Going To The Chapel

Hi readers! Here's some pictures from Ang's shower. Hope you're having a great Saturday!

Forced Landing

Forced Landing

In my parents' house,
there are a lot of books
about death and disaster
as if they knew what was
coming. Castaway, Adrift,
The Other Life. The titles
say everything even as they
are frayed around the edges,
falling apart, but not going
anywhere soon, just like me.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I've always spent more time with a smile on my face than not, but the thing is, I don't write about it." Robert Smith

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: Assuming The Position Rick Whitaker

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday!

Happy Birthday, Beth!

Happy Birthday to my dear sister Beth, pictured her with lovely Jodi of The J Spot fame and at my friend Angela's wedding shower. I'll be back with a longer post, but much love to Bether today!

Venus In Furs

Still working hard on the memoir. Thanks for all comments and suggestions! I don't often list the music I listen to as inspiration, but today I figure why not? Today's list:

Generique Miles Davis
I Think I'll Just Sit Here And Drink George Jones
Debaser The Pixies
The Streets Of Bakersfield Dwight Yoakum
Venus In Furs Velvet Underground
Till I Collapse Eminem
Love Hangover Diana Ross
Trouble Man Marvin Gaye
The Bargain Store Dolly Parton

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I'm always willing to endure humiliation on behalf of my characters." Ben Stiller

Cocktail Hour
Drinking restaurant suggestion: Joe T. Garcia's

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Thursday!

Pistons Basketball

I once walked out of a Blockbuster on a balmy evening in August when a man with a boa constrictor around his neck walked toward me. I was mesmerized by his t-shirt, a green tie-dye number and its movement which I didn't know was a snake until he came close enough. I screamed without thinking about it; I don't like snakes or surprises. He apologized, but I couldn't get it out of my head and dreamed of it for nights after.

I suppose most of the time we walk around in a daze, not noticing anything. When I taught, I spent a lot of time on this point, about how we all needed to strip the scrim of boredom and duty from our eyes and see things. It's so difficult in a world that demands so much just to get from point to point. Once I stood in a Kroger trying to feed cans into a machine to get money to buy groceries. The machine became full and started to beep in this grating way to alert the staff. Nobody came for a very long time, but I couldn't afford to leave without my receipt for the can money. At the time, I felt awful and tired from work and the Detroit hustle: the constant scramble for money and time and getting from job to job. To bring home some fake bacon and microwave it, the Enjoli commercial for our times. But now I look back fondly, thinking that it wasn't so bad to be young and tired and in a dirty grocery store, waiting to get a return on what I had so diligently saved.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever." Paul Auster

Cocktail Hour
Drinking movie suggestion: Tropic Thunder

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Tuesday!

Fear Of Flying

Hi readers! Thanks for all the great book responses. Mine are so really odd in that they cover the waterfront -- in no particular order:

The Incognito Lounge Denis Johnson -- beautiful poems and a constant inspiration when things run dry

Diary Of A Mad Housewife Sue Kaufman-- I read this when I was twenty and said, my God, I feel just like the heroine. Made major steps to change my life.

Fear Of Flying Erica Jong -- high school, sex, freedom, fear -- need I say more?

Clear Your Clutter With Feng-Shui Karen Kingston -- Iwas in a hopeless situation and this book urged me to begin throwing and giving things away. Felt a lot better after.

Drinking: A Love Story Caroline Knapp -- my favorite memoir ever. I cried when I found out she died at 42.

All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers Larry McMurtry -- most underrated writer ever. Like so many people who make money with writing, he's not given half the credit he deserves. This book breaks my heart.

There's a lot more, but that's a fast list. Still working hard on Second Day Reported. Back tomorrow with another section.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Never was anything great achieved without danger." Niccolo Machiavelli

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: The Middle Years Kelly Corrigan

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!

No Trespassing

Interactive blog question for this lazy Sunday night:

What books most influenced you? Not the books you're "supposed" to read, the real ones. I'm working on my list and will have it next week. It's been a crazy few days, but tomorrow is another day and all will be well.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to." John Cassavetes

Cocktail Hour
Drinking movie suggestion: Broken English

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Sunday!

