kind, your brain erases it and your lights literally just "go out" and there it is. It's over. Now, Why did this comfort me? I think because it made it less unknown. And I have always worried about the pain. Like, if your car falls off a cliff, like in the movies, and it explodes into a ball of flames on the mountainside, do you feel that? Is it fast or slow? I'm thinking that it's very fast. I think once you go into hyper-adrenaline panic mode you kind of blank out and then you either are or you aren't -- but you aren't aware of it happening. That's what I think. And that soothes me in some weird way.

So I was watching The 4400 tonight and there's some guy who was in a coma for three years and he was trying to describe it to his girlfriend. He told her to close her eyes. Then he said to open them, and imagine that three years had gone by. This really struck me, because I GET IT. (on the show she giggled coquettishly and said "I can't!" and he said "I can't either, I lost 3 years of my life" and blahblahblah they ended up sleeping together).

Deep thoughts on the eve of the eve of my trip out to the cold, cold sea amidst icebergs and whales and such. Did you happen to notice how linkalicious I am tonight? Did you? It's because I'm actually using my desktop, which is a PC (hiss) and so I have all these CRAZY features, like bold and italics and LINKS.

that is all. I am now going to go float in a hot bath for a while until I am too relaxed to do anything but fall instantly asleep when my head hits the pillow...

...then, in what will seem like mere moments later, a grey cat nose will wake me up by breathing into my ear, being sure to set its juiciness upon my inner ear canal for just a split second...just long enough to get catnip...

On stubbornness, whimsy, and tutus

I took ballet lessons as a little girl. I also took tap dancing (liked the clicking, not the dancing), acrobatics (loved it but sucked), girl scouts (stuck it out til middle school), piano (always), ceramics (liked, but not loved), soccer (one dreadful season), swimming lessons (didn't work), and on and on. I am very grateful to my mom for letting us experiment as children, trying things until we stumbled upon our callings. Mine, at the time, was piano, so that's what I did, all through high school, even competing in geeky piano competitions. But most memorable was my flirtation with ballet.

I think I was in kindergarten or maybe even younger. I was little. I liked dressing in the pretty costumes. I dug the pink shoes with ribbons, although I could never get them tied so they weren't too tight or too loose. I remember nothing at all about the dancing, which makes sense if you've ever seen me dance. I also remember, oh so vividly, my one ballet recital. If there was more than one, it doesn't matter -- THIS was the one that mattered. We were told the theme was animals/bugs. We were to choose which animal/bug we wanted to be, and I remember making sure it was REALLY our choice. After confirming this, I announced that I was going to be a dog house.

Yes, that's right.

A dog house.

Never mind that I've never had a dog in my whole entire life, but where the heck did that come from? No one knew, nor could anyone persuade me that a dog house didn't count as an animal. So a dog house I was. My mom and dad took a giant moving box (we moved every 4 years as a kid, so we had a lot of those around) and cut out arm holes and a head hole. My dad devised an elaborate cardboard "roof" over my head. Then we painted it white with a red roof. It might have even had green accents. So on the day of the recital, I proudly lumbered around the dance studio wearing a dog house, all the other little girls dressed as butterflies, bumblebees, lions, and other cutesy stuff. But. I was the ONLY one with a dog house. I rocked.

The only drawback was I had to take it off to actually "dance", but that didn't bother me a bit, I was wearing what I'm sure was a perfectly coordinated leotard underneath. I just pranced around until I could put my "costume" back on. I was the hit of the show. Laughing was good, wasn't it?

After the recital, we couldn't just let the magnificent dog house go to waste, now could we? So we did the logical thing -- my dad built a treehouse in the backyard with a wooden floor and -- you got it -- the doghouse exterior. I spent many a happy summer day huddled up in that cardboard box, sweat dripping down my body, squishing ants and avoiding locusts, learning about the pure joy of solitude. My sis and brother were too little to come up after me, so it was my perfect little hiding place.

The weather eventually broke down the cardboard, but the treehouse remained until the tree died years later. My love of solitude has never died.

