Discovering a New Summer Favorite!

This is my Strawberry Lemonade Face, Friends!  Yaaaaaaaargh!

Hiya, Big People!  Hey, if you know me, you know I love goin' to restaurants in the summer, or any time, really.  In the summer, though, especially. 

Well, everything's better in the summer, I think.

But what really gets me excited about eatin' at restaurants in the summer is that they bring out the strawberry lemonade!

Some places call it just Strawberry Lemonade, and that's cool.  Red Robin calls it "Freckled Lemonade," which makes me laugh.  No matter what the place calls their strawberry-lemon mashup, I just love the dickens right out of it!

So Friends, my wish for you this Summer is for you to find a New Favorite Thing, or maybe discover an old favorite again for the second time like it's the first time.  How about that?!

Today's a great day for it, too, Friends.  Friday.  Friday, incidentally, is my FAVORITE day of the week.

Back to the Future's Past Future

Your Future isn't written yet!

Hey, hey, Friends!  Happy Thursday to you!

Well, ya know, I really love the Back to the Future movies.  I think that Marty McFly is sucha relatable hero, Doc Brown is an excellent mentor for him, and the Delorean Time Machine is just the raddest ride this side of an AMC show!  I truly mean that from the bottom of my heart!

It really boggles my little mind, though, those Back to the Future movies.  Take the first one, for example.  Marty McFly almost erases his own existence, turns the big, mean bully Biff into Harvey Milquetoast, and then he goes back to the future and saves his friend Doc Brown from gettin' shot by the Libyans, effectively changing the whole entire course of history or something like that.

Well, think about all the things Marty changes about the Future when he comes back.  First of all, he killed one of old man Peabody's pine trees when he arrived in 1955.  So the Twin Pines Mall was known in 1985II as Lone Pine Mall.  Doc Brown was supposed to have perished in the Libyans' gunfire that night, but Marty goes back in time and tells him what happens, so Doc Brown wears a bulletproof vest under his radiation suit.  Doc Brown goes on to come to the Future, which is 2015, and he warns Marty that his kids grow up to be a buncha buttheads, and then he goes back in time to 1885 and finds a wife.  I mean if those fellas aren't messin' with the spacetime continuum, doing all that stuff, I don't know what they're doin'!

Unless Doc Brown was always going to have been warned by Marty about the Libyans, and he was always going to have put on a bulletproof vest before he set out for the mall that night. 

See, Friends?  It can get really mind-boggling, if you get to thinking about it energetically.  It really can.

One thing I especially loved, though, in the Back to the Future movies, is when Doc is on his magical time-traveling locomotive train, and he tells Marty that the Future isn't written yet, so it's fulla possibilities.  That really spoke to me.

You go ahead and have a great rest of your day, Friends.  And if you figure out how Marty and Doc got away with all the messin' around with the past and future that they did, let me know what you come up with.   I love ya lots, Big People!  I'll see ya tomorrow.  The Future hasn't been written yet, but our meet-up here on the interwebs is in my date book, and that's almost as good as havin' it written in pen in the Future.  Muah!

It Hurts My Heart

I can hear the laughter after I go to bed.  It hurts my heart.

Friends, I've gotta tell ya.  There's a downside to bein' me.  See, I hafta go to bed before everybody else.

Not only that, but after I've gone to bed for the night, before everybody else, if there's a groupa people around, I can hear my Big People laughing.  While I, the veritable life of every party, is languishing in a bed removed from the festivities, almost as though the Big People were waitin' for me to go to bed before they brought out the big fun.

I LOVE big fun!  And it hurts my heart to know that the Big People in my life can exclude me from said big fun, just like that.  I bet they don't even feel bad about sending me to bed before they all go to bed!  I bet it doesn't even cross their minds that such behavior on their part would hurt my feelings.

Friends, if there's a Little Kid in your life, and you're accustomed to puttin' that Little Kid to bed before the Big People go to bed, I ask you to put yourself in the place of that Little Kid.  How would you feel if all your Big People Friends, those people you love and trust most in this whole wide world, schuschelled you off to bed, unceremoniously, and then stayed up for hours, havin' fun and laughing and playing games and drinkin' Dang! Butterscotch Root Beer.  It sure as heck wouldn't feel very good at all, would it? 

Here's how you can help.  You can let the Little Kid in your life stay up as long as he or she wants, or at least as long as you Big People stay up.  Let the Little Kid participate in all the nighttime festivities, right along with the Big People.  Nobody likes to be left out of a party, Big People.  Not even Little Kids.  Think about it, please.

I love ya lots, and I'll see ya tomorrow.  Muah!

PEZManiac

I think I found my PEOPLE!

Hiya, Big People!  Happy Tuesday to you!

Hey, you know what?  I'm just fresh offa my trip to Cleveland, Ohio for the American Motors Owners Convention.  It was fun to see all those nice AMC cars.  There was a pink AMX that I told Daddy I wanted, but he said no, because that usedta be a Playboy Playmate of the Year's car, and he doesn't want me to grow up to be a Playboy Playmate of the Anything.  I don't even know what any of that means, but I like to play!