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Hello readers! Here's my friend Angela's wedding shower. I'll be back at you tomorrow with more pictures and stories. Hope you're having a great Saturday!

The Story Of A Scar

Saw The Dark Knight and liked it even though it got great reviews (I'm usually not a big fan of summer movies and great reviews --hey, I'm one of the few people who still champions Bug). Heath Ledger was as brilliant as everyone says -- his Joker is a perfect villain for our time. When I taught, I saw traces of him everywhere in our abused, broken generation, a man who by his own estimation isn't a monster, but merely "ahead of the curve." My favorite parts of the movie weren't the big action scenes or the gadgets -- they were when the Joker explained how he got his scars. Each telling is different, but each equally plausible and horrible and funny. Kind of an emotional memoir of his trauma in which the truth is no longer important, but the story matters -- we're listening for an explanation, but there is none or there are several. And really, what's the difference? He's totally fucked.

I once read that some sexual abuse victims consider everything that happens to them as children as their fault while they consider their adult behavior to be beyond their control. This makes sense to me in a deep way. When bad things happen, we distance ourselves from them or get closer to them as a way of controlling them. To recreate the past is to fool ourselves into thinking we can get control over it. And even when we get beyond a painful moment, sometimes we miss the prison and can't help but crawl back inside for a little while, just to remember what it felt like and how much we did or didn't miss the food.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Sometimes a man just wants to see the world burn." The Dark Knight

Cocktail Hour
Drinking dvd television suggestion: Sanford and Son

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday!

Outfits That Match The Walls

Still catching up on things here, but will be back tomorrow with more of the book! For those who have asked, I estimate it should be finished by December, God willing as they say.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I tend to wear outfits that match the walls." Debra Winger

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: Undiscovered Debra Winger

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Thursday!

Wait For A Mystery Lover

Another piece of Second Day Reported. Thanks so much for reading!

The last movie Edie Sedgwick made before her big split with Andy Warhol was Lupe. The plot, as thin as any porno movie, went something like this -- Edie got ready, put her face on as they used to say, which in Edie's case took considerable time , each eyelash just so, and then she dons an Aztec ceremonial gown and waits for a mystery lover. This other worldly lover never shows up and she overdoses and ends with her head in the toilet.

Andy instructed Edie to vomit for the last scene, but she couldn't. Despite all those bulimics who make it look effortless, it's not something everyone can will. We are not made for such small acts of death. Instead, we carry our toxins with us, swirling around our polluted systems until we can no longer stand it.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"To him who has been hurt, everything rustles." Sophocles

Cocktail Hour
Drinking movie suggestion: Lolita

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday! I'm in the midst of a lot of craziness, but I promise to respond to all e-mail by the weekend!

Tuesday's Child Is Full Of Grace -- NOT!

Hi readers! Am gearing up for a lot of different activities this week, so I'll be with you tomorrow with more of Second Day Reported. Hope you're having a great week!

The Snake Kissed Back

Kiss

So once again hope is marred.
You are not what you thought
you would be. I saw a man
take a cookie off a rattlesnake’s
head without harm. When he
dared to kiss it, the snake kissed
back. Risk is an emergency room
full of people with their hearts
in their hands, thinking they might
have been luckier this time.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Always what we are leaving behind will be the source of light and shadow of what we are going toward." Ellen Burstyn

Cocktail Hour
Drinking television show suggestion: Keep watching Mad Men -- the outfits alone are to die for! Plus everyone smokes and drinks like crazy which makes a person feel pretty moderate.

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!

A Mannequin In A Garage

Once I had a garage sale in Detroit, and a man came round and bought a Playboy bunny outfit I once wore at a Halloween party, a Halloween party that was supposed to be a costume party, but I was the only one in a costume besides the children attending. "I'm going to dress my mannequin in this," the man said. "My old lady wouldn't fit into it." I thought about it and laughed. A mannequin in a garage in Detroit would wear my old outfit and probably be less self-conscious; maybe he had other friends for his doll that also wore similar get-ups.

