Give a girl the right shoes and she'll conquer the world.

(Bette Midler)

Blackbird has done it again--wowed us all with her pictures and stuff. I have hardly written about the Olympics, mainly because I've been watching them in snippets and doing what I said I'd do--suffer from "Olympic insomnia." Well, tonight are the women's figure skating short programs. (That's a crazy sentence, but it's 8 am and I don't give a crap) (just keep writing) (okay)

I guess the other reason I haven't been writing about the Olympics is because they're so close to my heart, I don't want to make fun of them, I don't want to explore how I feel about them, I just want to watch them. Last night at writing, Cliff, one of the other students, said, "So is anyone watching the Olympics?" and everyone said "no," except for of course, yours truly, who started to babble about the ice skating. "No, I don't like ice dancing..." I feel like a foreigner to these other people, I mean, it's the Olympics!!!

Every time Google introduces a new "doodle" I save it to "My Pictures." I had a thought to do a post just of those, but then I'd have to wait for the things to download. So here's the link. And, no, Babelbabe, it is not every day.

Babelbabe saved me yesterday, when I learned that my hairdryer was not going to give me one last dry. It worked Sunday and never told me it wasn't feeling well, just died in its sleep sometime on Sunday night/Monday morning. Said hairdryer rests right now in my trash in the bathroom.

Ah, which leads me to another funny story: yesterday was a federal, county, state holiday. It was not, I repeat, not, a city holiday. But there was some confusion on that. I merely forgot to put out the trash and was pleased to see that someone else had. But when I went downstairs to add the second can to the lot (we overflowed into a second can, yes!), I noticed that the Snodgrasses didn't have their trash out. Neither did Mini or Susie. My brain thought, oh, they must be right, and why would that be? Oh, it's President's Day. So, because I didn't want our trash to sit at the corner until Tuesday morning, I took it back to where it lives next to our house. It was around the time that I discovered the death of dear hairdryer that I heard the recycling trucks. Damn.

So anyways, I ran over to Babelbabe's, where I was greeted by Primo and Segundo (how I love those boys!) and I blew my hair dry. Then I watched the baby while she looked for cash since I wouldn't have time to hit the ATM on the way (I was late for an important date.) "Sweet Baby James, do you know that song?" Yes, Primo, I do. My brother's name is James too. "Do you know 'Country Roads'? That's a great song." (The kid is five!) Which, actually, is about when my dad introduced me to the song, but I bet if you take any five five year olds today, in 2006, only Primo will be able to sing "Country Roads" for you. And I know BB is going nuts because she is not crazy about quotation marks. Sorry, dear. But you have the best boys, you really do. (I bet Blackbird's boys knew John Denver songs at the age of five, too, though--I get a sense that they are a very musical family.)

After my important date (I was going to write about Lauren Winner but somehow this post has become What Sarah Louise did on President's Day) I drove to Edgewood Town Center, to K-mart, where I bought my new hairdryer. It has ions. Apparently that's a good thing. I just wanted one that was 1875 volts and didn't look too weird. (The pink one, it was too strange.) (It was just shaped wrong.) Then I went to Giant Eagle, got milk and cash.

Here's a picture of my current shoes:



Here's a picture of my ice skates. They're from Germany, and I always get comments on the fact that they're blue.



I got them for Christmas the first year my parents lived in Poland. We went ice skating in a gymnasium where they had seen the Harlem Globetrotters play. It was huge and wonderful and very Communist (gray, not pretty at all.) I really miss Warsaw. As much as I want to be in Torino, if you gave me a choice of two tickets and I could only use them today, I would take the ticket to Warsaw, because I'd still be able to watch the Olympics in my hotel room. I think the Winter Olympics are in Vancouver coming up. That's a goal I could attain...Yes, it is. 2010--can you hear me now? (Honey, I know you want children, but I really want to go to the Vancouver Winter Olympics and I think we should wait until they're over. It will be easier to travel if it's just us.) (Mr. Right would understand.) (I'd make him understand.) I truly crack myself up. Thank you for indulging me, dear blogosphere.