I'm baking Mom's birthday cake. It smells awesome and it's making me hungry!
So, thank you to everyone who was very clever and sweet and gave me exactly what I wanted in my Xmas stocking...(seriously,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moonphased, I would LOVE a Celestial Brush because I'd just run around painting sunny skies and "blooming" everything in sight! Everything is cold and grey here, now.). The funniest, though, came from my brother John, who gave me "eye-safe perfume".
So, thank you to everyone who was very clever and sweet and gave me exactly what I wanted in my Xmas stocking...(seriously,
moonphased, I would LOVE a Celestial Brush because I'd just run around painting sunny skies and "blooming" everything in sight! Everything is cold and grey here, now.). The funniest, though, came from my brother John, who gave me "eye-safe perfume".See, when we were kids he was a little booger who lived to torment his sisters. One rainy day (there was always a direct correlation between boredom and the amount of monkey-business that John got up to) he had driven my little sister Nancy and I into our bedroom with his antics. He stood outside the door , (a thick old-fashioned giant wooden door with a big old fashioned keyhole running right through it...there was a skeleton key that locked all the bedroom doors, but who knew where that was? I just had to prop a chair against the knob to keep John out), and taunted us. "You smell! My sisters stink!"
Well, those are fighting words to a young girl (I think I must have been 9 or 10 at the time). Of course I cared about how I smelled! And fortunately I had a bottle of "Love's Baby Soft" at hand (cheapo 1970's little kid version of Chanel no.5), so I grabbed it and said "Put your nose up to the keyhole and see how bad we smell!" , and sprayed the Love's Baby Soft into the keyhole. I'm thinking to myself that he'll get a snootfull of good-smelling stuff and that'll show him!
But from the other side of the door come these howls and shrieks of agony. What I didn't know (but should have guessed) was that instead of putting his nose the the keyhole, John put his eye to the keyhole...and I'd sprayed a ton of cheap perfume right into it! Oh holy crap, what a noise he made! So he runs bellowing down the stairs to find Mom or Dad and tell 'em what happened and I'm running right after him yelling too "That's what you get for!" (it was our favorite line of defense). Of course I got in trouble, but John learned never to corner a girl with her perfume at hand (an important life-lesson...we're dangerous!). Also he had to spend the rest of the day smelling like "Love's Baby Soft", which I'm sure was no fun for a 6 year old tough guy.
I'm pretty sure he's never forgiven me. ;-) But that's okay because I think he's ONE man who knows the absolute importance of following a woman's advice exactly. Or y'know, you might just get maced with kiddie perfume.
Well, those are fighting words to a young girl (I think I must have been 9 or 10 at the time). Of course I cared about how I smelled! And fortunately I had a bottle of "Love's Baby Soft" at hand (cheapo 1970's little kid version of Chanel no.5), so I grabbed it and said "Put your nose up to the keyhole and see how bad we smell!" , and sprayed the Love's Baby Soft into the keyhole. I'm thinking to myself that he'll get a snootfull of good-smelling stuff and that'll show him!
But from the other side of the door come these howls and shrieks of agony. What I didn't know (but should have guessed) was that instead of putting his nose the the keyhole, John put his eye to the keyhole...and I'd sprayed a ton of cheap perfume right into it! Oh holy crap, what a noise he made! So he runs bellowing down the stairs to find Mom or Dad and tell 'em what happened and I'm running right after him yelling too "That's what you get for!" (it was our favorite line of defense). Of course I got in trouble, but John learned never to corner a girl with her perfume at hand (an important life-lesson...we're dangerous!). Also he had to spend the rest of the day smelling like "Love's Baby Soft", which I'm sure was no fun for a 6 year old tough guy.
I'm pretty sure he's never forgiven me. ;-) But that's okay because I think he's ONE man who knows the absolute importance of following a woman's advice exactly. Or y'know, you might just get maced with kiddie perfume.
In other news, I'm a bit blue because yesterday my beloved old Volvo went the way of the Dodo. That car was a tank and it just kept running...right up until last week when it finally stopped. It was 17 years old and it had almost 300,000 miles on it and it was an awesome old car. What makes me saddest, though, was that it was a gift from my Dad. He LOVED that car and when the Mazda I'd been driving started to go all old and funny on me, he gifted me with the Volvo (at the time it was 8 or 9 years old but y'know, Volvos aren't like other cars. They last forever). He said "I don't know what kind of favor I'm doing you, here, because this thing is costing me a fortune to repair", but it turned out his mechanic was just a barracuda who was taking advantage of Dad's penchant for fixing every little creak that the car made. I drove it pretty much trouble-free for all these years. Dad died in '01, but in his old car I felt like a little piece of him was still with me.
Now the old Volvo is gone too and I'm sad. When someone you love dies there's that awful period where you feel the loss so keenly and of course that's terrible. What no one talks about are the little painful, daily reminders that show you in a thousand ways how that person has been removed from your life. Lance Armstrong wins the Tour De France again and Dad's not there to enjoy it. John buys a mansion and Dad didn't get to see that. Cirque Du Soliel buys one of my designs and I can't call Dad up and tell him. Those stretch out over the years...little events and happenings that slowly erase the evidence of that person, bit by bit, until all you have is pictures and memories. It's like watching Dad disappear slowly and it hurts. The effect is cumulative. I felt like a part of him got towed away to the dump yesterday and my heart is just a bit more broken today.
This probably doesn't make sense to anyone who hasn't lost someone close to them. *shrug* The wonderful and terrible thing about life is that we all get our chance to learn these lessons eventually.
Now the old Volvo is gone too and I'm sad. When someone you love dies there's that awful period where you feel the loss so keenly and of course that's terrible. What no one talks about are the little painful, daily reminders that show you in a thousand ways how that person has been removed from your life. Lance Armstrong wins the Tour De France again and Dad's not there to enjoy it. John buys a mansion and Dad didn't get to see that. Cirque Du Soliel buys one of my designs and I can't call Dad up and tell him. Those stretch out over the years...little events and happenings that slowly erase the evidence of that person, bit by bit, until all you have is pictures and memories. It's like watching Dad disappear slowly and it hurts. The effect is cumulative. I felt like a part of him got towed away to the dump yesterday and my heart is just a bit more broken today.
This probably doesn't make sense to anyone who hasn't lost someone close to them. *shrug* The wonderful and terrible thing about life is that we all get our chance to learn these lessons eventually.
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