a belated but sincere happy birthday to tim! i thought of you yesterday as i was painting my office the color of...mango? no...canteloupe? no...72 slices of american cheese? BINGO.
hope you had a wonderful day, and that you'll have a brilliant 26th year.
last weekend betty and i surprised mom by appearing on her doorstep to celebrate her birthday. just what everyone wants for a present: unexpected houseguests! (click the disembodied head of aunt betty for a larger picture.)
we ate pizza, baked cookies, ran errands, watched the super bowl, and laughed like madwomen. we also made a pact that's making me a little bit nervous — we've granted each other show-up-unannounced-whenever-you-like privileges. i figure if i just keep the driveway unplowed and impassable, i'm safe...for now.
today is paul's birthday!
Happy birthday, Paul!
(also emily's. a big day!)
courtesy of my mother, here are david and thomas at their school's halloween parade.
how awesome is it that my grandmother reads my blog?
i have many pictures of grandma, but this one's my favorite. she went to a costume party decked out as marie, queen of roumania. all hail the queen! (click on the tiny picture, peasant, for the regal portrait. best part? it's autographed!)
i should probably stop swearing quite so much.
my brother's family went on a couple of fall fruit excursions, and my sister-in-law kindly sent me these pictures. clever comments fail me. (as usual, click for the bigger versions.)
dear brother, the mackest of daddies,
in case david, thomas, and matthew still need halloween costumes, why not consider one of these? (be sure to click on the photos to enlarge them.)
okay, it's not quite bootsy collins, but it's a start.
funkadelically yours,
lady miss j.
yesterday mom and i had lunch out. we both went to the bathroom after the meal and dutifully washed our hands afterward...or tried to. mom stood on front of the sink with her hands under the faucet, waiting for the water to come on. she waved her hands impatiently in front of the infrared sensor, waiting for the water to come on automatically...
...which it never did. too bad it was a conventional turn-to-get-water faucet and not a newfangled airport one.
i was talking to david out by my parents' pool. he's 8, and full of interesting information. that day he started telling me about the mission he'd go on as a young mormon of 19 or 20.
julie: wait, won't you be in college then?
david: no, you go to college after. i hope when i'm on my mission some dates call my house and ask to go out with me. mom and dad will have to say i can't go because i'm on my mission.
julie: (coughing to squelch hoots of laughter)
david: i hope i get to do my mission in america, because i already understand the language and the currency.
julie: (drily) you certainly do. so what if you decide you'd rather not go?
here's where it gets funny. i told betty later about this conversation. turns out he'd raised the same topic with her, and she asked the same question.
| what he told betty | what he told me |
|---|---|
| you have to! it's the first step on the path to righteousness (or something similar)! | you have to. your mom and dad make you. |
from my mother, about tom, my five-year-old nephew:
Tom and I were headed to Kroger and were stopped at a red light. The car in front of us had an unusual decal across the back window and I thought I'd point it out to Tom.
"Tom, that window has a sign that says, 'Sink the Fink!' I don't even know what a fink is, do you?"
"Lala, you must be joking me. You know what a fink is! It is one of those statues that they had in ancient Egypt — you know, a finks, that statue with the body of a cat and the head of a person."
it's betty's birthday today. i will treat you to a sampling of the knowledge i have acquired through her patient tutelage.
never buy a two-door car.
if the car plunges off a bridge and into the mississippi river, first check to see which bank is closer. then grab aunt betty's purse. i learned this before i learned how to spell my last name.
do not eat chicken salad you have not made yourself. it will always contain the bite you wish you'd never tasted.
vodka should be stored in the freezer. it makes it kind of thick and syrupy.
check to see whether the fries are hot before you leave the drive-thru window. at the ordering speaker you will ask, "are the fries hot?" the disembodied voice will say, "everything's hot!" but sure as i'm alive, the fries will not be hot, and you will save yourself another trip around if you verify that immediately.
i swear it, da ali g. show really is funny. reSPEC'.
courtesy of my mom, who's just back from camp bloch, here are my two oldest nephews, david (a harry potter fiend) and thomas (who calls me either "the dreaded aunt julie" or "my beloved aunt pickle," depending on mood):
in paducah, betty fulfilled a lifelong dream.
betty on why she couldn't have a job like oprah or dr. phil:
"i would get sued my ass off."
a shout-out to my homey, my younger (not little) brother tim, who turns 25 today. happy birthday!
introducing paul's blog!
so a couple of days ago aunt betty told me this story.
when she was ill and living at my grandparents' house, she rarely felt like eating or drinking anything. sometimes she'd eat, you know, half a piece of toast and a single strip of bacon and be full. (anyone who knows us can imagine how sick you'd have to be for that to be true!)
once she asked for a glass of pink lemonade. my grandmother kindly got it for her, and betty took a sip.
it was hummingbird nectar.
as we all agreed, the funny thing was that my grandmother probably would have drunk the whole glass...and claimed to have loved it.
paraphrasing from a conversation with betty this morning:
here's what we did on our louisiana vacation. click on the images for a larger version. unfortunately, no audio track survives, but it's got a good beat. you can dance to it.
 | q: what do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians? a: a drummer. |
 | q: what does the average drummer get on an i.q. test? a: drool. |
 | q: what do you call a drummer with half a brain? a: gifted. |
 | q: what do you call the smartest drummer in the world? a: mildly retarded. |
i just talked to my nephew david to wish him a happy birthday. he wasn't especially eager to talk to me -- when i asked him if he could manage to give answers consisting of more than one word, he eked out two: "yes, ma'am." uh, hm.
he described his birthday dinner to me. i asked him if he'd send me some. "no, aunt julie, it would be spoiled by the time it got to vermont." even via fed ex? "they don't allow you to send food!" even packed in dry ice? "aunt julie." maybe via e-mail? "you can't put food into the internet. iloveyoubye." *click*
in new orleans, mom and betty and i went to a mardi gras store. (mom gives mardi gras dinner parties, and needed some more decorations to give her home that classy purple-gold-and-green-glittery look. understated elegance.) here is some music, RA format, to give you some local color.
i grew up hearing mardi gras music, of course, so the songs they played over the pa system were familiar to me. doesn't matter: since saturday night i have had the whistling riff from "go to the mardi gras" scrolling through my head.
make it stop. i beg of you.
just a brief taste:
lydell, who's about to turn fifty, had shown us her new tattoo. mom was marveling at it, saying she couldn't understand the notion of volunteering for pain. "how long did it take you to get it?" she asked, and we all expected lydell to say, you know, half an hour, an hour.
but betty rolled her eyes and said, "obviously about fifty years."