I sold a lot of stuff that day, but didn't make much money. The economy here has suffered for years. And I'm a soft touch and gave away some stuff to people who have fallen prey to the scourges of the city: crack, heroin. One woman took my old red comforter from years ago that I had slept under in all kinds of weather, mostly freezing. She rode off with it around her shoulders on a rusty bike. I could see my red blanket for miles, getting smaller and smaller, imagined it might be used to soothe someone to sleep, thought about all the kindnesses that had been bestowed on me by others, more than I could ever possibly repay and was glad to have this last glimpse of it.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form." Rumi

Cocktail Hour
Drinking picnic suggestion: Raymond Carver special: KFC and champagne!

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Sunday!

Little Miss Detroit

The X In Christmas

Hi readers! Because everything has been so hectic, I'm going to post a story for the next few days called "The X in Christmas." It's something I started working on many years ago when I moved to Detroit.


The X in Christmas

"I was getting eaten alive out there," Glory says, carrying two beer bottles, one dangling from each hand, blood on her thighs from killing mosquitos with her palm. She sets the bottles on the floor near a lone mattress, everything else in Will and Ann's apartment loaded into the U-Haul by a group of graduate students who'd come over to help with the move. After dinner, a paper plate affair served at the wooden picnic table in the center of the apartment complex, scraps of paper exchanged with promises to write even though I'm really bad about that sort of thing as the common chorus, address books dug out of purses, goodbyes said, a string of awkward hugs and handshakes between people for whom these gestures rarely come into play, only Mike and Glory remain. Outside the screen door, pizza boxes sit open, attracting flies.

"Love among the ruins," Mike says, opening a bottle with his t-shirt and handing it to Glory.

This is how she thinks of their relationship, of them, such as it is, such as they are. Glory and Mike met in graduate school, sharing a cramped basement office area plagued by plumbing problems, huge roaches that thrived under the dank conditions, and a relative who's who of the socially disaffected for office mates, that Glory's misguided notion of the ivory tower being a place for attractive, articulate scholars was shot, but she felt more at home than she would have had it been otherwise, a promising dance career and a not-so-promising marriage already behind her. Twenty-five, with the proverbial breath knocked out of her early, she believed herself through with serious relationships for a while, and Mike surprised her. Fourteen years older with the air of an aging jock, he seemed very male in a way that was unfashionable for men closer to her own age, a strange combination of concern (jackets and sweat shirts offered when she was cold, food left at her door) and distance (a curious lack of discussion about relationships, a process he referred to as "paralysis through analysis") that grew on her.

Now she's losing Mike to a new job scheduled to start a month from tomorrow in Chicago, a city two thousand miles away and much to the surprise of people they know, but not to her, neither one of them has said anything about it. Mike studiously avoids the subject, and she has subsequently spent the last three weeks of the two years they've dated trying not to cry, and the effort shows on her face, the downward turn of her lips, the bright red marks under her eyes caused from rubbing them whenever she gets nervous which is way too often. For the first time in her life, everything makes her sad. She who never cries now gets misty-eyed over the news with the crime reports that seem to get longer each day, the horrible human interests stories about girls drowning their newborns in toilets, and more recently, a mother who let her daughter get up to the impossible-to-imagine weight of 650 pounds before the child died of heart failure, the mother, indignant at accusations of child abuse, claiming that she was just like any other mother. Glory thinks about how downhill everything seemed to have gone since her childhood, a general loosening of standards happening as long as she can recall, serving to impart a desire in her not to not do bad things, but to avoid the appearance of having done them.

And concerning matters of her own appearance, Glory, moderately obsessed, finds her reflection mesmerizing and horrific, and she excuses herself to the bathroom to stare in the full-length mirror at her skinny legs sticking out of cut-offs, brown hair in a high ponytail, and her feet that look huge to her, encased as they are in an old pair of Nikes with a turquoise swoosh. She pulls up her t-shirt to see if her ribs are still visible after the one piece of pizza she's eaten, and they are, painfully jutting out, undeniable. She switches off the light and turns around for one last look, but she can't see anything in the sudden darkness. Just like that, she's not there.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"To me death is not a fearful thing. It's living that's cursed." Jim Jones

Cocktail Hour
Drinking snack suggestion: Frito Pie -- chili and cheese over fritos -- this is as close to cooking as I get

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday!

