I use The Google

My friend Carrie is in Milwaukee visiting her mom this weekend, and earlier today she sent me a text message with a comment she thought I'd enjoy:

I asked my mom if she knows what a blog is, and she said, "Yeah, it's kind of like a Google, right?"

My reply?

That is the best thing I've heard all week. I may have to put it on my blog. I mean, my Google.

And so I did.

It's easy to laugh at the late middle aged and borderline elderly... I enjoy Carrie's stories about all her mother's baffling quirks (consolidating her kitchen by storing her microwave inside the oven; fearing that pretzels might go bad if she doesn't store them in the fridge and leftover salad is precarious enough to require the freezer), but really I appreciate these bits of information not because I'm judging her mother in any way (I've met the woman, and she's a terribly sweet and well-mannered lady towards whom I certainly mean no ill will or disrespect), but because it makes my own parents look a little less strange by comparison. They actually have the opposite problem (spreading out more and more stuff across every possible surface in their home, and testing the limits of expiration dates and proper food storage on an all-too-regular basis) but old and crazy is old and crazy either way.

Truth be told, maybe I appreciate these stories just because I feel a bit old and crazy myself at times, and I like to think maybe age has nothing to do with idiosyncrasy; maybe we should embrace our quirks as charms at any age, without worrying that they might compound over time.

I'm saying all this, of course, at the end of another of my weekends of hermitude, so maybe I'm trying to justify my lifestyle in some way. Yesterday I didn't talk to anyone (unless e-mail counts as conversation), and I stepped outside my house only far enough to get my mail, and today I left only to buy fabric for a quilting class I'm taking soon. Apparently I'm practicing for old age: as if being a shut-in who knits isn't enough, I've decided I need a few other proper and traditionally ladylike hobbies as well. Oh! And I'm buying things in bulk, too, as if stock piling for a nuclear disaster. But instead of canned goods or toilet paper, I'm stockpiling lip gloss.

Yes, I said lip gloss. Neutrogena has this nasty and annoying habit of discontinuing products immediately after I've fallen solidly in love with them (oh, HeatSafe spray, how my dry, split ends miss you so), and MoistureShine Tinted Lip Balm seems to be the latest perfect item in their collection to fall to such fate. First I saw the near-empty bins with clearance tags at Target; next I saw the same sad thing at Ulta. Today I searched online and bought approximately half of the remaining stock at Amazon. I spent $36 on drugstore brand lip gloss, and my only regret is that perhaps I should have spent $36 more.

Moving on. I may have been an old lady and a hermit this weekend, but I was also quite productive and domestic. I made some solid progress on my basement beautifying project, and I also cooked three times in three days as well. Cooked! For real! With mostly non-processed, legitimate ingredients and with use of pans and stove burners! No Kraft singles! No microwave! Forgive all the exclamation points. It's just been a while is all. Incidentally, dinner both Friday and Saturday went just fine, but breakfast this morning? Not so much. I think I've decided that making pancakes, simple a process as that should be, is just going to rest solidly and permanently in the "Things I cannot do" column. I don't know what the science is; I don't know why I need to throw out not just the first pancake, but the four after that as well... All I know is eleven hours later, everything in my house still smells like burnt pancake, so maybe making pancakes is just something I'm not meant to do.

Luckily, mastery of grammar and spelling is still in the arsenal of skills I can call my own. The 2008 Poppy Awards were recently announced, and I took home the Grammar and Spelling award for the second year in a row.

This year I apparently had some competition. I had to share the award with another worthy contender. Maybe if Poppy knew Aaron's preemptively named me Grammar Czar for his soon-to-be-elected administration? Maybe that would have tipped the scales in my favor? Who knows.

I received another Poppy award as well, though it's one I was a proverbial shoe-in for, as Poppy created the category with me in mind. (Thanks, Poppy!)

In case you've forgotten, that award is in reference to this post, and is in honor of my recently departed grandmother, god rest her crazy old soul. Her funeral last week actually brought up a few things I thought bloggable, but I've already forgotten most of them by now. One still stands out, however, and seems appropriate to mention here. Following the service there was a lunch in the church basement for any family and friends who cared to come. My mom chose to include mashed potatoes because my grandma always made them for me, and kneecaps because they were my grandma's favorite at the Easter and Thanksgiving buffets. I'm guessing she did not have anything to do with the vegetable selection, however. I was directly behind my younger sister in the buffet line at the lunch, and as she peered in the pan of mixed vegetables on the food table, she looked at me and said, "Look: Lima beans." Without missing a beat, I said, "Dammit." Good thing Grandma wasn't actually at that lunch, I guess.