One "Mahvelous" Week!!!

In case anyone does not know, Sarah is my cousin from Tucson.

We are the sisters that neither of us ever had.

Sarah came to visit on March 13th, mainly to see Susan in Nunsense.

Wow, did we take advantage of that opportunity for a great time!  

Here we are with Sister Amnesia (Susan) and Sister Marionette.

Oh, my.  This show is such fun.  Susan is wonderful enough on her own, but she handles that puppet amazingly!

And her "I Could've Gone To Nashville" is worth the price of admission all on its own!

(Isn't Sarah's jacket darling? Her husband, Dick, picked it out--with the jewelry--and gave it to her for Christmas!)

We headed for Fossil Rim Wildlife Park early Monday morning.

Well, early for us.

We checked in and bought two sacks of food.

Our first encounter along the road was with  ostriches.

They were so HUGE, but ate gently from our hands.

Next there were many types of deer and antelope.  Sarah is very knowledgeable about plants and animals, so she looked up what each breed was; but, me...I'm not so good at that.

So here we go...

 SWEEET!

Don't you know these guys get teased?  "Hey Buddy, nice rug you got there, tee hee hee!"
 

We took a picnic lunch and ate at the overlook point.
 

 

Then we were off to find a giraffe for Sarah to feed--to fulfill a BIG item on her bucket list.

But there was a problem: The giraffes were waaay off in the distance.

They weren't very hungry since they were just coming off 

spring break gorging! 

But, a miracle happened.  Truly, it did!

 

That's an adult giraffe walking slowly but surely toward our car!

(And that's Sarah's camera in her hand dying!  So all our pictures are from my cell phone!)

And then he ambled off, but he had made our day!!! 

We next encountered an unexpected creature which became our favorite of the day!

These are aoudads or Barbary sheep from Morocco.  

I love these beautiful faces!

 

We happened upon two aoudads wrestling and butting horns, which we captured in a video, but I can't make it appear here.

See it on my facebook page or at http://youtu.be/WAckzejr2GE

It's worth the effort, I promise!

When we left Fossil Rim we went to see dinosaur tracks.  We weren't quite as excited about these:

   Yes, this is about as well as you see them in person.  That's definitely one at about 12 o'clock.  But I can check this one off my bucket list!

We also went to see Life of Pi in 3D at the West Village in Dallas. 

 Again, great for two animal lovers.

And a cool location!


We watched Pride and Prejudice on my fab television!


We ate in a manner most un-typical for us!  
(In other words, we gorged like the Fossil Rim animals
 on spring break!)

We had Mexican food at Chuy's with one of my lunch bunches 

(all of whom Sarah already knew from previous trips!)

 

We got a Papa John's pizza!

We had big juicy Burger Street cheeseburgers!

We got Krispy Kream donuts!

Sarah went to church with me, and afterwards

 we had wonderful Texas barbecue at Colter's!

(Then we went shopping for matching muu muus cause we could no longer wear our clothes!)
(Not really)

And she played with and loves my obnoxious, overbearing, hyperactive dog.

  God love her heart.  She's invited back any time!  

It's Me Again, Precision

I'm planning to do a blog entitled "I've Got People."

Bruce and Andy from Precision Auto Body will be on my list.

If you remember, I headed straight to their place when my car was backed into before it was 4 months old!

They took the trailer hitch imprint out of my bumper just fine.

 

I picked the car up on a Friday, and the following Sunday someone must have let a shopping cart hit it while I was in a grocery store.

It was very embarrassing to walk back into Precision on Monday!

"What's wrong?" they asked.

They said they could buff out and touch up the damage in a couple of hours.

 

Precision has buffed out scrapes when I've slightly misjudged the side of the garage.  They've buffed out places where I've let the electric gate close just a wee bit on Jack's Navigator.

 

BUT...

 

I wonder if they've ever buffed out and retouched aoudad horn scratches.  Yeah, those cute bighorn sheep were wreaking havoc on my rearview mirrors as they were eating food out of Sarah's and my hands!  

 

Wouldn't you like to be there when they ask me, "What

happened here?" 

I'm going to play my video for them! 

 

  

Watch Your Language!

There is a peril to writing these days that you might not have thought of.  (Actually, that should be "of which you might not have thought," but that sounds so stiff and stilted.)

That peril regards what people have done to our English language/vocabulary.

 

 Words that were perfectly harmless and acceptable in my lifetime have been given double entendre meanings and now elicit snickers if not outright laughter if uttered or written.

I refuse to list these words to protect the innocent (and myself!)

But if you think for a few minutes, you can probably come up with quite a few.  I can.

I'm constantly on guard, avoiding certain perfectly good words and wondering if any I do use can be misconstrued and made suggestive.