Thank you mom and dad, for letting a spunky little girl have her way. That was way cool.

On nothingness

After an hour of preening (which is my top preen-time since I’ve hit my 30s), I spritzed on my foody-smelling body spray and headed to the airport to pick up BoyToy (BT). I was filled with trepidation, dread, and excitement. The usual emotions connected with BT. The unusual part – I’d had a couple of days to think about this, so I was buzzing with nervousness. I do much better with him when he calls and gives me an hour’s notice that he’s coming into town. No time to stress or to set any type of expectation that is sure to be shattered.

His flight was delayed so I drove slowly in circles for about 20 minutes. During which time he called me on my cell about 5 times, reporting that they had just landed, he was heading to baggage, then that his bag was lost, etc etc – then I almost drove right past him when he finally did come outside b/c I was not expecting him to be in a suit. Sheesh, I’ve never seen him in anything but soccer shorts and once or twice in jeans. In five years. So of COURSE I thought he worked at the airport when some man in a suit on a cell phone started waving me down in front of the terminal. It briefly flashed through my mind that perhaps they thought I was a terrorist since I’d driven by so many times without accomplishing anything. But no, it was BT, on the phone with the baggage people. Anticlimactic, but I expected that. It usually is.

Sitting next to him in the small space of my car was intoxicating, as always. I don’t know what it is with him. We have nothing major to say to one another, yet we have this magnet thing going on that we can’t seem to kick. Once I got okay with the knowledge that he is not and never will be my soulmate, things have been much smoother. Even his moving out of state hasn’t been too traumatic, since we only saw each other spottily anyway. Anyway. Now we have these sporadic visits. To look forward to, or not.

We went to his house and hung out for a while, then went to dinner, then I went home. Alone. He hugged me goodbye and thanked me for picking him up at the airport, said maybe we could get together again before he left town, blahblahblah, and that was the last I saw/heard from him. I’ll get another phone call in a month to 6 weeks and the cycle will crank up again. The point of my writing about this is that it FELT different this time. I was not overly excited to see him, although the chemistry is still there. I did not overly enjoy my time with him; he didn’t really make me laugh, and that’s usually a dealbreaker for me. It was all just very “eh”. Mediocre. Blah. All of it. Out of habit, I felt a crushing sadness as I drove away from his house and headed towards my own, but it went away after about 5 minutes. I have no more tears to cry for BT. I even told him this once, when we quarreled before he left for NM. That I had no drama left to give him. No more tears, no more emotion. Our staying in contact has been more of a comfortable habit than anything else. But again, this time it felt different.

I haven’t given him much thought at all since I saw him exactly a week ago. In fact, this time last week I was already back at home curled up in my bed watching CourtTV, letting the serial killer drama lull me to sleep. So all the preening? I guess that was more for me than for him, and it seems pretty pointless in retrospect. Am I leaving out part of the story? Well, of course I am – my whole life isn’t in this blog, only the parts I feel like sharing. But the thing I’m getting to tonight is that hmmm, I need to process the blah nothingness that I felt. I don’t even know if the chemistry was enough to make it worth ever seeing him again. I felt let down and even a little annoyed at the end of our evening. Ask me again in two weeks, it could all feel different. It’s important to note also that I’m primarily driven and controlled by my hormones, and they are particularly crazy this week, if you know what I mean. And no, I’m not blogging about that either. This time.

On splendor and glamour and chocolate (just for good measure)

I probably shouldn't post on Saturday nights, because it just advertises the fact that I'm home, on my couch, with my laptop, on a Saturday night. Ah well, it's the truth. And, it's also a choice. I **could** be out doing something glamorous in this glamorous town, but you know -- I saw a MOVIE last night and that was exciting enough. Tonight, it's Dr. Pepper and makeupalley.com. Plus, this time next weekend I will be on a giant boat and will have PLENTY of glamorous things to do, so I'm resting up. Ok?

