All seasons of MASH are now available on Hulu, so today we started binge-watching it.  Season 1 is where they are working out the kinks, and finally easing up on the blatant misogyny and tail-chasin'... though I guess it is a period piece. 

Either way, I love these characters so much, and Larry Gelbart is a script god. 

I am happier now that the Father Mulcahy I recognize and Klinger have arrived. 

The show holds up great now that we're half a season in, and it's a pleasure to watch. But you definitely have to get through the first few. Henry Blake is less of a dunderhead and more a dude; Frank and Houlihan aren't just meanies out to foil Hawkeye and Trapper, but are nuanced people.  

I feel like I'm with old friends. :)

This article by Lili Loofbourau on Slate sums up my feelings of sadness, helplessness, futility, and we're-fucked-ism. 

Enjoy!  Yay!  This is fun!

The only balm is watching dog rescue videos, re-watching Anthony Fantano's review of Corey Feldman's 2016 album "Angelic 2 The Core," and cooking videos on YouTube. 

I wrote this stream-of-consciousness and haven't edited or condensed this yet. I'm just talking it out, out loud. Yep, I know it's a public post... but I fucked up the other day and I own it... and I'm trying to work out my thoughts here by typing them out. 

Didja ever have something really frustrating  happen, and you vent about it, and once you've gotten it off your chest, you've pretty much forgotten about it?  Like, the act of venting pops the proverbial zit, it heals, and then you're done?

That's what venting is for. And we vent to our pals about stuff. That's one of many many neat things that pals are for. And that's also what blogs are for... and blog pals. :-)

Another thing blogs are good for is for feeling connected to people when you may have a hard time seeing folks. Like, I don't really like thinking about what I'm about to type in this here paragraph because it depresses me, but it's a fact that Matt and I are pretty isolated. When his belly issues started in 2012, we couldn't go out as much. And then what seems like one day in February 2015 the belly issues stopped and were replaced by unspeakably awful anxiety attacks, and then we really couldn't go out any longer. When we would try to go out we'd always have to leave early, so eventually we just stopped going out. The few times we tried inviting people over instead, Matt would still end up having an anxiety attack (I'm not looking for a cause or diagnosis here), so we just stopped inviting people over.  And understandably, people have stopped inviting us to things because they/we just know we'll either have to cancel beforehand or leave shortly after we arrive. So we don't really see people any longer unless it's for a rehearsal or a gig. Matt has friends he talks to on the phone, but I don't really. I also don't have coworkers, and my family all lives hours away, so I am pretty isolated.  I'm not on Facebook, so this blog (and barely Twitter) is pretty much my main  connection to other people. 

I've been keeping an online blog since the mid-90s, since before the word "blog" was even used.  I once had a creepy neighbor discover my old llij.net blog, and he saw me in person one day and told me how close he felt to me because he read what I wrote.  But he didn't know me-- he just knew those teeny moments and ideas I shared.  This spooked me out a bit, and shortly thereafter I switched to LiveJournal, which had the ability to lock certain posts down so only a small subset of people could see it. You could have public posts too, of course, and you could also even lock things to be completely private, for those rare things I didn't want to bounce off any friends but still wanted to immortalize on electrons. :-)

But when you don't see someone very often but you read something they've written, it's logical to assume that what they're written is some deeply-held sacred belief or life philosophy... when it could just be the brain-fart du jour.

LiveJournal ("LJ") got bought by the Russians a few years ago, and since Russia does not believe in https, we all abandoned ship since no privacy could be assured there. OnePostWonder ("OPW") was born, and we've all built a nice cozy home here. It's not as huge as LJ was, but most of my LJ pals (many of whom are IRL pals) made the jump to OPW, so it's good here. (Plus I love and trust the people who built it.)

I've always loved writing, though I know I'm not that great at it. I switch tenses all the time, I change I/you/they prounouns constantly because I write in a very stream-of-consciousness way. And I'm long-winded as hell (plus I start sentences with conjunctions-- heavens!).  But I blog as a way to just shoot the shit, but also so I have a way to work out some things I'm thinking about, and to share some general life happenings. 

