Keely, over at Unmom, does this thing.
You post Random Thoughts on Tuesday. That’s it. Try it – it’s addicting. Then link back to Unmom and see what other people are randomly thinking and typing about.
Every Tuesday, I think to myself, “This week I’m going to finally get around to participating (not really, I really don’t think the word “participating”)
OK. Start over. Every Tuesday I daydream about writing something really epically random for the Random Tuesday blog. And every Tuesday, I try to figure out what in the heck I’m going to write about. Does anyone else have this problem? Or do all of y’all just walk around thinking random stuff all day, willy nilly?
Alright, so there’s my confession. I am guilty of being random-thinking challenged.
But today will be different. I will blog about some random stuff if it kills me. I’ve been reading advice on how to make your blog more interesting over at Copyblogger, and one of the big things they recommend is making a list. Apparently, people like to have stuff served to them in little bite-like bullets. So I will attempt to give you ten other random things that I feel guilty about.
What? I’m southern. Feeling guilty is what I do.
1. Even though it is a huge waste of time – I like to do crypto-quotes and play Farmville. Anybody else?
2. I really like going into stores that have sample bottles of hand lotion, that let me pump out a bit on my hands. And yes, I realize that sounds kind of nasty. This is what happens when I try to do random.
3. I’m related to Elvis. Yes, “The” Elvis. He was my father’s cousin’s step brother. Or, he was my step second cousin. Or, he was my Great Uncle’s wife’s stepson. OK, got that?
4. I really want to go somewhere warm this week. Like Tahiti, or Cancun, or Silver Springs.
5. I love reading Sophie Kinsella books. It’s a pleasure as sinful and guilty as eating the whole top layer of a box of Whitman’s Chocolates all by yourself.
6. My first impressions about people are sometimes wrong. Very wrong. I would tell you all about this, but I can’t quite bring myself to blog about really personal topics. I don’t want to be that crazy old woman at the family dinners wearing the tee shirt that states, “Be Careful Or You’ll End Up In My Blog.”
7. I’m obsessive about checking my WordPress stats. Several times a day, OK? It’s a little game I have with myself – to see if there is ever a day that goes by that I don’t get a hit from someone searching for “sexy mature feet,” or “red toes,” or “foot fetish.” I may go down in history as being The Woman With The Sexy Mature Feet, y’all.
8. My husband is having a mid-life crisis. He admits it. He wants to buy a new car – a red Corvette. I suppose that’s better than wanting a new wife. Maybe if I spent less time playing Farmville and checking my toe stats…?
9. I broke up with my hairdresser. He spent too much time wandering around the shop talking about his gay boyfriend, while I languished under the frosting cap, looking like a gargoyle looking my watch. And I haven’t even told him that he’s been replaced. He’s still asking my mother where I am, and she won’t tell him either.
10. Those are my feet in the photo. Yes, I am shamelessly trying to boost my blog stats. I might even start a whole blog about my feet. Just to get the stats.
What about y’all. What do you feel guilty about today?
This week’s photo challenge on I heart Faces is We Heart Kisses. In honor of Valentine’s Day, they want to see some kissing. It can between a newly married couple, between two children or even a pet. The possibilities are endless, but the photo must have a face.
These are three of my favorite faces. My son, Kyle, his wife, Erika, and my tiny new grandson, Kole. Kole is our miracle baby. After three years of trying, and finally getting pregnant, Kyle and Erika were blessed with this little guy, six weeks early, on, appropriately, Thanksgiving Day. He was in the infant neonatal unit for ten days and weighed just under five pounds when he came home.
For someone so small, he has had a mighty effect on all of our hearts.
I Heart Faces is a photography sharing forum that focuses on the art of capturing faces and their various emotions. Each week, people from across the world enter their favorite face photos.
Click on the picture for a better view and click the button to check out lots of other faces, or to enter a photo of your own!
This week’s photo challenge on I heart Faces is My Story in Photos: Places I Love. They are lifting the requirement to see faces this week – they want us to post photos of the most romantic places we’ve been!
