Whew, today was extra busy. Our city had it's mayoral primary, to shorten the list of ten candidates to two. Of course I voted for Billy Foster. On all his campaign signs it says BILL FOSTER FOR MAYOR. Even the ballot said BILL FOSTER. But I used to ride the school bus with him, for miles unending because our school was on the total opposite side of town from where we lived. We rode that yellow, giant, noisy inferno (remember, this ain't the Sunshine State for nothin') for YEARS, and I've always wished someone had logged the miles because without a doubt we'd have circled the equator 8 million times if you strung it all together. But Billy Foster, who was three grades behind me, will always be Little Billy Foster to me. BILL? That's so utterly foreign and ridiculous. Hello, Mayor Billy Foster, do you remember me? Lots of people posted his signs in our neighborhood, and I have had lots of fun saying "BILLY FOSTER" everytime we see his sign while driving down the streets. At some points there are many Bill Foster signs all in a row and I almost get tongue-tied trying to say BILLY FOSTER, BILLY FOSTER, BILLY FOSTER fast enough to keep up. Good thing DTD isn't in the car when this happens. Every time we pass my old elementary school, North Ward (sounds like a prison), and DTD is in the car, I say, with great enthusiasm, I went to first grade HERE (and point to the southwest corner of the building) and second grade THERE (and point to the northwest corner). Mom, you've told me this ten thousand times. You say it EVERY TIME we go by. Well, I can't help it. I have lots of memories, the good, the bad and the ugly, and I think DTD should realize that the fact that I attended first and second grades HUMANIZES me. Don't most people go to first and second grades? I am a people, too. Anyway, it was beginning in third grade I had to start riding that dern school bus. In the good old days (meaning first and second grades), I walked to school, just like Beaver Cleaver and Opie Taylor (as if a parent could allow that these days). I wish I could have stayed at North Ward because it was an old-fashioned building and even as a kid I loved old-fashioned. The building has a big sweeping staircase to the second floor where all the BIG KIDS went to class. We little pee wees couldn't wait until we were old enough to be in the BIG grades so we would get to climb those stairs that led to regions unknown but daringly contemplated. Instead, I had to suffer motion sickness for 8.5 years riding that dern school bus. I am a traveling WIMP. You DO NOT want to take a trip with me. I was born motion-sick, and my parents discovered it when I cried for three solid days when I was a baby on a road trip to Michigan. Imagine the fun of that. One or more years the afternoon school bus route passed by a bread factory. I'm already totally bus sick. Kids, all of them, would hang their heads out the bus windows and deeply breathe in the "delicious" scent, ooohing and aaahing. I would hang my head down around my lap, hold my breath and try not to give it up. It has occurred to me that the bread factory manager was a sadist and somehow knew about me and would deliberately time his baking so that the loaves were removed from the oven just as the bus rattled by. Oh, here comes that sick kid, everyone position yourself by your oven door! Well, I don't really mean that. Anyway, BILLY FOSTER FOR MAYOR!

Tonight we had to have spinach salad again. I buy this HUGE tub of spinach because it is such the better deal than the miniature box, even though we're only two small people, and then you are forced to become Popeye. I learned how to make a Spinach Cocktail (before I gave my Magic Bullet to DTD), mainly because I came across this recipe, but also because I always have gobs of fresh spinach to choke down somehow. I have to get resourceful and engage my imagination for how to spend my spinach. It will be so much easier to make Spinach Cocktail with my new broken in blender. You stuff spinach in the blender and add pineapple juice. Press WHIR. Boy, it's good, you hardly notice it's spinach, even though the drink is a nice shade of spinach green, a tad paler, naturally, what with the pineapple juice toning it down ever so slightly. You can pretend the texture is pineapple pulp instead of spinach pulp. I'm telling you, there are all kinds of tricks for enjoying Spinach Cocktail. I suggest if the color is a turn-off that you just close your eyes when you drink, you will think you're drinking pineapple juice with a little added something you can't quite put your finger of (figuring you're brain-dead, of course). Pretend you're on a Hawaiian beach and have just been served a special tropical beverage. There, that's more like it. I always feel smart and healthy when I drink my Spinach Cocktail, and you will, too. But tonight I was so happy to realize that I didn't have to suffer the Crouton Drill again. I remembered we were OUT of croutons, because I actually remembered I had used them all up the other night, remember the Crouton Mini Meltdown the other night? OKAY!, so we all remember! But still, I could IMAGINE what it would have been like if I HAD NOT remembered we were out of croutons, it would have been way worse than before because I would have gone through ALL THAT and there really wouldn't have been any croutons to find. That would have been so sad and futile . Tonight I threw in corn chips instead, and it was very tasty.

I'd better talk about that quote before I have to press PUBLISH POST, which I have to do every night before midnight, in keeping with my goal to write every day for a year (scary). Last night I think I pressed PUBLISH POST at 11:59:59, shaving it quite close (scary).

Well, as a refresher, the quote is:

"The wisdom of life consists of the elimination of nonessentialis." - Lin Yutang

I love that, it sounds so . . . so non-fussy, so wise, so no-brainer, so easy-breezy. I do have a question though. Okay, so what is nonessential? I DO know some ESSENTIALS - showering twice a day, having my Spinach Cocktail, Bible and prayer. Oh, and supposedly my back exercises. Yes, I need to practice the piano and do laundry and dishes. Fairly essential, wouldn't you concur? I sneak in vacuuming the bathrooms and kitchen and giving the bathrooms a quick Windex squirt every night, too. Speaking of Hawaii, Mike took me there six years ago and I'm still operating on Hawaii time, meaning I stay up all night and sleep all morning. Somehow I never switched back to EST. I guess he'll have to take me to India or somewhere now, to reverse my internal clock. He sees it as a problem, but I don't, not particularly. My mother says I'm like a baby, I have my nights and days mixed up. My nephew can't believe I have the nerve to vacuum in the middle of the night while he's sleeping, he thinks I'm nocturnal. My mother-in-law is the only one who gets it. She says her mother used to do her housework at night. So there. Of course, I'm not so sure my MIL appreciates that I do this, she goes to bed at 7:30 PM, but at least she is familiar with the concept, which is more than I can say for most people. Speaking of vacuum, I took it in yesterday, Monday, and the man said, We'll have it ready for you on Saturday. I am no actress, never have been, so I'm sure some kind of shock registerd on my countenance, because that's what I was, shocked. Because I just can't survive without my vacuum for four solid days. With the economy and all, I didn't foresee that everyone was running to line up at the Gorilla Vacuum Repair. But I politely and sweetly asked, If it's ready sooner, could you please call me? He replied, Well, we can have it ready for you on Thursday. Okay, I say, but if it's ready sooner, could you please call me? (Tuck chin, tilt head, tip lips, bat, bat.) But he didn't promise anything before Thursday. Shucks. I told him, I use my vacuum EVERY day. He smiled. And for the most part, I do, because again, it's all about that loose hair that cannot be humored. Can't have them (loose hairs) scampering about and getting bold and brazen due to sheer power of numbers. Been there, done that. So, of course I vacuumed right before I took it in, and tonight and tomorrow I will have to hand vacuum or hand scoop, well, what it really is if I'm peppy enough is taking a damp cloth and doing a mop job on hands and knees, but that's okay, 'cause I don't mop very many times a year. And it's very interesting to see what a damp rag will collect, it brings back the Rainbow concept . . . in a very diminshed way . . . water, hair and dirt. PLUS, it allows me to see just how many hairs I really do vacuum each day, which is mind-boggling, believe me. Just regular vacuuming doesn't highlight these things. You just vacuum gingerly away and whistle and have no earthly idea what's really happening in the hair-on-the-floor department. I should perform a scientific study on it, because I've never heard of one and really, I've read that hair never disintegrates. Talk about accumulation! Somebody come to the rescue! Billions of people have been losing MUCH hair, that never disintegrates, for many thousands of years, on a daily basis. So . . . WHERE DOES ALL THIS HAIR GO? The city dump?, which ours is called Toy Town? With all the hair, where's the room for the other garbage? Birds' nests? My mother used to comb the hair out of our brushes and toss the loose balls of hair out in the yard (if you can toss something so weightless without it blowing right back in your face, which I personally don't care for the idea of sucking up a human hairball, for lack of a more fitting term). Mattress filling? Now there's a thought. I'm telling you, the human species loses TONS OF HAIR EVERY DAY. And we tend to grow it right back, to exacerbate things. Okay, I promise not to talk about this again for a while. I know I'm the only person in the world who could possibly be interested in this subject. Every day I also take a masking tape lint roller and roll our bed sheets. And it comes up hairy. Okay, now you know how weird I am, so someone please tell me something weird about you so I can feel a little less freaky. I'd appreaciate it. Thank you.