Anyhoo, you may recall I wrote a post the other day where I vented about a very frustrating night at a restaurant where an acquaintance's kids (two daughters)  misbehaved and it upset not only people at our table, but also a group of strangers who had to sit in our semi-private section because it was a busy night. I wound up buying the strangers' dinner (nobody put me up to it) because they were in my direct line of sight and I could see how upset they were over how often they were getting bumped into and squealed at by the kids, and I felt the mom (I called her "S") wasn't doing anything to control her kids. Plus, this kicked Matt into one of the worst panic attacks he's ever had, and he left the restaurant early. I had assumed he went to sit and cry in the car (which he always does), but when I got outside after I quickly said goodbye to folks, I found him wandering the far end of the shopping center speaking gibberish and spinning in circles, arms flailing. I wish I was exaggerating. It was really upsetting.

In S's defense, her daughters were super-happy. I think maybe parents tend to correct their kids when they're being skootchy or annoying or hitting, but when they're squeeing and giggling and dancing (OK, and climbing the walls and trying to do cartwheels) maybe you don't worry about it because they're chipper, maybe it's hard to see that as misbehaving. I dunno, that's just a guess... I'm not a parent.  

Anyway, when I wrote that post, I really let loose. I was raw. We had just gotten home and I had finally gotten Matt calmed down and in bed, where he was still punching himself in the head and speaking nonsense words, moreso than usual. It was a particularly awful panic attack (he said later it was one of the worst, if not the worst one, he's ever had), made even worse by the fact that we were so sure going into the night that he wasn't going to have one. We don't get to go out anymore, but that night the stars had this magical alignment and he was actually OK, and we felt normal and hopeful for the first time in a very, very long time. I was so, so angry to have had that taken away... and I was so so angry because I felt that this could have been avoided. 

What do I know.

Maybe I'm delusional and maybe Matt was destined to have a panic attack all along. Why should that night have been any different?  Maybe we're idiots for having hope anymore. 

So I vented. I was frustrated. Not only was I trying to piece Matt back together again, I was also out over $100 for the strangers' meals... and I was annoyed that the strangers never even smiled to say a silent "thank you." Nuthin'.  And then I felt guilty that my friends bought my and Matt's dinners because they knew I bought the strangers' dinners. I wasn't trying to cost anyone extra money! So I was angry, and embarrassed, and annoyed, and sad, and hurt, and crushed, and disappointed. And those were all valid feelings, and I don't feel bad for having them.

But in my venting in my blog post, I did something awful. Legitimately, genuinely awful, and something I feel deeply sorry for.  I called S, the mom of the rowdy daughters some awful, awful things in my blog post.  I was vicious. I was beyond harsh. I used words that may have felt justified in the moment but were absolutely NOT OK.   

It's one thing to hate the behavior... it's another thing to hate the person. 

And the truth is, I don't hate the person at all.  Never did. After I wrote what I wrote, the venting was over, we commented on it here, and bloop-- I forgot all about it. 

Right? Haven't you ever vented about something and then forgotten about it? That's what venting is for.  Once it's vented, it's over. It's a non-issue.  If someone were to bring it up again, I'd say "Yeah, that night was a shit-show," but if I saw S the next day I'd say hello like everything was fine, because everything is fine, and I don't hate and never did hate her.  Sure, I was pissed in the moment, and I reaaaaaallllly wish the night played out differently, and I shot my big dumb mouth off on my blog and let my New Jersey out, but then I got over it once it was out of my system. Humans are wonderfully resilient that way. 

But due to my blog entry, a bunch of strangers on OPW now think that S is some awful human being, though she is not.  (Not that 99.9% of you know or will ever know who S is... but still... that's negativity the world doesn't need.)

