Fran & Marlo Cowan (married 62 years) playing impromptu recital together in the atrium of the Mayo Clinic. This makes me really really happy.

Public Announcement

I just have to tell the world how much I love Wilson Phillips. Hold On has changed so many lives, including mine. Yesterday my friend and I belted it in the car on the way home from the airport and it felt SO GOOD.

And in looking up the music video, I could not help posting this one. It is quite possibly the most awesome thing I have seen in a really long time. I love how these girls have taken this song into their hearts.

Time Difference + Bad Sleeping Habits

=when you go back to Florida after spending two weeks staying up late in Arizona, you can't fall asleep before 5.00 am even if you have to wake up at 8.30. And then tossing so much that your phone, and consequently your alarm, gets too smothered under a pillow to emit noise which means that you wake up an hour and a half late.

But before the phone smothering fiasco, it was 3 am and I made Pi Day cards. Sure, it's 2 1/2 months away. But something had to be done. And it sure wasn't going to be the dishes.

Here's a highlight from the holiday. It's Christmas morning and I insisted on making my nieces work for their presents, i.e. go on a treasure hunt. I keep on secretly hoping they ditch their dreams of becoming princesses and start wishing they were pirates.

It's Official.

I have this really loose policy when it comes to getting ride to the airports. It's called: it will work out somehow. I seem to never really arrange a ride until the last minute. Sometimes I'm arranging it on my lay-over, and I can never really get myself to worry about it enough to do something about it earlier. This year, in honor of Christmas miracles everywhere, I not only arranged my ride to the airport next Tuesday, I already found a ride back on Jan 1st. I'm feeling pretty awesome about it right now. So, happy holidays.

ZOMBIE. PROM.

Oh yeah, Halloween was 1/2 a month ago. Oh yeah, I'm still going to post these pictures. This is what happens when they make me in charge of a dance, I go a little bit psycho with some elaborate theme. I kinda think that I would have more enthusiasm for life if every day had a theme, like spirit week in high school. Except it was spirit life and there were community committees dedicated to coordinating twin day and wacky day. I know it's not going to happen, but it can happen in small ways. And so here is my attempt at revolution. One day, one day.

That's right, a jellyfish! There's something delightful about having a zombie being stung by a giant jellyfish.

I stayed in character all night. Being 1/2 dead takes only 1/2 the energy.

Family Folklore and Sesame Street

A few years ago my family went to see my mom's dad and her stepmother. They had gotten married a couple years after my mom and dad did, so even though we grew up called her grandma, my mom called her Jody. And I remember that confusing me.

Both of them had been falling apart since I could remember them. My grandma Jody, who died about 2 years ago, had been in a wheelchair for years, and my grandpa doesn't have an eye (no, he doesn't wear an eye patch and yes, the state of Arizona reissued his drivers' license, which my mom talked him into surrendering).

So while we were sitting around, Grandma Jody got to telling stories about growing up and her first husband and teaching. She had been a kindergarten teacher for 30 years, and she had centered her instruction around letters instead of concepts. So she would teach them about Fish and to count to Four and Five and learn how to play Football. She was explaining this concept to her summer professional development class, when a girl in the corner picked up the stapler and said, "This lesson was brought to you by the letter F." And everyone laughed.

Later Grandma Jody was visiting with the teacher, asking her about what all the students were up to, and the teacher referenced that girl with the stapler. Apparently, she had gone to New York to start and educational television program using my grandma's teaching style. Yeah, Sesame Street.

I felt like I had never met her before. How could I have possibly not known that my grandmother partly inspired Big Bird?

Part of me doesn't really believe it. Short of calling my own grandmother a liar, I can imagine that she was just confused or was exaggerating in some weird, extreme way. But Joan Ganz Cooney did graduate from U of A in education, and she did work in Phoenix for a few years before going to New York. And sometimes I think it's okay to just believe her. It makes me, in some way, feel like somewhat of a cousin to Oscar the Grouch. And come on, who wouldn't want to be related to a puppet?

I Can Really Get Into This

I wonder how many things I could get tricked into if it were made more fun. Like abstaining from Diet Coke. Or not procrastinating. Someone really needs to get on that.