Mark your calendar

(Again with Florida. What is it with that place?)

We missed it this year, but come next August the place to be is the annual Wausau Possum Fest:

Politicians! Eating roadkill! What could possibly be better than that?

Mission improbable

Time flies, whether or not you're having fun.

I find myself, suddenly, invited to the wedding showers of nieces and nephews I still think of as kids. Only yesterday I hand-sewed them elaborate bunny dolls and staged early morning raids on the Power Ranger section of Toys R Us in a quest for that rarest one, whichever it was. And Beanie Babies ... oh my god, the Beanie Babies, the craze from hell. Yeah ... but I loved it all. It's strange now, shopping for kitchenware and china.

Strangest of all is the shower assignment I received this week: On the colorful little 3X5 card provided, I am to write The Secret for a successful marriage. Simple little fun thing, you'd think. But the more I thought about it the worse things got. THE Secret. Distilled to a few pithy, entertaining words. No back-up colorful card if I screwed it up.

I started with the truth, the hardball reality things that keep people together. Depressing. Had to discard those. It's a party, after all. Decided to turn to the coward's refuge, famous quotes. Oddly, while there are lots of great quotes about marriage, there are precious few on The Secret to making one a success:

"Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight." - Phyllis Diller
I think it's funny, but this group wouldn't. Pass

"Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards." - Benjamin Franklin
A little too negative. Pass

"For marriage to be a success, every woman and every man should have her and his own bathroom. The end." - Catherine Zeta-Jones
The couple can't afford two bathrooms. Pass.

"Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years." - Simone Signoret
Snore.

In the end, I ripped off the concept on the wall plaque in my kitchen and tweaked it to fit:

"Argue little, forgive much, laugh every day."

Eh. Given a colorful little card of your own, what would you have written?

Thanks :-)

Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone. It's been over a month since since I've been here, because I haven't been able to face seeing "I am 55" in writing again. I think I'm done sulking now.

So.

Looks like everybody else has been busy. Everyone who ever blogged there seems to be hanging paper lanterns and putting out the bean dip for the party brewing on AOL. Groovy is crossing swords with both the PTA and the Pirates of the Caribbean. Bon and Mal are even writing a cool, scary novel called--evocatively enough--Dark Rambler. (Read it with the lights off.)

And me? Welllll. I turned 55. Did I mention that?