Happy Birthday, Angela!

It's my dearest Ang's birthday today! Happy birthday, honey! We met about a million years ago. She is/was good friends with my ex-husband to be. And we're all still friends now, although I like to say that I got her in the custody battle. Here's to many more and lots of drinks and fun on the big day!

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Cultivate your curves - they may be dangerous but they won't be avoided." Mae West

Cocktail Hour
Happy Birthday To Me

one glass of champagne
one shot of X-Rated Pink Vodka
one rasberry dropped into the bottom of the class

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Thursday!

Chaos Theory

Things are very chaotic here, so I'm going to sign off for today and promise more tomorrow. Hope your week is going well, my dears!

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Hard work has made it easy. That is my secret. That is why I win." Nadia Comaneci

Cocktail Hour
Drinking dvd movie suggestion: Lars And The Real Girl

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday!

Keys Made While You Wait

Keys Made While You Wait

I’ve always loved something that could mean
anything or nothing at all. That explains many
things, you and me, and the guns underneath
our bed. The romance of the Chinese
restaurant menu portion of our relationship
has long since worn off. We are no longer
pointing out the obvious traits, but rather cloaked
in conversation. If I say, it seems like a long time
until my next birthday and you look down to trace
my sign, we can say the words we know so well.
There’s a sale on caskets at Costco -- like all the advice
books say, it’s good to keep in mind where this is going.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue." Albert Einstein

Cocktail Hour
Drinking dvd television series suggestion: Square Pegs

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Tuesday!

Tour Of Duty

Hey everyone! Since I'm on a roll with this creepy birth theme, I'm going to stick with it. Thanks for reading!

My friend Hank's mother talked about giving birth to him while his father served his second tour of duty in Vietnam. "When Hank was born," she said, "I thought now I'll never be alone again." She told this story at Hank's funeral, the part after everyone goes to the church rec rooms to eat a potluck dinner, the Southern food in all that Pyrex, the potato salads and ham dishes. I popped another Vicodin but to little effect -- nothing could rival the morning high that had allowed me to coast through a breakfast at IHOP with a few friends, my ex-husband, and his new wife. I thought about how Hank was born during a freak snowstorm, born in the Crazy Water Hotel which eventually became a nursing home. So much to take in -- the snow in March, him born partially blind, his dad at war from which he would return, but not really the same, because let's face it, memory can't be altered and war cannot be forgotten and the body doesn't return to normal no matter how much your setting does.

Hank's dad said almost nothing ever. I do remember one story, about having to work one summer cutting down sunflowers in the Texas heat. "I hate sunflowers," he said. "Nothing uglier." I knew so little about him that this stayed with me. Although I loved all flowers, even weeds, I decided I could hate sunflowers as well in solidarity. I saw them on the sides of the roads, took in their beauty, and dismissed it.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"If you enjoy the fragrance of a rose, you must accept the thorns which it bears."
Isaac Hayes

Cocktail Hour
Drinking short story suggestion: Pleasant Drugs Kathryn Kulpa

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!

All That Snow

Here's another excerpt from Second Day Reported. Thanks for reading!

My first trip anywhere was to St. Paul, Minnesota for my dad's work where my mother and I stayed in a hotel room all day awaiting his return and watching the snow fall. "It felt like we were the only two people in the world," my mother said of those hours. "All that snow. It covered everything." When she told this story, I thought of myself at six months and about her one story about being in labor with me. "There was a woman next to me who had four kids and she cried and screamed. You wouldn't believe it, such a baby herself. I never made hardly a sound."

