Thursday Thoughts - When it has to do with my life I wanna be the one in control

1. This is not the move you fucking dumbasses. Bunch of book banning burning fascists. p.s. Show Us Your Books is Tuesday.

2. Glorious beach walk Monday night, so weird to go without the dogs in the off-season. I love the ice on the pipes and pilings.

3. I sent them home in MFD so I could spend a few days working while visiting Kim and family in Vienna, VA. It's so nice to have the flexibility to work from everywhere and spend time with one of your bffs of 30+ years and her family. It really makes for a more rounded life. It was nice to share meals together. Kim and I did a HomeGoods errand, which we used to do in Marshalls in Levittown/Langhorne from the time we could drive ourselves to stores, looped in with a Drug Emporium trip. And Esteban, Kim and I watched the first few episodes of Tommy & Pam. Wild and hilarious. I left before the asscrack on the way down and am leaving at a much more palatable time to go home this morning, getting up early to flex work time instead.

We did games after dinner and Natalia taught me Loteria and we had some Go Fish action as well. She's smart and funny and I love seeing my friends' kids in their own environment.

Some food over the visit: steak salad and fried green tomatoes, mixed mashed sweet potatoes, glorious baked brie

4. I'm ahead on my shore outfitting for the year thanks to the HomeGoods trip. The best thing about going in places other than your usual geographic area is that they have different things. Excellent shore house shower curtain collection at this one. 10/10 recommend

5. We have reached the point in the season where my skin looks categorically awful, just dry and worn. I need to get through February without upending my regimen like I typically do, which throws my face into a tailspin. Already did that a bit with prescription tretinoin, and I'm going to sell that shit

6. I have not seen the Janet Jackson doc yet but I have been listening to a lot of Janet as the title implies. Who has seen it? 

7. Standard yearly reminder that Black History Month is every month, Black history is everyone's history, and that in addition to celebrating Black people we should be examining how much more difficult Black lives are made by systemic racism and every iteration of Jim Crow white people have dreamt up including the current mass incarceration one, question why in the fuck people wouldn't want the actual history of this country as it relates to Black people taught in schools (pretty sure you know the answer even if you don't want to say it out loud), buying Black, paying Black content creators, amplifying Black voices, and making sure there is equity. EVERY month.

8. Add this to one of the conditions in my optimal existence from yesterday

9. Reminder via doodlydays

10. This made me laugh.

Happy almost Friday!

What appears beyond the hyphen in Thursday Thoughts titles is what I'm listening to when I'm starting this - this week is of course Control by Janet Jackson - I forgot about this video

Thursday Thoughts - I need a long winter's nap

1. Amanda and I were talking about the Golden Girls, which I'm watching from the beginning on Hulu. GG is one of  her favorites. Literally every night this week I come home and read and have tea and watch the Golden Girls like any normal 70 year old woman. Anyway when we were talking I mentioned how I missed Dorothy, and Amanda said the same about Sophia, and I said I love her and Dorothy but Dorothy the best. She was like that's because you are Dorothy. Which is true. Amanda went on to say that I am Monica Geller and Dorothy. Also true. So, my exact composition in TV sitcom characters:

Monica is blurry because she's a gif but I hate gifs. Love label makers, hate gifs. 

2. Does anyone want to read Behind Her Eyes or Pretty Little World ? I have copies of them and am happy to mail/give them to you under the condition that you mail them to someone else or share them in person with someone else, with the same instructions given to the person you pass them on to. I don't want them mailed back to me, but I do want them shared with as many people as possible. Let me know. I already tried to pawn them off on my co-workers. No takers. EDITED TO ADD these have been claimed! Stay tuned for more in the future. 

3. Look how lame my book photos are. Are you following That's What She Read on Instagram? Jenn's book pics absolutely always draw my eye. The only time I am tempted to pose my life on that social media platform is around books, and usually after I see one of Jenn's photos. 

