All you need is the Beatles

A while back I declared that Wednesdays on my blog would henceforth be “Wordy” wednesdays. These days, I’m healing slowly and the staples (all 34 of them) have finally been taken out of my guts. If I’m totally honest, though, and say how I really feel, I’m still pretty freaked out.

Not to be super morose and serious, but I think it’s really important to be honest and acknowledge when I’m having some of the blues (as I’ve done before on this blog). I have ups and downs every day, but I wanted to share something that, along with incredible family, friends, and the wonder that is Netflix, has helped me keep perspective and avoid getting blue.

Music. Once again. More specifically this time, though- The Beatles.

I embarked on a photo/ lyric/ postcard project the other day and ended up making a list of a bunch of my favorite Beatles lyrics, the ones that really give me a boost and keep it real for me. So today I wanted to share a few , with accompanying photos.

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done, nothing you can sing that can’t be sung, nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game, it’s easy, all you need is love. There’s nothing you can do but you can learn to be you in time, it’s easy, all you need is love.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life you were only waiting for this moment to arise. Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these sunken eyes and learn to see. All your life you were only waiting for this moment to be free. Blackbird, fly into the light of the dark black night.

Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers that grow so incredibly high.

 What is your favorite Beatles song? What music do you listen to for a cheer up and a dose of reality?

Meri

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Remember This? episode 3

Happy Monday, dear readers! The time has come again for my favorite new feature; where I wax all nostalgic about crap from my childhood in the 80s and 90s…

Remember This? Episode 3

1. Cookie Crisp- As a dedicated sugar fiend throughout my childhood, imagine my amazement and glee when the evil cereal industry started dangling this in front of my demanding, 8 year old eyes…with an equally obnoxious cookie bandit of some kind as it’s mascot who would shriek about “coooookie crisp!” but in reality this cereal was a massive and soggy disappointment, and after that first box I never begged for it again.

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2. Writing BOOBLESS with the keys on an upside down calculator… (‘nough said). See also “HELLO,” “HI” “BOOB,” and I do believe, “BOOBIES.”

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3. Where’s Waldo books. First find Waldo, then find Wenda and Woof… man that guy gets around!

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4. Popples. Hmm, my memory of these is a bit foggy- all I remember is some sort of creature resembling a powder puff with a puffy tail, that can wrap itself inside of its own pouch before “popping” out or whatever and comes in a myriad of pastel colors? I don’t know what the point of these was, only that in the 80s any type of overly cutesy character seemed to sell pretty well.

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5. Kindergarten Cop. Ah yes, we have AH-nold Schwazaaneggah here with bunch of kids, his eyes popping out of his head as he has a coronary right in the classroom and tells kids “It’s not a tumor.” Also notable were the incredibly creepy villain/ father of the obnoxious main child, and the kids who talked about penises and vaginas. Also, Ah-nold’s partner was pretty funny and random in retrospect. I might need to rent this gem again soon.

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Do you remember any of these from this week’s list? What was your favorite horrible sugary cereal? Did I miss any of the calculator message words?

Meri

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Name that book!

This past week I’ve had to spend a lot of time on the couch laying pretty still- which for me means one thing, primarily:

I crank through a lot of books! Last week I got through Catching Fire, the second Hunger Games novel by Suzanne Collins, and then moved onto Mockingjay (the third and final in the series) as well as The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant.

While Mockingjay (as well as the other books in the series) are set in a sort of futuristic, dystopian world, The Red Tent fictionalizes one of the oldest families of biblical times- Jacob and his brood of sons (and one daughter). Both of these novels contain a lot of characters, and I was struck, reading them both simultaneously, by the very different names of characters in each, and what it means about the time the characters live in. Here’s a sampling:

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The Hunger Games trilogy: I noticed that a lot of these characters have names that are either descriptive, earthy, and natural (from the districts),  or have a Roman vibe (the characters in power from the Capitol)

  • Katniss Everdeen
  • Gale Hawthorne
  • Peeta Mellark
  • Haymitch
  • Cinna
  • Prim (Primrose)
  • Finnick Odair
  • Rue
  • Cato
  • Brutus
  • Chaff
  • Seeder
  • Glimmer
  • Marvel
  • Gloss
  • Cashmere
  • Clove
  • Thresh
  • Foxface
  • Beetee
  • Wiress
  • Mags
  • Claudius Templesmith
  • Coriolanus Snow
  • Seneca
  • Greasy Sae
  • Effie Trinket
  • Hazelle
  • Fulvia
  • Castor
  • Pollux
  • Octavia
  • Caesar Flickerman
  • Plutarch Heavensbee
  • Johanna Mason
  • Romulus
  • Madge
  • Flavius
  • Venia

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The Red Tent: While some of these names are quite common in many cultures today, others are less common (in western culture, anyway, which is all I’m really aware of as far as popularity of names goes)

  • Dinah
  • Rachel
  • Leah
  • Jacob
  • Laban
  • Ruti
  • Bilhah
  • Zilpah
  • Reuben
  • Judah
  • Simon
  • Levi
  • Adah
  • Inna
  • Gad
  • Asher
  • Naphtali
  • Zebulun
  • Joseph
  • Esau
  • Issachar
  • Dan
  • Oholibama
  • Libbe
  • Eliphaz
  • Basemath
  • Tabea

Are you interested in how people are named? Do you know what your name means? Do you know of characters in books or movies that share your name?

