Take a Sad Song and Make It Better

Last night we were on the way home from dinner (just me, my mom, and my brother…my sister had to work and my dad had a meeting―on my birthday! Miscreants! :-D) and were listening to my new Beatles CD. No, I didn’t get the re-mastered mono box set *sob* *sob* but I did get #1 which has all of their number one hits. (Can you believe that Twist and Shout, I am the Walrus, and Sergeant Pepper weren’t #1 hits?) Anyway, Hey Jude came on and Mom, who had been singing along with nearly every song (I never knew that she knows the lyrics to so many Beatles songs!) told us how her swing choir danced to Hey Jude at the junior high to recruit the kids who would be moving up to high school. Apparently, they had to go out into the audience of 6th, 7th and 8th graders and try to get them to dance too. My brother and I thought this was extremely funny…I mean, Hey Jude is one of my favourite Beatles songs but it’s not the first one I’d pick to dance to…. We had trouble breathing when Mom said, “But they didn’t really want to dance and so it was like being in a Brady Bunch episode where nobody else had the script.” (That really does sound like a Brady Bunch episode from the later seasons…. :-D) By that point, I was laughing hysterically but managed to say, “Is that your memory of Hey Jude?” “Yes, I guess it is.” Mom laughed. “That’s really sad.” My brother said. “Take a sad song and make it better,” Mom said, which only made us laugh harder. “And, it’s kind of a slow song so you can only do a few moves to it…” Then, while driving, she demonstrated the dance…kind of grooving her shoulders and then clapping her hands together… which made my brother and I laugh so hard that we didn’t even care that her hands weren’t on the steering wheel. Though…I did have a vague feeling that we were driving on the wrong side of the road…. :-D (Just kidding…we weren’t.) Ah, Beatles music. It brings out the best (I hope) in all of us. :-)

:-)

Today

Right now…I’m going to focus on the annoying things that happened to me today…which are almost always funnier than the nice things...right? :-)
This morning, I awoke from a dream that it was next week and the day of my cousin’s wedding. I’d miscalculated the time and was running around trying to get ready but kept getting hung up somehow. My hair wouldn’t obey or I lost my skirt or my top had a rip…and so on. Very annoying. (Next week though, I will remember to start getting ready way ahead of time. :-) ) I also had a dream that I could play the guitar…which I want to learn so I was mad when I woke up from that one and found that I still can’t play the guitar. How typical!
The book I inter-library loaned though Ick, by one of my favourite biography authors, was an utter waste of time. I skimmed though part of it last night and first, it’s supposed to be in Tudor times but the characters don’t speak with “thee” and “thou”… they speak like they just came out of the supermarket in Ohio. Second, (and much worse) it’s all mushy and kissy. Blecck! I hate mushy books! So now, I’m reading Wind in the Willows to soothe my injured feelings and the other book is going to be returned. I’m really quite surprised at this author…I expected better…especially since she wrote in the 50’s and 60’s. If she were still alive, I’d write her a letter expressing my sentiments.
We cleaned the entire house today (because the family is coming tomorrow for my birthday and oh my goodness! The house absolutely must be clean, clean, clean or they might slonk over dust bunnies and sue us! :-D) and moved the tree into the living room. We went out in the frozen cold yesterday to buy it but it wasn’t that cold and I do love real trees (you can’t make a fake tree smell real). I cleaned the bathroom (my job around here―yeah, fun, I know, but I keep them in top order) and asked everyone to not slime up the sink before tomorrow but we’ll see how well they do.
Tonight, when I took off the band-aid that I'd had on my finger since last night, the place where the band-aid had been looked all weird and shriveled like a corpse. (In short, the rest of me is alive but I think my finger died.) It was helpful though because later when my sister grabbed my hand and cooed, “Your hands are so soft!” I held out my middle finger and said, “Doesn’t this look like a corpse?” She let go quickly and I don’t know what she was squealing about…. :-)
My brother and I played Lego Star Wars (my one decidedly “non-academic” weakness) and he kept cheating me… I don’t know how he does it but he always steals my points! I build something and he takes all the studs or he hops in front of me and grabs the blue studs (1,000 points) before I can get there. *grrr* And worse, we have invincibility so my character can’t shoot his! When we get too mad at each other or bored, we turn off invincibility and have duels. Mouse droid races are also fun. If you don’t have a knowledge of Lego Star Wars you’re probably lost by now…so I’ll move on. :-)
I found old pictures of me at nine years old in a Bible study folder and oh my goodness, I looked fat! I have never been fat but people always manage to snap pictures of me looking like I’ve eaten nothing but pop tarts my whole life. *sigh* *groan* And, I wanted to throw the photos away but Mom wouldn’t let me and said they were cute. Cute!!? Oh well.
Lastly, something I’ve always noticed… when your birthday’s coming up people yell things at you like, “Don’t come in here!” and do things like stop talking when you walk into the room and then stare strangely at you. Happy Birthday. I guess the presents make up for the shunning beforehand…well...mostly.

:-)