But if you don't know me very well, or if you don't see me that often and you read my post, you'd think I was gonna set this lady on fire. You might think, "My god, I've never known Jill to hate anyone like this. This is upsetting and concerning." And I could see why you'd think that, and I wouldn't blame you.  (Sure, I'd hope you'd give me the benefit of the doubt, but I could also understand why you wouldn't.)

And this Benefit of the Doubt thing:

This is where I went wrong, and for what I feel awful: In the moment of blogging, I never gave S the benefit of the doubt. I went straight for the jugular; I chose vicious. I didn't say "I wish her behavior was different," I said "She is a fucking piece of shit." I didn't say, "Man, she had a lapse in judgment that night," I said "She has shitty fucking parenting skills." (or something like that.)  I didn't separate the actions from the soul.  I judged her as a human. I called her such awful things that it could almost even be viewed as an insult to everyone else at the dinner. If S was such a complete piece of shit then everyone else at dinner must be too since they're all friends with her. Only shit likes shit, amirite?

This is not okay. 

To be clear, I don't regret my description of what happened at dinner. It was factually accurate from my viewpoint-- I was watching stuff happen because I could see the whole room from my seat. But I deeply, deeply regret what I said after I described the events of the evening... where I got personal. I called names. I judged. 

As if you couldn't tell, I've been really reflecting on that evening and its blog post and my word choices, as well as my description of the night's events.

And check this nugget out:

There were two moms there; Julie is Kit's mom, and then there was S and her two daughters. The truth of the matter is Kit was behaving just as inappropriately and was just as rambunctious as S's daughters, but I described Julie and Kit as "fine" because I know Julie and I love Julie very much... so I naturally cut her some slack in my judgment. I didn't mention Kit's climbing or cartwheel attempts or windowsill dancing once in that post... because I know Julie is a good person who tries hard, so I didn't throw her under the blog bus.  But S? I don't know her so FUCK HER-- SHE MUST BE A TERRORIST. Whaaaa?  Hey Jill you asshole... YOU may not know S., but everyone else does, and she wouldn't have been invited if people didn't love her very much. So just because you Jill don't know her, maybe you should cut her the same slack you cut for Julie and Kit. They are clearly deserving of slack and basic human fucking decency, instead of coming out guns blazing.

So I've been soul searching ever since I realized what I had done. 

And I really think this is the crux of what sucks with the world and the USA today. So many of us are all so quick to vilify those we don't know... but that person we're vilifying is someone's friend, someone's daughter, someone's sister, someone's mother. Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to "other-ize" people, or to "well they should just"-ize people. It ain't that easy. If they "could just," wouldn't they?

If anyone called any of you the things I called S, whether you made a mistake or not, I'd set them on fire.

It's actually a very very minor subplot-point that I completely accidentally made that post a public post (that I have just friends-locked an hour ago), and S's dear friend saw it and got very understandably upset... so upset that she didn't want to speak with me so her husband brought it up to me.  (S's dear friend and husband were not at dinner; they had heard from other attendees that dinner was a shitshow, and I think it got mentioned on Facebook... but my OPW post was the only place where someone (me!) was vitriolic and horrible.)  I'm not angry at the dear friend who got upset, and I'm not angry at her husband for telling me... and I'm not angry at anyone else who may have seen the post and shared it.  I'm angry at myself.   

I fucked up. I own it. I'm genuinely sorry. I am using this as a learning experience and as an opportunity for growth... which sounds douchey, but I am totally sincere here. 

This is not one of those things where I'm apologizing because I'm sorry I got caught. 

In some lumpy way, I'm almost happy (?) I got caught, because it's forced me to have a VERY uncomfortable look at this thing I sometimes do without thinking about the larger impact it's having.

So while I'm damning S for doing something without realizing the larger impact it's having, I'm doing the same thing like a hypocritical fuckstick. And I've gotta knock it off.  If you wanna make the world a better place ya gotta look at yourself and make a change, yo.

So yeah, I'm not apologizing because I got caught. And I'm not apologizing because people are upset.

