I've got a bowl of organic hamburger in the fridge with onion soup, Worcestershire and A1 mixed in. It's sitting in there absorbing all the flavors and as soon as Robert gets back from his tramp in the woods with the kids he will make patties out of it and slap them on the grill. I've also got chips and all the fixings to pile on the burgers.

Who's coming over for dinner?

Wow, 11 days without a word. That may, quite possibly, be a new record.

Yea, verily doth I sucketh.

Tomorrow is the third birthday of my darling son. We plan to open presents in the morning and do lunch at Applebee's (his choice) in the afternoon. Around 4:00 I'm taking off, bound for Tulsa, to see 1964 (yes, again). To those who have no children, or only one, this probably sounds horrible. To that I say: just wait until you have two (or more). [/evil laugh]

Seriously, though, we weren't going to have a party for him, anyway. He's a bit young to do the preschool-friend-party thing and we only have Robert's dad and brother here for family. In my book four people doesn't constitute a party. So the things that we are doing tomorrow are the exact things we'd have been doing if I had no plans to go anywhere. I will just be leaving at 4:00 instead of putting him to bed at 8:00.

I'm going to be staying the night up there while I'm at it. The show probably won't be over until 10:00 and then it's a two-hour drive home. Granted, I am never in bed before midnight, anyway -- but there's a vast difference between sitting on your couch till midnight and having to drive over pitch-dark country highways during that same time period. I came home after last year's 8:00 concert up there and it was a tough drive because I really was tired. Therefore I decided to make a mommy trip of it. Saturday I will probably go to the movies and will definitely go shopping at Super Target. Mmm.....Super Target.....*drool*

Eh...what was I saying?

Oh yes, the birthday. I don't think we'll be doing a cake. I'm pretty sure they give a free dessert to birthday kids at Applebee's, and it has a candle in it, so that will suffice. We have enough junk in the house right now, as it is, and Robert and I are supposed to start back to the weight loss thing on Monday, anyhow. I'm really looking forward to giving him his gifts. I was clueless about what to get him; we have both seen all the toys at Walmart a million times and nothing there seemed to catch his interest (or mine, either). So I went up to Toys R' Us and found a bunch of great things that I think he will genuinely enjoy. Also I think Madalyn will like the items, which is a big plus as she's kind of his only option for someone to play with.

By the way, our schedule for the rest of the summer is looking pretty booked. (Local people: this is not to be taken to mean I am unavailable for drinks, movies, cow tipping or carousing of other sorts. Call me. I mean it. I'm bored.)

This Sunday we are going down to Lake Texoma to spend the night and visit with family friends.

Madalyn has day camp July 10-14.

This one is super-cool: my best friend will be here from California from July 10th through the 26th! Well, not here. She will be in Tulsa for job training. I plan to spend time with her up there during the week then bring her down here for the weekends.

Then we will be heading to California somewhere around the 25th of July and be there until approximately August 18th -- a mere few days before school starts again. This summer is just flying by. I can't believe it.

There we are -- not the most interesting of updates but it needed to be done. It is now 12:12 a.m. and I have three bags of gifts to wrap (read: stuff haphazardly into gift bags) so I must call this good and get my butt in gear.

Washing and detailing my car. For an hour-and-a-half. You name it; I cleaned it. It was hard work but the van looks fab.

On the way home (at 11 p.m.) I stopped at the donut shop and got a couple pigs in a blanket (with cheesy sausages, no less).

The excitement never stops when you're an old, married woman with children!

Gmail has RSS feeds at the top of the page now, and when you open your spam folder, to be silly, they have Spam recipes along the top. I was clearing out my spam folder just now and noticed one that begins such:

Vineyard Spam Salad

Combine grapes, Spam, peapods and onions in large bowl.....

I was afraid to click on it and see what else was included in the recipe. In my humble opinion, anything that starts out with the words "combine grapes and Spam" goes completely against the laws of nature. That is messing with forces that ought not to be messed with. I am not sure what all will be involved when the apocalypse happens but I'm willing to wager Spam will figure into it quite heavily.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: an update.

*I am so, so tired of summer. I hate being hot. I hate going to get in the car when it's been sitting outside and burning my hand on the five-thousand-degree door handle. I hate not wanting to be outside for any more time than is strictly necessary to get from Point A to Point B. I hate having to show my fat legs because it's too hot to wear long pants all the time. And I really, really hate sweating. Fall cannot get here fast enough, in my opinion. I know lots of people love summer but I think it's for the birds. Give me a nice, cool, breezy day where I can spend a few hours outside without breaking a sweat and I'm a happy camper. Bonus if it's cool enough that I can be wearing long sleeves the entire time and still not get overheated.

I am so incredibly sick of the same old food. The only decent restaurant in this town is an Italian place whose food is so rich I can only stand it a couple times a month, max. I mean, you know, it's not like I'm wasting away to nothing. It's probably a good thing we don't have any of my favorites here because I obviously don't miss a meal, as it is. I certainly don't need any more temptation to stuff my face more than I already do.

