People of the world, you have to see this. Beyonce let a fan sing at a concert. 

 

If that wasn't amazing, I don't know what is.

Mark my words: Huffington Post will run the headline "Rock You Like a Herman Cain!" within the next 6 months. 

Herman's brother's name is Thurman. Really. I can't make this stuff up. 

I read about a study today that linked exercise to early menopause. I speak for no one but myself when I say: NOPE. A couple of weeks ago I read that women who drink several cups of coffee per day are less likely to become depressed. Double NOPE.

The carhop from Sonic who brought me a drink last week was named Amgerica. Like America with a G 'cause she's gangsta.

The oldest child has to write down how many watts are in each room for homework. 4th grade is going to kill me. We have approximately 420 light bulbs in our house. This may take all night. What if I had the child write on her homework that we're Amish and only use candlelight?

I went to the dermatologist today. I didn't sleep past 3am this morning because I was worried about skin cancer. My doctor only took one mole off. WITH A RAZOR BLADE. It was like ghetto dermatology, but in the nicest facility ever. Oh, and my paper dress only covered half my body. I think it's time I took up a cause and it's going to be true one-size-fits-all paper dresses. This may win me the Nobel Peace Prize because it will lead to women not getting mad when their paper dress doesn't fit in their doctor's office.

I hate the phrase "wheelhouse."

There is a new GOP debate tonight. At this rate, there will be one debate for each Republican in America before the nominee is locked in. I hear that the next debate will be held next Tuesday morning at George's Grill in Shreveport and my Aunt Charlene will moderate. Try the grilled cheese. Another debate will be held on the Saturday before Mardi Gras on Anderson Cooper's Endymion parade float. Whoever catches the most beads will be declared the winner. 

I could go for some nachos.

 

I've been wanting to change the look of the blog since I found the newspaper damask you see in the side panels now, so here it is. I went with a new, yet familiar look because I don't want to scare longtime readers off. I think it suits me and this here blog. Now I just have to figure out how to change the sidebar thingies because now they don't match. Ugh.

 
Last night I had to use my Phone-a-Friend Lifeline for the 4th grader's homework. This was the problem:

It's a little blurry (and I'm not wearing my glasses), so here it is in the lovely Georgia font: Keith wrote the expression 10d to represent the number of dimes in d dollars. Is Keith's expression correct? Explain.

No idea. And I don't even know Keith. With that many dimes he's probably a drug dealer.

And why are they doing algebra in 4th grade? I called the hubs (math genius) for the answer. He knows I have a block and the only math I can do is figuring out what the sale price of dress is if it's 30% off. Answer: a little more than 25%. 

I've written about my lack of math skills before, but I thought I would go into it a little bit. In third grade I pretty much stopped paying attention when multiplication was introduced. I blame reading A Wrinkle in Time. I was far more interested in that book that learning multiplication. I was lost in math. No amount of flashcards could help. It was like a foreign language. Plus, I now know that I I had ADD, but girls didn't cause problems in class, so whatever. I was constantly told to stop daydreaming and pay attention. This went on throughout my career as a student. Have I ever mentioned that I was on the honor roll once in my life? Once. I was not what you would call a "good student." I was bright, but math-challenged. And attention-challenged. I remember sitting in Chemistry in 11th grade and realizing there would be math involved and I think I had an out of body experience. I also caught my hair on fire over a bunsen burner that year, then I had bangs. It was not my year for a plethora of reasons. 

Anyway, the child is bringing home math that is beyond me. I honestly don't know how I graduated from high school with my math skills (it was because I had patient friends who helped me). College was another story. I didn't graduate. I took remedial algebra twice. TWICE. That's how remedial I was. Oh, and I had to have tutoring to pass. At the time I was tutoring football players in English and getting math tutoring myself. I was convinced that English Ed majors had no reason to take Algebra. We wouldn't be teaching math, so we only needed a "how to average grades" class. If you knew me in college, you probably heard me say this once or 42 times. Sadly, the Education department didn't agree with me. 