I'm apologizing because I'm sorry for judging this person so harshly instead of cutting them some slack. I'm sorry for being a judgy asshole and jumping to the worst possible conclusion without even considering any other possibility. I denied her her humanity. How fucking shitty is that?

Sure, her actions almost definitely caused bad times for me and Matt, and caused other people to have an uncomfortable, awkward, unpleasant night.  But nobody is perfect. You need to separate the person from the actions until you have hard, ongoing, consistent, repeatable proof that the questionable actions are an actual character trait and not just someone having a bad night or a one-time lapse of judgment. We all have bad days. We all make mistakes. We all deserve forgiveness. 

I hope people will extend me the same courtesy. 

I have some apology emails to write.

(This post was typed stream-of-consciousness and has not been edited or condensed.)

Our dryer died about a month ago. I forget if I wrote about this or not.  

Since that happened, we've taken our clothes to the laundromat a few times, did our laundry at my folks' house, and also washed stuff here and hung it outside.  It hasn't been awful. 

I figured our dryer died because it's 20-ish years old. But I also know it's entirely mechanical, so therefore entirely fixable by anyone with half a brain. I've already replaced the belt that spins the drum, so I'm totally comfy fixing stuff.  

My dad raised us to always try fixing broken things. In the worst case, it continues to stay broken. In the best case, you fix it! In the medium-case, it stays broken but now you know how one more thing in the world works. 

Anyway, I know that dryers can die because of a clogged lint pipe, but we just had our lint-tubes totally cleaned out when we had our ducts cleaned a few months ago.  Turns out they didn't clean the dryer lint tube at all. See Exhibit A:

Ummmm... I guess this would explain why our dryer stopped working. Guess I should ask for our money back from the guy who cleaned our dryer vents a few months ago....  It's a miracle the house didn't burn down.

Anyhoo, our friend and handyman Crusher (yep, that's his name!) ripped out the old impacted lint-duct and replaced it with smoove new pipe that is easily accessible and clean-outable.  We fired up the dryer, but it didn't get hot... turns out the heating element burned out (surprise surprise), so I ordered a new one off Amazon which will be here Friday along with a new thermostat (I figured I'd replace it just in case).  So we'll be back to laundrytown by Friday evening. Yay!

But man. It's crazy to think that the house really could have burned down from all that lint. My dad's a fireman, and we know lots of stories of fires that started with a lint-trap clogged a fraction of what ours was.

So please clean out your lint-lines, folks. 

Did you know that you have a dominant eye? I knew this, but had never considered what it might mean for my life.

So... put your arms straight out ahead of you, palms facing away from you, fingers pointing towards the ceiling.  Now twist your wrists inward a teeny bit to touch your thumb-tips together and your pointer-fingertips together... this makes a diamond-shaped hole.  Now find something on a wall about 10-20 feet away and look at it through the hole in your hands (make sure both eyes are open).  Now close one eye. Now switch eyes. Make sure your hands didn't move.  When you closed one eye your hand blocked the thing, right? And when you closed the other eye you could see it through the hole, right? Whichever eyeball you could see the distant thing through is your dominant eyeball.

I'm sure there was an easier way for me to describe how to do that, but okay. 

Anyhoo, this morning I went to the eye doctor-- it had probably been nearly 10 years since I've been there. My prescription has never been all that strong, and it's only ever been for distance.  Even though I only ever was supposed to wear my glasses for driving and for watching movies, I'd just keep them on all the time because it was just easier. They're so weak that they never really got in the way or me seeing stuff.

Today's eye exam showed that my distance-prescription has gotten just a teeeeeny bit worse in 10-ish years... and both my eyeballs continue to have the same prescription as each other, which is nifty.  He asked if I'd resorted to cheater/reading glasses yet now that I'm 47, and I told him that just in the last year I find that if I need to read something I have to take my glasses off and read it with my naked eyes... but I don't need cheater/reading glasses yet.  (Matt owns a pair of cheaters and I only use them if I'm doing REALLY close/fine detail painting for an extended period of time. But general reading and dicking with my phone, nope, still all good.) 