I Heart Faces is a photography sharing forum that focuses on the art of capturing faces and their various emotions. Each week, people from across the world enter their favorite face photos.
Click on the picture for a better view and click the button to check out lots of other faces, or to enter a photo of your own!
If you are one of the large group of my enthusiastic fans five people who occasionally read my blog, then you must already know that my husband took me on my first cruise for my 50th birthday. We barely made it onto the ship, and you can read all about that ordeal here. But it was worth every minute of aggravation we went through to get there, as these photos will attest.
We cruised out of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida on Royal Caribbean’s Jewel of the Sea. It was a five day cruise to the Western Caribbean. The first port of call was Key West, a romantic place I had always wanted to visit!
Key West has a laid, back, quirky, off beat appeal. The homes are quaint, colorful, packed with personality and have some of the most gorgeous, tropical flowers and trees around them that I’ve ever seen.
This “market” is unlike anything you will find anywhere else. This photo is quintessentially Key West!
A walk down Duval Street lived up to it’s reputation of oddities, variety and a 24 hour party atmosphere. We met some characters, that’s for sure!
Yes, there really are chickens running all over the place in Key West!
Our next port of call was Cozumel. We played golf at the Cozumel Country Club. It was overrun with all kinds of critters. We saw snakes, iguanas, alligators and this large crab was determined to keep me from hitting my ball!
The next stop was Playa Del Carmen. We took a cab to a eco-water park called Xel Ha. It was all inclusive food and drinks, as much as you wanted, all day. This lagoon was full of tropical fish and they offered snorkeling gear, kayaks and rafts for use.
There were chairs and hammocks set up all over the park, walking trails, several wonderful restaurants and bars and even a place to swim with dolphins (for an extra fee.)
We floated down this authentic lazy river on a double raft. It would have been very romantic, but we were having to paddle the whole time against the waves to keep from crashing into the rocks along the shores.
Part of the park had access to the beach and the ocean. This was my favorite photo from the whole cruise. It was paradise.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the color of this water.
Even the rocks were unbelievably beautiful.
As you can see, it was a great place to loll around in a hammock.
At the time, I had no idea this would become my header photo for a blog!
Our last stop on this cruise was Belize. We had to take a tender from the ship into the small port.
We went into the tropical forest in Belize to visit the majestic mayan ruins of Laminai, which means “submerged crocodile” in the Maya language. It’s also the third largest and possibly most interesting, archeological site in Belize.
Our tender boat, and the Jewel shared the water with these Belizean fishermen.
Since this post is for I Heart Faces, here are our smiling faces, just before going to a romantic dinner onboard our ship.
We loved getting away on this romantic cruise and I can’t wait to take another one!
This week’s Spin Cycle topic is Pet Peeves.
Whoopi Goldberg summed it up well, y’all. She said, “I don’t have pet peeves, I have whole kennels of irritation.”
There are a lot of things that people get peeved about. Getannoyed.com has a list too long to read. I read through about half of the list, found out that I agree with most of it, and that I am probably guilty of being somebody’s pet peeve, myself.
But I didn’t read the one thing that gets to me most of all; intrusive servers.
Maybe it’s just me, but when I go out to a restaurant, I’m there for two things, and two things only. To eat (obviously) and to enjoy the company of whoever I am with.
So, waitresses and waiters all over the world: Please try to understand this simple, obvious idea. I am not there to be entertained by you, become your new best friend, listen to your life story, share you with my husband, give you advise, help you do your job, be interviewed by you, be in awe of your cleavage, or your cute little behind or your too-tight, ultra short shorty pants or be astounded your vast wine knowledge.
When did all the rules change? Remember the good old days, when waiters were tall, silent men in white gloves and tuxedos? When serving you unobtrusively and silently was almost an art form? Nowadays, all we get are a bunch of half dressed, chatty twits.
So here are my ideas of what makes a good dining experience:
Don’t stoop down next to me to look over my shoulder and talk into my ear while I’m reading the menu. Not only does this invade my personal space, but it creeps me out.