I became very aware of this recently.

I accidentally left the book I was reading at the car dealership where I got my oil changed.

It was a book by C. S. Lewis, one of the most profound and revered Christian authors of all time.

The problem?  It is called The Screwtape Letters.

I made a special trip to the dealership, hoping it had been turned in.  Knowing that the girl at the reception desk had probably never heard of this (actually very well known) book, I rather timidly asked if it had been found. 
I don't think I allowed myself to sputter around and say it is a Christian book, but I was tempted.  

She looked for it and said, "No."  I didn't push it! 

Screwtape is a senior demon who writes a series of letters to his nephew, Wormwood, encouraging him in ways to promote sin among us, the "patients."  I wonder...had it been written today, would the publisher or other representative of the Christian book industry have said, 

"Mr. Lewis, we will need you to change the name of the 

title character to something less objectionable." 

I started to say "less titillating," but thought better of it.

 

 

An Eclectic Mix Of My Favorite Things

Have you ever thought just how clever the song My Favorite Things is?  Who doesn't love Raindrops on Roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens?  I'm afraid my favorite things aren't nearly that clever and lyrical!  But here goes (in no particular order!).


I love vanilla petit fours.  For those of you who don't know, they are little very sweet cake squares covered in white icing and usually decorated--kinda like wedding cake.  I may have to drive over to McKinley's tomorrow just to buy one so I can show you!  And I guess I'll have to eat it after I photograph it.

  
I did and I did.  And yum, it was good!

 
Little lamps--ah, one of my favorite things.  Call them accent lamps or mood lamps, they make a home feel warm and homey!  The light from five is visible in this picture, taken from my faithful recliner.  (Along with several reflections.) 

Room service coffee, preferably on a cruise!  It's my wake-up call in the morning.  Especially wonderful on the last two cruises when it came with real cream!  Heavenly!


I just can't tell you how much I love the keyless ignition on my car.  Purses are like bottomless pits when it comes to finding car keys.  But mine can just stay there.  See if I care!


I adore my Charleigh Girl's big brown eyes.  Definitely one two of my favorite things.  I see love for Mimi (that's what she calls me!) there!

This new mascara is currently one of my favorite things.

  
It is Cover Girl clump crusher by Lashblast.  It really seems to crush clumps in my opinion.  I like it so much that I gave it as bridge prizes in December!  My friends gave it a thumbs up! 



Of course, I dabble in dieting all the time.  One of my favorite diet secrets is Kroger Carbmaster Yogurt.  

I especially like this strawberry colada flavor.  It has 60 calories and only 4 carbs.  The pear spice flavor is also very good.  Not nearly as good as a petit four, but not nearly as caloric either!

At the risk of being called weird, this umbrella, made by Shed-Rain, is one of my favorite things! 

And not because it's a cute leopard print.  It's because it is vented, letting the wind escape without turning the thing inside out.  Umbrellas seem to have it in for me.  I don't know how many I've had "turn on me" (no pun intended!) through the years.  But I think this one would survive even in Chicago!

Those of you who know me are probably saying, "Well, where is it?  We're waiting."  Here it is.  Of course, no list of my favorite things would be complete without...My Keurig!!!

Ah, yes.  Almost as good as room service.  I'm currently on a wild mountain blueberry flavor binge.

Since I consider myself to lead an Exclamation Point Life, I seem to have a lot of favorite things!  I keep looking around and seeing more!  But I have to stop somewhere!  I did have one other thing on this list which I decided needed a blog of its own.  Stay tuned... Oh, yeah, it's great!

 

 

My New Hobby!!!

Every girl can use another hobby, right?

So I'm going to adopt flower arranging as my newest and latest!

I've spent way too much time this morning trying to find a class.
(Thank you, Lord, for your gift of time to me!)

Just knew Central Market would have one, but no!

So what's the obvious answer?  You Tube, of course!

I have watched several tutorials, but the things they taught were things I already knew--like cutting the stems at an angle.

I did learn that my flowers will last much longer if I change the water daily or every other daily!  But they didn't tell me just how to accomplish that.  I think I need a big suction thing to get the water out without ruining my "flower do." (Get it--as in "hair do.")

I am going to be very brave and show you some of my beginning efforts.

      

That is the front door you see in the pictures, and the second is taken from the stairwell.  Won't it be wonderful if I can keep fresh flowers there to greet my (few) guests.  Better than Charleigh-Girl's greeting!

This one is in my kitchen.  Can you see the rocks in the bottom of the vase (no!) and the three butterflies? (Probably not!)  

  Somehow doesn't give the proper effect, but here's a closeup of a butterfly. 
 

 I remember being very proud of this one.  I left the daisies fastened together.  The plaque is a gift from cousin Sarah.  It says, "The measure of love is to love without measure."
 