Okay, WHERE in the world were we? Yes, so those were my essentials, plus emailing. Does this require all other activites to fall by the wayside, as in the dead-end category of NONESSENTIAL? For instance, I have PILES (do you detect a theme in my life?) of piano magazines to read, from way back when. Not long ago I did read some of them, and boy, I really learned a lot of very valuable concepts and tore out some of the articles, which was a mistake, of course, 'cause now what do you do with all those lose pages besides wind up with them scattered hither and yon, never to be runited again in original sequence? SOOOO, do I give away the rest of my magazines or do I hope to read some more some day, even though that thought smells burdensome? But so does donating them seem drastic, I'm so conflicted. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? I've dreamt of buying a little beach lounger chair and going down by the bay and sitting under a palm tree in the breeze, with lemonade and Twinkies and HoHos for companions, soaking up the surf and important piano content (delusional, I know). I'm obssessive/compulsive, unfortunately, so the very idea that there might be some more little gems tucked in those pages (and 1,000% there are), wow, it's really hard to just say, Okay, I will never have time to peruse you, so nice knowing you, now go make someone else happy . . . or likewise miserable.

I'm obiously confused, I should have all this figured out by now. But I still love that quote and maybe one day I'll have the courage of my convictions, which I'm afraid goes against the grain of human nature, to carry out one's convictions, that is.

Today MTM's (Miss Teenage Muffet) new phone came by FedEx. She sends things to our house since she's never at her apartment when the delivery truck is. I immediately texted, Ur phone came. Yay!!, she texts back. Before that we had texted about changing her dental appointment at my childhood friend's dental office where I worked for one week and checked A on the application. They wondered if she could move up her appointment and come in several days early, as in three hours from now they had an opening, and she would get a 5% discount. She said, No, I'm at work all day :( I texted back, I'm working, too. You work? She's incredulous. Sure, I write a blog, texted with attitude. That was the end of that texting conversation. But right on the money MTM appeared shortly thereafter on a break between shifts to pick up her phone. She was so excited, but I put the dampers on instantly by saying, Just because you got a new phone doesn't mean you can text and drive. MTM: Do you enjoy wasting your breath? So I tried a new tactic. Now we can talk person to person again instead of texting only. MTM: Maybe my old phone was a good idea. She and Mike got busy talking tech, but eventually something came around I understood. He said, You should get a phone cover for it in case you drop it. MTM: You mean WHEN I drop it - but I only dropped my old phone three times and that was near the end (maybe that's why it WAS the end?, thinks I, but I keeps that little pearl to myself, I'm not always entirely lacking in good judgment and self-control. I also resisted piping up with, Oh, I drop my phone, too, how sweet, like mother like daughter. Hold the applause, please). Then I walked over and saw her phone on the table and I wanted to hold it, it was calling for me to reach out and touch it, overtly, but I knew that would illicit drips of sneers. So I kinda snuck (hey, that's a word now, I found it in the dictionary of all places, it didn't used to be a word, did it?, I remember getting reprimanded in school for saying 'snuck', I like sneaked better, the former proper word, but, whatever, I'm probably aging myself here) my hand around her, like a kid sneaking (no such word as snucking, thank goodness) a cookie. MTM: Don't act so weird. Mother: DON'T TELL ME I'M WEIRD, THAT IS RUDE. MTM: Don't act weird and I won't have to tell you. Well, you can see this little interaction was going nowhere fast, so I patiently ceased and desisted. I know those two words mean the exact same thing, but I used them both for EMPHASIS and not mere mindless redundancy. If you know how MTM and I used to carry on, you would give me a lot of credit, you really would. During one especially classic volley, my stepson laughed his head off and said, I can't believe I have to go back to college and miss all this. It had something to do with MTM conveying that I was an embarrassment to the human race in general and to her in particular, what else? (All mothers with similarly dispositioned daughters, are you relating? Of course, I'm not saying I was/am the smartest mom on the block when it comes to these things, far from it.) So I said, Wow, MTM, why don't you start a club at school called MOMS STINK. You can be Prez since you hold fast the opinion that you have the stinkiest mom in the Universe. So, believe it or not, we've really come a long way since she moved into her apartment. On last Mother's Day she wrote on her beautiful handmade card, which was attached to her hand-decorated gift bag, I'm so happy we get along so much better since I moved out. AMEN, Baby. I know I tease about all this, but really I am SO BLESSED by my daughter. Thank you, dear Lord, for MTM.

It's time to press PUBLISH POST!
KEM