Strange how sad that story made me, my mother such a brave little engine, so tough that she couldn't allow herself to make much noise during a long and arduous labor. How it made perfect sense that's how I came into the world, my dad in the waiting room as men did in those days. My mother alone and silent with her pain and then with me.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"My whole life has been decided by fate. I think something more powerful than we are decides our fates for us. I know one thing - I've never planned anything that ever happened to me. Sharon Tate

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity Kerry Cohen

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Sunday! Thanks to everyone for all the recent e-mail. I should be caught up in the next week!

Gratiot Dream Cruise

Hi everyone! Here's Saturday pictures. Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

The Double Image

Hi readers! Been busy with many nightmarish tasks today so I'll be back with pictures tomorrow. Thanks for all the comments on Second Day Reported!

Michelle's Spell fo the Day
"There is a time of reckoning in all our lives." Lorna Luft

Cocktail Hour
Reading poetry suggestion: "The Double Image" Anne Sexton

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday!

Mother's Little Helper

Here's another excerpt from Second Day Reported. Hope you're having a great day!

My ex-mother-in-law posed spouses at the edge of family pictures so that in the even that they should divorce, she could cut them out of the photograph with an exacto knife. I can still see her at the kitchen table with her gas-station mug filled with Diet Coke and some version of a mother’s little helper (vodka usually because of the lack of smell), wearing one of her hideous housedresses which was strange given that she was an attractive woman but went to great lengths to hide it except once when she went to the Denton Gold Triangle mall and had a series of Glamour Shots taken -- most of them were all right, but the nautical these that permeated most of them proved to be a mistake. She’d ease the pictures out of their frames and set to work while I’d see if there were any stray painkillers in her bathroom which was usually a safe bet given the never-ending nature of her female trouble. She had troubles all right, the kind that go on and on. Nobody wanted to listen, most of all my husband, her son.

One night she called us to her house telling us it was an emergency. "Hide my gun," she said. "I feel like putting it in my mouth."

My husband sighed, unloaded the chamber, and put it back in the dresser drawer, nestled in her underwear. He’d started to get an inkling that my own mental health was a little dicey, and he had has his fill. We hadn’t had that much fun and we weren’t going get well no more. He’d been trying to get away form a particular house of horrors, only to step into another. Life was funny that way, fucking hysterical.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Better times perhaps await us who are now wretched." Virgil

Cocktail Hour

Drinking memoir suggestion: Lessons In Becoming Myself Ellen Burstyn

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Thursday!

Valley Of The Dolls

Hi readers! Big day today so I'm posting a few shots from what I imagine to be the casting call for a post-modern Valley Of The Dolls. Hollywood doesn't go for booze and pills! Read Lovely Me (Barbara Seaman), the fantastic biography of Jackie Susann. In the small world file, Jackie and her friend Rex Reed almost went to the party where Sharon Tate was murdered by Charles Manson. The only thing that saved them was that Jackie had a headache. Of course, Sharon Tate starred in the movie version of Valley of the Dolls. Creepy world after all.

Compliments

Hi readers! Still recovering from my toe injury -- thanks for all the good thoughts. Going to post a poem today and will be back at you tomorrow.

Compliments

I don’t even like boobs, my friend’s boyfriend said to anyone
who would listen. “What a waste.” She wandered by
in her black push-up gown, not speaking as he poured
more Rum and Coke, more Rum than Coke. I thought
back to my mother’s friend who drank the same thing.
She’d sit in our kitchen for hours and once, looking at me
in my leotard before gymnastics practice, said, “You
have great legs. Too bad your top part doesn’t match.”
She let me sip some of her drink that night, but it
was so sweet that I couldn’t drink enough to enjoy it.
Nothing much changed over the years, but I know enough
to nod and smile when the boyfriend says, “You have
great legs. It’s like something you’d see in a magazine.”
I pretend like I’m drinking what he is, but he’s too drunk
to realize I’ve switched to something with bite, something
that tastes like it could really hurt you if you let it.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"A man's most open actions have a secret side to them." Joseph Conrad

Cocktail Hour
Drinking fun suggestion: Joe's Lemonade -- teeny tiny lemonades meant for children, but perfect for adults who like tiny boxes and straws.

