Tonight: Some random thoughts (really?) and a story wrap-up.

So Mike reads my blog about our trip to the mall, where we went to get my free stuff including an escalator ride. He informs, 24 sorry hours too late, The DOWN escalator worked. Boy, oh, boy.

I'd like to know what is cuter than a Fiestaware custard cup. Unless it's their teensy fruit bowls.

I saw on AOL where the washing machines of the future are going to wash a load of clothes with one (yes, ONE) cup (yes, CUP) of water and thousands of nylon beads (OKAY, they lost me). It explained that the water, all eight ounces of it, would wet the clothes (what's their idea of a load?, a pair of socks?), and the nylon beads would collect the dirt. You don't say. Doesn't that sound just a mite too futuristic? In other words, nuttier than a fruitcake? How does AOL find this stuff? Maybe we should all go stock up on some good old-fashioned corrugated wooden washer boards. I can see myself bending over one down in the bay, scrubbing in easy rhythm with the swaying palm fronds (bay is calm, no rhythmic waves.) Hey, this might be all right. No hurries, no worries, just soaking up the sunshine, a scrumptious salty breeze and a lazy wash, letting my thoughts drift out with the gentle rhythm of the tide. Yeah, this sounds swell. Rhythm, to me, is the crux of life anyway.

We're back on spinach, but it was a wet box. Pooh. Spinach that's been drenched for a while just melts in your hands. That's right. Anyway, I picked out the few good dry leaves, which took all night, and dolled them up with beets. Beets are about as underrated as a poor unpopular vegetable can be. So unfortunate. But you roast the ugly little suckers in the oven. You peel 'em, you cut 'em up and decorate the spinach with 'em, 'cause somehow now they've turned ruby beet red 'n glossy purty. You slice up an orange, too. Chunk up some goat cheese and drop it all around. Do some walnuts. Do some orange vinaigrette (wouldn't you prefer to spell that vinegarette? I would.) What you sit down to is a gorgeous, super colorful, SUPER delicious, SUPER healthy Roasted Beet Salad. I saw a picture of it in Betty Crocker's Cookbook and I went, OH MY, YES! Green, purple, orange, white. Sounds like Fiestaware.

Tonight the Andy Griffith Show was the episode where Aunt Bea becomes disgusted that Opie is hanging out at a jail where he's exposed to crime and savage criminals. She "rescues" him from this disgracefully-inappropriate-for-a-little-boy environment by making him stay at home and plant spinach. Opie says, SPINISH. I like that. SPINISH. (The Andy Griffith director got a lot of mileage out of that, he has Opie saying SPINISH every few seconds, and I plan to get a lot of mileage out of it, too, just watch :) But he doesn't like SPINISH. You can imagine just how thrilled Opie is to go from the jailhouse where he hangs out with his cool dad Sheriff to tending SPINISH plants by the side of the driveway with a watering can in hand. Anyway, I didn't really watch the episode, but I turned it on for cheerful vibrations 'cause I can hear it from anywhere in the house, our house has a modern open floor plan, which is, eh, not that great. But not that bad, either. The way I keep house, it's really better to be able to close off rooms . . . all of them. But it IS fun to scoop up the scoop on everything at once because the house is just one giant room and no privacy. So, what I'm getting at is I don't know if I put that Andy episode together exactly correctly or not. At one point I glanced at the TV and saw Aunt Bea frowning at Andy and later I caught a deeply disheartened Opie amongst his SPINISH leaves. Based on that I pieced together the rest of the story from memory. Maybe I'm lying. Well, all that to say, if you can believe this, is that a wet box of spinach should definitely be called SPINISH.

Continuing my Random Roll, so as not to disappoint, I want to tell you THE MOST RIDICULOUS arrangement of words anyone ever assembled within and specifically for my hearing . It happened when DTD was a three month old baby. You didn't know this yet, but DTD was BORN with a toned little body. Her fat/muscle index, or whatever you call it, is exceptional, the lucky duck. So someone asks me, Wow, I never saw a baby with such muscle mass. Do you have her lifting weights? Boy, oh, boy.

THE SECOND MOST ABSURD thing anyone ever said to me concerned supermodel Cindy Crawford. My friend and I were discussing Cindy's beauty in a cement pond in North Carolina (added for color because no one forgets where they were when startling news shapes up, but also true). Well I, anyway, was enumerating her assets when suddenly out of the brown cement pond my friend tossed an unusual take, to put it mildly. She snarked (why isn't this word in the dictionary?), with an obviously pre-meditated conviction, Cindy Crawford has the face of a horse. This was so shocking, preposterous, really, that it left me rendered speechless. WHAT ON EARTH??? All I can say is, I want to look like that horse. Cindy Crawford, if you are reading this, just chalk it up to the green-eyed monster.

In case you are unaware, there is an ongoing Escalator World Crisis. I was downtown today where they have a snazzy outdoor shopping plaza. It has an outdoor moving staircase. I actually didn't have moving staircase on my mind at the moment, unbelievable, I know, but then I saw it. FUN!, I instantly perked up. Fun! until I realized it was roped off with a sign that read, BROKEN. KEM STATS, what can I say.

I was GOING to deliver the punchline to the Sally Goes Shopping Alone and The Little Rabbit that would not Eat post. Well, I can no do tonight because I have wilted. I feel like NIP when he ate poorly, before he learned to appreciate parsley soup and mashed turnips and of course SPINISH. When he only ate dessert and depleted his vigor and vitality and languished around doing zilch. That's how I feel. Which makes NO sense after eating a four-color salad dinner off of FW. Of course, it is 3:30 AM. There, maybe that has something to say about it.

RANDOM REIGNS,
KEM