Thursday Thirteen #1 (totally copying Ampersand)

My first Thursday Thirteen...

1. American Idol this week. Ugh. I thought everyone but Gina was blah, some more than others. And, ew, the faux hawk, how grotesque... why bother? Either get a real mohawk or don't but faux hawks are NEVER, I say, NEVER cool. Apparently, Sanjaya is here to stay for awhile since he is the contestant of choice on the anti-idol website. I wonder if he'll become as popular as the Asian guy who was able to get commercial work after his bad singing on AI. OK, back to the performances... the usuals did OK... Melinda and Lakisha, but they just weren't "on". I was thankful that Sanjaya wasn't the one to butcher "The Cure" song but Blake didn't do it justice either. He could've pushed it so much further with the whole reggae thing but instead ended up wishy, washy, middle of the road... I was sorry to see Chris Sligh go. He added an element of fun to the whole show and can sing but why oh why did he choose the Police? They are so distinctive in their sound. Oh well, 5 more days until next time... I am such an addict.

2. I am going to be reading two books related to mental diagnoses this upcoming month, "Born on a Blue Day", by Daniel Tammet (thanks to Ampersand) and "The Speed of Dark", by Elizabeth Moon (thanks to a member of my book club). The first one is non-fiction and the author is a man who suffers from Savant Syndrome. The second one if fiction and the main character is an high functioning autistic man who is given the opportunity to undergo a surgery that would "fix" his autism.

3. Other than those books, I look forward to going to the library and finding more books, specifically fairytales, by George MacDonald. Wikipedia has this to say about him,

"Though no longer a household name, his works (particularly his fairy tales and fantasy novels) have inspired deep admiration in such notables as W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Madeleine L'Engle. C. S. Lewis wrote that he regarded MacDonald as his "master". Picking up a copy of Phantastes one day in a train station (presumably from a railway station bookstall), he began to read; "a few hours later," said Lewis, "I knew I had crossed a great frontier." G. K. Chesterton cited The Princess and the Goblin as a book that had "made a difference to my whole existence". Elizabeth Yates wrote of Sir Gibbie that "[i]t moved me the way books did when as a child ... Now and then a book is read as a friend, and after it life is not the same ... Sir Gibbie did this to me." Even Mark Twain, who initially despised MacDonald, became friends with him, and there is some evidence that Twain was influenced by MacDonald (see links below for an article on the subject)."

4. Bounce (youngest dd) and I had an picnic on the porch two days ago and afterward she said an impromptu prayer that melted my heart, "God, thank you for making my Mommy," She said something else but I can't remember but remind me to read this post when she is a teenager.

5. Wow, do I even have 13 things to say about myself or my thoughts? Ampersand, how do you do this?

6. If you ever have a cast on your leg, a plastic ruler is a good way to itch inside of the cast without hurting yourself. You may need to invest in more than one, though, because they do break as I have found out.

7. I love my dog. Since I hurt my ankle, he'll wait at the bottom of the steps until I am all the way up and away from them before he runs up and gets on my bed. He's so considerate.

8. Dogs do need baths. Thank God, Dog was given a bath this week. Up until then, you could tell when he entered the room because everyone would start wondering, "Who farted?" Yeah, it was THAT bad.

9. I really do wish blogger was more similar to other blog communities. On livejournal you can blog and have a conversation because all of the replies go to the right people and back almost like a mini-forum rather than having to sign on to see if the person whose blog you commented on, commented back.

10. I wish every house had a porch and that people actually sat on them. Wouldn't it be fun to walk by your neighbor's house and talk for a spell because they were already sitting outside just waiting for someone to pass by?

11. Same daughter just now made up a song that included the words, "stupid mommy"... my how the pendulum swings.

12. Having ridden in a cart at Ikea due to my broken ankle, I can say with surety that I would never want to be the passenger in an adult-sized stroller.

13. There is now a Barbie on the market who comes with a dog whom you feed a "snack" which oddly resembles poop which... it is, when it comes out the other end at which point you can utilize the handy dandy pooper scooper that comes with the Barbie to pick it up and feed it to him again... Kind of gross, huh?