Don’t lean over towards my husband suggestively, giving him a free peek at your practically falling-out-of-your-bra boobs. It you want a good tip, honey, quit acting like a slut and just take the damn order.
Don’t tell me your name, what you like on the menu, your favorite special, which wine you prefer, how long you’ve been working here, or how much I remind you of your mother because I DON’T CARE. I’m there to eat, not to get acquainted with you, no matter how nice a person you might be. Get it?
If we order an appetizer, don’t, for The Love of God, bring it with, or worse, after the entree. You forgot about it. I understand. Just deduct it from the bill and apologize. Thirty minutes after we’ve finished our meal and are ready to go is not the time to be presented with the long-forgotten bowl of French Onion Soup, OK?
Don’t interrupt us nine hundred times during our dinner conversation with stupid, annoying questions. It’s alright to cruise by, make eye contact, smile and murmur, “Everything OK?”
It is NOT OK to ask me, “Would you like more coffee?” ( Um, my cup is still untouched.)
“How is everything this evening?” (It would be just fine if you’d stop interrupting us.)
“Are you ready for your salad?” (Yes, just bring the damn food and quit asking so many questions.)
“How is everyone enjoying their meal?” (LEAVE US ALONE!)
“Are you having a good time?” (After being pestered to death? You’re kidding, right?)
“Can I get you more bread/wine/french fries/another napkin/anything else?” (If I needed something I would have told you the first five times you rudely interrupted my first chance all month to visit my mother.)
“How are you doing with that entree? Isn’t it wonderful?” (It would be wonderful if you’d march your little fanny back into the kitchen.)
The ONE time you need to ask a question (and usually don’t) is before you try and take my plate away, when I’ve still got food left on it. You’re really lucky I didn’t stab you with my fork, instead of shouting, “Hey! I’m not finished with that salad!”
But the question I hate most of all, is the dreaded, “So? How does it taste?” I hate this question so much that my husband has gotten into the habit of bribing telling the servers not to ask it, if they want to avoid witnessing a menopausal meltdown want to get a good tip. To me, “how does it taste?” is so…intimate, so personal.
It’s just rude, y’all. My hairdresser doesn’t ask me “How does it feel?” while she’s shampooing my hair. My bank teller doesn’t ask me “How does it smell?” when she hands me a crisp stack of new bills. It’s none of their business how my body is responding to stimuli and I’m not going to tell them either, if they ask. Which they won’t because, unlike dingbat servers like you, they know and respect the boundaries of human decency.
Why do you want to know anyway? What is the point of the question? Are you going to bring me another dinner if I say it tastes awful? I doubt it. Everyone knows that everyone has different ideas about what tastes good. What might be too salty, or spicy, to me, might taste great to my husband.
I think the reason you ask me “so how does it taste” is to appear to seem interested, and at the same time, avoid asking something helpful, such as, “can I bring you anything else?” I know this because of all the times I’ve had to finish chewing, swallow, smile through gritted teeth, say as politely as possible, “it tastes just fine, thanks” and then have to shout at your retreating backside, “BUT COULD I PLEASE HAVE SOME KETCHUP?”
And if you ask me, “How does it taste?” before I’ve even actually had a chance to taste it…well, you ain’t seen rude, sweetie, until you see the measly tip you’ll get from this emotionally over-wrought menopausal southern lady, and I ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie!
I know, I know. There are whole blogs out there devoted to the Pet Peeves of hard working servers. And I’m sure I’ve made the top of somebody’s list.
Want to find out what peeves somebody besides me? Check out the Spin Cycle at Spite’s Keeper.
May I present… “Mr. Adorable!”
My grandson, Kole, is already two months old. We had him for a little Grammie and Pops time last Saturday night. He hung out with us in The Man Room and watched TV, sat in his swing for a while, enjoyed a few delicious warm bottles prepared for him by his Pops, took turns snuggling with each of us, and had a nice bath in his new tub before his photo session Sunday morning.