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Tuesday!

My Blood Went Cold

Four years ago today, I was on a plane returning home after my dad died in a plane crash. Seated next to me was a woman named Sanyo, a word that means health. "I renamed myself at three," she said. "I wouldn't answer to anything else." She looked really normal, not like a Sanyo which I suppose kind of made her point. "Can I buy you a drink?" she asked. She'd overheard me explaining what had happened on my cell phone before the flight. She most certainly could buy me a drink and when the stewardess heard what happened, she gave us half the bottle of vodka for free.

Much has happened in those four years, much has stayed the same. Memory is a funny thing. I remember going to yoga that morning and eating donut holes in the parking lot of Tim Horton's with my friend Cal after class (who says you can't have it both ways?), and I remember a homeless woman coming up to our window. I gave her five dollars; I don't know why. She said, "I'm so so sorry," in this creepy voice, and I felt a chill. She had the look of someone who had used crack for a long time, a zombie. And she felt sorry for me. Not a great sign. I remember how I felt when I got the news, how all my blood went cold -- there really is no other way to describe this peculiar physical sensation. That and the knowledge of deep shock, despair, and how things would get a lot worse before they got any better. All of this proved to be true. Sanyo gave me her card; she worked for a computer company. I've often wondered how she is doing, a good Samaritan bought me a drink. Health sat near me that day, and we toasted to better times which is always a good wish, no matter how distant.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"At last we are in it up to our necks, and everything is changed, even your outlook on life." Ernie Pyle

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: Drunkard Neil Steinberg

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!

How I Take Your Blood

My friend Ang and I were discussing manners of all sorts the other day, etiquette, wedding invitations, matters of a disturbing and dark nature, and while she was telling me about a label problem from the Martha Stewart line of wedding invites (Martha Stewart is the devil, albeit a big blonde one who makes nifty little treats out of ordinary household objects just like my mother did -- except my mother said things like, Here's something dead. See what you can do with it and Martha, well, Martha insists that most things are good things except when her husband fucked Erica Jong at a bookfair in Germany many years ago and both Erica and Martha lived to tell the tale about how awful the whole nightmare was), and I thought about the last stationary set I bought that starts out, Dear Douche Bag. It also includes a Dear Douche Bag pen, and I look forward to many hours of writing with it. I prefer douchebag as one word, but when you find treasure, you cannot be all that picky.

I'm not one to stand on much ceremony these days, but I do miss some of the common courtesy, feel a sadness about so much slipping away. I had my blood drawn on Friday afternoon and asked the tech how her day was going. Late Friday afternoon, everyone tired, the office a morass of low morale and illness. "It won't affect how I take your blood," she said. I said that I knew, but was just interested, just being friendly. "Oh," she said. "Nobody ever asks me anything about my day. People just hate being back here so they never worry about me. I'm getting a divorce. It's a nightmare." I said I was sorry as she taped up my arm and told me to squeeze a ball as she found a vein. It was over before I knew it, which is more than I can say for her situation. "Everywhere thinks it's going to hurt a lot worse than it does," she said. I told her she was good at what she did, that I had been to people who had trouble finding a vein. She smiled and said, "I wish everyone knew it wasn't easy."

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Honesty has come to mean the privilege of insulting you to your face without expecting redress." Judith Martin

Cocktail Hour
Drinking movie suggestion: Turn The River

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Sunday! Thanks for all kind words about my broken piggy. He's healing and is getting used to being taped next to his buddy piggy.

If It's Serious, Go To Detroit

Hi readers! Thanks for all the sympathy about my fractured piggy. I have to stay off of it and tape it to a buddy piggy for it to heal. Happy Saturday to all!

This Little Piggy Is Evil

Hi readers --thanks for all the well wishes! I think I sprained my toe, the piggy that in the children's rhyme didn't go to market, didn't stay home, didn't eat roast beef. Not the one that cried wee wee wee -- the one next to that whiner! Anyway, I've got an appointment to find out the damage later so I'll keep you posted. Happy Friday!