That’s One Way To Lose Weight

Me: I love my new Spin class.

Mom: Ew, I don’t think I could do that one; I’d throw up.

Me: Yeah, I feel pretty bad for the first 15 minutes, but more my breathing than my stomach.

Mom: But aren’t you really dizzy after all that spinning??

Me: What do you mean? Just your legs are spinning.

Mom: Just your legs??? I thought…don’t you…well, what is Spin class anyway?

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Spider Growing In Face

This is for the person or people who recently landed at red Ravine by searching the following term:

spider growing in face

I didn’t want you to be disappointed.



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Spider Growing In Face doodle, pen and ink on graph paper then stylized in Photoshop Elements, image © 2010 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

-Related post: NEWSFLASH: You Can Reach red Ravine Via This

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da•da poetry

I

seagulls and the smell of fish

the earth smolders and smokes

there is a fine line between solitude and loneliness

I like to walk that line


pink syrup flowing over rock

the wheat field consumed the trees

sandwich of bodies

II

nothing’s stable, everything shifts


I fly through the clouds

down below a brown landscape

where am I going?


helpless helpless helpless


i see wild stallions galloping

mountains can look like horses, can’t they

I climbed all this way and now cannot find the valley


tree figures run away


froth on chocolate milk

shadows of Stonehenge fall across the snow

III

pieces of cloud fall from sky

I think of traveling, being places where I don’t come from

soft edges on formerly rugged rock

salty lips, the waves pushing me back to the shore

IV

in my memory I see the waves

the colors pink and blue, like a gentle sunset in summer


black rock on a craggy coast

the sea rushed over the village


I think of strangers, and how much I am like them

there were children crying and colors flying

V

my slopes are cooling down

land melting thinning, what’s beyond

I think of the ocean, which I love and fear both

where the clouds meet the land


setting sunlight captured in liquid love


my edges are hotter than my center

papers fall from Heaven unnoticed

I see nothing for miles, I feel empty inside

some days I go back to the beach


I am flying apart







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These poems came out of an exercise suggested by red Ravine guest writer Judith Ford, and modified from an event she attended and describes in the post lang•widge. Guests at that event, which was held this past March in Bethesda, Maryland, was an “evening of art, jazz and spontaneous poetry, featuring paintings by Freya Grand.”

Freya Grand’s paintings, pictured above, became the inspiration for our own red Ravine “blog happening,” created and curated by Jude:

So here’s an idea: How about trying a little mini da-da poetry writing sans Steven Rogers’ music? Take a look at any of the Freya Grand paintings in this post (or visit her website). Pick out a piece of music you currently like a lot. While the music plays, quickly, without much thought, jot down five (or so) lines or phrases…. Let’s see what we come up with.

Jude received free form lines and phrases from three participants (including myself). She printed them, cut them apart, and scrambled them. Then, she used playing cards to generate the poem, picking a card, choosing that number of lines, then picking randomly from the bunch. Jude took the liberty of creating stanzas as she typed the results. She did a beautiful job.

Thank you, Jude, for sharing this creative fun with us!

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Got (Soy) Milk?

Got (Soy) Milk?, morning fix of soymilk and coffee,
photo © 2010 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

I picked up my milk habit in Granada, Spain, in 1986. There my morning ritual was to walk out the door, hop the narrow cobblestone road to the bar across the way, and order a tall glass of café-con-leche. Pepe, the bar owner, prepared it with hot milk and just a splash of strong coffee.

Milk became over the next 20-plus years my daily vice. In all respects it seemed to be a respectable habit. My nails grew strong, hair thick, bones firm. One would expect (and I do) that my two cups of milk-and-coffee a day kept osteoporosis away.

But there were downsides. The worst was at night as I lay on my back and drifted off to sleep. I’d wake up choking to what felt like a wet hairball in the back of my throat. Mucus was the culprit, and it wasn’t just at night. When I exercised I had to clear my throat like a smoker with a hack. I suffered from morning stuffiness and a drippy nose even when it wasn’t allergy season. And forget about allergy season! During those months I was a poster child for Kleenex.

But the worst of the milk side effects hit recently as I began to enter menopause. If you’ve gone through menopause, you know the symptoms. Sore boobs, hot flashes, mood swings (mine went from grumpiness to rage).

