Hello!

How are you!

I am fine!

But somewhat manic!

It’s just been one of those days. Family and work and errands and supper and church and deadlines and emails and last but not least, SO MUCH UNWATCHED TV ON THE DVR THAT IT MAKES ME ANXIOUS.

WHAT IF I NEVER CATCH UP?

I haven’t even watched the Rachel Zoe season finale yet. And I know it was, like, SO MAJOR. And I bet she LITERALLY DIED nine or maybe even twelve times. I also bet that there was some dress that didn’t get to her studio on time and it was A TOTAL NIGHTMARE.

Anyway, this has also been one of those days when I’ve had a bunch (“a bunch” being a very relative term) of ideas for blog posts I’d like to write, but do you know what? I’m not going to write them. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just that I’ll know that I’ll never get around to it. I’ll write a paragraph or two and get distracted by a football game, or I’ll write a sentence and decide that I need to go to Walgreens, or I’ll write three-quarters of it and decide that it’s garbage.

This is why there are currently – hold on. let me check. – EIGHTY THREE partial posts in my drafts folder.

Apparently I have some issues with finishing things.

Anyway, here’s a list of the stuff I thought about today. In no particular order, mind you. I’m just going to put the list out there so that I can get back to the important business of catching up on “Survivor” as well as the 16 unwatched episodes of “House Hunters” that are currently on my DVR.

Here we go:

1) There are no realistic married couples on TV (at least not on the shows that I watch) except for Eric and Tami Taylor on “Friday Night Lights.”

2) When I look at a church’s website and see that the pastor is featured more prominently than anything else, it makes me uneasy. And maybe a little judge-y. Which is another good reason not to write a post about it.

3) Today I bought a $25 Groupon for $55 of “hair services” at a local salon. It made me so happy that you would’ve thought that I’d won the lottery (however, if I had won the lottery, I’m guessing that THE BAPTISTS WOULD HAVE SOME ISSUES WITH ME).

4) I’m getting my hair cut Monday, and once again I’m filled with blind optimism that this haircut will be The One. It’s been three years since I’ve had a cut that I loved. I think it’s time.

5) I don’t understand how people learn to pair certain foods with certain wines. There was a whole episode of “Top Chef” about this very skill, and I kept thinking that if I were in that competition I’d serve my food and then ask people if they wanted sweet tea or diet Coke. Because as far as I can tell they’re good with everything. You may have picked up on the fact that I’m very sophisticated.

6) Tonight at church I heard a sweet woman telling a joke about her husband’s gift of discernment, and I wondered how many times a day people (okay. Baptists.) use spiritual gifts as a punchline. WE’RE SO WACKY.

7) “Like Incense” by Brooke Fraser Ligertwood is a gorgeous song. GORGEOUS. The second verse makes me teary-eyed. A chorus by Rich Mullins never hurts.

8) My sister-in-law and nephew got home from Uganda yesterday. They met all four of their Compassion kids, and I can’t wait to share some of their stories with you. A couple of nights ago I looked at my nephew’s pictures on Facebook and just bawled. The kids’ smiles were like pure sunshine.

9) My hoop earrings with multi-colored beads are hands-down the best accessory I have ever owned. Sometimes I think about what my life would be like without them, and it makes me sad. In a completely superficial way, of course.

All right. I’m all better now. Might even be able to sleep now that I’ve set the crazy free.

Thank you and by all means have a lovely Thursday,
Me

Last Thursday afternoon I stopped by the Walgreens to see if they had any Mentholatum. A few of y’all had commented and emailed to tell me that sometimes Walgreens keeps the Mentholatum behind the counter (I have no idea why? maybe because of its supernatural mentholated goodness?), so I couldn’t WAIT to get to the drugstore and ask the pharmacist.

I ended up having to stand in line behind a sweet older couple who were apparently moving every single prescription they have ever been prescribed to the Walgreens pharmacy. About the time that they were digging out their IDs and preparing to sign a blood oath that they were who they professed to be, one of the Walgreens employees asked if she could help me. Maybe she could sense my determination since I’d been standing in that line for upwards of ten minutes. Or maybe she could sense my frustration because I WAS READY TO KNOW ABOUT THE MENTHOLATUM, ALREADY.

I’m sort of guessing it was the latter.

Anyway, I told her what I was looking for and she said, “Um, I don’t know what that is. But I do know that we have Vicks right over there!”

“No. Not Vicks,” I replied. “MENTHOLATUM. It has menthol like Vicks, but it’s a completely different product.”

“Well,” she said, “I know that there are several different kinds of Vicks. Let’s take a look! Maybe you’ll see something that will work down on this shelf!”

Apparently I wasn’t doing a very good job communicating the degree of my Mentholatum need. So I took a deep breath and dove right back into the mentholated confusion.

