Picture And Links And A Movie, Too. Oh My.

Ah. It was a good day. But a dangerous one.
I went shopping.
And you know, I haven't been shopping in a long time. Okay, Kathleen and I went to the mall a few months ago but somehow, that wasn't so dangerous. Today I went with Owen and Lily because Lily's birthday is next Monday, the day after her son's, and she asked me if I would get her a new pair of jeans because she has lost a lot of weight and wanted something to look nice in for her birthday.
So we loaded up the boy and set out in the mall and one of the very first things my eye lighted on sent shivers through my spine.
Have I ever told you about my purse obsession?
Well. I have one. And for about a year I fed it via E-Bay, buying one gorgeous Coach leather bag after another. ALL FOR REALLY GOOD PRICES, BELIEVE ME!
But then I realized that the answer to life is, sadly, probably not really a fine leather handbag. No. Plus, that rack I hang them on kept falling down from the weight. So maybe that was enough.
And I haven't seen a purse in a really long time that made me just stop and want to fondle it. Made me search out the price tag. Made me want to OWN IT!
But dammit, it happened today. It was everything I want in a bag. It was...bag-like. It was soft leather. It was called...The Abbey Road Foldover purse!



Can you say match made in heaven?
The red one (which is the one which caught my eye) is TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS and the brown one, which would do just fine (no- better than fine and maybe the black one is even better), is ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-EIGHT DOLLARS!
I wiped the drool of my chin and we moved on.

We got to the part of the mall where they have all the little kid rides. Lily immediately wanted to put Owen on one. We both knew he was too young but neither of us could stop ourselves from finding the seventy-five cents it required to make one of them go.
We choose the train engine. It seemed the least intimidating.
Owen was not impressed. Okay. He was impressed. But not in a good way.


Well. What can you do? We'll be back when he's older. We strolled on to the places where Lily wanted to shop for jeans. Here are me and Owen in front of the mirrors while Mama is trying on jeans. Owen was tired. Owen was laid-back. For that moment, anyway.



So Lily ended up getting jeans and a beautiful new shirt and then we went up to Sephora and we got her some glittery eye shadow and a new mascara. Birthday bounty! It was a good trip to the mall although Lily was NOT so happy with me when I started dancing to the Muzak and who can blame her? Who wants to see their mother, a grandmother for god's sake, rocking out to rap? Not Lily, I can tell you that. So I only did it when she was in the dressing room. Owen was highly amused (trust me) and joined in.

Then we got in the van and sped to a local restaurant where we met Billy and Waylon.
Ah. My Billy. Ah. My Waylon.



I usually say that we had a "lovely lunch" but in this case, the word would have to be "lively."
Here's a very short bit of recording I did and I am kicking myself for not making Billy tell the What's the difference between a Corvette and a hard-on? joke.
Okay. Next time. I promise. Meanwhile, how country do I sound? "He can be cute TEW!" Oh yeah.



Those boys were wild. Waylon and Owen, I mean. They wanted to clear the table of everything on it and they have long, long monkey arms with which to sweep the area clean.
We left a really good tip. I promise you.

By this time, Grandmother was exhausted. We kissed Billy and Waylon good-bye and Owen fell asleep in the van immediately and I sat with him while his mother ran into various places to get things she needed. While I was sitting with the sleeping boy, I took this picture:

Is he perfect? Oh yes. He most certainly is.

And when I got home I found a message from Freddie who sent me this link:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5811038/technology_and_the_apocalypse_of_fear.html?singlepage=true&cat=2

Now I do not know who Diana Zaragoza is, but let me tell you this- she is welcome to come to Thanksgiving dinner at my house this year. She gave Freddie's film an amazing review AND she gave me a nice one too.
Do you know what? Those few nice words she said about my performance mean more to me than a bucketful of money and are sweeter to my heart than a bucketful of honey.
My first review. Ever.
And of course I love the fact that she obviously loves Mr. FC Rabbath and his films. I was talking to Freddie yesterday and he was somewhat depressed. He's had a difficult past few weeks and a few people were being a bit tarty in their opinions about Disconnected on the forums. And of course it's the negative things people say about us which seem to have the most weight, especially if we're already depressed.

"Fuck them!" I told him. "It's so easy to criticize. It's the easiest thing in the world. You're out there doing it, Freddie. And they're not."

Poor Freddie. He's such a good Christian man and here I am, an old woman (a grandmother!) saying things like "Fuck them!"
Ah well. He was a Marine. He can handle it.

And that was my day.
I can't wait for the moon to rise so I can take pictures of it. I hope some of them come out. We need rain badly but this dryness may mean that we get one of those huge, orange moons and if that happens, it'll be worth the dryness.

It was a good day. A little bit dangerous, but I didn't buy the purse.
You go out of your comfort zone and yes, it can be a bit dangerous. But you survive. And the adventure we call life becomes even more amazing.