Life As a Pearl

Got some good news for you, friends; some very good news, indeed. Today, the 18th of July, is both national ice cream day  and  national caviar day. I don't suggest combining the two--probably didn't need to tell you that. But I do  suggest indulging in both today. Why? Well if you're really the kind of person who needs more than a national directive to treat yourself to decadence, I've got you covered. Get you some ice cream, get you some caviar, and enjoy them both in honor of me! Now that's  indulgent, you're probably thinking. Who is this girl, to suggest we spend our hard-earned monies and eschew our calorie counts in her honor? What does she think this is--her birthday? Nope. That's tomorrow. And if you want to celebrate me then, too, I say go for it! But trust me; today's the better day for celebrating. Mostly because of the ice cream and caviar, but a little bit because today marks the one year anniversary of my divorce. Yep. I hea...

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS CLASSIFIED MATERIAL. [THE CLASSIFIED PART IS THAT I TOTALLY LOVE THE X FILES, AND I'D LIKE TO KEEP THAT BETWEEN YOU AND ME.] I'm not going to lie to you, folks. You read the warning; I'm an abashed (according to my spell check, yes, you can be abashed) X Files fan. I want to tell you it's because the only person hotter than Gillian Anderson is David Duchovny (true), but I'd probably be a fan of the show if Mulder was played by Richard Belzer, and Gillian was replaced by Paula Deen. Ok. Probably not Paula Deen. But you get the point. I like the show even more than I want to marry the cast. Now if you've ever spent time with me, you've also spent time with my brother, and you know we quote and discuss certain television shows as though they have some actual value in our lives. And in a slightly drunken moment, we would (and did, last weekend) argue that, in fact, they do. I can't relate the conversation word for word. Most...

Well I have news for you, Eric Smith (utterer of that glorious original sentence); it IS my birthday. My birthday month, anyway. And because I share this birthday month with some very special people, I go ahead and declare the whole thirty-one days cupcake worthy. It's a sweet month for me. But you know how it gets when the years start piling up. Instead of proudly declaring oneself seven and a half, then seven and three quarters, then almost eight, you're just twenty-six for fifteen years until the grandma running the makeup counter suggests her brand and you realize you're no longer pulling it off. I don't know what happened this year (divorce, single-motherhood, too much sun, not enough butter--take your pick), but I hit a devastating milestone. Twenty-seven was the year I stopped being accused of being too young for my life. Too young to be married. Too young to be in college. Too young to adopt. Too young to teach. Too young to write. Too young to know those w...

I know you've thought this at least once while reading my blog: Damn. That Ricka  sure sounds like a cool cat. Well, you're right. And here's reason number 147: the Q & A a Day book. For my birthday a few years ago, she bought me (and herself too!) this nifty book. It's like a diary for people who have absolutely NO interest in journaling at all, but would love to have something to force their children to read after they've passed on. In case the title doesn't explain it well enough, Q & A a Day has one question for every day of the year. It has five blanks for each question; the idea being that you would answer the same question on the same day every year for five years. Then you can look back and see how your answers have changed over the years. It's great. Particularly when you think of the kids. Ayana will be thrilled to know that on  30 August 2012, kisses from her were my simples pleasure, and on 25 January 2013, I thought that what makes ...

Alright, Universe. I have something to say to you. This has been a bad week. I'd let it slide if it was just a personal thing, really I would. My own bad week isn't really your fault--that sits squarely on the shoulders of two men I wish would have just married each other and left me out of it. Them and that smoke detector that started beeping at 4 this morning and wouldn't stop even after unplugging and battery removal. I won't blame you, Universe, for my failure to keep those stupid square batteries on hand. But I might blame you, just for kicks, for even allowing crap like that to happen to single mothers. I mean really. I've had a lot of bad weeks in my life; I'd imagine most of us have. But until recently, I've gone with the Simon & Garfunkel method of dealing with the bad stuff: I am a rock. I am an island. A rock feels no pain, and an island never cries. Turns out, rocks and islands are not happy people. Why, they're not even...

You and I both know there's news, and then there's "news." When I wake up in the morning and am ready to know what's going on in the world, I head to BBC. Everyone has his/her favorite source and I'm not here to make a political statement; I just like the BBC because it acknowledges the goings on of things outside Brangelina's castle walls. American news sources can be hard to wade through, and I find myself getting caught up in conspiracy-theory type thought patterns when I accidentally land on FOX or CNN. In my small mind, American people have dark motivations and Europeans have...lovely accents. It's a well known fact that no nefarious person ever had a British accent. Just ask James Bond. As important as it is to me to keep abreast of global and local happening, I'm not going to lie to you. I love me some "news." So there I was this morning, skipping through a blooming field of bright yellow stories (you're welcome, single re...

I don't know exactly what age one must be to inherently distrust "newfangled" communicative devices to fulfill the communication errand to which they've been tasked, but my dad is most definitely whatever age that is. He's been that age for a long, long time. Such a long time, in fact, that I expect a phone call to accompany any email I receive, suggesting I read said email. If he didn't consider texting and Facebook threats to [his personal] national security, I'd be receiving notices that way as well. He recently decided to use all the antique stamps in his worthless stamp collection, so it's not out of the question that I'll start getting letters reminding me to check my voicemail--there's a message on there about an email. Now it's only fair that I 'fess up. Many years ago, I had to admit to my dad that I don't open any of his forwards. It was a forced confession. He couldn't understand how I wasn't deeply impacted by...