“No ma’am – it’s not a Vicks product. It’s made by The Mentholatum Company. It looks like this,” I answered – and then I dug around for my (rapidly dwindling) Mentholatum in my purse and pulled it out so that she could see it. Because crazy people like myself ENJOY A VISUAL AID.

The Walgreens lady took a quick look at the shelves and said, “Nope. We don’t carry anything like that – sorry!” and started walking back to her station at the pharmacy counter. I closed my purse and was about to head for the exit when I heard a voice behind me saying, “Honey? I KNOW. IT’S AWFUL. I CAN’T FIND IT ANYWHERE.”

I turned around and found myself face-to-face with the woman who’d been moving her prescriptions earlier. She told me that she too had been looking for Mentholatum everywhere, and as I nodded in agreement with every single word she said, she leaned in a little closer, looked around to make sure no one else could hear her, and whispered, “You know, you can’t even find it at the Walmarts anymore.”

“I KNOW!” I exclaimed.

I think my enthusiasm may have been a little more than she bargained for. But then she said one more thing:

“Honey? Have you looked at the Rite Aid?”

And do y’all know what I realized?

I HADN’T LOOKED AT THE RITE AID.

I’d looked on their website with no success. And I’d looked at Walmart, Walgreens, Publix and CVS. BUT I’D FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT THE RITE AID!

I told the sweet lady in Walgreens that I would definitely look at Rite Aid, and when I cranked my car in the Walgreens parking lot, there was just a glimmer of mentholated hope in my heart. A vapor, if you will.

Friday was cuckoo busy between family stuff and work stuff and football game stuff, but Saturday morning I was rested and rarin’ to go to the Rite Aid. Our little family was planning to go to lunch, so I asked D if we could PLEASE PLEASE PRETTY PLEASE stop by the Rite Aid on the way to Chuy’s (we are creatures of habit and also, I might add, slightly addicted to the deluxe tomatillo sauce).

So we pulled in the Rite Aid parking lot, and I was out of the car like a shot. Couldn’t get in the drugstore fast enough. And I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a Rite Aid, but they arrange the aisles at all sorts of angles so that once you get inside the store, you feel a little bit like you’re trapped in a maze. My guess is that they’re just hoping that at some point you’ll give up trying to escape and start filling your cart to pass the time while you try to figure your way out of there.

Anyway, I finally made my way to the cold care aisle, and WOULD YOU LOOK WHAT I FOUND, WOULD YOU JUST LOOK, IT’S AN ALMOST-BUT-NOT-REALLY-AT-ALL MIRACLE!

Oh, you’d better believe that I shook those boxes like maracas all the way to the cash register.

And I promise that I’ll never ever mention Mentholatum again.

Unless Rite Aid quits carrying it.

Because clearly in that case all bets are off.

Edited to add a little clarity: Mentholatum is what God makes to cure a world of hurts: chapped lips, dry skin, stuffy noses, bad coughs. I’m particularly fond of it as a lip balm, but I’ve also been known to rub it on the bottoms of my feet before I put on socks. :-)

Okay. This isn’t really a post about booties.

But the title made me laugh, so I went with it.

Deep wells of maturity.

Several of y’all have asked if I’ll share the booties info that Melanie sent me. And yes, I’ll be happy to share, but I need to get all the links copied and pasted first. In the meantime, just know that I’m tickled to be able to encourage you (thanks to Mel) in your booties-related journeys. It warms my heart to know that my shoe struggle wasn’t just for me, my friends. It was for all of us. For the sake of our soles.

(I couldn’t resist the pun.)

(You’ll have to forgive me.)

(It was like a gift. Just sitting there for the taking.)

Anyway, I have some updates. And announcements. And stuff. And whathaveyou.

– There’s a new Laughing Cow $150 gift card giveaway that I just posted today. Feel free to hop on over and enter to win!

– This post of Angie’s is a must-read. Absolutely beautiful.

– Shaun will be answering a bunch of questions about the Compassion Bloggers program over the next couple of days – including information about how bloggers are selected for trips, how effective the trips ultimately are, and all sorts of other fun stuff.

– You know how everybody was doing the choreographed dances at wedding receptions a few years ago?

Well, this video – from the wedding of Tony award-winning writer Lin-Manuel Miranda and his beautiful new bride, Vanessa – is a brilliant new twist on the reception surprise.

It makes me SO HAPPY.

They’re gonna have a blast at family get-togethers, aren’t they? (via Throwing Things)

Happy Friday, y’all!

And Go ‘Dogs!

