Sisterhood!

The origin of the Sisterhood Award comes the awesomeness of Diana who created it out of inspiration by The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. This is a special award that is meant to be given and shared with our best bloggy girlfriend(s). The mission is to bestow on them the award in thanksgiving for their special friendship. No need to list favorites, addictions or what-not, although today's winners have plenty of the latter two, as well as a severe case of commentarrhea. And mine is a Equal Opportunity Blog.

I was catching up on some of my favorite friends in the midst of this sleepless night when I stumbled upon this award from Alix at Casa Hice. I've had several of these as of late (sleepless nights, narcoleptic days, but certainly not awards) and if you think the reason I nearly missed it is because of that, you're wrong. It's because Alix has literally become a shadow of her former self and when she stands sideways, she's beginning to resemble a zipper. With cool traveling pants to boot. So bless you, Alix, for this sweet award, for your sweet success, and whom I will forever remember as being the only person in my life who made me cry over a duck. Love you, LuLu.

It is with deep pleasure and true irony that I pass this on to the women and men who have given me the support and grace laced with sarcasm, humor and even a bit of eewwwww over at the Fellowship of the Traveling Smarty Pants. You see, they (meaning katdish) stole this award from someone early on in the writing of FOTTSP because they wanted to be that blog. Now, they are. So ladies of the Marvelous 7+ and men, you have earned this award for real. Do with it what you (respectfully) please, eliminating all references to Rotel, Velveeta, and Joel Osteen, if you would.

• Stacey
• Jeff (who may have actually disowned us?)
  
• sherri
• Shark Bait
• Nick the Geek
• Steph at The Red Clay Diaries
• Peter P
• Beth
• Marni
• katdish
• Hucklebuck
• Annie K
• Ryan B
• Mare
• Helen

I bestow this upon you. You are redeemed and you now have this for real. No more liftin' awards off of others now, ya hear?


Tea tonight: Tazo Zen

By Your Side

These are comforting words to me today. Scroll down and turn off my playlist on the left first.

Tea today: Green ginseng with lemongrass

Serious Life

Serious.Life Magazine has a new issue out today, and I am in their Featured Blog Directory. It’s a very high quality magazine… you’ll really like it.

The magazine includes a lot of great content from bloggers you’ll appreciate, as well as great features, photos and other content. The magazine is owned and published by a family who have seven kids, three adopted and one who has Leukemia (www.riggsfamilyblog.com). The magazine gives away a bunch of ads to charities and ministries. Besides great articles on interesting people, there is a lot about family, adoption, personal finance, spiritual life, humor… all sorts of “life” topics.

Again, the subscription is FREE, and I know you’ll enjoy the magazine, so take a minute to check it out and sign up to get future issues. www.seriouslifemagazine.com

Tea Today: jasmine

Pretty (Expensive) Feet

For the most part, feet are probably the least attractive part of the human body, except for my friend Janie who has those cutesy size 6's that are perfectly pedicured at all times and have skin like a baby's butt. If you look closely, even Katie Holmes and Paris Hilton have pretty disgusting feet, except they can disguise them with Jimmy Choo or Manolo Blahnik and get away with it.

Me, not so much.

I have these long, skinny contraptions at the end of my legs that look like they broke free from the skeleton in the cadaver lab. Even in narrow shoes, they flop right out. I'm trying to find a pair of heels to dye to match a dress, and the ones I found that would work best with my pitiful peds were $348.

I'm not a shoe snob (that's Sherri). I wouldn't buy those if I could afford them (actually she wouldn't either; she'd steal them).

Then there's the skin on those bony feet. I could show you pictures, but you'd think you were looking at a dermatologic firestorm with bruised and absent nails, corns, callouses, bruises, and the like - all as a result of many years of slamming into the front of running and tennis shoes, having shoes that never really fit right, and yes, this dreaded eczema that decided to find its way to my 10 little piggies a few years ago. I've had 2 pedicures in my life, mostly because I don't like grossing out pedicurists, because my dermatologist advises against it, and oh, did I mention that I'm cheap?

So I ordered a pair of hot heels online (no, not the pricey ones. Cheep. Cheep.) hoping they'll fit. Or at least I can fill the insides with glue from my hot glue gun to make them fit (yeah, it works)! But I must get two toes on each foot looking presentable in order to wear them. I'll be working hard at that, including beefing up this prescription, that over the years, could have bought some mighty fine shoes.

Holey Moley, this stuff is pricey. $408.99?? You'd better mention my pretty feet when you see me.
Tea today: Green with Pomegranate

A Prize and a Funeral

Thanks to String Too Short to Tie for the "Friendly Blogger Award" yesterday! I'm passing it to all of my friends at Fellowship of the Traveling Smarty Pants for their compassion, understanding, and sweetness. Yeah, watch them make a mess of it and force Vanilla to snatch this right back. I'm anxious to see who they each pass it to. I'll bet they throw it amongst themselves, hot potato style. Warning: there will be sass and snark involved, which is (usually) done in friendship.

*****

We'll be attending a funeral next week - the sweet Grandma of my future daughter-in-law. Too many of these, lately (funerals, not daughter-in-laws), but I've come to accept them as one of the best parts of life. Particularly if life ends in little suffering. Being with the Lord for eternity is how it's supposed to end.

But it certainly gives me pause to ask God once again about the algorithm He uses for His timing.

Death doesn't scare me nearly as much as life does sometimes. But I'm working on that. Those Respectable Sins continue to haunt me.

Last week at a funeral home, I told my dear friend who is the Funeral Director that I was coming for a "two-fer" since both visitations I was attending were at the same place. He accused me of coming for the dinner.

"Really, there's food downstairs???"

One visitation had lots of family and friends; the other, not so much. One was mellow and quiet; the other was a little more upbeat and life-giving. It really is OK to laugh and chatter at a visitation. I hope people don't mope around at mine. I want them to laugh until they snort ( you know who you are). I'm going on record to say (again) please return me to ashes when I'm gone.

Otherwise someone will say "She's wearing that again???" or "She looks better dead."

Hopefully someone will drag out those wedding pictures for display, and people will have their last memory of me at 110 lb. with some great music playing in the background. It's all picked out, and Ron Burgundy often reminds me that "people aren't going to want to hang around that long." You will if there's food.

This takes me back to my own Grandmother's funeral.

My kids were pretty little, and it was only the second funeral they had ever attended. My youngest boy (the one who was banned from the church nursery when he was 2) was being his typical self. Squirmy, restless, ricocheting off walls. He's the kid who always got the chipped plate at family dinners, because we knew if it wasn't chipped or broken, it would be when he was done. When the kids played "house," he thought it was neat he got to be the family dog. They just wanted to tie him up. Anything that was destroyed or lost in the house was bound to get blamed on Luke.

He was that kid.

At the cemetary after Grandma's funeral, my oldest, the "Alex P. Keaton" of the bunch, whispers to me "I'm going to go tell Grandma how sorry I am that Great-Grandma died." Oh, how sweet.

Yeah, he was that kid.

"Take your little brother with you," I said, hoping to distract him a bit from his hooliganisms.

"Where we goin'?" he hollers (the kid never grew an "inside" voice).

"Go with your brother and tell Grandma how sorry you are that Great Grandma died."

"Well, I didn't do it!!"

Yeah, we knew that. But apparently you thought you'd get blamed.

Sweet boy. He called me last night. LYF.

And Grandma "I" - rest in peace. You loved so, and you are so loved!

Tea today: Green ginseng with citrus