When I go home in August, Sophie may or may not remember me. Kind of like Brianna, my flower girl at my wedding. When she was born, I was 20 years old and was home from college. I babysat her every day of the summer and had such a great time being around her.
I have had great luck this summer with finding very ripe and very cheap red cherries.
I recently had rainer cherries for the first time and was surprised how good they were despite their unorthodox color (compared to the red cherries I’m used to eating).
New Hampshire fruits of the summer that I loved to eat the most were blueberries by the handful from one of the seven bushes in the backyard of my house growing up. I was able to teach Sophie how to locate the berries on the bush and to avoid the leaves. Sunday mornings, my mom would walk outside with a measuring cup and pick what she needed to make blueberry muffins.
I can also remember my mom eating red raspberries in cream with sugar (like it was cereal). She said that if you were a very wealthy person, you ate that every morning. There were wild blackberry bushes in our backyard toward the woods and by our mailbox (before the post office moved in next door). You could eat them right off the bush they were that perfect.
Strawberries are another favorite of mine. We would cut them up, dip them in sour cream and then in brown sugar. So good! My parents had them for dessert at a restaurant one time and they have been eating strawberries like that ever since.
I don’t know what it will be like to see Grampa after all these years. Last time I saw him was at Grammy’s funeral years ago. He turned 90 last September and is living in the nursing home where she spent the last years of her life. I never had a connection with him like I did with Grammy.
Whenever I came to to visit their house, I would hug and kiss them both, but would sit in the recliner next to Grammy. She would mute the TV and we would talk about things that you wouldn’t believe. Stuff that she genuinely liked to listen to me talk about. I did not tell her things to get her opinion, just to have an outlet and she was such a great listener.
In 6 weeks, I will be taking a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Manchester.
Probably have a couple hours layover in a U.S. city along the way.
I will be tired from trying (and failing) to get sleep on the plane.
I will be smelly from walking around multiple airports over a span of 12 hours in the same clothes.
I will be restless in an aisle seat, waiting for my planes to take off and land.
I will be anxious in the stuffy shared air as my fellow passengers and I tap our fingers and our feet in anticipation.
We will politely push and shove each other out of our way like cattle out of a cage.
This year I love the World Cup for one main reason: Ryan wakes up early to watch the games and takes Cali pee. I take Cali out every morning before I leave for work; I also take her out on Saturday & Sunday and then go back to bed. This must be a sight to my neighbors as I throw on slippers and a hooded sweatshirt and shuffle outside with eyes closed to the nearest patch of ivy.
Ryan’s sole responsibility in regards to taking the dog out, is to make sure she goes pee before we all go to bed, and the later the better! If she pees super late at night, the odds of her sleeping in the next morning and not stepping on your stomach and licking your face at 7:00am are very good.
I am a huge radio station surfer in the mornings on my drive to work. I am not a big fan of talk on morning stations especially when stupid listeners call in to bitch about their personal problems in search of advice from other listeners that are in reality, STRANGERS! I mean, come on people, don’t you have a friend or mother you could ask advice from??? Anyway, it’s a huge pet peeve of mine so when the music stops and the talk starts, I surf.
DISCLAIMER: The information in this blog post may not be suitable for my freak friends. Please, Joyce and Tanya, proceed reading at your own risk.
Take this evil feeling
And that disgusting look
Right. Off. Your. Face.
Bleach tie-dyed wishes
Wash them from his brain
You can not fake
This polish
This paint
Or make it want to glitter
Cuticles will not recede
Ratty hangnails pull and puff
Legs: no shave
Brows: no wax
Popping knuckles, dislocated
Joints cannot bend
Take out the trash
Take your medication
Your vitamins
Your turn
Your chance
Make a decision
To chance
To change
To jelly rolls
Gliding over recyclable
Lines
Words
Rhymes cluttered
Over creamy, spiral-bound pages
Copyright © 2010 N.E. Tasker
Ryan will be so proud. I just watched the first match (South Africa v. Mexico) online. Actually, I read it online and watched hi-lights when ESPN.com posted them 30 seconds after they happened.
The way I see it, I have to find some kind of peace with soccer because it is such a big part of Ryan’s life. He is on two soccer teams, one indoor and one outdoor, and he has been hanging out socially with his soccer buddies more and more in the past few months. I have even tagged along when I know 100% that I won’t be the only female attending.
My friend at work (let’s call her Joyce) is just in love with the vampire Edward from the Twilight series. She has gone ga-ga over the books and the movies and is bouncing off the walls in anticipation of Eclipse, which opens June 30. Below is Joyce’s boyfriend, Edward:
She has tried to get me to read the books since 2008 when the first Twilight movie came out. Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good vampire story. My two favorite TV shows are True Blood (HBO) and Vampire Diaries (The CW). I also started reading a series of books about The Black Dagger Brotherhood.
As you may already know, I LOVE The Bachelorette / Bachelor series. It is one of my guilty pleasures in reality TV and I tivo every single episode. This season of The Bachelorette with Ali does not overlap any of my other Monday night shows so I get to watch it live and I love it! I got my friend at work to watch it as well so that I have someone to talk to about it on Tuesdays.
I counted three squirrel’s dead bodies on my way to work this morning. The first in the intersection outside my house; the second on the left side of the fast lane on the 101 heading South; the third in the middle of a back-road in Encino. I am writing this to all of you to make you aware of these Squirrely Suicides that have been increasing in frequency over the past few weeks.
All of these unfortunate deaths came to my attention while I was out on my usual week-day morning run with Cali in early May. There we were, trotting along and in the distance in the middle of the street, I saw a squirrel hunched over eating something. It was only seconds later when I saw two cars speeding down the street, quickly closing the distance between car and squirrel. Cali and I were both looking at the squirrel as we got closer, but the cars got there first and before I could shout out to warn the creature that its death was swiftly approaching – the squirrel looked at the car and – SQUISH.
