Idle thoughts ...

... for a Friday.


Began my day very early this morning - too early, actually - by clicking on a couple of sites I haven't visited recently after first catching up with Steven's latest. He almost always posts shortly after midnight his time, and last night was no exception. I can look forward to something new and very different from what everyone else seems to be doing first thing each morning. Neat!

I made no comments except for Ellen's post. She was feeding M&M, Chuck's cat, spinach leaves in an attempt to train it not to beg for food. It was funny! She included a couple of cute pix, and I just had to leave a comment. I love cats!!

Kind of unusual for me to leave just one comment, but I'm a little gunshy right now after putting my foot in my mouth the other day and being somewhat careless and (I thought) intrusive with one of my comments on Craig's site. "It's all good," he says, but I'm having trouble getting over being mad at myself. I will, eventually, but right now I'm still kind of in the doldrums.


I reminded myself of Ann Richards who, when campaigning for re-election as Texas' governor in the mid 90's, made the statement about her opponent (who happened to be "W"), "Poor George ... he was born with a silver boot in his mouth!"

Die-hard Democrats and feminists loved it. The media were ecstatic and ran with it! Where was I in all this? I immediately lost all respect for that woman, and began paying more attention to "W".

I had trouble visualizing him as governor of our great state. I didn't much care for his laugh and facial expressions - looked a little 'smirky' to me at times, had some difficulty getting used to his inability to get his tongue around certain words that should have been easily pronounceable (imo), and thought his general 'folksy' demeanor would not be conducive to promoting Texas' image nationally.

He was elected, and I thought did a credible job. (But then, you have to keep in mind that I'm not nearly as involved in the political scene as I once was, so my opinion is probably worthless.) I was pleased, actually, when he ran for President and won.


I thought the media did their very best to try and elect Gore, trumpeting to the world that the State of Florida had gone to Gore when the polls weren't even closed there!!! I was incensed with rage, and wondered aloud to anyone who cared to listen how many tens of thousands of Florida voters who lived in a different time zone might have been on their way to vote, heard the 'news', and turned around to go back home. Talk about disenfranchised! Certainly we wouldn't have had any of this 'hanging chad' nonsense!!

I wonder how many of the voters in the rest of the country, who live in the same time zone as that of Florida's panhandle - Texas is in that same time zone, from here all the way up north to the Canadian border, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Oklahoma, Louisiana, etc. - the 'guts' of America, might have been on their way to the polls when the Florida election (mis-reported and highly distorted) 'results' were broadcast far and wide.

It wouldn't have been even close, folks! Now, there's no way I will ever be able to prove a statement like that, but I'm sticking with it.


Ann Richards meant to be unkind. Mean, even! Lloyd Bentsen meant to be unkind when he zapped Dan Quayle during their Vice Presidential debate with this zinger, "And you, sir, are no Jack Kennedy!" A low blow. Quayle left the door open for it, but ugly nonetheless. And intentional.


I was not intentionally unkind or intrusive, but I certainly was unthinking when I wrote my comment. I sometimes (maybe more than sometimes) put my foot in my mouth when speaking, but not usually when writing (unless I'm really upset about something - Tammy'll vouch for this).


When composing a post - especially on the computer where it's so easy to change a word here or a phrase there, delete a whole paragraph, even, or start over - particularly one like this where it's so full of feelings, I often spend several hours thinking, and trying to get all my thoughts together in some semblance of reasonable order. I often jot down little notes in case I get distracted.


After viewing a few blogsites, I worked the daily Sudoku puzzle. Fun! Tammy and I exchanged a few e-mails, I got the garbage all bagged up and placed outside for pickup, and then I took a nap. It's Friday, and there was shopping that had to be done. Yuk!!


OK. Awake, alert, dressed, and with list in hand, I headed on over to Kroger's to get my weekly 'fix' of grape salad, baked fish filets, mushrooms, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I had signed up to receive 'Allrecipes' frequent e-mails months ago and yesterday, after reading about a cornbread and sausage casserole, decided I'd like to give it a try.

I can just hear you saying, "Goldenrod, that's not on your diet!" I know it's not, but I've been a very good girl for a while, and thought I'd treat myself. The biggest problem was figuring out how I could cut the proportions! There's just me, and the recipe serves eight!! (I can always zap something in the microwave, but how many days in a row would I want to do that?)

So anyway I thought I had it planned out fairly well, but then there was the problem of finding the ingredients - now that was a less than pretty picture! All was finally in hand - or I should say in the basket, and my last stop was in the meat section. Guess what?

You guessed it. No ground pork, at least not packaged. My recipe called for 'ground pork breakfast sausage'. So I went to the meat counter, confident that the butcher would be able to fix me up. No could do. Kroger's policy is not to grind pork to order. It all comes pre-packaged. What's with that?!?

I left the store w/o all of the ingredients necessary to prepare this casserole dish that had sounded so enticing. What I'll probably do in the next day or two (perhaps Sunday, on my way back from taking one of my regular customers to the airport) is return the other stuff I bought to put in the dish. Maybe not. Haven't decided for sure. Right now I'm a little discouraged. The gal in charge of ordering said she'd put in an order for me, but still!


You'll never believe what happened after I had loaded my groceries into the car and was wheeling the cart over to one of their cart stands! There I was, minding my own business and doing a good deed by returning the cart to its proper place when I saw this large SUV-type vehicle backing out of its parking place and heading right towards me!!

I immediately let go of the cart, repositioned my body to a place of safety, and another shopper and I watched with some fascination as this woman (not a little old lady, either - didn't notice if she was talking on her cell phone or not) slammed her vehicle into the cart. Incredible!

It has long been my opinion that parking lots are very dangerous places. The ones who are leaving have concluded their business and are anxious to get on to the next place on their agenda. They simply are not completely focused on the task at hand, namely that of backing out of their parking spot without hitting something or - worse yet - someone.


I'm going to conclude my 'idle thoughts' with a comment or two on the CBS series, "Ghost Whisperer". Do you watch that, by any chance? Well, the series has taken a decidedly weird turn. Not sure I'm going to continue watching it anymore. I mean weird!

I might decide to do a fairly short post tomorrow for those of you who do not know very much about the show. Would you like that? That way, you can decide for yourselves whether or not you might enjoy looking in on an episode or two. Yeah, I think I will. Look for it, OK?


Meanwhile, I hope you all have had a good week and are looking forward to the weekend. It's supposed to start getting cold here. Well, it's that time of year, what can I tell you? Talk atcha later!