Today, I am on the hunt for these things:

The Wine Thief, the Stranger, Cin and Her Girls

Scenario: Cin, Chelle and I step out onto the secluded patio at the Wine Thief. Our only company on the patio is a handsome gentleman who looks at us with pleasant surprise.

Handsome Gentleman: "Wow! What a lovely group of women!"

Cin: "Thank you! They're gorgeous aren't they?"

HG: "Yes, very."

Cin: "I love my girls."

HG: "I love your girls too."

Cin: "Too bad. They're all mine."

This made the Consort and I fall out laughing:

I must be out of my mind to go into work on a Saturday like this. This is what I'm pondering as I stare out the window that's just behind my monitor screen here at home. It's beautiful out and it's raining. The trees are so happy to get the rain that their little leaves seem to turn up like hands, cupping the rain. My saint augustine grass has returned to the dark green shade it boasted pre summer. And I keep seeing birds land just under the crape myrtle tree to bathe in the rain as it filters through the slender branches.
...so why am I getting dressed to go to work again?

I am going to be up to my ass in alligators tomorrow at work. Yikes! Why am I still awake?? I'll tell you why - I got hooked reading a thread about Spiderman. I'm such a dork.

Here's some photos the Consort and I took with our phones. We ran away from home last weekend. It was just for the one night but it was way fun to get away from it all and pamper ourselves a bit.
The first picture is of the Consort on the phone with hotelsdotcom after they mistakenly booked us at a resort in Big Horn, Montana instead of the Omni Mandalay in Dallas. As you can imagine, he was quite frustrated but he handled it all like a pro and before I knew it we were in our hotel room and ordering room service. It was awesome! Two very yummy desserts, a bottle of wine and a day later we felt recharged and ready to start a new week.

If you have children of school age or if you're stupid enough to try and go shopping today, like me, you'll know it's tax free weekend. I was after items that would not be tax free but I still had to fight the lines like everyone else.
So while driving around town today, the Consort and I were reminiscing about the crayons they used to give kids in kindergarten. They were bigger than normal crayons and fat so that little hands could hang onto them. I told him that where I grew up they were called chubbies. This got a chuckle.
Looking at him over the top of my sunglasses I said, "Of course they probably don't call them that anymore."
"What do they call them now?" He asked, "Hard-ons?"

The bell tolls for thee...

Odd topic to use as a way to start writing in my blog again but oh well -
The Chihuahua from the "Yo quiero Taco Bell" commercials went to that great dog house in the sky yesterday. When I relayed this news to a friend of mine, his response was "Ask not for whom the Taco Bell tolls, bitch".
Some people hate the Bell... personally I dig those cylindrical bag o'squeezins they call burritos. Oh, and it's sad the puppy died. :(

Why are balloons?

"Why are balloons?" was the Gray Man's question.

I've been up reading Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories: What Six Girls with Balloons Told the Gray Man on Horseback. Of the six different answers, my favorite reply came from the fourth little girl, "Balloons are to make us look up. They help our necks."

It reminds me of how quickly and deelpy we become mired in our own day-to-day. Our backs hunch, we forget to smile, we look at people's feet instead of into their eyes...sometimes I think we could all use a red balloon.