Friday Fragments - The Mojito Edition

Time for Friday Fragments, the place to share all those odd thoughts - you know the ones - that are just too random to be a post of their own. Summer is the perfect time to be random, so if you'd like to learn from the master, check out Mrs. 4444 over at Half Past Kissin' Time. She is the one who started this fiesta, and she's still hosting us fragmenters every week. She picked my friend Andrew from A Long Patience as Favorite Fragmenter this week - yeah! And then she picked my friend Hallie from Wonderful World of Wieners for honorable mention. I'm so happy, I hardly noticed that she didn't pick me for anything... Oh well, go check them all out. Very funny stuff.

* This past week or two has been bad for cell phones in our neighborhood. First, I dropped my cell phone into a steaming hot, very full cup of coffee. Decaf. With cream, no sugar. I grabbed it out, but coffee had permeated every orifice. I took it apart, cleaned it, and air-dried it. And waited. After 24 hours, I put it back together, charged it, crossed my fingers and called someone. The good news? I could hear people fine. The bad news? They couldn’t hear me at all. I repeated the cleaning/drying process, and to my delight, it’s working fine now. There’s a bit of a murkiness around one edge of the screen (the cream, I’m guessing) but I can live with that. The day after I got mine fixed, the meter reader for the power company ran over his cell phone in my driveway. Ooops. And then, a couple of days after that, a friend of mine who was visiting dropped her cell in the lake. I think it’s Mother Nature telling us to drop the technology and enjoy what little summer we get.

* I must be getting old. For a bunch of reasons, and not just because I’m beginning the transition from tampons to bladder-control pads, either. When I was at the movies, watching the Ugly Truth and thinking murderous thoughts about the teenagers and their mid-movie texting, I kept wondering if some of them were old enough to be hearing some of the R-rated dialogue. Which is ridiculous, since I know my kids learned more on the bus in third grade than I knew when I graduated from high school. (“Mommy, what kind of a job is a blowjob?”)

* I am sick to death of not having a working oven in this house. I don’t bake a lot in the summer, but it’s nice to have the option. I have to bring all the snacks to my stamping club meeting tonight, and trying to come up with something good that doesn’t require baking is not that easy. Especially since the other women keep trying to outdo each other in fancy-ness. I can’t just show up with chips, dip and a bag of cookies from the store. Any ideas? Quick, because I have to be there at 6:30.

* Am I the only one who thinks the television talks to me directly? I swear, since I became really, really panicked about not having enough money to pay essential bills, and since I started thinking I might not ever have a job, I think all the tv shows are talking to me. “If you lose your job, we’ll make your payments. Too bad you weren’t smart enough to buy one of our cars before you got laid off.” “A recent study shows that people who are still unemployed after one year have the same chance of finding a job as getting hit by lightning. In a related story, large numbers of unemployed people are reportedly standing out during a lightning storm holding a nine iron.”

* Starting this afternoon, and until Sunday afternoon, I am housesitting/dogsitting for a friend of mine. They have sled dogs, like us, but only 10 or 12, plus a couple of house dogs, so it should be pretty easy. Food and water a couple of times a day, and let the house dogs out to potty every so often. Other than that, I think I’m free to sit by (or in) their gorgeous inground pool with the Tiki bar, outdoor fireplace and cool torch lighting. The weather is supposed to be hot and FABULOUS the whole time. I wish you could all come, too. I’d make you a kick-ass mojito.