This poor kid is going to think his grandma is a photo lens, y’all. But who can resist a face like this one?
I’ve been trying to participate in a photo forum on Thursdays. Brought to us by I Should Be Folding Laundry (me too, by the way) It’s called You Capture. Every week there is a new theme. This week’s was “FACES.” When I read, “Get up close and show us some cute, handsome, stubbly, soft-skinned, furry, adorable, beautiful faces! Even yours, if you’d like!”….well, I knew which face I wanted to share!
However, laundry must be getting folded over there today, because as of right now, there isn’t a new You Capture for this week. Oh well, hopefully she’ll get around to it.
Click on the link here to read about how to play along. Then do your best to visit the other participants’ sites – everyone loves the traffic, the comments and the feedback (not just you!)
I love my city, Wilmington, North Carolina. I love the sights, the sounds, the smells and the people. Wilmington is a diverse city, made up of all kinds of people. It is a college town, a thriving port, a retirement relocation for many folks of the Northern persuasion, home to a large film studio (and the location of too many productions to mention), an historic southern city with roots going back to the Civil War, a popular travel destination, a beach lover’s paradise and a golfer’s dream.
I especially like taking candid shots around town of our people. Truly “candid” street images strive to capture something unique and inherently interesting about the subjects. I hope I have succeeded with these.
I chose these photos for Sunday in My City, a photo forum that has folks posting pictures on Sunday of their cities. I thought Wilmington NC should be included.
To participate, visit Unknown Mami and link up! Let’s visit and travel the world together.
I think the thrill of taking candid shots of people on the street is never knowing what I will capture. Some photos that I think are going to be great, are actually quite mundane, and others that are almost unintentional turn out to be spectacular.
I was actually annoyed when I took this photo because this woman was “in the way” of the shot I was trying to get of the riverboat. Now I think she is the most interesting element in the photo.
I was focusing on the shadows on the walkway, and this couple just happened to kiss – right when I snapped the shot.
I was zeroing in on the Capt. J. N. Maffit on the side of the boat, and had no idea how interesting these people were going to look.
This woman never looked up from her task of cleaning a boat, so the shot I got was, I thought, going to be a disappointment. Now I love the mystery of not seeing her face.
I was taking a photo of an historic home, when she appeared out of no where! I have no idea what the feather boa was for, but she looked as though she enjoyed wearing it.
I wanted a photo of the colorful door on this bar, and a man on his cell phone would not move away from it. Much more interesting with him in, don’t y’all agree?
I thought these women were beautiful, eating sushi in a downtown cafe. I had no idea if they would even be visible in the photo, since I was shooting into the glass.
This woman’s bright, red hair caught my eye.
I admit I paid absolutely no attention to what these people were doing. I was simply shooting the brick street. In this shot, the people became the background.
If I see someone in an interesting outfit, I have to take their picture. Check out the stockings on the girl on the right!
This guy fascinated me. The shorts, the shoes AND the tatoos match.
Sometimes when you think you’re taking a candid shot, you get caught! This fellow was a good sport about it.
I was aiming for the graffiti on the wall, but it became just an interesting background when this guy intruded into my shot.
While looking through my lens at the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, an animated conversation got my attention. Everybody down here knows that Southern women can’t talk without using their hands. Here’s the proof!
As a Wilmington native, I am so proud to show off my hometown. I love it so much that I have another blog called Wilmington Daily Photo. It keeps me busy posting a new photo of the Wilmington area every day. I hope y’all will check it out and see for yourselves why I think this place is so spectacular.
This week’s Spin Cycle topic is Happiness.
“Dogs are obsessed with being happy”
–James Thurber
“I lie belly-up In the Sunshine, happier than
You will ever be.”
– Author Unknown
Thank God we have a dog, y’all. What else would we do with ourselves on an unexpectedly warm day in the middle of January, if we didn’t have this 105 pound pile of constantly shedding black hair rottweiler following us around with this look, which we call The Look, in her eyes:
…which obviously says, “Are you Freaking People EVER going to take me for a walk?”