Then again, I find that if I have a certain type of food readily available I will obsess over it for a little while and then lose interest; I suppose because it's no longer rare and elusive. Case in point: Jack-in-the-Box and Carl's Jr. I almost never ate at either place when I lived in California and had one five minutes from my house. But when I moved to Oklahoma and there was nary a one to be found in the entire state I longed for it. Now we have both establishments here in town and, once again, I almost never visit either one of them. So, perhaps, the same would hold true if we had, say, an IHOP here. Maybe I'd gorge myself on pancakes for a few weeks and then it would lose its luster.

The bottom line, however, is that I am sick unto death of the food choices available to me here.

I do get a brief reprieve when I head to California next week. There is all manner of things to eat there that you can't get in Oklahoma. Like a decent sandwich, for one. I've looked high and low and the only truly satisfactory sandwich I can find in this state is at Panera Bread. But even those pale in comparison to the ones I can get back home. My menu when I'm home is, like my palate, extremely simple and unsophisticated. It consists mostly of deli sandwiches with trips to Denny's sprinkled liberally in between. (What can I say? I love a good grilled cheese and fries and Denny's serves them up 24 hours a day. Not to mention we don't have one here so that automatically places it a few notches higher on the list than where it has any right to be.)

Well, golly....see what happens when I write before I've had dinner? Off to wait for the pizza man now....

Dude, we were cooking this full-on turkey dinner? And it was about 20 minutes away from being done? And our lights? They totally went out. We were having a storm and it blew the power for the entire neighborhood. It was off for 2.5 hours, y'all. It just came back on about 9:45. I had already given up on the kids eating the dinner and had run to McDonald's and gotten them something. So now it's just me and Robert and we're about to dig in.

Well, I mean, what were we supposed to do? We had an almost-cooked turkey, cooked potatoes that just needed to be mashed, water for the dressing had butter in it and was boiling.....and neither of us have eaten since lunch. So, to heck with society's narrow-minded time limitations. We're about to have Thanksgiving in June.....at 10 p.m.

I'm either a vampire or I'm mental. It's 1 a.m. and I have no desire to go to bed. I'm a little tired but no more so than I would be during the late-afternoon slump that most people go through. Since I'm fairly certain I have a soul and my house is not littered with the carcasses of animals drained of their life blood, I'm leaning toward the mental thing. I'm almost sure I'd know if I was undead. Though I have to say I can't remember the last time I looked at myself in a mirror. And garlic makes my IBS act up. Do vampires have spastic colons?

Scene: My bedroom. Time: 9:30 a.m.

According to the super-cool countdown clock on Zoot's blog there are just 73 days left until the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

I suppose I could go the boring route, like my mom, and pre-order it online. It would show up in my mailbox the day of release. But, no, I have a hankering to go to a midnight release party. To really do it up properly I would have to go spend the night in Oklahoma City, where they have Borders. I actually have an appointment up there on the 14th but I think I will call tomorrow and find out if there's any way of bumping it to the 15th. Then I could have my appointment, stay over and go to the release party that night.

This would be my first time at such an event, though I've been hearing about them since Book 3 was released. I did go out at midnight to get the last book -- hugely pregnant, I might add, as it was just two days before John-Zachary was born -- but that was only to the local Walmart, which is open 24 hours. There were a lot of other people there buying it but no parties.

Last time it took me I-don't-know-how-many months to finish the book. As I said, it was purchased two days before my workload increased from one child to two, and then number two turned out to be excessively needy so I didn't have a whole lot of free time on my hands at the very start. (Still don't, come to think of it, but I can at least grab a few pages here and there. I'm not saying I'm not in the can when I do it. You do what you've gotta do.)

Anyway, I'm betting, this time, I will put it away in a week or less. Or...maybe not. It is with trepidation that I look forward to the release of this book. I am, naturally, dying to find out what happens next. And yet when this book comes out that means there will only be one more left. I am way too emotionally attached to these people to be ready to let them go. Which is kind of pathetic....but it's me. That's how I am about books that I really, really love. I still mourn for the unwritten sequels of favorites that were published 70 years ago. So it's a big thing for me that, when I finish The Half-Blood Prince, it will mean I'm just that much closer to reading what will allegedly be the final Harry Potter story. And that? I am just not ready to face.

This is a story about the dumbest thing I ever did.

It's not dumb because of what happened as a result of my doing it. Actually, it all turned out just fine. But it's the potential -- of what could have happened; the fact that I could have ended up as nothing more than a picture and a story on the ten o'clock news -- it's that potential that makes this, hands-down, the stupidest decision I ever made.

I am sitting here wondering what brought anyone who happens to be reading this to the blogosphere. Am I the only person who can't remember how I got started? I remember where I got started but I don't remember how I got there.

The first journal I ever read was Hashai. I was hooked from day one and started blog-surfing from there. So I can do a Six Degrees of Separation from Anna Beth sort of thing with every link on my blogroll, as each and every one was discovered through my original forays through her blogroll.

But as for what led me to that particular blog -- or any blog, for that matter? I simply cannot recall. I knew absolutely nothing about the world of personal blogging, so it's not that I was doing a search for ones to read. I must've stumbled upon it while looking for something entirely unrelated. I really wish I remembered! Alas, however, I am pathetic and old.