Daddy made it pretty clear that a pink AMX is NOT in my future, though.

Anyways, the reason I'm so happy today is because I think I've found my tribe.  You see, at the same hotel where the AMO convention was, they were havin' a PEZ convention.  I LOVE PEZ!!!!  I mean, how many times have I told you how much I love PEZ candies, and PEZ dispensers? 

Maybe not as much as I think I have, or as much as I THINK about PEZ, which is all the time.

But, you see, at that hotel, there was a whole convention of other people who are as much as or even more into PEZ than I am!  It was something to see!  There were signs all over the hotel, directing a person to people who had a buncha vintage PEZ dispensers to sell.  There was a guy there that REPAIRS dispensers.  I mean... WOW!  And there were tables-n-tables fulla PEZ things to buy: plush replicas of PEZ dispensers, pillows that look like rolls of PEZ, Tshirts proclaiming the wearer's love of PEZ... Friends, there was so much PEZ stuff in that room and in the hallway that I couldn't wrap my head around it. 

I went to Cleveland an AMC Kid, but I've come home knowing there's a place for me in another tribe. PEZManiacs.  How about that?!  How the heck right about that?!

The Secret Life of Books!

I'm gonna start learnin' Classical Greek next week!

Friends, if you know me, you know that I love to read books of all kinds.

What I get to wonderin' about is what goes on after the official story ends. 

Specifically, I'm wondering if things ever get awkward when Goldilocks runs into the Three Bears when they're out and about around the forest they all call home.  I mean, it can't be that bigga place.  I bet they run into each other in the Fairytale GreenGrocer, or maybe the movie theatre.

It's gotta be awkward for everybody.  For Goldilocks, because she got caught bein' a big ol' mooch when the Three Bears weren't home.  And it's gotta be awkward for the Three Bears, too, runnin' into Goldilocks, on accounta she kinda did that whole breakin' and enterin' thing on their house, and she broke Baby Bear's chair. 

If that happened to me, and some dumb girl snuck into my house and ate my cereal and sat in my favorite chair and broke it, and then went up and slept in my bed... why, you can bet I'd wanna hafta bring it up every time I saw the same dumb girl.  Hey, Goldilocks!  Remember that time when you broke into my house and ruined my stuff?  We shoulda EATEN you!  That's what I'd wanna say.

So that's what I wonder when I finish readin' a book, Friends.  How it turns out after "The End."  Because "The End" is never really the end.  Ever.

Hey.  I'll be seein' ya tomorrow.  I love ya lots, Big People!  Muah!

Why I Talk About The Weather So Very Much

Small-talk gives me an emotional base-line on the person I'm visiting with!

Hiya, Friends!  I sure hope you're havin' a great weekend.  The weather's bein' good to us.  It's been a complete turn-around from the way the weekends were treatin' us earlier this summer. 

Well, heck.  They were either cold or rainy for the whole month of June, now, weren't they?! 

What's that?

Why am I always talking about the weather?  Well, why not? First of all, weather fascinates me.  I can't get over the wonder of watchin' a day go from cloudy-n-rainy to bright-n-sunny, just like That.

The other reason I talk about the weather a lot is that it's just small-talk, and contrary to what some of you Big People think, Small Talk isn't a waste of time or phony.  It's a way for me to get an emotional baseline on whomever I'm speaking with. 

You see, weather's something that most people don't get too excited about.  While we're hob-nobbin' on the subject of the clouds, I get to see if my talkin' partner runs angry, or sad, or neutral usually.  That way, when we get to talkin' about the really important stuff like which is better, the green marker or the yellow crayon, I can gauge how the person really feels about the conversation, based on how their words and mannerisms have changed, compared to our original start-versation about the weather.  How about that?!

Well, because I'm still kinda new around here, you know.  I'm still learnin'.  So yes, everything IS kind of a social experiment for me.  It should be for you, too, Big People.  There's always something new to learn.

Something that shouldn't be news to you, though, is that I love ya lots.  And I'll be seein' ya again, tomorrow!

Muah!

Five...

Hiya, Santa!  See you in five months!

Hiya, Friends!  Happy Summery Saturday to you!

I'm not sure if you noticed what day it is or not, but I am contractually obligated to bring it to your attention that it is now the Twenty-Fifth of the month, and therefore, it's time for me to tell you that there are five months left until Christmas.

What can you do to prepare for this inevitability?  Well, Friends, get your Wish Lists updated with a list of things you'd like other people to purchase or make for you.  People aren't always going to stick to your list, but at least you put it out there and give 'em an idea of what you'd like.

On the flip-side, now's a good time to start savin' your pennies so you can buy the things your lucky gift recipients would like to have.  Obviously, if they want fancy, extravagant things, you're not gonna get 'em that... unless your pennies you're savin' are a lot bigger'n' mine!  If that's so, rock on, you fabulous fairy godmother, you!

Just remember, even five months away from Christmas, the most important thing to know, whether you're on the givin' end or the receivin' end of a present, is "It's the thought that counts." 

So when I hand you a box with a painted rock in it, just smile big like it's that Maserati you have on your Christmas list.  Mmmmkay?

I love ya just the same, Big People!  Muah!