Ok. I hate to do it again, but this is another post about the impending cruise. My friend Matt called me today to inform me that he had talked to the cruise people and they confirmed what he suspected -- that we **have** to "dress up" for dinner. Now I knew there were two "formal" nights, and had already resigned myself to just wearing various components of basic black, but EVERY NIGHT? And it gets even worse -- he asked them about eating the 24/7 buffet on the "Leto" deck and they said even THAT requires fancy clothes. Hell, the only way to avoid "dressing up" for dinner is to order room service. Which you bet your ass I will do at least once. Or twice.

Admittedly, I'm not currently in the spirit of the cruise. Supposedly, say former cruisers, once I get on the boat and into the whole luxurious splendor of it all, I will WANT to dress up and look nice etc etc. The problem is that I don't "dress up" in REAL life, so why would I want to do it on my VACATION?? When I think "vacation" I picture no makeup. A lot of sleeping and eating. No stress. Drinking, touring, but mostly, relaxing. So the notion of dragging ass back to the [teenytiny] room after a full day of touring a glacier or something equally grand, and then cleaning up and changing clothes for dinner, does NOT seem appealing right about now. I'm really worried about this. I'm sure it will be fine, I'm sure I'll get into the "spirit" of the cruise and will feel differently, but right now all I can think is I'm going to have to drag myself to the mall tomorrow, on a wretched weekend-day, to buy "nice" clothes. [Taking a time out to acknowledge the persistent use of quote-marks in this entry -- sorry about that, but if you were talking to me in person I'd be doing giant quotes in the air w/my hands, so I have to be true to myself].

People, I wear jeans to work every day. Every. Day. I break it up sometimes by wearing cropped pants in a different color, usually black. That's as dressy as it gets in Lisa's World. So anyway, just a small freak-out a week before the Alaskan Splendor that I'm sure I will adore and all my fears will be erased once I get on the boat and have a couple of $20 margaritas and relax. I should be very excited, I know. My friends who have cruised before are mega-excited and all giggly about it. This is one of the things I hate about myself: the inability to not stress out about the unknown. I would be giggly and excited if it were my 2nd time on a cruise and I'd enjoyed the first one, I'm just unsure at this point. But I trust that this time next week I will feel very differently. Yay!

On the eve of blessed Friday

I did a bad thing tonight. Again. I came home from work and slept on my couch for several blissful hours. This is bad because it totally mucks with my sleep pattern and evening overall -- yet I can't seem to help it this week. And speaking of this week? I cannot concentrate on ANYTHING. The reason my posts have been light and fluffy lately? Because that's what's in my BRAIN, people.

I think it's a combination of things; one being that this time next week I'll be in Seattle about to get on a giant boat for a week of Alaskan splendor. Heh. Also, this is the hottest, muggiest, most miserable month of the year to live in stupid Texas. This distracts me, makes me feel listless, prevents any inspiration on my part to do my hair or makeup. I mean, what's the point really, when it's so dang humid that when I step out of my car in the mornings, my glasses fog up??? My sistah, in Colorado, she is so lucky.

Thank goodness this week is almost over. Then I'll only have to suffer through four more days next week before my trip. Of which I am harboring much trepidation, along with excitement. Things I'm nervous about? The Unknown, of course. For example:
-Will I get seasick and throw up?
-Will my other two roommates get seasick and throw up?
-In our tiny, closet-sized room? That we're sharing??
-Will the ocean freak my shit out? Will I become obsessed with the dangerous creatures frolicking beneath the dark, dangerous, cold waters?
-Will we hit a glacier? I KNOW what can happen, i SAW the movie.
-Will I have the right clothes, or will I pack oh so carefully only to find I look all wrong and have NOTHING I like?
-Will I enjoy all the pre-planned excursions, or will I end up feeling stressed and tired and want to hide out somewhere where no one can find me?

and on and on. I know it will all be okay, I know after we board and spend about a day and i see that we're not going to sink or be deathly ill, I'll have a blast. But thanks to my genes (THANKS MOM) I will worry until that time. It sucks. The worrying, I mean.