So he asked me how I felt about contacts. I told him I only ever really wear contacts for any gigs where I need to glance at sheet music or lyrics (I keep the sheet music/lyrics far away so they don't block the audience's view-- so my everyday distance glasses/contacts work great) otherwise I don't wear contacts... my glasses are fine for everyday life.   I have a gig where I don't need lyrics/music, I prefer the "psychic distance" having a slightly-fuzzy audience provides.  Proof: The last time I ordered contacts was 2009, and I just used my last pair about a month ago. So I really don't wear them often.

(I brought the empty contacts box with me just so he could see my old prescription, and he said "You just used these? You realize these expired in 2016, right?" Oopsie.)

He asked if I was averse to contacts, and I said no. So he suggested we try an experiment. He figured out which eye is my dominant eye, and then did a few tests to see how dominant my dominant eye is... and as luck would have it, my dominant eye is more of a switch. ;-)   This means I'm a great candidate for Eyeball Shennanigans™ -- which means I wear a distance-contact in my non-dominant eye, and I leave my dominant eye nekkid. So if I need to read, my dominant eyeball springs into action, and if I need to see far, my brain switches to my other eye with the distance-lens in it.  Ta-daaaa!

So we popped one contact-lens in at noon today and HOLY SHITBALLS my life has changed. I can see EVERYTHING. It's so cool!  Fuckin' eyeballs, how do they work?

For the record, eyeball dominance has nothing to do with which eye is less-blind or which eye has an astigmatism or anything. It's also not related to your dominant hand. It's just a brain thing.  (My left eye is my dominant eye. Neat!)

#themoreyouknow

(Hi. My name is Jill, and I take 87 years to say what anyone else could convey in 6 sentences.  Go me!)

Old ladies have ways of doing things that seem silly or dated or whatever... but ya know what? These old-lady ways WORK. 

Like, I have this great sweater-dress that I wear with tights or leggings, but I'm always yanking on it because sweater + leggings = sticking to each other.  What's a girl to do?  Wear a (half)slip. 

Slips?! But those are for old ladies!

Yeah, but ya know what? Old ladies aren't pulling on their damn dresses all day... because the slip just fucking works. 

I jumped on Amazon to buy two half-slips (insert joke here about why didn't I just buy one whole one instead-- herpaderp), one black and one cream-colored... and instead I discovered a magical thing called "pettipants," which is a floofy slip but with leg-holes so your thighs don't touch. And I wore it under my sweater-dress and over my leggings for Mothers Day and sweetwoundedjesus it was magical. I was comfy, the dress looked great, and I didn't have my hand up my arse tugging and unsticking myself all day.  

Old ladies. They get it.

Some Other Old Lady Stuff that I'm Using and It's Working Great:

1) Washing my hair once per week, if that... otherwise I just slap conditioner on it and rinse it out. (Some days I just chuck on a shower cap and don't wet my hair at all. They're really onto something with the not-daily-hairdo. Boom. Done.

2) Cleaning my house with stuff like a vinegar solution, borax, baking soda, etc.  It's cheap, it works like a mofo. Boom. Handled.

​​​​​​3) Oil of Olay. I'm talkin' the OG OoO... the shit just works. Smells like Nana. Boom. Addressed.

4) Cold cream to get your makeup off... even impossible stuff like waterproof mascara and that liquid lipstick. Boom. Fixed. 

​​​​​​​5) Those pillows that go between your knees when you sleep. HOLY CRAP, what a godsend! Without it, my hip is screeeeeaming in the morning. With it, happy times.  Boom. Finito.

6) Bathtub handles. OK, I don't have a bathtub/shower handle in my bathroom (yet), but whenever I stay in a hotel with one I'm much happier. Should probably get one.

7) Toppik for thinning hair. No, it's not the scalp spraypaint of the Ron Popeil days... these are little fibers that you sprinkle on and they really fill in the slightly sparse spots. They're not gonna make a totally bald person look like Fabio, but it is amaaaaazing. Really works. For men and women. Boom. Fixx0r3d.