Women I knew told me that I ought to try soy milk. My sister-in-law said it had an instant calming effect on her. Soy beans contain isoflavones, which produce an estrogen-like effect on the body. Inspired, I gave it try.

At first I disliked it. The sweetened kind was too sweet; unsweetened tasted like liquid chalk. For a few months I tried almond milk, then coconut. Nothing stuck. I turned to green tea (since I drink black tea the way I drink coffee) but didn’t like that either. I fumbled through my mornings, lost. I lamented that I’d inadvertently dumped my coffee habit. I missed my ritual.

I don’t have all that many vices, and honestly, milk-and-coffee probably did more good for my health than bad. Maybe that’s why I kept trying to find the right non-dairy version of my old favorite beverage.

Persistence paid off—I have finally discovered the secret to making the kind of non-dairy leche-con-café that might even make ol’ Pepe proud.

I am now an avid soy milk drinker. The extra mucus is gone, as are a couple of extra pounds. I only rage once in a blue moon. But most importantly, I got myself a new morning ritual. Life is good.

Roma’s Menopause-B-Gone Soy Milk-and-Coffee Drink

Start with a good brand of unsweetened soy milk. Not all brands are the same. Soy milk is processed from soy beans, and as with other processed foods, the processing can take something that is healthy and make it unhealthy. So if you’re going to drink soy milk, you need to check out the soy scorecard.

Pour about a cup of soy milk into a glass saucepan (preferably with a pouring spout) and heat on low for about 3-5 minutes, stirring constantly. I add just enough local honey (no more than a teaspoon) to give the unsweetened soy milk a hint of sweetness. I’m not a fan of sweet coffee, and so I’m stingy with the honey. Just a bit. Helps with allergies, too.

Once the soy milk is good and hot yet not boiling, pour it into a curved mug that fits your hand just so. Add in enough strong coffee to top the drink. (I make the coffee beforehand in a French press.)

Walk into your writing room, sit down, take a few sips, and then write. A calm beginning to any day.

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How Many Days In The Month Of March — 30 Or 31?

This happens to me almost every month — I have to stop and think about how many days there are.

Some months I know by heart. January has 31, February 28, October has 31, December 31. But those months in between — March, April, May, June, July, August, September, November — I honestly don’t know.

I use the fist method (aka the knuckle method). It sounds crude, and it is. I form my hand into a fist then act like I’m about to do a fist bump with a friend. As I’m looking at the fist from the top, I use the knuckles and valleys that my fist makes to count the months.

Knuckles stand for 31 days, valleys for 30 (except in the case of February, which is 28).



Counting Months on your Fist, iPhone photo of ybonesy’s fist,
March 30, 2010, image © 2010 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.



So, using the fist method we learn:

• First knuckle hump is January — 31 days
• Valley is February — 28 days
• Knuckle is March — 31
• Valley is April — 30
• Knuckle is May — 31
• Valley is June — 30
• Knuckle is July — 31

At this point we run out of fist, so we start over:

• First knuckle is August — 31 (this is when we remember that July and August both have 31 days)
• Valley is September — 30
• Knuckle is October — 31
• Valley is November — 30
• Knuckle is December — 31

If like me you were trying to remember if March has 30 days or 31, now you know. And you’ve learned an easy method to always be able to figure out how many days there are in a given month.

I know, I am a font of helpful information.

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Alice Walker — Find A Quiet Space

I discovered my passion very early. I just love doing it. My mother claims that I was writing when I was crawling — with a twig in the sand, or on the margins of books. But I think just growing up in the South and having a somewhat difficult time, you know, really helped me to look to creativity as a way to cope, really, with life.

Art requires us to really see, to look at things with understanding. And I think because things were difficult —  for instance, you had one pair of shoes that had to last the entire year. So if you sort of wore them out, what were you going to do? Well, you had to really think hard about how people managed to clothe you, and how they managed to feed you.

The advice I would give to anyone, but especially to the young — find some quiet space around yourself and maintain it. And don’t fill your outer space or your interior space with other people’s anything. Keep a space for you. Because it’s the only way you can grow into being who you were meant to be.

–Alice Walker speaking this morning on We Have a Dream: Inspirational and Motivational Black Americans on 5 KSTP

-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

-related to post on practice, mentors, and Alice Walker on labyrinths: Labyrinth

• Alice Walker’s Blog: The Cushion and the Road: Meditation and Wandering As the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm’s Way
  

• Alice Walker’s Official Website

• Alice Walker’s Booklist
  

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My Pug Has An Underwear Fetish

Should I be worried?

