There are times when your heart breaks for someone and you have absolutely no idea what to do or say.

There is a very sweet family that I know that honestly needs comfort right now. They lost a very loved baby boy last night, quite suddenly, and could use every prayer you can give. Whatever you believe in, whomever you pray to, please take a moment and send up a prayer for them.

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) You know how sometimes I say I feel like a certain color, or that something tastes like a color? It's because of this! I kind of hate that they've pared it all down to genes and biology, though. I'd rather just believe it was magic! :)

2) Last week was our 10th anniversary. That's hard to believe, right? Anyways, we had a nice day. It was kind of low key, but nice. We had dinner at The Melting Pot again, which was loverly as always. I only stabbed Steve with a fondue fork once, and we managed to get out of the place with only a tiny bit of cheese on my pants! It was fun! I'll say this too, we ordered the White Chocolate Creme Brulee dessert, and it was probably one of the best tasting things I've ever had, (and I'm saying that as someone who eats a lot. I mean, a LOT.) Fortunately, this year we didn't happen to run into anyone throwing up in the parking lot, so that was definitely a plus. Good times, noodle salad.

3) Saturday we headed out to Fayetteville, TN so that Steve could play with the Madison Community Band at the "Host of Christmas Past" festival.
First off, I had no idea Fayetteville was so close. Second, I had no idea that this festival thing was such a big deal. We went a couple of hours early, ostensibly to look around a while, but a great deal of that time was spent looking for a parking place and standing in line for the bathroom. Seriously, why does it take women so long to pee?! We didn't really look around much once we got outside, because Steve was uncomfortable in a tux and didn't want to walk around, it was very warm and very crowded. I wish I could have taken more pictures, but...there you go.
This was the only picture I managed to get of Steve while he was playing. The beardy guy on the end blocked him most of the time. The arrow was for the benefit of Facebook, because there are a great deal of people I know on there who don't know what Steve looks like, and as nice as the beardy guy is, I didn't want people to think I was married to a paw-paw.




In case you want to hear them, I got the first song in it's entirety. I wish it had better sound quality because they sounded great! Because of where I was sitting, the sound didn't blend as well as it would have if I was out front. I also wish I had a better vantage point, but as it was I had to punch an old lady in the ear to get the chair I was in! :)

4) Just so you know, I really will share my chocolate with other people. I wouldn't really stab anyone in the eye over it. Well, maybe not. Just felt I needed to get that out there...

5) Did you know that if you poke a sharp knife into the bone marrow of a Honey Baked Ham, it will squirt blood on you? I found that out the hard way last night at our church's Thanksgiving dinner. I was also reminded that trying to pull apart a Honey Baked Ham and/or turkey into manageable slices (even while wearing gloves) will render you a sticky, sugary mess that no manner of hand washing will help. I came home last night exhausted, sticky, crusted with sugar and spattered in pig blood. Eh...just my regular Wednesday night kind of thing, you know.

6) Here is a picture of the sky outside my house this morning! Beautiful, even with the power line in the way! It's kind of an awkward shot, but I didn't want anyones roof in the picture!

I'd once again like to apologize to the neighbors for going out without wearing pants. I didn't have time to go and get any because the sky was changing every second! Art doesn't wear pants, after all.

7) Google failed me! My illusions are completely destroyed! I had been talking about football and the subject of national championships came up. We were trying to find out if Auburn University had ever won one, so I went to Google. Absolutely nothing I found made sense to me. Luckily, The Kenny knows all about Auburn football and he told me the answer:

"1957. They were on probation, but won one and it counted. Auburn could also claim a few other minor ones, but they leave those trifles to Alabama.

Other seasons of note, if you really care: 1983, 1993, 2004. All great undefeated teams."

Mystery solved!

So...in your face, Google! Now I'm just going to ask him when I need an answer to something! You have failed me for the last time, search engine.

