And I mean it in this way, played really loud. (Do it, gang; I implore you! It will shoot your spirit like a rocket to the moon!) Then have at least one more cocktail than you can really comfortably handle. Light a charute and go to town, baby. Behave like you're 15 for a few unholy hours (assuming you were wildly sexually active when you were 15; I was) and then... wake-up Sunday morning (today, for instance) and feel like you're one hundred and ten fucking years old. Ack. Christ. But man, did we have fun.

I was celebrating last night. Celebrating what, you might ask? With mom still sick, and me out driving around in all that snow -- well, first shoveling the snow b/c I needed to get over to mom's and the snow plow guys hadn't gotten here yet (and when they did come, they plowed only what I couldn't get to and yet still charged me the full amount. Gee, thanks for that. You have a nice day, too.). But before getting to mom's, I bought her some potted plants to cheer her, among them some hyacinths that were blooming, and gosh did they smell incredible. You just know spring is going to come when you smell a hyacinth blooming. It will come, gang. Somewhere under all these mounds of snow, the hyacinths, the tulips, the crocuses, the daffodils -- they're all down under there getting ready to push through and greet us. It's gonna come. You have to have faith.

And I had also managed a quick phone chat with Peitor in L.A. yesterday. He had me on speaker phone b/c he was in the kitchen baking up a storm for a dinner party. But he managed to get my head turned back around, gang. He's so good at that. He was boiling, blanching, stirring, zesting; and all the while, hitting the nail  right on the head in regards to me. "You're so caught up in managing everything that you're not addressing the bigger picture; you're steering your boat and doing a great job at it. You have no control over the current or the weather; you just gotta keep steering your boat." He said other stuff, too, but it was personal.

Anyway, I felt back on track when the chat was over.  So last evening, we found a couple hours to celebrate. We watched Sunset Boulevard and I lamented, as always, that I can't go back in time and live in Hollywood in the 1920s. And I said to Jay, do you think they'll invent a time machine in this century that will at least take us back in time as invisible observers, if not actual participants? I would love to get back there and stand in the middle of it all, even if I can't interact with people, even if they couldn't see me. I just so wish I could stand there for a minute and look around, you know? I guess we shall see. At the very least I hope they invent some type of virtual reality game that makes me feel as if I'm experiencing it all. (Then no one will ever see me again, probably! "Where's Marilyn?" "Oh she's off in her room again, doing the usual." And there I'll be in my room, flailing away in some weird helmet and strange gloves, thinking I'm on some Paramount back lot and it's 1922.)

On another note... this West Memphis Three thing is disturbing. I knew next to nothing about those guys who got convicted of the murders, but I remember the murders of those little boys so well. Wayne & I were on our honeymoon. We'd been in Arkansas and we would eventually got to Memphis & West Memphis, as well, but on that specific day, we were just checking into our motel room in Byers, Colorado and we turned on the TV while we were unpacking. And there it was on the news. What had happened to those little boys was so horrifying to me that it completely destroyed my evening. I couldn't stop thinking about it. About those poor moms who were just devastated. How does anybody handle that?

Okay, that's it for today, gang. I'm going to go back out in that snow and refill the birdfeeders. Keep the faith about spring getting here soon, okay? See ya. Thanks for visiting!