-Related to posts Because She’s A Nut and Ten Things About Sony The Pug.

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Runes, Oracles, & Alphabets

RUNES, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, December 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Yesterday we went to a book signing at Common Good Books. Jeff Hertzberg and Zöe Francois recently released their second book Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The bread was delicious, the authors serious about their work, down-to-earth, engaging and fun. In casual conversation, it came out that Zöe knows Latin. I remembered that I had taken two years of Latin in junior high, a curriculum requirement in the 1960’s. That got me to thinking about language and alphabets.

After the signing, Liz and I did a little Christmas shopping and later went to the studio. I was looking at this set of Runes I made from clay a number of years ago. For a period of time in my life, I consulted with different oracles on a daily basis: the I Ching, the Runes, Tarot, Medicine Cards. I have a passion for learning about symbols in different systems of mysticism.

Symbols are used to create structure within a system, to help us understand complicated ideas with a simple visual. Over time, color has been organized into systems like Goethe’s Triangle and subsequent Colour Wheel, while chakras are symbolized by certain colors. Logos and brands (like red Ravine or ybonesy’s new logo) take their lead from symbols of yore. Graphic designers are always trying to create  innovative new fonts with which to drape old symbols in more imaginative cloaks. (Yet people still like an old standby because Helvetica remains one of the most widely used fonts around.)

I couldn’t find my Runes book last night or I would have drawn the Runes. But I did find an odd book I’d snapped up at a sale, an old Readers Digest Book of Facts. According to the Languages section of the book, all the alphabets around the world can be traced to a North Semitic alphabet that emerged around 1700 B.C. at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. From the Semitic alphabet developed Hebrew, Arabic, and Phoenician. Then Phoenician alphabet was adopted and adapted by the Greeks who in 1000 B.C. introduced a modified form into Europe.

The Greeks standardized the reading of written lines from left to right, added symbols for vowels, and gave rise to the Roman alphabet (used for modern Western languages) and the Cyrillic alphabet (named after Saint Cyril and used in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union). The North Semitic alphabet spawned the Aramaic alphabet which eventually developed into Asian alphabets, such as Hindi.

The earliest forms of writing are picture writings found on clay tablets in parts of the Middle East and southeastern Europe. Some of the oldest found in Iraq and Iran recorded land sales and business deals.

Where do the Runes fit into all this? They are a mystery. The Runic alphabet is one of the oldest in northern Europe with early examples dating to the 3rd century A.D. They have been found in 4000 inscriptions in Britain, Scandinavia, and Iceland but nobody knows for sure where they originated.

For some reason, the Runes remind me of the ancient celebration of Winter Solstice. Some scholars believe the Runes were derived from the Etruscan alphabet of southern Europe and brought north by the Goths after their invasion of the Roman Empire. To me, they are an oracle of mystery. And that’s what draws me to them.

Post Script: The bread baked by Jeff Hertzberg and Zöe Francois was delicious. Their new book Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day looks like a winner with many whole wheat and gluten-free recipes. There’s a recipe for their whole wheat Christmas Stollen Bread in the post of their video interview at KARE 11. Or you can visit their website Artisan Bread In Five with fabulous photographs of mouthwatering baked goods. You will come away hungry for more!

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, December 13th, 2009

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American Rug Laundry — A Photographic Study

American Rug Laundry, Lake Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

 

I’ve always wanted to photograph the American Rug Laundry building on Lake Street in Minneapolis. At the end of June, I had a chance to photograph the building before and after dining at a nearby Lake Street restaurant to celebrate a friend’s birthday.

I decided to do a photographic study from different angles, at dusk and by night. I’m a long-time fan of vintage neon signs and couldn’t decide which photographs to post, so I left most of them in my Flickr set. The graphic elements make the sign come alive: the rusted screen, angled chains, and black-tipped pins that looks like a larger version of pins a seamstress might use. I am also drawn to the vintage typography. Do you have a favorite shot?

The American Rug Laundry was established in 1895 and is the largest and oldest rug cleaning and carpet repair facility in the Upper Midwest. Large floor rugs used to be hand-delivered and there are some wonderful historic black and white photographs from the 1920’s all the way up to 1954 on their site.