Yesterday was the day I had to go back for my filling. I hate that I'm such a baby about stuff like that, but I have good reason! My childhood dentist had obviously learned his craft at a concentration camp or something, because whenever I had to go in for a filling, it felt like he was trying to remove my medulla oblongata with a syringe. Of course, maybe it was just because I was a kid and terrified of needles of all kinds, but in my head, that dentist was Joseph Mengele in disguise. At any rate, when I went in to have the thing done, I explained my aversion to needles. The drill I'm cool with, the novacaine needle throws me into a panic attack. They were surprisingly nice about the whole thing, and my dentist, Dr. Knight the younger, was very gentle. I barely felt him give me the injection at all...but then again, I had taken a tranquilizer beforehand, so maybe I did feel it and just didn't care. The actual filling part took 20 minutes or less, and seemed to be a lot simpler than it used to be. While I was lying in the chair, some man leaned into the cubicle and said hello. I didn't know who he was, and I thought he was talking to the dentist, but he was staring straight at me. I probably came off as quite rude, because I didn't say anything and it became obvious he was talking to me, so I finally said hello (as well as I could.) I realized after a second he was Dr. Knight the elder, whom I'd never met before. My main problem was that they had to clamp something in my mouth, something that looked a lot like a tool I remember my dad having in his utility room. It wasn't really huge or anything, but it was clamped in my mouth and sticking out. They had also stuffed my mouth with cotton, I had two pairs of hands in there, a sucker hose, a water hose, and a heat light wand that they were using to bond the composite to my tooth. OK, maybe that wasn't happening all at once, but how can you be polite to someone you don't know when you feel like this?

I felt bad for seeming rude, though. :( At any rate, after my social faux pas, they finished up with my mouth and things were fine. My mouth was still numb, and I had a slight case of stroke-face, and the clamp thing they had put in my mouth had pinched my lip, but my filling was filled! Now my mouth is very sore, but at least they caught the cavity before it got bad. He said he was "concerned" about the tooth right next to the one they filled, but he would keep a watch on it. Seriously? How can he do that if I only go twice a year? SIGH. I don't want any of you to think I don't take care of my teeth. Seriously, they cost my parent's a small fortune, and I'm almost OCD about taking care of them, so I have no idea how I'm getting cavities. Let's just hope that tooth he's "concerned" about doesn't need any work done on it. I don't like people poking around in my face holes!

Speaking of my dentist, he is precious. He seems to be a very young man, well...younger than me by a bit anyway, and he is very proud of his wife and kids. In fact, he was telling me and the dental assistant that his wife is due to have their newest baby any moment. In fact, he was leaving the office soon after he worked on me to go home and make sure he was with her if she needed him. He said this would be their fourth son (the oldest being 5, yikes) and since this was the last one he was so excited about rounding out their family. He said he was so excited about meeting this new baby and seeing what he looked like. It was so sweet. He also mentioned that all his boys had blue eyes and he wasn't sure where it came from. The assistant asked if his wife had blue eyes and he said "They are kind of blue, but they change depending on what she wears, and close to the pupil she has this ring of gold...but I guess her eyes are blue." AWWWW! You know a man loves his wife if he knows THAT much about her eyes. Precious.

THINGS I'VE LEARNED, I THINK... VOL. 1

Sometimes I wonder about stuff that is wildly improbable. I don't know why I do this, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with having a well developed imagination and a lot of time to use it. Although I am aware that we don't truly know how we'd act in certain situations until we actually experience them, these are some things I believe I know about myself:

1) I think I'm a pretty good candidate to have Stockholm Syndrome if I'm ever a victim of a long term hostage situation. It's not that I'd necessarily want to become complacent and accepting of abuse and being kidnapped, but I tend to want to get along with everyone if I can, even in pretty harsh situations. I'd actually like to think I'd rise up righteous and rip a bad guy's spine out through his stomach, but I'm fairly certain I'm more likely to offer to bake them cookies.

2) If I were in the medical profession, I could totally be a surgeon. I have no problem cutting people up or being bled upon. Not that I've ever cut anyone up before, you understand, but I am fairly certain I could do it. I even think I could eventually deal with the whole "life and death" thing easily. I could not, however, be a nurse. It takes a very special person to be a nurse, and I don't think I'm that kind of special. I can be bled on, sure, but the first time someone got vomit or poop on me, I'd run screaming from the building.

3) I believe I could kill someone if I had to. I don't mean that I'd wake up one morning and just decide to take someone's life, but if I had to do it to protect myself I could. I also think I might be capable of beating the living hell out of someone, if they caught me at the wrong moment. I've been mad enough to do it, but I hope I don't ever get tested on either of these things! I'd feel terrible once the rage-fog wore off!

