Friday Funny

The Queen has been in the American news constantly during the last few weeks, what with The Wedding, Liz's apparently mind-bending trip to Ireland and Obama's stay in Buckingham Palace.

Maybe that's why this image caught my attention.

Wouldn't this be an amazing Halloween costume?

First, the Queen (observe a moment of silence for Mr. Mercury here):
Sterilizingly tight leather pants, shag chest toupee, a crosswalk-thick layer of guyliner and a muskrat pet for a mustache.

Then The Queen:
Over this fabulous assemblage of man parts you don a perfectly square, Crayola-colored gown and $100M worth of jew-ells plundered from former members of The Realm.

Et viola! I can't wait until October...."Oh, Huu-uubby! Do I have a costume for you!"

Oh, shit, here we go

Last week I woke up, in the middle of the night, in a hideous sweat. I blamed it on the steak and red wine I'd had for dinner.

Sometimes, when I eat heavily late in the evening, it effects my sleep. That happens to loads of people -young people, even. Right?

The next night I had pasta and red wine.

More sweat.

I blamed the wine.

The following night, no wine, no sweat.

Eureka! It isn't hormones! It couldn't POSSIBLY be hormones. It's the wine.

Last night: no wine, buckets of sweat.

Well, fuck a duck.

This morning? I spent 10 minutes searching my office for my computer glasses.
As I was walking out the door to retrace my steps, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror - and found my glasses.

Of COURSE they were on top of my head. That's the oldest menopausal/middle-aged cliche in the book. Sweet Jeezus - if this is going to happen to me, can I get some original symptoms, please? Something with a little color? Something a little less...textbook-y?

So, here we go, kids. It looks like I'm crossing the threshold into Those Years.

I hope The Hubster survives.

Image attribution: Middle Age Barbie is all over The Interwebz...I have no idea who originally Photoshopped her. Sorry.

Bless It

No, I haven't died, and if you read CG1's last two posts, you aren't surprised to learn I'm still breathing. Okay, it's more like an exhausted wheeze, but still....

So, you might remember that The Hubster owns an event management company (rents giant tents, builds stage props, throws casino parties - dealers and pit boss included).

Last weekend he had a prom...out in the country. I don't want to identify the county in which this patch of "country" is located lest I offend someone's kinfolk, but suffice to say, an F4 tornado ripped through the middle of it and no structures were damaged. The Country.

Anyhoodle, a few hours after the onset of The Prom, the prom sponsor texts Hub with the image above. The girl in the picture is wearing a cammo dress (that would be a dress made out of camouflage material, for all you other City Girls) and her bouquet is made up of:

Calla lilies
Mums
Wheat
Fishing Lures
and Shotgun Shells

She is going to make some man (or woman) a damn good wife someday.

It's back to the dots in the Celotex...

There's this speech I make. It's a post on here somewhere, I'm pretty sure. Involves the day you're laying in the nursing home, drooling all over yourself and staring at the ceiling. Counting the dots in the Celotex.

If that day ever comes? I don't want to be laying there regretting things. I don't want to be thinking, "Damn. I never bought a red car." (I haven't but...I don't want one. That's not the point ;) "Damn...I never made it to Ireland." (I will.) "Damn. I wish I'd spent more time with my kids." (I do.)

The arts festival City Girl and I have helped at was this weekend, and after a couple years lay-off, I was there. Late Saturday afternoon, after the manual labor for the Saturday night party was done, I took a quick turn through the park. All SORTS of amazing stuff...everything from pastels, acrylics, folk work, metalwork, jewelry to woodwork to pottery to...you get the picture. There's a piece of pottery in the gallery I'm going to buy this afternoon if it's still there ;)

There was also...yard art. Now, I know this is a touchy subject for some, and I've never really HAD any yard art but...sometimes, things change. A couple of years ago I gave up on tilling up a patch in the back yard and planting a garden. The back yard is the side of a hill...it slopes. And unless you've ever man-handled a tiller across a slope? You have NO idea.

So I embraced something a friend calls "guerilla gardening." Planting herbs, vegetables and edibles in and amongst your landscaping. From there, I fell in love with the metal obelisk things...the pyramids made from rebar with old finials on top. Tomato cages ;)

And Saturday, on my quick stroll, I literally laughed out loud. (Problem with having kids at 44 is that not ONLY did I spend Sunday explaining Purple Rain, but they didn't even know who Prince IS.) There, on a five foot piece of rebar, a pig was flying.

I hooted.

Came home, nursed my aching muscles with ibuprofen washed down with bourbon, and laughed about the pig. Flying. It apparently, is time. For pigs to fly. Ed McMahan hasn't shown up yet.

From there? Oh. My.

Sunday I took some and all of the kids and their friends to the festival. We wandered around. Ate lunch. Wandered around some more. I kept laughing about the pig. (An aside here...it's a small propane tank, I think. With metal wings, nuts for eyes and rebar legs. EIGHTY DOLLARS.) I laughed every time we passed. Sent some people to see it. Explained to the kids..."when pigs fly..." Don't know if they got it or not.

And then, toward the end of the afternoon, I thought, "You know? I could get hit by a truck crossing Seminary Street this afternoon and there I'd be. Bleeding out in the middle of the street. Staring at the sky thinking, 'Damn. I never bought a flying pig'."

So I did.

And they do ;)

My, how time flies....

City Girl and I met when we were both working on a local arts festival in our burb. I've been sitting here trying to figure out many years it's been...

 

The six degrees of separation thing doesn't apply around here...two degrees max and fifty percent of the time we're related. I enrolled in the Master Gardener program when I was six months pregnant with The Not Nice Kid. Met a lovely Scottish lady there, who turned out to be the Matriarch of the Arts Festival...which is how I was recruited. So that would be ten years. I think.

 

You know how you have definitive moments in life...funny little scraps of time that you can recall in complete detail? I don't remember the first time I met CG but I can tell you the moment I realized she was a keeper.

 

Another volunteer was driving her van down a sidewalk in the city park...I think we were hauling children's art. I was in the passenger seat and City Girl was in the middle of the back.

 

(An aside here. City Girl has flawless skin...as in...no imperfections and the bitch ain't got a wrinkle in sight. Whatever history she has is not reflected in her face.)

 

Driver Friend said something about something about being married, I said something about something and City Girl says, from the back seat, "Well, I something-about-something, and that's why I've been married three times."

 

DF and I, simultaneously, turned and looked at each other. There was an...extended...silence, and then together we blurted out, "HOW OLD ARE YOU????"

 

I was giving her 23, tops. TOPS. I mean, for real...early 20's. DF agreed with me. Turns out, we were more than a decade off and to this day...I'd show up at her 30th birthday party tomorrow with no questions.

 

This weekend is the arts festival. CG is no longer a college student; she has a big-girl job, no time and flits all over the planet. I have one kid with a big-girl job, a teenager and an elementary schooler. Driver Friend is 800 miles away.

 

That van was maroon. DF had on a denim shirt. Life moves on ;)