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Whistle while you work it!

Yesterday I lolled on the couch filling out a crossword puzzle (one of my all time favorite pastimes, for the record), and one of the answers ended up being, “va va voom.” I giggled to myself as we only do when we have too much time on our hands to sit around thinking about things.

Which, as these things do, led me to start thinking about all of the funny expressions people use when they see something sexy they like!

For example, we already covered “Va va voom,” but what about:

Hubba Hubba!

Oh-la-la!

Very niiiiice (Borat)

Scha-wing! (Wayne’s World)

Shumina Humina!

Have Mercy! (Uncle Jesse)

Daaaaamn! ( in the style of Salt and/or Pepa)

Ar-ar Ar ar arrr (Tim the tool man Taylor)

Bada bing! Zowie! Me likey!

and my personal favorite, the good old fashioned whistle.

In the spirit of overt sex appeal, here’s a few photos to drool over (or laugh at)

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hubba hubba indeed!

Do you find overtly sexual images like these attractive or cheesy? What are your favorite catcalls? Who do you think is super sexy?

Meri

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down on gowns

As an accompaniment to our daily scrabble-thons, I’ve been trying to get my mom hooked on “Say Yes to the Dress” on Netflix. As we hem and haw over double word scores, we also have been critiquing this silly show and the gowns that are tried on.

In the midst of this diversion, I was aware once more of something I’ve noticed before- I like almost no wedding gowns.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with traditional weddings and wearing white dresses or even with fancy gowns in general (hello Oscar gowns!), but when it comes to white sparkly pouffy confections, I just don’t get it. I’m pretty sure at this point if we ever decide to have a wedding that I’ll be wearing something much more gala friendly than wedding white. Am I nuts?

So, in order to convince you of what we’re missing out on because of this silly idea of a pouffy white princess gown, let me show you what a dress that costs hundreds or thousands of dollars should look like!

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and my very favorite of all… this glass beaded dress…

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Do you like traditional wedding gowns or do you think they are overrated like I do? Do you love to look at fancy extravagant gowns and couture?

Meri

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say (mac and) cheese!

Tonight, thanks to a post-hospital grocery run by my mom, I enjoyed a delicious Amy’s mac n cheese for dinner. It was slightly easier than the Annie’s mac n cheese I had last night for dinner (am I the only one who thinks Annie’s and Amy’s are too similar for comfort and can’t keep them straight?). The ultimate mac n cheese experience for me will always be not a microwaved one like tonight or a boxed version like last night, but a made from scratch white sauce over elbow macaroni or bowtie pasta like my mom used to make for me.

When I do make mac n cheese from the box, though, I usually try to doctor it up a bit to “healthify” it or personalize it for other family members. So in honor of my suddenly cheesy diet (after an abdominal surgery you no longer care if you show some lactose intolerance symptoms, trust me), I thought I’d share my recipe for two that I made a week or two ago.

Veggie Mac n Cheese for Two (the Annie’s edition) 

first, chop and cook your veggies in individual bowls (me like cauli, man like asparagus)
while the veggies cook, boil your macaroni
finish preparing the mac n cheese
divvy up the mac n cheese into the two bowls... and enjoy!

Now you can have your favorite convenience food and add a few healthy veggies too! I find that cauliflower, broccoli, onions, asparagus, and red peppers go best with mac n cheese.

Do you ever settle for boxed or microwaved mac n cheese? What do you add to your convenience meals to health them up?

Meri

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Remember This? episode 2

Hi friends.

I got an overwhelmingly positive response to my latest feature, entitled “Remember This?” where I reminisce about the good old days of the 80s and 90s and remind us all why our generation is so weird…

and then I went and dropped off the face of the planet for a whole week, bringing us to episode 2 of “Remember This?” with no blog posts in between. Why? Well, to make a long story short and not invoke a pity party, I ended up in the hospital again last Tuesday with an internal hernia and had to have my second abdominal surgery in the past year. I got to come home from the hospital yesterday, but it bodes to be another formidable recovery and I’m feeling a bit down and freaked out about it all. What’s a girl to do when she’s feeling freaked out and overwhelmed?

Distract herself with something fun, of course! So with no further ado, I bring you episode 2 of “Remember This?”