A QUICKY

Do you want to know what I love? I love that I have friends who pull things apart and them give me pieces of them and say "I just thought you might be able to make something with this."

That probably sounds weird, but I love that they think of me, and believe I'm creative enough to make something good out of the things they give me.

It's a little thing, but the best things are always the little things.

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) As we all know, yesterday was Halloween and no hi-jinks ensued at our house. We were at church most of the day, of course, but when we got home, we were too tired to deal with anyone so we cut off all the lights and hid until a reasonably late hour. Shut up. I know, I know, and I'm sorry if that seems mean of us, but you can bite me. If we lived in a close, well lighted neighborhood I wouldn't be this way, but we don't and there aren't many children who come by and the ones who have come in the past were either creepy or way too old to be trick-or-treating. If avoiding them means I have to crawl around, marine-style, in the dark - I don't mind. We probably could have gone to Mr. Lee's house and helped him give out candy (he lives in one of those places where the houses are right up against each other and everyone knows one another) but I had to run the sound board for services last night, and by the time we got out, we just weren't in the mood! Bah, humbug! (or whatever the Halloween equivalent of that would be!) :)

2) I had to go to the dentist the other day, and the girl who cleaned my teeth spent the whole time talking about how good my teeth were and how well I took care of them. When the dentist came in, he looked at my new x-rays, which are now kept on some kind of awesome computer program that looks straight out of "CSI," and found a cavity! BOO! Bait and switch! I've been so careful about my teeth since the root canal and I got a stinking cavity! At least he found it before it got bad. Apparently it is in between two of my back teeth, which are very close together thanks to my early stint with braces and retainers, and difficult to get in-between. Ugh. Now I get to go and freak out while they stick needles into my mouth. I hate getting dental work.

3) Speaking of Halloween... When I was younger, we always had super-fun Halloween events with our church. They'd have parties, or take us trick-or-treating, and one year even had a haunted house for us. It was done to keep us safe and it was always a lot of fun! Of course, when we got older we got a few people in our church who decided that Halloween was evil. Oh, yes, it was a veritable mosh pit of demons and virgin sacrifices to the devil! At any rate, the church stopped the Halloween stuff and started having "harvest festivals" or taking us to Judgment Houses (I hated those things). Anyways...I suppose I can understand their point of view, sort of, but one lady always made such a big, stinking deal out of the whole thing. She even got incensed when one of the Sunday school teachers wore a dress with a jack-o-lantern on it. I mean, she actually stood up in church and sort of passive-aggressively called her out on it (she didn't use names, but we all knew who she was talking about.) Well, last night, I watched a documentary on the history of Halloween, and I wish I had known all of the stuff I found out back when that self-righteous heifer decided to ruin it for everyone. It never had anything to do with the devil, and in fact, the basis of what we know as Halloween came directly out of an early Christian celebration! Halloween as it is now celebrated was an American invention to keep neighborhood kids from causing too much mischief! The whole candy thing is almost a 100% commercial creation - like Valentine's Day- invented so that candy companies could make money. I know I sound awfully negative, but I don't mean to. I just don't like willful, narrow-minded, stupidity - and the fact that the woman from my old church sounded so completely convinced that she was right about it makes me wish I could go back in time and tell her to shut up.

4) Wow, I do sound really negative this morning! I'm not in a bad mood, I promise!

5) I had a long and drawn out fight with myself this morning about going to the gym. I lost. Now I have a cramp in my left calf and I'm scared to stand up! The TV that was on my end of the cardio section was playing The View, and I'm so glad I couldn't actually hear what was going on. That show gives me a headache! I'm fairly certain I'd physically attack that blonde lady and the one named Joy if I had to deal with them on a daily basis.

6) I bought a pomegranate last week and had no idea how to eat it. I think I bought one years ago, and it took me, like, 6 hours to eat it because I didn't realize you could eat the seeds! I Googled the question, but the only thing I found told me how to open the thing, not eat it. So, I posted the question to Facebook, and people finally told me I could eat the whole aril (yes, I also learned what the red thingies are called while Googling), and not just the red part around it! It was so good! My fingertips were stained maroon, and it took me 2 hours to eat all the little thingies, but it was worth it!