So, there you have it.

Any other old-people hacks that work for you?

I'll bite: 

I DAAAARE CM Adams post about the story of the Wallingford House.  I gotta know.  

(Many apologies and thanks to Anne Mollo ​​​​. :-D  )

And no worries if you're not.  (Long overdue HB Snoozeletter comes out tomorrow. You can sign up for our mailing list here if ya want.)

Also: For pals in far-away places: If you know of any venues near you that book bands where people tend to listen (read: we are not competing with TV screens showing sports), or if you've ever wanted to host a house concert (they are shockingly easy), let me/us know! 

You can reply here, or you can email us at awesomesauce@hot-breakfast.com .

I've been devouring all of the reports about Southwest 1380 (the plane that lost an engine and had a hole in the fuselage that made an emergency landing in Philly).  As an air travel enthusiast and Southwest fan, I am so impressed with how this terrifying scenario was handled.

I just listened to the control tower chatter, and wow... this is what everyone's training is for.  (Listen here, if you're interested: https://youtu.be/fASCzgKS0Qg)

That pilot was so calm, professional, and perfect. That first ATC guy (the one you could hear clearly during the first few minutes) was also absolutely fantastic. He's *exactly* the guy I'd want on the other end of the comm channel during an emergency. Great job, everyone. Really. 

I am devastated to hear about the one woman's passing, and one is too much, of course; but it's so true that this could have been so much worse.

I wish I knew the name of the ATC guy... I would send him something. For realzies.

... are the words I use at the laundromat

Our dryer died last week, so for the last 5 days we've been watching Mt. Laundry reach Everest altitudes while our underwear drawers were even running out of Emergency Undies rations.  So on Monday we decided to bring our enormous hamper full of dirty clothes to the laundromat. Dare I say it was fun?

We tossed the stuff into three giant washing machines and then went next door to El Diablo Burritos where I got myself three delicious chicken soft tacos and Matt got himself three steak tacos with this chili-lime sauce on 'em. SO GOOD.  When we were done nomming, it was time to move everything into the dryers. 

We filled the 40 minutes of dryer time with a trip next door (the other way) to the Hallmark store where we bought Mothers Day cards and Yankee Candles (because we're grandmothers, apparently).  We have a little Yankee Candle problem-- we keep one lit in the bedroom and/or the great room pretty often; it acts like a nightlight in the evenings. The problem is that no matter how well we trim the wick and use those little candle caps, the black waxy soot is on EVERY wall and ceiling, really amplifying every drywall nail in the ceiling. It's a great look... though it gives me something to obsess over when I can't sleep at night and am looking at the ceiling.  I can't but think "Jeez. If our walls and ceiling have this much black crud on them from just 2 years of burning candles, imagine the work that dude had to do as he cleaned the hundreds of years' worth of soot off of the Sistine Chapel frescoes." 
  

House stuff

My house needs a lot of love. In no particular order:
1) I need to fix the fence that got wrecked in the nor'asters. At the very least I need to replace the missing slats... at the best I need to replace the whole fence because it looks like crap.  That will not be cheap, but that's OK-- I am willing to pay good money to have a straight, even fence that will last.

2) I need to have a plumber come over and fix a zillion broken things.  A) The basement slop sink keeps filling with black bilgewater... that's not good.  B) The drain underneath the basement slop sink has a huge hole rusted out of it so I kludged together a replacement pipe out of duct tape (yes, really) and it's holding enough, but water + tape don't equal a long-term solution. C) They also need to figure out why my master-bathroom sink is dripping underneath it. (Stuff in the cabinet beneath the sink is wet, but I can't find where it's leaking.)  D) My kitchen faucet looks like shit and the adjustable water-spray can't decide what setting it wants to be on, so it just spritzes in get-all-over-everything mode. E) my hall bathroom toilet needs to have the guts replaced...  you have to hold the handle down to get a complete flush, and that only works 80% of the time... the other times you need a second flush. Annoying. 

