I Do Believe We've Entered The Twilight Zone

What?!?!

NASA's new mission is to improve U.S. relations with the Muslim world?

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

This is really just a tardy April Fool's Day joke, right?

Why have you abandoned us, J.F.K.?

Reflections on the Fourth, or "Plan Ahead"

Pepper and I had a rather serious case of the indecisives about the Independence Day holiday this year. We couldn't come to a decision about what to do and/or whether to go somewhere to take advantage of the lagniappe time off from work.

And then, there was that other thing.

A couple of years ago -- three now, I believe, because middle grandchild John was still crawling -- The Son and his family came down for a visit and towed back to Arkansas a rather nice pleasure craft that Pepper had been persuaded to purchase for the family. Why, you might ask, was the Pleasure Craft towed back to Arkansas instead of berthing here in sunny New Orleans where Moogie and Pepper could enjoy it on the meandering rivers of southeast Louisiana and open waters of Lake Pontchartrain?

See the foregoing: "persuaded to purchase for the family," with the bulk of said family being located in Arkansas.

Although Moogie is a rather prominent member of "the family," she has been aboard that boat a grand total of -- um, let me calculate it here, um -- once. The day it was purchased. The day before it headed north. Pepper has been aboard a few more times, having been in Arkansas and available for nautical adventures during the intervening summers, but, Moogie? Nope.

So, we thought, maybe we should visit the family for the Fourth and let Moogie get her sea legs and join in the early celebration of Younger Daughter's July 7th birthday.

That's when it got a little complicated.

Younger Daughter, during most of her twenties, has thrown a birthday bash camping trip on Lake Ouachita near Hot Springs with family and friends. Outdoors. In tents. In Arkansas in July.

The last 3 years, the above-referenced Pleasure Craft has transported them to islands where they set up camp, and entertained them during the day with wakeboarding and tubing and other wind-in-your-hair, spray-in-your-face activities. A trip to Ouachita would give Moogie an ideal opportunity to spend time with family and get familiar with the Pleasure Craft! One might be tempted to conclude that this scenario was indeed an ideal opportunity.

Um, nope.

You see, Ouachita is a beautiful, pristine body of water whose quality exceeds that of most cities' treated drinking water, but it is, after all, outdoors. In Arkansas. In July.

I do enough perspiring where I live, and I did a tremendous amount of perspiring during our vacation to LJ's wedding in Ft. Lauderdale a few weeks ago and at the CLE conference in St. Pete back in May, and I can cope with that. But, there's a difference with distinction between those locales and a camping trip to Lake Ouachita in Arkansas in July: in all of those sweaty locations I was able to sleep in air-conditioned comfort, free from perspiration, nocturnal buzzing insects, and (literally) rock-hard sleeping surfaces.

As a younger woman, pre-childbirth, who could wear two-piece swimsuits with flair and aplomb, I actually enjoyed camping. I even backpacked Europe for three months! But as a more "mature" woman, accustomed to many creature comforts, do I put "camping in July" high on my wish list? Nope -- not so much. Pepper, having given nearly 35 years to the Army, a great deal of which was spent in the Infantry, didn't have much argument to my take on the whole camping thing. So, we thought about trying to find nearby accommodations where we could join the kids during the day and retire to A/C to sleep.

We thought about doing this on the Fourth of July weekend the week before. With dogs in tow, because who can get kennel reservations the week before July 4th?

Ha! Just try to find pet-friendly accommodations near a lake the week before the most lake-centric holiday of the year, even if your husband's high school chum runs a nearby resort. Bill offered to rent us the floor in his bedroom!

So . . . this recounting has been a rather convoluted explanation of how Pepper and Moogie came to be on a friend's balcony on July 4, 2010, watching fireworks over the Mississippi River in New Orleans with a freshly baked apple pie. You can't eat store-bought apple pie while watching fireworks on the Fourth of July.

And Moogie has still been aboard the Pleasure Craft a grand total of -- once.

Reputations and Inaction

The Start Page for my internet browser has a gadget that displays a different quote each day by somebody famous or inspiring or smart. They're usually pretty accurate, or at least instructional. But today . . . . ?

Here's the quote:

"You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do."

--Henry Ford



WRONG, Mr. Ford!

My Friend, and the Gardenia, Knew

2001, in Moogie's Kitchen . . . .

A few weeks ago . . . .

The Mother-of-the-Bride's chair at LJ's Wedding, June 25th . . . .

