Blogging success stories and why my upper lip is swollen...

Has it really been seven months since my stubby little fingers have hit the blogging keyboard? Yep. It has.

It's not that I don't enjoy blogging and getting things off my chest. Ooh! I wonder if I could blog and get things off my hips...like 15 pounds for instance! Sorry. I digress. Life has been busy with working, not working and fretting about when my erratic work with the Census Bureau will pick up again, looking for and finding a new job that doesn't give unwanted vacations, has sick and vacation pay, paid holidays and health benefits, as well as taking care of my Mom's needs, being on a massive learning curve with my new job and hoping that my brain can keep up--it's huffing and puffing but still breathing, and just doing the general tasks of living a life that sometimes feels like a bad game of bumper cars!

I am grateful for my new job and the workout my brain is getting. I thought it had left on vacation, but it appears that I was wrong. It was just taking a rather long nap and not responding to my cries for "help!" Now that it's mostly awake and doing a proper job of thinking, I'm feeling much better about life. I still forget names occasionally or words I haven't used for a while (my "a while" is about 15 minutes currently). I spend too much time berating myself because I'm not the sharpest tool in the workshop, but at least I don't harbor many grudges anymore. Who can harbor grudges when memory is an issue... Guess that's a positive for all my friends and family. You can tell me all your most hidden and treacherous secrets, and I not only can swear I won't tell anyone, but also can assure you that I won't be able to, under any circumstances including torture and threats of death, repeat them, unless, of course, the interrogators capture me within 15 minutes of your telling me.

Speaking of circumstantial, I saw the movie, "Julie & Julia" recently. Don't go to this movie hungry unless you enjoy drooling and gnawing on the arm rest or seat back of your theater chair. This is a foodie's delight of a movie. The reason I bring this film to your attention is not to make you slobber on your keyboard, shorting it out and risking possible electrocution and certain replacement of said computer component, but it is to ponder how Julie's blog became so popular, so quickly. She was blogging back in the day when there weren't many blogs available, before Facebooking and Twittering were all the rage. Guess the potential readers must have smelled the Boeuf Borgignon or other tantalizing recipes "cooking". Yum! I still don't understand how she produced all those magnificent dishes in her tiny kitchen with no room for anything on a countertop and a stove that made an "Easy Bake Oven" look like a commercial range in comparison. I had hopes of having my blog hit the reader waves with a splash. Maybe I'll add some scent-o-rama features to see if that helps. Of course, the downside to that is I will always be hungry whilst typing and that will send me to the kitchen where I'll eat and then feel sleepy and then put on extra pounds I don't need which will prevent me from typing on my keyboard because my stomach will protrude over the top of it and that will be the end of my blogging days! Whew! What a scenario. Maybe there's a film in all of this. I could add a handsome vampire or two to my blog and we'd all have a bloody good time, except all the red meat dishes would have to be served raw...and quickly....

But, alas, I can't figure out how to add smells to my blog to invite new readers in, and someone has already successfully written about the vampirish element, so I guess I'll just continue to write from time to time about the everyday events in my so-called life, which brings me to my swollen upper lip. It (my lip) currently resembles a bad Botox injection on an aging actress. I didn't have to visit the doctor or pay lots of money for mine. I just tried to pick up a box on the upper shelf of a closet only to discover, mouth-first, that there was a hidden, hard, heavy object resting on top of the box. Hard object attacked upper lip (without provocation mind you), and voila, I'm every actress over 40's vision of "youthful" or food allergic reactive. My lip looks pouty and distorted. The more I look at it, the more I realize that I could win the "Imitate the Guppy" contest at the local pet store. Then I wonder why anyone would purposefully do this to get "the puffy-lipped" look, unless, of course, you are a flat-lipped fishy in a tank filled with puffy-lipped mates who cannot tolerate differences....

Who needs "smell-o-blogging" when you have exciting stories like this to write? Beware! Any smart-aleck answerers of this question will find themselves with a fat lip, and will be sent to bed without supper--Julie's, Julia's or mine.

The mothership returns...

For all my millions of fans, well, okay couple of fans, I've been absent. I was abducted by aliens, turned into a cranky old person and returned to the earth with less hair, a softer, wider middle section and I can now do a mean imitation of a weeble (weebles wobble but they don't fall down--well those of us who live where it snows and gets icy might be exceptions to that rule).

I made it through Christmas and New Year's without mishap. I made it through a couple of flurry days, but today we actually had some snow--only about 1-2"--but enough to make walking an interesting and dicey event. I took my Mom to a dental appointment early this morning, came home and decided that I am much safer inside the house than out (and, who knows, the mothership might be lurking out there waiting to pick me up again and take more of my wispy hair and gracious manners away--okay, my manners aren't that gracious, but neither are yours if you're pointing that out to me!). I was actually working most of the day--there shall be no holidays for the wicked and the hairless cranky! And now I've fulfilled my every obligation and am planning on having a yummy dinner and some couch time--something the creatures on the mothership don't understand or approve.

Tomorrow I'll have to slip into something appropriate, then I'll have to venture out onto the slippery sidewalk to get into my car and then drive on the slippery roads to get to work. I guess all this slipperiness is really appropriate since my mind has been thinking slippery thoughts for quite some time now. Speaking of which, my stomach is telling my mind that it had better force my being into the kitchen and slip it something good to eat. Then I'll slip onto the sofa, slip a diet drink and watch some TV--always a slippery activity. I think I'm done with all this silly, slippery speaking, so I'll just slip off to take care of din-din and a little R&R.

Perhaps the mothership will come get me and restore at least some of the brain that I misplaced during the security check post-boarding....excuse me. My slip is showing.