Channeling Nana Luke

First order of business:  A HUGE thank you to USteve, who rescued me and my ginger kitty Weasley on Friday night by bringing us to the animal ER.  Weasley was quite ill and I was quite mentally ill, imagining his impending death.  Weasely is on the road to recovery thanks USteve's assistance and some prescription meds.

Second order of business:  Last week (before incurring a large emergency vet bill), I purchased this bag in kicky "poppy" pleather.  It is very pink.

Anne Klein Perfect Medium Tote

Today I am wearing a pink maxi dress that matches the bag to a startling degree and my pink toe nails are on display too.  I am not usually a pink person and I am definitely not usually a head-to-toe pink person.  When I walked out of my house today, I realized just how coordinated I was and I thought of my great-grandmother, Nana Luke, who loved the color pink.  We played a family trivia game years back in which each person wrote ten facts about him/herself on a sheet of paper.  The facts were read one at a time and when you thought you knew which person had submitted the facts, you wrote down the name and handed it into the moderator.  If you guessed right on the first fact, you would get 10 points, with the number of points decreasing for each additional fact.  Nana Luke included, "My favorite color is pink" in her list and the entire group passed in their guesses at once.

Nana Luke in pink-- a tougher shot to find than I would have guessed.

Third and final bit of business:  Today is my dad's birthday.  He asked that Ryan and I not get him birthday presents, and we failed to meet that request.  He asked that we not post about his birthday on Facebook, and again we let him down.  I am not home to send him through the hot oven, so I hope that any readers in Central Maine will take care of that.  Thanks a million!

Father Knows Best

One of my dad's most repeated pieces of advice when Ryan and I were growing up was, "Worry about yourself."  It was his way of reminding us to mind our own business and not to make comparisons between our situation and our perception of other people's situations.  Ryan and I discussed "worry about yourself" recently when the phrase popped into his head.  I told Ryan that I think about our dad's advice frequently.  Whenever I start to get ticked off about something that is none of my business, I try to remember to worry about myself.  My dad is a very even-keeled person and I think that is in part because he is not constantly getting fired up about petty issues.  "Worry about yourself" is my mantra for attempting to manage anger and jealousy.  Whenever I am consumed by the THAT IS SO UNFAIR-ness of a situation, I try to worry about myself.  It helps me to avoid being consumed with envy when a coworker manages to finesse an advantageous work schedule or to avoid blowing my stack when a person claims a seat for his backpack on a crowded train.  I have been trying to practice what my dad preaches for years and it is still a work in progress.  Check out how youthful and relaxed the master himself is:

My Decade

I went to Maine to see my parents and celebrate Easter last weekend.  I had a lovely visit with them and with my nana.  While I was at their house, I became addicted to an '80s music station that is part of my parents' cable package.  My dad was irritated that I turned on a plasma TV (notoriously expensive to run, according to him) to listen to old tunes.  We had a discussion about "our music" and he thought it was peculiar that I identified the '80s as my musical decade.  I guessed that he would pick the '70s as that is the decade in which his teen years occurred, but he also chose the '80s.  Although my mum is a serious disco enthusiast (we listened to The Bee Gees in her car while I was home), I think she would choose the '80s as well.  Another advantage of having young parents-- we all know the lyrics from every song that blasted out of our silver boombox* in the Reagan era.**  Anyhow, it occurred to me this morning that my work day would probably be more enjoyable if I listened to some '80s music at my desk.  I've been tuned to "Best of the 80s on SKY.FM" and I genuinely think it has improved the day.  It doesn't hurt that today is Friday either.

*At this point, mentioning the silver boombox is purely for my own entertainment.  The silver boombox is to this blog as the spider and grasshopper are to Little Critter books.  (The following illustration is from Just Me and My Dad by Mercer Mayer.  I loved those books and I had a "just me and my dad" moment last weekend when The Boss and I took my parents' dog for a walk.  I am not an outside gal, but the weather was perfect, the bugs weren't out yet, and we had a nice chat and stroll on their quiet country road.)

** The Dude and I saw President Reagan at Westover Air Reserve Base with our grandparents and mother.  I decided to bring my BFF/stuffed animal Tippy with me to see the president.  Tippy is a ginormous stuffed puppet dog, and the Secret Service nearly didn't let me in because of her.  Fortunately she went through the metal detector without a problem.

Like The Boss

Dad's Day is coming up and there are lists of great TV fathers floating around the net.  Without checking any lists, I thought of The OC's Sandy Cohen, Roseanne's Dan Conner, Modern Family's Phil Dunphy, The Cosby Show's Cliff Huxtable, Little House on the Prairie's Charles Ingalls, and Friday Night Light's Eric Taylor.  How do these dads compare to my father, The Boss?  Sandy has a magnificent set of eyebrows like The Boss, Eric is both emotionally buttoned up and smokin' hot like the Boss, and Dan, Phil, and Cliff are super funny like The Boss.  (Pa Ingalls weeps way too frequently to draw any real comparisons with The Boss.)

Then I thought of a TV dad who raised an outrageously adorable ginger child and whose Aunt Bee has always reminded me of The Boss's grandmother, Nana Luke.  Happy Father's Day weekend, Dad!

Andy & Opie Taylor

Like Looking in a Mirror

I stopped eating animals a few months ago in hopes that I would soon be built like one.  I'm still waiting for my super buff physique to kick in.

Speaking of physically fit individuals, I'm sending good thoughts to my father, who has injured his back.  Unlike The Green Mile up there, he isn't on a killer vegetarian diet, and is therefore susceptible to aging and other omnivore problems.  Here is a quick and easy suggestion for how to relieve your back pain, Dad: