Blue Bamboo Diffuser

I meant to share with you the sentiment on one of the cards my sister gave our niece upon the occasion of her 40th birthday.

How could you know...

when you were 20 and imposisbly sexy and unable to imagine yourself otherwise,

that time would teach you something.

That age is not a loss but an exhange of wisdom for youth,

grace for foolishness, love for lust.

And it is an exchange that will seem a very unfair trade,

not for the woman, but for the girl.

I forgot to tell you the funny thing that happened to me NOT on the way to the forum but in the bathroom of The London Tea Room at my niece's birthday celebration. If you recall, she turned 40 2 weeks ago, and my sisters and I took her to high tea at a lovely tea room. We were dressed as if we had all gone to church. It was still chilly (since it's March) so I wore this very nice layered gored lavender skirt with a white top, and a
very colorful sweater.

After we ordered our tea, I had to use the bathroom. Nice little room as far as loo's go. A one-holer. Well, as I explained, I had on layers. So as not to drop my very long skirt made up of copious amounts of material into the commode, I gathered it in front of me and flipped it over my shoulder. Perfect plan so the skirt would be spared the icy plunge.

However, I did not take into account the diffuser of Blue Bamboo oil on the back of the toilet tank. Are you seeing where this is going? I heard the glass diffuser topple, and before I could say "Queen Elizabeth II," oily diffuser liquid was oozing down the sides and front of the toilet tank and onto the tile floor around my feet. The 6 "pick-up" sticks were rolling in the oil on the slippery porcelain.

Now I won't go into detail about what happened when one is peeing and one must jump up quickly from the toilet seat. I don't even want to think about it, but it does take a lot of brain cells for your synapses to scream, "Jump, squeeze, jump hold, GET OUT OF THE WAY OF THE OIL BUT STOP PEEING." I managed. And I managed not to get the oily diffuser all over the back of my sweater by sitting forward when necessary. Pretty fit manuevering for an old gal.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry as I sat there with my lavender skirt lopped over my shoulder and urine-colored oil seeping down the toilet tank onto the floor like lava from Mt. Vesuvius. Do you know how many paper towels it takes to clean up diffuser oil? You know, the cheap butcher-paper kid of hand towels. Let's just say LOTS.

To my credit, I DID clean up the toilet and the surrounding floor tile (with my skirt still lopped over my shoulder). Hell, from a distance, this goop looked like pee, and I didn't want anyone to think I had peed oil. I kid you not... when I returned to the table, my niece said, "My, you smell nice. What are you wearing?" After our tea, we went shopping in the nearby British goods store. At the last display was the table of Blue Bamboo Diffusers and candles. I took a whiff and knew I had smelled that somewhere before. Not a bad smell, not too overpowering. I inquired about the Blue Bamboo line of products and the proprietor said, "We use that in the bathrooms here, and everyone loves the smell so much that we sell a lot of these." I wasn't interested in purchasing any that day. It was a smell, subtle as it was, I could do without. And besides, it was following me home... for free.

I did not tell my family members so as not to detract from the festivities of the afternoon. But on the way home, I did tell my sister the funny story of spilling the oil all over the bathroom. My funny sister called me while I was driving out of town and said, "My car smells lovely. Thanks for the air freshener." Funny!

Going for my Oh-My-God-I-Must-Be-50 routine colonoscopy this Friday. And if you don't think I'm not going to be posting about that in detail, well, you're just full of ... you get the idea!

A Poodle? Are you nuts?

Cheez doodles and ice cream

Lately, I have taken to eating cheez (with a "z") puffs and ice cream (Moose Tracks). Both on sale and soon gone so this divergence is short-lived. Try as I might, I cannot find the nutritional components except, perhaps, dairy in the ice cream. Can you say "depressed"?

Work is crap. Because they do not trust our boss and want him to quit, they are making his life miserable and, subsequently, the people under him. We have to account for every minute of every day on our Outlook calendar. I can understand presentations. I log those in anyway. But now we are to log in "reading a journal article on sex," "checking out videos on this website," "planning for a presentation." How much longer before we have to record "taking a dump" or "looking for a new job?" We are 5 adults who manage our time. We do not need to record our every waking moment and be babysat.

Taking more swimming lessons. Even went on my own the other day to practice putting my head under water. I didn't like it, but I did it. And finally scheduled my colonoscopy because of this hysterical article. Good for 50-yr-old me. (Of course, I haven't gotten there, but I need all the accolades I can get beforehand.)

Going back to St. Louis for my niece's 40th b'day this weekend.