Just call me a lusciously luscious lush

Unrelated note: If you'd like to make an appointment to have your own child's portrait taken, please let me know. Otherwise, on with the show ...

In the spirit of the hotties, I took some Lynchburg Lemonade to a cookout with Husband's co-workers last night. I wore my green and white striped halter top and the Green Eyes Almay i-color series. Everyone else drank Sprite, but I am not ashamed. As we were leaving, I thought, "Hmmm, should I leave the leftover lemonade or take it home -- these people don't drink, so why leave it and let it go to waste?"

I went inside, grabbed it out of the fridge, and noticed that the one bottle I had finished was inside the container (note my moderation). I guess B put the empty bottle back in the case so that we could take it home to recycle it. He's a recycling fanatic.

As I was saying my goodbyes and thank yous, B's boss walked past me and grabbed something out of the four-pack. He is also a dig-stuff-outta-the-trash-to-recycle-it maniac, so I assumed it was the empty bottle. Later, while on my way to our car, I noticed that the empty bottle was still there, and one of my lemonades was GONE. Apparently The Bossman (picture an ex-marine, Church-of-Christ-member with six beagles) doesn't have any idea how far my PWTPI abilities have taken me. Even before I became the founder and operator of the #1 PWT Detective Agency, I always noticed when someone swiped my toddies.

Husband couldn't resist making a comment about this, so we both went back inside to ask his boss if he wanted the rest of the four pack. While there, the Boss's friend (picture ex-mullet-wearer with a huge affinity for my sans-raisin oatmeal cookies) answered for him, saying, "No, he never drinks. Ever. He's like a Mormon."

I said, "Me too."

Then the friend said (read this in your best TN accent), "Yeah, we've all heard you can throw 'em back with the big boys, but at least you can make some damn good oatmeal cookies."

OK, so now that I've been labelled a lush, I must contemplate the other word families that can be associated with this label. Clearly, our only choices are the following noun, adjective, and adverb, respectively: lusciousness, luscious, lusciously. Personally, I like it. So fitting.

Do y'all like this "Just call me ..." series? I'll have to do more with that.

On Friday (7/8/05), we will be embarking on a family vacation adventure with Husband's family. The Goose's Paternal Grandparents (even The Great Grandpa B) and his only aunt and uncle (I'm an only child) are meeting us in the Ozarks (of Arkansas) for a long weekend spent in a pet-friendly cabin with a whiny baby and two people (Husband & his mom) who are highly allergic to pet dander of any kind. This promises to be delightful. As a result, I may be on sabbatical for a while, because it is so incredibly difficult to plan and pack for any trips with The Goose that it will likely take me the rest of the week to finish.

In addition, I am finishing up my final evaluations of my online students. We don't give them grades, so I have to write one ENTIRE page for each of them, quoting their writing and interspersing constructive criticism with praise. These kids are usually brilliant (it's a "gifted" distance education program through a very prestigious university) and they (and their doctor/lawyer/corporate-executive parents) are scary in my opinion. They all live on the East coast except for the few California kids. They email me questions about grammatical concepts such as raising in "if-then" statements, how to tell the difference between noun complement and relative clauses, and subordinate adjectival clauses which may or may not be restrictive. Yeah. They're in 5th - 7th grades. Now, if you knew that there was such a thing called "raising" in grammar, then please email me because unless you have a degree in applied linguistics, then you are a total grammar dork and we need to swap stories.

Most of my student evaluations include this line: "Student Name, your writing is quite vivid and detailed; however, it's regrettable that you cannot operate your word processor's spellchecker even though you can program computers in five languages."

I have to finish 10 of those before we leave on Friday, so that's another reason I may be gone for a while.

Finally, I hope everyone had a happy and safe holiday and that you did not find any brown recluse spiders in your bathtub when you returned home from your burgers-and-fireworks celebration. And p.s. if you ate burgers then obviously you have not been keeping up with the news about the latest case of Mad Cow Disease, otherwise known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. Personally, I would rather not develop holes in my brain, so I ALWAYS eat free-range, vegetarian-fed beef and I suggest that you do the same, along with making a committment to spend the extra buck and get organic strawberries rather than the PESTICIDE-RIDDEN kind that are grown in Mexico and commonly found on sale in Kroger at this time of year. The pesticides used on strawberry plants are some of the worst on the planet (both in terms of environmental and physiological effects). Hotties, if you're reading this, don't worry! Those daiquiris I made while you were visiting were all organic, right down to the high-fructose-corn-syrup-based mixer. Do I use too many compound, constructed-with-hyphens adjectives?

Country Lyric of the Week
"I'm not as good as I once was,
but I'm as good once as I ever was."