BUT. I am very happy to have a trip to look forward to, and even if all those things I'm worrying over actually do happen (well, except for the glacier one) it will STILL be an adventure and beautiful and great. And -- perhaps most importantly -- MUCH cooler than Texas in August.

(AND. There is a LUSH [I'm on a Mac and it doesn't do links, in case you were wondering] store in Victoria, and I'm harboring a secret fantasy that I'll actually have the time and ability to FIND it and LUSH always soothes me. So that. It will rock.)

P.S. Last night at Target I bought an umbrella the size of my iPod. Kick ass.

I wonder where he gets it?

I got takeout Mexican food the other night and they included a couple of pralines. I love these illicit treats, except for the pecans; I spend way too much time trying to suck the sugary substance off the pecans w/out having to ingest them (for more on this, see my post yesterday). I have given much thought to how one might make pralines without the pecans. Would it even work? Would the goo hold together or harden without something on which to adhere? Would chocolate chips work just as well? Why has no one ever thought of this besides me? Or have they? And if so, where can I get some???

So. I carefully unwrapped my praline and began the methodical process of removing as many pecans as possible. Somewhere in the process a large grey cat appeared out of nowhere and began not-so-sneakily trying to steal away with my treat. Now, although large, this cat usually doesn’t eat people food. The exception? Pastry. Like pop-tart crusts? He’s ALL ABOUT the pop-tart crusts, which makes us a great team b/c I hate them and remove them immediately anyway. But we don’t have a problem in that case, because we have a system – he has access to my plate and he knows only to grab the crusts. It works for us. BUT in the case of the praline? This was a feline possessed.

He climbed all over me. He planted his kitty arms directly on my boobs and leaned all 20-something pounds of himself onto them, straining to reach the prize. I sat chewing, with the praline raised above my head. Never did his gaze waver from my hand, or from that which I clutched. I brought the praline down to take another bite and he actually snapped at it, managing to get a tiny piece of dried sugar goo, which he greedily inhaled and then quickly went after more. Clearly, this was unacceptable. I began with the stern “NO”s, which, if you have cats, you know how well this works. It was like his entire grey body and mind was focused on nothing but that praline and how he must have it. He chilled after a while, that is, he quit climbing me, and just sat in my lap, his body taut and poised to strike, eyes trained on my upraised arm. After a long while, long after my arm got tired, he finally gave up and jumped down. I waited 5 minutes and tried to unwrap the praline again – WRONG. He came bolting out from wherever he was and the whole thing started again.

Interestingly, I just read an article a few weeks ago that claimed that cats cannot taste sugar. That if they eat sugary things, it’s not because of the “sweetness”, it’s because some other ingredient turns them on. Um, I’m calling BULLSHIT on that theory, as there is nothing else in a praline BUT sugar (well, and pecans, and he doesn’t like those either). This cat, he would not rest until I gave him a microscopic crumb and made myself stuff the rest of it whole into my mouth, pecans and all. Needless to say, I got my yearly praline fix…

I wonder where Jess gets his single-minded food fixation? Hmmm. I wonder why he scorns meat and cheese, but strongly desires pastry, bread and sugar? Oh, and chocolate ice cream? Yeah, cats can’t taste sugar. Or else…….maybe this proves my theory that Jess is at least partly dog? I have yet to meet another cat (and I have known many) that comes when called; begs for treats; comes to get me when he wants to go outside or when the litter box is unacceptable; nuzzles me awake with his wet nose; growls at strangers in the yard or on the porch……………………… food for thought.
Make that PRALINE for thought.

Six facts about cookies

If I was in charge of all the cookies in the world, these things would NOT be included:
1 - nuts
2 - coconut
3 - raisins

and these things WOULD:
4 - chocolate
5 - caramel
6 - cream

that is all.

How my Monday has extended into Tuesday

I hate that this has happened. I hate being so mundane and ordinary as to say Mondays suck. But well, they do. Or at least yesterday did, and for some reason it seems to be bleeding into my Tuesday as well.