1. Mmmm Bop! Okay, so this one is kind of a freebie, since I’m pretty sure no one who lived on planet earth in the year 1997 emerged unscathed by Hanson‘s infections pop tune. No one knows any of the words beyond “mmm bop”, and no one cares. I wonder where those blonde brothers are now? VH1 owes us a special on this…

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2. Whistle Pops: I was so very obsessed with these candies (I was a girl who always loved a gimmick), where you could theoretically compose a melody before enjoying your lolly.

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3. Animaniacs (and other Tiny Toons): Okay, I’m not embarrassed to admit it- I had a crazy unhealthy obsession with these cartoons in middle school. I rushed home every day to watch wakko, yakko, and dot in their mischief around the Warner Brothers set, and even had several commemorative items of memorabilia that I got from cereal boxes and other marketing schemes. To this day, I still think this show is genius, especially Pinky and the Brain…

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4. Gumball machines: 2012 may have its cake pops and whoopie pies, but the sugary craze when I was in grade school was gumball machines. Do you all remember how popular it was to have your own gumball machine (whether large or small) for a few years there? I wonder what ever happened to that thing. I just know I got such satisfaction from buying myself my own gumball… that I had already purchased… and then getting the money back. Stupid, but I loved it.

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5. Trix color changing spoons:  Another marketing gimmick that my dorky self fell for, I remember everything being more exciting if I could eat it with a color changing spoon. Just today, I was using one of my reusable Target straws to drink a smoothie, and I noticed that it was color changing as well. It brought me right back to my spoons!

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Do you remember any of these things? Who was your favorite Tiny Toon or Animaniac?

Meri

Posted in lists, Make my list Monday | Tagged , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Remember This? A new feature…

Tonight is flashback time…

Lately I’ve been making man-g0-round suffer through episodes of Dawson’s Creek on Netflix (yes, seriously… I got at least 10 minutes out of him on the first three episodes so far…). All of this reminiscing about shows I watched as a youth have me reminiscing something retro indeed.

In the spirit of recently becoming an aunt again (for the fourth time- lucky  me!) and thinking about some time in the future when I’ll regale them with tales of, “when I was a girl…” I thought I’d start a new series (likely to go along with Make My List Mondays) called… “Remember this?”

Remember This? Volume 1

1) The creepy mutant Quiznos rats: Oh, the hours my friends and I sat around drinking beer and emulating these bizarro mascots. Why they were chosen to sell food I will never ever understand, but they remain my all time favorite TV commercial gimmick. “THEY GOT A PEPPER BAR!”

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2) Book-it: For major nerds like me, I couldn’t believe my own luck- now I was being bribed to read books with delicious personalized pizzas? Whoever thought this up was a freaking genius, that’s all I’m saying. I can still picture my hologrammed purple “book it” pin. Thank you pizza hut, thank you skool. Now I can read good.

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3) Singled Out: Jenny McCarthy got her big break on this MTV dating show (back before she was ruining the world with her idiocy). Contestants had to answer questions in order to get closer to the inner circle (where the bachelor or bachelorette was waiting) and Jenny McCarthy pranced around in platforms and Spice Girl style dresses saying inappropriate things. Ah, the glory days of dating shows…

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4) Sisqo: He took the world by storm with the dumbest song of all time, “The Thong Song,” and then seemingly dropped off the face of the planet. I’m not shocked that this happened, I’m just bringing you guys back for the memories…

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5) Clearly Canadian: Yes, there are still limitless varieties of sparkling, flavored waters about these days- but none of them will ever compare to Clearly Canadian, and how absolutely glamorous I thought I was when I drank it…

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So that should start you off on some good, old fashioned nostalgia! I am so excited about this new feature that I plan on keeping it around for a good long while (as there is no generation like the 80s-90s generation for bizarro crap to remember, in my opinion). I’ll take nominations and recommendations for future lists, also!

What do you think of my new feature? Do you remember any of these? What goofy things of the past make you say, “oh my gosh, remember…”?

Meri

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let’s share a cold one…

This week in Minnesota happens to be a bit of a cold spell (sixties mostly), which means I’m pretty comfortable to sit out on our patio. Last week, however, we had a few days up in the 90s, which had me reaching for my favorite cold beverage of choice… beer.

If there is one thing I’ve learned, though, it’s that not everyone is a beer drinker. Therefore, for the purpose of entertaining (or just expanding my own horizons beyond the average lager), I’ve been doing a little summertime cool drink pinning in my free time. And since I’m such a nice gal, I thought I’d share a few of my finds!

Watermelon Lime Frosty

almond milk with coffee ice cubes

 champagne with frozen grapes

spicy gingerman

These ice cold confections look so good they might just have me reaching past my usual Surly or Heineken for something new and different! What is your favorite cold, refreshing summer drink?

 Cheers!

Meri

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