3) I need to get the carpets cleaned. We had them scheduled but called them off because of one of the snowstorms.  I'll probably wait until July to get the carpets done at this point, mostly because we are having two Beatles rehearsals per week at the house and we have a zillion people bringing instruments and gear in and out of the house. No sense cleaning the carpets when I have a parade happening 2x/week.  Maybe I'll have them cleaned once the show is in production so we can have a cast party at our place after the closing night, maybe.

4) Landscaping. I would love to hire someone to trim my bushes that got obliterated in the snow last month. While they're at it, I would love to have them plant plants, put some mulch down, and have a yard that isn't a joke.  Then I would love to have someone turn my backyard into something not-embarrassing.  Yes, that means removing the Big Gay Purple Shed. 

5) I need to get the gutters cleaned, and while someone is up on the roof, they need to clean out the drain vents because I am sure they are clogged.  As much as I love my rare Redwood tree, it poops stuff for three out of four seasons and I'm constantly cleaning up after the damn thing. It's maddening.  And the stuff it drops is smaller than the holes on the gutter guards, rendering them completely pointless.  

Easter candy
In other news, I'm not all that into chocolate. But Matt's folks were in Connecticut for Easter and brought us each back a solid dark-chocolate bunny from this local magical chocolatier in Simbury, CT.  I devoured two chocolate rabbits by Munson's Chocolates in just 5 days. They were DELICIOUS. So smooth and tasty!

Yogurt: The struggle
Speaking of tasty things, I've been on a yogurt kick, but it is near-impossible to buy plain ol' full-fat yogurt in the store. There is Greek yogurt out the ass, and every kind of low-fat or fat-free yogurt everywhere. But I just want full-fat yogurt, made with sugar or some sweetener that comes from a damn plant or a bee.   I finally found Siggi's Icelandic Yogurt, but you have to look through the different kinds of Siggi's to find the full-fat stuff. It is deeelicious.  I also found Brown Cow brand yogurt, which is also full-fat yogurt and damn tasty.  But finding these is a feat and a half, and I have to make special trips to find 'em. Annoying. 

What else...

Hot Breakfast stuff...

Hot Breakfast has been taking a bit of a hiatus, but we're finally starting to fill up the ol' gig calendar. We've got a gig in Dover on May 4th, and then we've been asked to play the Wilmington Flower Market on the 10th and then a record-store event on May 11th.  We've got other stuff potentially coming up, too... so it'll be nice to play our own gigs for a change, since we've been doing so many tribute shows lately.

What else...

lipstick
I've been wearing this ridiculously bright hot-pink lipstick lately and I don't care how silly and age-inappropriate I look. It makes me happy. 

Birthdays
Today is my brother's birthday, and I posted a goofy photo of him wearing a leisure suit as a 4-year-old on Instagram.  I called him and we chatted for 20 minutes or so, which was delightful. I love my brother very much.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is my birthday and we have nothing planned, just like the last zillion birthdays. Matt asked me if I wanted him to get everyone together and I said no thanks.  I don't need people to interrupt their lives and go through the hassle of leaving the house and fighting the social anxiety (or real anxiety) on my account. I don't need the validation. I already feel valid and loved, thanks. :)

If someone thinks of me tomorrow they can send me a text or a card or something. But I don't like obligation. Birthdays are not important to me. 

EDITED TO ADD: How could I forget! My beloved birthday pie turns 17 today, which means we're bringing it for its drivers test and license.  It's a little stressed about the junior prom considering how hard it is to find a date, but we are staying optimistic. I was telling Shelle via text that the closest prospect was a can of evaporated milk from 1995 that lives with my parents, but said can of milk is not interested in kid-stuff like the prom anymore. Shelle replied "Too milquetoast for dances?" And that is why I love Shelle Klein Houser ​​​​​​. 

OK, that's enough for now.