There is also a FAQs page where you can learn some of the differences between handmade and machine made rugs. One of the most obvious differences is that in a hand knotted rug, the fringe is part of the rug and not sewn on as an extension. Another difference is that tufted rugs are almost always covered with a cotton/canvas backing, while the pattern is clearly visible on the backside of hand knotted rugs.

Since our current home has wall-to-wall carpet, we have a handmade rug from Liz’s childhood (last cleaned at the American Rug Laundry) stored in our attic. But I think our next house will have hardwood floors. Which do you prefer?

 
 

Lake Street At Night, American Rug Laundry Chains, American Rug Laundry Clearance, Dusk At American Rug Laundry, Cash & Carry, Sign Study – Rug Laundry, Lake Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

 

-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

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Back-To-School Sales — A Writer’s Paradise

Tools Of The Trade (On Sale), Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

 
 

Back-to-school sales are a bonus for writers. Liz came home last night with presents in tow: three full-sized college ruled notebooks for Writing Practice and five colorful 4 1/2 by 3 1/4 Composition notebooks with marble covers (my favorite for carrying around in my pocket). The large notebooks were a penny less than 4 bits; the small ones only 19 cents. (Hint: a bit is 12.5 cents; 2 bits is a quarter.)

Last night I put the small red Composition notebook by my bed. It came in handy when I woke up at 3 a.m. with insomnia. I grabbed it and wrote down these haiku (senryu) floating around in my head. I had hoped the rhythmic counting would help me get back to sleep:

 
 

Insomnia haiku (II)
_____________

crumpled white paper
word remembrances of love
regurgitation
 
10 sleepless monsters
rambling around in my head
flat Insomnia

beyond Milky Way
a random act of kindness
what it takes to love

 
 
 

 
 

I hope everyone is taking advantage of the back-to-school sales to stock up on writing supplies. Paper products are our Tools of the Trade. What kind of notebooks and pens do you love? Where can we get the best deals?

 

-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, August 13th, 2009

-related to posts: WRITING TOPIC – TOOLS OF THE TRADE, haiku 2 (one-a-day)

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How I Plan To Spend My Oodles Of Spare Time

Tree Pendant, domed resin pendant using ybonesy doodle,
pendant and doodle © 2009 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

 
 
 
 
 

 

       

Other titles I thought of for this post:

  

• Look Mom, I Made It Myself!
• Coming Soon to a Store Near You
• Would Say More But Must Go Make Tile Pendants
• What Children and Husband?
• Yogurt & Popcorn for Dinner
• Not Planning to Lose My Day Job Yet, But Dang, Am Having Fun!!

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I Found Potatoes In My Pantry (& They Scared The Hell Out Of Me)

                                                       

 

 

Other titles I thought of for this post:

 

• Night of the Living Spud
• Eek, a Potato!
• The Root of All Root Vegetables
• I *am* a Green Thumb Afterall!

Please, add your own. Or, write a haiku inspired by these taters. Heck, how about a Writing Practice on Everything I know about potatoes…. Go!

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This Is Your Tooth On Pepsi

Goodbye Teeth, What’s left of Em’s tooth after 48 hours soaking in a Pepsi soda (one can), photo © 2009 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

This has been a rough week as far as Em’s concerned. First we had to tell her that there is no tooth fairy and that, in fact, we had in our possession all the teeth she ever contributed to the making of new stars in the sky (that’s what tooth fairies do with teeth, you know). Second, she had to take two of those teeth and set up a science fair project to look at the Big Question: Which will dissolve a tooth faster — Mtn Dew or Pepsi? And third, she had to watch before her very own eyes as one of her teeth dissolved within two days in a can of Pepsi (something she used to be supremely fond of drinking whenever we let her).

(She also had to get her teeth cleaned last week, but the dentist and his staff were so excited about her science experiment — the doc predicted that Pepsi would dissolve the teeth faster than Mtn Dew — that they paid her oodles of attention and gave her extra stuff from the goody chest.)

Em started with two almost equal-sized teeth of hers that she had to get pulled a few years ago due to crowding (not because of tooth decay).

 

The Pepsi tooth after the first or second check, still pretty much intact.

 

The Pepsi tooth after about half a day of soaking.