It was crappy day, after all. Which means we had just worked four, twelve hour night shifts in a row, so we were feeling like, well, crap. Poor Hannah had spent all four nights curled up in her chair, alone. I figured after four nights of torment, the three of us would enjoy a little fresh air and sunshine. Plus, she was giving me The Look.
It’s so easy to make a dog happy, y’all. “Do you want to go for a ride in the truck?” gets this look of joy. You can’t see it in the picture, but she was actually trembling with joy.
And that makes me so happy, y’all.
Hannah has bad hips, so getting her into the back of our SUV is a bit of a project. But she is very patient with Dad, as he lifts her up. She does her part, of course, by flailing around like an octopus falling out of a tree.
“OK, I’m all in, let’s go! let’s go! let’s go! I’m ready to splatter your windows with slobber and bark at all the other cars!”
“I take back everything bad I said about you guys. I love you, Mom.”
So, without further ado, I give you Hannah’s Trip To The Beach…
“Dogs are our link to paradise.”
– Milan Kundera
“All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers is contained in the dog.”
—Franz Kafka
“The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.”
— Samuel Butler
“To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.”
–Aldous Huxley
“She is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are her life, her love, her leader. She will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of her heart.” –Author Unknown
“To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden,
where doing nothing was not boring – it was peace.”
– Milan Kundera
“In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn’t merely try to train him to be semihuman.The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.”
—Edward Hoagland
“If the are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went”
–Will Rogers
I hope y’all all got happy on this little virtual walk with Hannah. I’ll leave you with just one more thought…
“Today I sniffed
Many dogs’ behinds. I celebrate
By kissing your face.”
–Author Unknown
This week’s photo challenge on I Heart Faces is “Texture.” This photo of me was taken by my husband on our first sunrise visit to Wrightsville Beach. He and I aren’t ready to compete with the pros, but I liked the different textures in this photo, and thought it was a nice one to share with y’all.
I Heart Faces is a photography sharing forum that focuses on the art of capturing faces and their various emotions. Each week, people from across the world enter their favorite face photos.
Click on the picture for a better view and click the button to check out lots of other faces, or to enter a photo of your own!
My husband gets a little “irked” with me, as we say down here in the South, every time we are getting ready to go play a round of golf.
First, I have to have shoes to match my outfit. And a visor, naturally. I have to have nine thousand (or so) balls, because I have this uncanny ability to find the exact center of any body of water within shooting distance with my ball. I have to have my lipgloss in my pocket (because I’m Southern a girls gotta look good to play this game, y’all) and a magazine to read in the car on the way. I find it does absolutely nothing helps my game alot if I bone up on swing tips from Phil Nickelson in the Golf Digest before a round. A cooler with a few beers in it is another “must”, if only to ward off a deep depression and quit golf altogether to celebrate another successful round after the eighteenth hole.
And finally, I always insist on taking my camera. You never know what you might see out there! Why, a dern ole dragonfly might just decide to land on the end of your driver….
He was obviously posing for Macro Monday.
For Macro Monday, you take a close up picture that you think is blog-worthy, post it, and link back to Macro Monday so everyone can visit everyone! (That’s southeren-eese for leave each other comments, if you know what’s good for ya.)
We took advantage of the warm weather last week and went for a walk at Wrightsville Beach, NC. This is one of the 500 plus photos I managed to snap, while enjoying a Bloody Mary and trying to keep my rottweiler, Hannah, in check. She loves going to the beach, y’all.
I was looking through some of my favorite blogs today and found a new photo meme that is open Friday through Sunday. It’s called Weekend Reflections over at Newtown Area Photos. I immediately decided to enter this. I think the reflection of the little sandpiper in the water’s edge is stunning, don’t y’all? Click on the link to enjoy lots of other reflections.
Newtown Area Photos features a photo a day of the beautiful area around Newtown, PA. If you want to see more of my photographs of my beautiful hometown, Wilmington, NC, check out my other blog, Wilmington Daily Photo.