I got a wonderful letter in the snail-mail yesterday! I hardly ever get real hard-copy letters anymore that have any value other than notifying me I may have won the Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes or have an expiring-soon opportunity to buy (fill in the blank: A. mattresses; B. landscape lighting; C. carpet) at a discount. But this letter was a keeper.

Even before its arrival, I knew it would be a keeper, though. My late friend, JB, told me so.

You may remember my bestest buddy, JB. I posted about her last fall, on the anniversary of her passing. She was quite the character, but also quite the nurturer, and -- ever the riddler and punster -- she keeps up with that nurturing thing in the oddest little ways, even today in this world she has left behind.

In 2001, at the same time I left Arkansas to live in New Orleans full-time, JB and her husband moved back to Arkansas from New Jersey to throw slumber parties for a living (they bought and ran a B & B in the Ozark Mountains). In July of that year, on the same day, with neither of us knowing about it in advance, we sent one another "house-warming" plants.

She won the "who's a better friend" contest -- I sent some random house-planty thing, but she sent me a gardenia in full-fragranced bloom, nestled in a crockery planter. It graced my kitchen island for nearly a year (and I nearly let it die of thirst countless times!) before I finally wised up and transplanted it to the front yard where there is rich, black Mississippi delta soil. And there it has thrived, surviving our Katrina-imposed exile and other unpleasant weather, and even Bouie's youth, during which he converted the gardenia bush into a gardenia topiary with his strong, sharp puppy teeth. Today, it stands well over five feet tall -- and I know I'm accurate about its height because I stand five-feet-flat in my stocking feet and must bend the top branches to drink in that heavenly gardenia fragrance from the highest blossoms.

This year, its spring bloom started on Easter Sunday, and it set so many flowers that its branches strained with the weight and drooped over the plastic netting Pepper installed to (try to) dissuade Bouie from any further defoliation.

Last month, a few days after I found the lump, on the day before I was to undergo the second mammogram and ultra-sound, I pulled up to the curb beside the front gate after running some errand or another and was suddenly knocked over by a calm; a peace that unknotted those muscles all tensed-up with worry in my neck.

That peace took over me because I spied it -- one single gardenia blossom nodding to me on the gentle breeze. It smelled like JB.

She was letting me know that everything would be all right.

And it was.

The next day, another bud appeared beside the blossom as Pepper and I were preparing to fly to Ft. Lauderdale for the Destination Wedding of JB's younger daughter, LJ; LJ is JB's half of "The Littles." (Our four girls are of two ages -- now 29 and 27 -- so they were "The Bigs" and "The Littles" as inseparable youngsters, and the term just stuck.) My Little, along with her fiance and older sister, was to join us in Florida and stand up for LJ as an attendant in a sunshine-yellow polished cotton bridesmaid dress with pockets in the seams.

That second bud opened the morning we left for the airport.

It was a message to my girls and LJ that her mom would be there for her wedding. And she was there -- in the smiles of her Big's sons that she never got to hold, in laughter and tears, in untold glasses of white wine, and certainly in the Jimmy Buffett songs spun by the DJ.

LJ wore her mom's cathedral-length veil in her wedding on the terrace overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It flew wildly in the stiff breeze, and wrapped itself around LJ and her father as they moved down the aisle, but it stayed firmly gripped to LJ's beautiful bridal hairdo, rejecting the temptation to take wing on its own adventure.

And thus JB nurtures on.

The letter from my snail-mailbox opens with, "Your imaging examination shows a probable benign finding (not cancer)." Then it reminds me of my follow-up appointment in December and other stuff, but who cares about that right now. An actual doctor wrote the literal words, "not cancer" on actual paper! In ink!

JB knew it all along.

And the gardenia is still blooming today.

I Love to Pilfer!

Shamelessly stolen from Moonbattery.

The only change I'd make to Van Helsing's observations is to note that thousands of jobs have gone missing while the Emperor dabbles in immigration, not hundreds.

Muslim Culture Meets German Engineering

I now want that car. Very. Very. Much.

I'll rent it to any car bomber who would care to use it for an extremely reasonable rate.

h/t to Donna T.

Taxing That Bronze Glow for Healthcare

Not that I use tanning beds, and aside from the fact that I don't trust them and always discouraged my daughters from using them, nonetheless . . . .

Isn't adding a tax to a service used pretty much exclusively by one race pretty much the embodiment of racism?

Just sayin'.