Yesterday. Running a bit late, nothing new. No drama. Until lunch, when I went out w/my friend Anita for the first time in over a week. And we got severely rear-ended by an SUV at a stoplight. That SUV hit her SUV, which then crashed into the SUV in front of us. (This happened in Westlake: the land of the Ladies who Lunch. Perhaps I will go into more detail on this someday…but if you live or work anywhere near this area in Austin, you already know what I mean). So anyway, it just so happens her front passenger seat belt wasn’t working, and the whole thing freaked me out waaayyy more than it should have. I was having mini flashbacks to my own accident and that horrible sound. That awful BOOM that occurs when bumper hits bumper, it took me back. But really, no one was hurt (a little sore maybe) and we made it back to work w/ out incident. The rest of the day was spent w/me nursing a mild headache, then going to a HH and accidentally getting tipsy. While I was getting ready for bed, somehow I locked Piper in my linen closet; I kept hearing this faint thudding; I would turn off the sink faucet and listen intently and it would stop. I’d turn the water back on and it would start. I was starting to get kind of creeped out when Jess sauntered into the bathroom and jumped four feet in the air as Piper snaked her arm out from under the door to bat at him. Scared the bejeezus(sp) out of both of us. Anyway. Mystery solved. Went to bed kind of early, woke up today with the same headache as yesterday. Good times.

Even though I was running late (again) this morning, I jumped in the shower to wake myself up. Hmm, how curious; my shampoo won’t lather this morning. Hmm, maybe I missed my head, perhaps I need more. Ok, I’ve now used two giant handfuls of my shampoo and my hair is NOT LATHERING. Ok, I’ll resort to my solid shampoo bar, the one I’m trying to preserve until our trip next week (NEXT WEEK!!). Finally, the lather I was looking for. Rest of the shower was uneventful until I reached for my conditioner and realized that I was using handfuls of my precious, expensive, LUSH conditioner earlier and that’s why there was no lather. Neither my hair nor the shampoo was defective. Just my brain. Now I only have a little bit left of that hard-to-obtain conditioner, dammit. Plus, as if I don’t have enough hair issues, putting gobs of conditioner into dirty hair and THEN washing it tends to bring out the weirdness in your hairstyle. Or lack thereof.

Stepped out of the shower and tripped on my grey cat who was not so patiently sitting there waiting to bug me for catnip. Stuck in traffic. Headache continues. So far, so good.

Sorry for this total bitchfest, but you know. It happens.

iThoughts

I'm currently reclining on my couch, laptop in my lap, TV on but muted, listening to the gentle wheeze/purr of a large, contented, grey cat. He has not been far from my side all day, as I've floated from bed, to couch, to floor, back to couch, and soon, back to bed. The time I spent on the floor I was organizing stacks and stacks of CDs. You see, for the past few weekends, I've spent Sunday afternoon lazily watching bad TV, yes, but also performing the arduous task of loading all my CDs into iTunes. Well, not "ALL"; I'm finding a few here and there that I just feel ridiculous to even own, so I'm setting them aside in a separate pile known as "if everything fits and there's still room". Then there's the pile of "yet to load", and the pile of "iTunes spits these out for some weird reason". As I'm loading them, I'm re-alphabetizing them in my CD rack. This hasn't been done properly since my sister started having babies 5 years ago and the babies started crawling around my house looking for things to destroy/eat at their eye level. But with the babies safely in CO, I can once again alphabetize to my anal-retentive heart's content.