 

The Pepsi tooth cracked and broke into two pieces after about 24 hours of soaking.

So, I’m giving up my occasional Pepsi or Coke, plus every other carbonated drink, for that matter. (Shoot, I was just starting to like Arizona Iced Teas!) I hate to be such a goodie-two-shoes, but that little floating string of a tooth, the one that resembles goldfish poop…well…it’s grossing me out more than you can imagine. (It grossed out Em so much that she didn’t even take a photo of it to include on her science fair project board.)

Jim says that during this week’s Science Fair, all the parents will be dragging their kids over to see Em’s project and all the kids are going to glare at Em for doing it.

I don’t know. I don’t think it will have much an effect on anyone’s drinking habits. Now, if we printed a few wallet-sized prints of that stringy tooth, that might make a person think twice before drinking a soda.

How ’bout you? Still gonna pop the top?




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Postscript: Over a week after the Pepsi tooth dissolved, the Mtn Dew tooth was still intact. We finally threw it out but took this last photo for posterity.

I guess the moral of the science project is: If you must drink a soda, go for Mtn Dew instead of Pepsi. Less wear and tear on the teeth. 🙂  (Wish I had a smiley face icon with a missing tooth.)

Mtn Dew tooth, Em's tooth after almost two weeks soaking in a can of Mtn Dew, still going strong.

 

-related to post Less Than 1 Calorie Per Bottle

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Inspiration Can Be Found Any Ol’ Where

I feel a bit disingenuous.

QM asked me in this post where I got the idea to use spray paints on my Flower Power painting. I told her it was a fun medium to use.

What I didn’t tell her was that I use spray paint all the time, on odd pieces of furniture.

My first was to change a file cabinet from the bland creme-color it came in to a blazin’ fire-engine red. Ah, how happy that made me!

Another time, when my paper effluvia outgrew my red-hot storage unit, I bought another lifeless four-drawer metal cabinet, this time tan, and began experimenting with different spray paints.

First I painted it day-glo orange, but it looked vaguely like a clementine, which, if you know file cabinets, just didn’t cut the mustard. I added day-glo pink, and still, something was missing.

Then I got the idea to plaster flower power stickers all over it and paint it a sort of olive green. Wa-la! A filing masterpiece. Now I smile every time I deposit yet another cell phone or credit card bill away to never be seen again.

(Who said filing is dull? Probably the same person who said ideas are fresh.) 

I see my  flower power cabinet every day — it sits in my writing room — and I guess it’s affected me. In more ways that I can imagine.

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Watch Me Pull A Rabbit Out Of My Hat

Pulling A Rabbit Out Of A Hat, drawing by writer Ann Patchett, St. Paul, Minnesota, January 2008, all photos © 2008-2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

I was watching WCCO’s Good Question: What’s With The Easter Bunny? when it dawned on me that I had this old snapshot of a drawing by Ann Patchett on the front page of The Magician’s Assistant. The night we saw her at the Fitzgerald Theater, she smiled when I handed her the book — “I don’t get a chance to draw these much anymore,” she said, and from her pen flew this big-eared bunny poking out of a hat.

According to Darcy Pohland who covered last night’s Good Question (watch the video for some fun footage from kids on the subject), the Easter Bunny has ancient roots:

It’s part of a pagan tradition that started in Germany as part of a spring celebration. It honored Eastre (also Ēostre or Ôstarâ), the Anglo-Saxon goddess of dawn and spring; a fertility goddess who brought the end of winter.

One version of the bunny legend comes when she comes late one spring and finds a bird with wings frozen to the ground. She turns it into a snow hare with the ability to lay eggs in rainbow colors one day a year.

Snow hares with the ability to lay eggs in rainbow colors — you have to love that. I’m fond of the Snowshoe Hare because it’s directly related to one of my Totem Animals, the Lynx. They do a 7-year dance together and the Lynx’s ability to survive depends on the Snowshoe Hare’s abundant life and death cycle.

On this 53 degree Saturday in Minnesota, I’m longing for the end of Winter. Which means I’m jumping up and down for Eastre, the Goddess of Dawn and Spring. If you celebrate Easter, I hope you look glorious in your bonnet. Looks like tomorrow will be a good day for hunting those eggs. Or learning to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

Rocky:  And now….
Bullwinkle:  Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat.
Rocky:  But that trick never works.
Bullwinkle:  But this time for sure. Presto! [pause] Well I’m getting close.
Rocky:  And now its time for another special feature.