This past weekend I learned that if State loses a close SEC football match-up on a Thursday night, my mental and emotional recovery time the following Friday is going to be anywhere from six to eighteen hours. Because NO KIDDING. That game nearly wiped me out. I didn’t know whether to pretend-kick the walls or crawl under the covers when it was all said and done. I would have been terribly discouraged if I hadn’t been completely keyed up. Which pretty much meant that I NEEDED TO TALK VERY EXCITEDLY FOR SEVERAL HOURS ABOUT HOW COMPLETELY DISAPPOINTED I WAS.

In other words: the crazy was on full display.

By late Friday afternoon my blood pressure was finally back to normal, so I decided that after supper I was going to run to the Steinmarts because I had a coupon that was burning a hole in my pocket and I wanted to look for a pair of fall shoes to replace Ye Olde Faithful Reef Flip Flops that have basically been attached to my feet since April. I love them deeply and am considering placing them in a shadow box when I am forced to retire them from summer shoe duty. Or maybe I’ll just tie one of them to a rope and wear it as a pendant. It’ll be my accessory statement piece for fall.

So I went to Steinmarts and looked at shoes and I was, well, unmoved. I felt like everything had stiletto-type heels that weren’t necessarily practical for daily wear, or if the heel was do-able then the style looked like something my Mamaw Davis would have worn back in 1963 (that is to say: very sensible). Flats just aren’t an option because they hurt my feet and interfere with my lifetime goal of pretending that I am tall, so that pretty much leaves me with boots. And between the fact that my calves are enormous and my arches are freakishly high, I’m a tough boot customer.

So all that to say: it was a Steinmarts shoe strikeout. I did find some cute clothes, but I won’t go into that right now because it’ll end up being some epic Martha-esque digression (“It wasn’t really a white-y cream! It was more of a cream-y cream! But with a hint of yellow! Only not an orange-y yellow or a gold-y yellow, OH HEAVENS NO, it was more of a taupe-y yellow!”).

But wait – that reminds me of something that happened earlier this year, so we’re actually going to have a Martha-esque digression after all. Because I just remembered that the last time Martha and I went to Steinmarts together, she talked from the car to the front doors about how she didn’t need one thing! Not one thing! Just couldn’t think of one thing that she could possibly need! But she’d be glad to hang out for a few minutes while I looked around!

And y’all, we had no more crossed over into the carpeted area of the petites section when Martha turned and looked at me and said, “Now do you know one thing I’d really like to find? Something I’d really like to find? A scarf with a little blue and hot pink and maybe just a little bit of brown in it. I think I would really like that! And listen – if you happen to be over by the earrings while I’m looking here, I would love a pair of small gold hoops – CLIP-ONS! – because I can’t seem to find them anywhere! And do you know what else? I’d love a blouse that that I could wear to church, sort of a scoop neck, but not a low scoop neck, OH HEAVENS NO, but maybe a high scoop neck with just a little bit of embellishment around the neckline! Don’t you think that would be perfectly darlin’? And one more thing – WOULD YOU JUST LOOK AT THIS JACKET? I would love to have this jacket! But wait – wait – oh, goodness – OF COURSE they don’t have my size. They don’t have my size! And this is a shade of green that I just don’t have in my closet. Isn’t it the prettiest apple green? I don’t have it! But of course they don’t have it in my size because look! LOOK! This size 4 petite just swallows me.”

And then I collapsed into a heap on the floor and crawled over to a stack of extra large shirts and wrapped them around me and cried.

And thus concludes today’s Martha-esque digression. Up next: Martha’s thoughts on cupcakes!

Anyway, this past Saturday morning, after the aforementioned Steinmarts shoe strike-out, I decided to look for some shoes online, and after three to five minutes of in-depth searching I sent Melanie an email that said, “I really don’t think they make cute shoes anymore. And I can’t do boots because I DON’T KNOW IF I’VE MENTIONED THIS, BUT MY CALVES! AND MY ARCHES!” She immediately wrote me back and said, “Have you considered a bootie instead of a full boot?”

And the first thing that popped in my mind was, “Yes, In 1988. With my long khaki prairie skirt and my flannel shirt with built-in shoulder pads.”

And then: “I’M GOING TO NEED SOME HELP.”

Apparently the bootie is all the rage this fall, and within 10 minutes Mel sent me a whole bunch of links of potential bootie candidates. Which was actually a much more wholesome endeavor than that last sentence might lead you to believe.

The links helped me so much, and I ended up finding two pairs of booties at Rack Room Saturday afternoon. They’re actually perfect for my calves ish-ahs since they don’t get up in my calves-related bidness, and they’re also a good match for the freakishly high arches. Even though I would be totally fine with wearing my flip-flops well into December, I think the booties will be a little bit more seasonally appropriate. And also warm.

So there you have it. Upwards of a thousand words about booties.

It has been my sweet privilege to serve you with all the incessant rambling about all the nothing.

And I haven’t even told you about my Mentholatum-related drama yet.

I do hope you can stand the suspense.