I'd say I'm more than halfway done loading my CDs. I thought, when I began, that I would rediscover all these old CDs I'd forgotten about, that loading them onto the iPod would somehow bring them back to life. Turns out, I now no longer have any idea what's on my iPod. There's just so much, and I can't ever decide what I want to listen to, since I'm overwhelmed by the choice of having access, always, to almost every freaking CD I've bought since 1991. I spend a lot of time in the driveway staring blankly at my iPod screen, trying to comprehend how best to find something to suit my mood; should I search by artist? album? genre??? Forget it, I'm late -- I'll just listen to the radio. I was also under the misguided delusion that once I loaded the CDs into iTunes, I could them take bags and bags of old CDs to the used CD place and make a million dollars on resale value. This could still be possible, I suppose, except that I'm having a VERY difficult time getting rid of even the most silly CDs in my collection. Because, you never know -- what if my iBook dies the same day as my iPod and I lose ALL THE MUSIC OF THE PAST 15 YEARS????? I will most likely give in to my paranoia and end up storing them all in boxes, "just in case", and giving myself more crap to cart around when I move someday. But people, it's a collection -- how do you just abandon a collection?? You see, I am a Oualline by blood, and we Ouallines have trouble parting with unnecessary objects.

For example. Other collections I still have but no longer actively collect: cats. lots of little cat figurines, plates, lamps, everything. And fireflies. And blown-glass paperweights. And lizards. Ok, this does not mean I no longer like any of those things, it just means I no longer need 500 of them to feel complete. But -- I cannot get rid of them. I just can't. It's not in my genetic makeup. The only one of us who seems to have escaped this curse is my sistah. In her giant feat of rebellion, she gets rid of anything that isn't nailed down or currently in someone's hand. This chick has been known to sell belongings of others in her garage sales (ahem, stereo, cough). She won't admit it, but SURELY she's had a few "oops" moments from this behavior -- right??? Or is it just me that slowly and painfully cleans out my closet, lugging it all tearfully to Goodwill, only to need that green pair of flats I bought 8 years ago the very next week because they go PERFECT with something after all those years. Is it? Just me??

My brother collects broken or discarded computer parts, DVDs, Texas A&M stuff. My dad collects barware -- all kinds of crystal shot glasses, traveling bar paraphanalia, etc. Baseball caps. My mom? She collects...everything.

So back to my CDs. I really don't know what to do when they're all loaded up. Will I ever again stick a CD in a player? I mean, I have a converter in my car now, so I can use the iPod, and I'm quite sure my next car will have a built-in adapter. This digital music thing is here to stay. So will I just hold on to my CDs indefinitely, "just in case?" Well... now that I think about it, I still have a box of old cassettes somewhere....sigh.

it's a curse. a curse, i tell you. At least at this point in life, I recognize my obsessions and try to stick to things that are consumable -- like lotion or bubble bath, for example. By the gallon. And sugar scrubs. Oh, and body sprays ...shampoo...soap...chocolate. ice cream. chocolate ice cream. um, yeah.

TAG, I'm "it"

Babalicious tagged me to participate in this activity:

"List ten songs that you are currently digging ... it doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words, or even if they're no good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying right now. Post these instructions, the artists, and the ten songs in your blog. Then tag five other people to see what they're listening to. "

Here goes:
1 - Tower of Strength - The Mission
2 - Twist of Fate - Olivia Newton-John
3 - Friend or Foe - Adam Ant
4 - Hurricane - Mindy Smith
5 - Back to Me - Kathleen Edwards
6 - Express Yourself - Madonna
7 - Blue Orchid - White Stripes
8 - Running Battle - Kasabian
9 - In the Waiting Line - Zero 7
10 - Cowboys and Angels - George Michael

And I TAG - wait. Not fair. Babs already tagged all my real-life blogging buddies...Hmm. I'll have to think about this. In the meantime, please don't judge me...

iTunes flashback

I lie in the pitch black of the basement on my twin bed, bordered by dozens of stuffed animals. My eyes are squeezed shut and I am listening intently to this song on my bulky tape recorder and its one tinny speaker, trying to imagine it is me singing – even going so far as to envision the stage, the people watching, what I’d be wearing... If only I could sing – but no, I can only play the stupid piano. Filled with pre-adolescent angst, I imagine I’m singing my heart out, making Ritchie Powers or Steve McDermott wish they were going with me. Or maybe it was Todd Gaines. I am filled with unidentified wishes and yearnings, and I channel all that energy into my fantasy of performing this song on my imaginary stage. Leg warmers and all.

“Make a Move on Me” – Olivia Newton-John, late 1970s