Remind me to tell y'all about when I took African American Literature sometime. 

I really wanted to tell the child to write "Keith is obviously a drug dealer and needs a better way to keep track of profits."

 

I honestly think they write headlines like this just to annoy me. Say it out loud, you'll sound like you have a speech impediment. 

This was on the homepage of the Huffington Post earlier today:

They have hit a new level of silly word play. I predict at some point the homepage will show a photo of Herman Cain and will read: YES, I CAIN!

My middle child wants to be a cute mummy for Halloween, so I bought her this costume on Amazon:

I always like to see the "Customer Who Bought This Item Also Bought" section. Apparently parents who buy their child mummy costumes must have adopted children who need advice because they also purchased The Connected Child: Bring hope and healing to your adoptive family. Mummies! Parenting advice! It's a win-win purchase!

 
I was reading the Huffington Post this morning and noticed something. If non-English readers happened to peruse the front page (or Politics section), it would appear that the GOP presidential candidates are rehearsing for a musical. Every photo is jazz hands all over the place. I know — you need proof — well, see for yourselves.*

She's in the middle of "Shout." A little bit louder now.

A little bit softer now.

"Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me" was an interesting choice for Mr. Paul.

Mr. Perry is running for lead singer of Wilson Phillips. Hold on for one more day, Rick, things will go your way.

No one expected Rick Perry to do a magic trick in the middle of the musical. See — nothing in his hands, nothing up his sleeves. He will make Barack disappear. 

Pump up the jam, pump it up when your feet are stompin' and the jam is pumpin'.

And another one of Herman Cain because the next photo is awesome.

Gladys Knight, you're missing a Pip.

Sidenote: Newt Gingrich likes to show us how big his head is.

"Yes, it was this big in the '90s, then I went to Africa and had a witch doctor shrink it to the size you see now."

"I'm telling you, it was huge. That witch doctor was amazing. No, he had nothing to do with why my wife looks birdish."

 

*Some photos from HuffPo, others from various and sundry places of the interwebs.

Have you heard of the Listeria outbreak from Cantelope? On Huffington Post today the headline "How to stay safe during the deadly Listeria outbreak" made me laugh. Want to know how to stay safe? Don't eat effing cantelope. I am not concerned abou this in the least as I do not eat melon of any kind because I hate the texture of them. Gross.

My hubs sent me a link to the honey badger (my spirit animal) video. He said he knew he was a little late to the party on the video and I said "honey badger don't care."

Wi-fi is not working on my iPhone and it's making me mad.

Lots of things make me mad. I'm Irish and redheaded, so that shouldn't be a shock.

Drinking while watching Bravo and blogging is probably a cry for help. I wouldn't know anything about that, but I do like Kaluha and shows about fashion.  Mmm Kaluha.

Today I had a 3 and a half hour lunch with Kim at la Madeline. Next to us was a group of senior ladies playing cards, complete with a card shuffler. The card shuffler sounded like a blender and it felt like we were in an episode of the Golden Girls. 

Kim and I reminisced about the time I lived in Brunwick, Georgia and we went to the New Year's Eve Shrimp Drop (the giant shrimp fell into an old school satellite dish of cocktail sauce, but looked like it was humping the side). We wanted to get our fortunes told, but the hubs wouldn't let us because he said it was satanic, even though the fortune teller was the town librarian or something. 

Have I told y'all about when Kim and I took a trip to Williamsburg in 1999 and never actually went to Colonial Williamsburg? It was kind of pricey (at the time) and we had spent too much money at the outlet mall. We did take a picture in front of the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard, so all was not lost.

Have I told y'all about when I saw the blind country singer, Ronnie Milsap, outside of a mall and I waved? I would say that was an example of being young and dumb, but I'm pretty sure I would do the same thing today.

Have I mentioned I'm not a MENSA member?

More keystrokes of genius later. I'm going to trademark "keystrokes of genius."

 

My spirit animal is now in a pistachios commercial. Yes!