 This was an accomplishment for me!  I actually planted it meself for Easter!

These were beautiful flowers (from Costco, I think) that I arranged for a luncheon and cards Sarah gave in honor of my visit to her home in Tucson.  Looks pretty good, if I do say so myself, and I do!

Incidentally, the gorgeous vase used in the first and third arrangements is mine because of Jennifer Dean.  It was on her wish list when she and Ryan married, and I loved it so much I bought one for myself, too.
  

I'll try to update you with progress reports as I develop my "skills!?"  One thing about it--flowers are so beautiful that even I can't mess them up completely!

  

My Sabbath Peeve

So here's the scenario.  I live quite a distance from Fielder Church, where I worship every Sunday.  For a reasonable, prudent (pokey-tail) driver, the trip should take about 20 minutes, I would guess.  I, however, do not usually (ever) have that much time to spend.  So, what I do is go into "Suga' Mama" mode.  Now I don't really know who "Suga' Mama" is, but I was given this name by Madeline and Susannah when they rode with me in their car-seat years.  I do suspect it has something to do with the speed I drive.

So...back to Sunday morning.  My "pettest" pet peeve of all is anyone who gets ahead of me on two-lane Shorewood driving the speed limit or less when I'm on my way to church.  This morning I was forced to pass this old codger in a pickup truck, and would you believe he honked at me?  If I hadn't needed both hands on the wheel, I would have picked up my Bible and waved it at him to let him know it was for a good purpose!

What adds insult to injury (cause I usually can't or don't pass!) is that when pokey-tail turns onto four-lane Perkins Road, it's like he's been shot out of a cannon!  BOOM!  I can finally pass, but...he's off like a rocket!

Now, don't send me any cards or letters suggesting that I might consider leaving home a little earlier.  I'm planning to do that next Sunday.  Oh, no!  I just heard this morning that next Sunday is time change Sunday--the bad way.  What do you think the chances are that I'll be needing to wave my Bible again? 



 

The Pet Peeves of My Exclamation Point Life

I couldn't decide whether to do a "my favorite things" or a "my pet peeves" blog first.  I'm afraid it says something negative about my personality that I chose the latter.

Here we go.  I just can't stand litterbugs.  Whether it be someone disposing of an old sofa under the I-20 bridge or someone throwing a sack of fast food remains out of their car--it drives me nuts!  I won't even throw a peppermint wrapper out the window! We should not have to have crews out constantly picking up after slobby people!  And I should not have to step over this as I exit my car at Arlington Memorial Hospital!

Coming in at #2 has to be anyone who kicks the back of my seat.  I am unreasonably rabid about this!  One year we got seats directly in front of what must have been the tallest man attending the Fort Worth Symphony Pops.  His foot was constantly in contact with my seat back.  At intermission we moved!  And I asked for different seats the next year. 

I can't stand commercials that feature mouth noises.  Like people biting a Twix or a pickle or chomping DORITOS.  I reach for the mute button as fast as possible.  Didn't their mothers teach them any manners?

I seriously can't stand speed traps on access roads.  This might have something to do with the fact that (I know you will be shocked by this) I have been stopped for speeding three (3) times in my life.  All three were on access roads.  In my humble opinion, the PoPo's time would be better spent on the nearby I-20 where there is an accident almost every day of the world.  I have NEVER seen an accident on the access roads where I was stopped.  Oh, in case you were wondering...I got two tickets.  I smiled my way out of one!

I don't like drivers who can't make good square left turns.  You know, the ones that come within an inch of clipping the front of your car if you are stopped waiting at a signal.  Or if you see them coming, you stop way back.  Not me...I make a nice 90 degree angle left.  Well, most of the time anyway.

This one really shouldn't be so far down on my list.  It is:  people who sneeze or blow their nose just as loudly as possible in public.  It seems as if they're going for the Guinness record for loudest "a-a-A-CHOO" or nose honk!  I just can't think of anything else acceptable to say about how gross this is and how peevish it makes me. 

You probably already know this one if you know me very well: folks who sneer at Judge Judy really get my dander up.  She is smart, people, and very funny.  She tells it like it is, often saying "Get a J.O.B." since the majority of her litigants seem to be on welfare.  Yes, you'll see your tax dollars at work.

I've actually been working on this very important (not) list for several days now.  I remembered one that only happens when traveling.  People who let their hotel room doors close, bang, SLAM, as noisily as they can make me fume!  Some feel called upon to do it over and over in the wee hours of the morning.  I or we usually got up early, and considered returning the favor.  But we didn't.  Yeah, too nice.


I have one other peeve which is sooo BIG that it demands its own blog.  Stay tuned--it's coming soon to a computer near you.