Hello, get this. Mike has heard of gloaming -- in the Brigadoon musical/movie song, The Heather on the Hill. So I'm not nuts, not completely. Mike thinks gloaming, pronounced gloamin' in the song because that sounds better, has to do with a heavy mist or fog. This is Scotland, after all. So, I might not be correct that gloaming = dusk, but at least there appears to exist such a word. And fog is murky, just like twilight . . . sort of. Stay tuned again.

I promised more on dusk, so here's some: Dusk shows off the dif between kids and adults. Growing up in Florida, we kids would play hard outdoors up until the last possible second. Dusk was cool, as in neato, and made us play even harder because our daylight time was quickly dwindling and we'd have to go inside when it got dark. Pooh, the fun day was over and now we had to go waste our time sleeping. NOW, as an adult, I'm like, Oh goody, it's dusk, the day is almost over, I cannot wait to crawl under the cozy covers and sleep my life into oblivion. Wow, how do these changes in perception take place? Give me back the heart of a child.

I'm playing with a migraine and need to wrap it up. But I will say that in a recent blog I talked about my Swedish friend whose uncle wrote Leave it to Beaver and also how she always snaps up the all the latest Fiestaware, along with colorful placemats to mix and match under the FW, just psychedelic. Well, when I first wrote the post, I referred to her as a little rat. I said, The little rat has already gone out and bought the new FW Lemongrass placesetting. Something like that. Later that night I thought, What if she takes this the wrong way? I mean, I know she's not the kind of person to get all huffy, but better safe than sorry, right? So, I changed it to, Her enthusiasm runneth over and she bought the Lemongrass . . . Well, THE VERY NEXT MORNING she writes me about some bad little boys and calls them little rats. Yes she did. Mind you, she wrote this WITHOUT reading my blog calling HER a little rat, which I did make public for a few minutes and then went back and edited. I thought, Surely she saw my little rat in that tiny window and then wrote her own little rats by the power of suggestion. But no, no, she hadn't read the blog at all, this was just one of those little God-gifts, which I really thought from the beginning must be the case. Little God-gifts are the spice of life.

So, once I saw that she herself was not above calling some boys little rats, I emailed her and relayed my little rat story and enquired how we could both (aside from great minds, of course), unawares, from one end of the country to the other, manage to employ little rat(s) at the same exact time. I said, I really wanted to use little rat on you, even thought you are not a RAT rat, like the little boys. You are a lovely rat. It was just so perfect, but I didn't know if you would be offended. She commanded, PUT IT BACK. So, I put it right back but I also retained, Her enthusiasm runneth over, because I ended up liking that, too. Her enthusiasm runneth over and the little rat marched right out and bought the new LG FW . . . something like that. Typing black words on a blank white screen is tons of fun. It takes a lot to make me take down a word, once it's up there.

So, there you have it, I love my fun, spirited friends I can count on :)) Oh yeah, and she informed that she is NOT Swedish but rather is half-Norwegian, But who cares!, she says. That's exactly right. I told her that we will turn her into a Swede because my paragraph opened with Swedish meatballs and closed with my fun Swedish friend. I liked that. So, I'm taking some literary license . . . because it works. It was so endearing that she played along and I got to keep little rat and Swedish.

BTW, cleaning the bathroom last night, really in the wee hours of the morning, was horrid and gruesome. I hated it. Yes, I did. For one thing, there's a lot more to do, I could spend a day sifting through drawers and closet, well, half a day if I turned it up a notch. But all these crazy bottles of lotions and potions. My granny would blow her stack if she could see the accumulation (nice word!) in my bathroom. Once we went on vacation and when she came in the hotel room and saw all our cosmetics spread out all over every available surface, she shrilled, EWWWW, what is this, a drugstore?? This, of course, coming from the lady whose cosmetic collection consisted of one single item, the Coty's Airspun Powder. Hardly a collection.

Well, last night I took a casual inventory and man, do I have some old stuff in there. Stuff that if it weren't mine, I would laugh while pitching. Pitch, Pitch, Pitch. I mean, who in their right mind would dab on eye wrinkle cream when the cream's age is unknown, other than vaguely prehistoric? The cream has likely chemically altered into some foreign goo you wouldn't clean your garbage disposal with, much less smear onto your thin delicate eye skin. And I'm holding onto it?? Really, I mean, it's hard to throw out clothes you haven't worn in a year, like the experts recommend. But how hard can it be to throw out a once-liquid cosmetic that has petrified -- dry, cracked and bleeding, for all I know. It's not even USABLE, if I WANTED to use it. Which I don't, I just don't want to throw it out. Or the reverse, why wouldn't I toss without a thought a solid that has liquified? It might be lighter fluid by now and would probably flay the skin right off my face. How hard can it be to ditch? I'll tell you how hard. Impossible. I preach to myself, it goes something like this: THE MONEY (MONEY?) IS ALREADY SPENT (WASTED), YOU CANNOT (YOU CAN'T?) GET IT BACK (RATS) -- EVER (SUPER RATS). PLASTIC SURGERY (THAT'S RIGHT) TO REPAIR (YOU HOPE) THE DAMAGE DONE (SO SAD) USING THESE FOUL PRODUCTS (DOPEY) WILL BE VERY EXPENSIVE (VERY) AND MORE MONEY (OH, NO!) DOWN THE DRAIN (DRAIN...DOWN). T-H-I-N-K-!-! (SAY WHAT?) THROW THE JUNK OUT (NEVER!)! But my self-sermons bear no fruit. It must be human nature to cling to the death to not just any ol' stuff, but gen-U-ine bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. I blame all my faults on human nature in general, rather than on my human nature in particular.

So, how did I get all this junk, anyway? Some of it is DTD'S rejects. For one little instance, I have been using DTD'S XXL Volume Thickening Mousse with Fruit Micro-Waxes to shave my legs. Leg hair's gotta love that. Think what a close shave, the Volume should make all the hair stand straight out, and a nice waxy finish to boot. And I have a LOOOONG line-up of bottles and cans waiting their turn to sub for shaving cream, if I ever get past the Mousse. Some of the junk is Bad Buys, the product does not perform as promised, it does Zip. I use those on my feet or send 'em down the kitchen disposal to freshen it up (VERY questionable practice). Some of it is sheer over-quantity from picking up something HERE that holds appeal (like the Olay Sculpting cream, which, BTW, seems like toothpaste to me), picking up something OVER THERE on an end cap, (Oh, what a find, lucky I stumbled on THIS, can't pass this WHATADEAL up). These Jars O' Magic might really work their wonders, but still, a lifetime of generous application couldn't begin to make a dent in them. But ALL of the amassed gar-bage is buyer's remorse. Next thing you know, you have a drug store.

Well, ONE OF THESE DAYS, I'm going to get in a calculated frame of mind and calmly go around the house and play thief, except a thief wouldn't really want what I have. I'm going to loot my house clean, strip it bare. Then I'll make my speedy get-away. But I'm going to get scared I'll get caught so I'll dump the bags by the side of the road ('cause after all the City Dump, much less The Goodwill, doesn't really want my flaky rubber bands from the dry cleaners or the clear plastic snap pouch my latest mini L'Oreal Haircare Set ON CLEARANCE came in, do they?, or the candy canes from three Christmases ago, aren't I generous?, or a stray rusty safety pin, Goodwill might arrest me, and how 'bout those homely brittle make-up compacts?, Don't ya'll crowd around now.) Then I'm going to come home and pat myself on the back, breathe easy and blog about it. I WANT to revolutionize my life, but still, I resist.

Well, my headache is flitting, I babied it with three Spinach Cocktails and two asprin, that's why you got stuck with a long blog.

It's a Wrap, Little Rat,
KEM