–Rocky & Bullwinkle Sound Clips

          

Ann Patchett’s Bunny, St. Paul, Minnesota, January 2008, photo © 2008-2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, April 11th, 2009

-related to posts:

Ann Patchett – On Truth, Beauty, & The Adventures Of “Opera Girl”
Which Came First, The Grasshopper Or The Egg?
The Ant & The Grasshopper – Ann Patchett & Lucy Grealy
Book Talk – Do You Let Yourself Read?
My Totem Animal

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Two Degrees Of Celebrity Sighting

Jerry Rice in a San Francisco club, photo © 2009 by beeca. All rights reserved.

I am so obsessed with celebrity that even though I don’t know who this man is—my sisters and niece tell me he is famous—I am posting his photo on the blog. And not only is he famous—he is retired NFL player Jerry Rice, used to play for the San Francisco 49ers—but because he was runner-up in the second season of Dancing with the Stars, losing to Drew Lashea, who I also didn’t know but am told was in a boy band with brother Nick, who used to be married to Jessica Simpson, I am now connected through six degrees of separation to Tony Romo of the Dallas Cowboys. (I don’t know who he is either, and my niece just reminded me that since they are both of football fame, Tony and I are probably connected through three degrees, not six.)

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Saturday Morning Musings (About Nothing Much)

Breaking Bad Behavior

• I’ve skipped my usual evening beer these past several nights. I get the craving right about 6, and if I’m cooking dinner (like I was last night) the craving is especially strong to drink a cold bottle of beer while I’m whipping up the chicken tenders and potatoes. But by the time we sit down to eat, the craving is gone and it doesn’t return until same time next night.
• My new morning-computer-usage rule is that I don’t turn on the computer until a) I’m dressed, b) my face is washed, c) hair combed, and d) teeth brushed. Even if what I get dressed in is workout pants and t-shirt, I don’t allow myself to open the laptop until all of the above are met. Why? I was finding myself on too many weekend and weekday working-from-home days in my pajamas at noon with teeth still not brushed. Gross.
• My other computer rule is to limit personal usage. Limit to what?, I don’t know, but just curb my time. No hanging out on the computer checking stats every twenty minutes, no perusing political blogs to see what every little move of Obama‘s is being scrutinized, no wasting oodles of time.
• And on the positive side (no more Don’ts) I will make time for yardwork and painting. I have dreams about both—having a yard with lovely flowers and plants and producing several finished pieces of art for a May 1 gallery tour.

Speaking of Bad Behavior…

Have you ever been on autopilot while you’re driving and before you know it you’re singing along with a bad song? I did that the other day, found myself belting all the words to Paul Simon’s Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover.

Make a new plan, Stan, you don’t need to be coy, Roy, now listen to me. Hop on the bus, Gus, yaaa don’t neeeeed to discuss muuuch! Just drop off the key, Lee, and get yo’self free.

So this morning I am sweeping the floor and generally picking up the house and guess what song is playing in my head? And guess what song has been playing in my head almost every day since I zoned out in the car and inadvertently started singing those words?

Yep. It’s stuck, on a continuous loop. It’s like I was hypnotized and now any time I go into a non-thinking mode, I find my mental airwaves broadcasting Paul Simon.

Aaack! How do I banish him from my head?? Please, someone, help! (QM, how did you finally get Easy Like Monday Morning out of your head?)



Speaking of Bad Songs…

I’ve taken to calling two friends of mine The Skipper and Gilligan. The Skipper is my friend Patty, and Gilligan is her little buddy, Agi. Yesterday Patty and Agi called me to have me tell them again why they are The Skipper and Gilligan.

“Because, Patty, you call Agi your little buddy.”

“And who are you?” they ask.

“I’m Ginger, or Marianne.” (It just depends on my mood. Yesterday I was Ginger.)

Then I proceeded to sing—complete with passion and sound effects—the entire theme song to Gilligan’s Island, which blew them away. Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip…

Yep, I know the entire theme song to Gilligan’s Island, Beverly Hillbillies, and Green Acres. I might know others but those are the only ones I can think of now.

How ’bout you? Do you know by heart any TV series theme songs?


What are your Saturday morning musings?

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