4. As long as they're not sleeping, my dogs are very easy to whip into a frenzy of excitement over nothing and I love that about them. 

5. Tuesday's post about meeting a Muslim neighbor cost my heart a lot to write and I don't have it in me to go anywhere else on the burned down house front this week. Maybe because there are too many places to go? Protections stripped from transgender CHILDREN and indigenous people abused and shamefully pushed off treaty lands for the zillionth time in this country because greed and oil are more important than water. Anyhoo if you read Tuesday's post, thank you. If it made you think, I'm glad. If you skipped it or hated it, how about this weather we're having?

6. For Black History Month, one of my favorite poems by Maya Angelou. 

7. I forgot I took photos of the peacocks running amok at Grounds for Sculpture with my camera instead of my phone so I never included them in my initial post. They are such gorgeous creatures. Peters was having a field day with her spirit animal.

8. Nineteen days until I turn 40. Yesterday seemed like an opportune time to re-order my anti-aging night regimen. And a new backpack as if I was in elementary school. Yin and yang. Speaking of buying things, I am thisclose to buying a pet sling for when Mae won't walk on the beach when it's cold. I thought for a minute about people judging me, but then I thought of the lady who bikes around town at the shore with her cat in a covered house attached to the back of the bike. I said to myself self...get the sling.

9. Reminder:

10. E-card of the week: me, crawling towards my birthday month

Later hosen, 

Linking up with Kristin & Joey and 

Thursday Thoughts - you better put your kingdom up for sale

1. Made up existential crisis of the week: what if I had to choose between these albums and could never hear songs from the other again, as long as I live?

2. Nails: Essie Warm & Toasty Turtleneck, one of my favorites. I got them done this week to clean up my cuticles. I hate getting my nails done by someone else but try to do it once every two months for a clean up. As they were drying, someone walked in and asked me if we do eyebrow waxes. I was like well I don't work here but they do wax eyebrows. All of the girls in the salon loved it. 

3. How you know your husband is home from his trip even if you don't see him. 

4. Anyone interested? My friend Mrs. Tiff Dee is selling these through her KEEP Collective biz. She's raised $210 so far for the ACLU by donating her commission on every bar. If you want her info, let me know. They're custom so they're not on her site. 

5. This is the political portion of Thursday Thoughts. I could write a blog post on this shit daily but I'm not going to do that. So it lives here, every week, in one or two or three points. It's time for trump to release the tax returns he promised to release. We already know he doesn't pay taxes, that's not what's hiding. If there's nothing in there that will harm the country, it seems like a no brainer to me - it would go very far to quell the fears of people about foreign influence and interference in this administration and stop some of this shitslide. Then you have the elected officials who voted against forcing him to release them...what are THEY hiding? Why was it important for all other presidents to release their taxes BEFORE taking office, but now that this guy is in there, it suddenly doesn't matter and is an invasion of privacy? Newsflash: if you run for president, you know you're going to have to release your taxes. Why the fuck are we still chasing these down? Call your rep today and demand they support a push to release them and for a full investigation of the administration's foreign ties. Find your rep in the House here and in the Senate here. Should foreign interference not merit the same exhaustive investigation a blow job did back in the 1990s? Anyone remember that? As for his response...First, it's nonsense, not non-sense; second, I do believe this twitter account is unsecured. Hillary who? You're the president now. This is all on you. The only people talking about Hillary still are you and your cult members. But her emaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiillllllllllllsssssssss. Sorry, it was three members of YOUR campaign that  resigned due to foreign ties during the election. Not three members of your opponent's. Get it together. 

6. Have you ever seen Red Dawn? Wolverines.

7. Now we all know every damn month is black history month and women's history month, but to play along in the designated BHM...Sometimes people say that slavery was so long ago and black people need to get over it and we're equal now and and stop with the black lives matter shit. Then you read something like this, where black women of above average intelligence were being sterilized without their permission - in 1961 in Fannie Lou Hamer's case. That's less than 60 years ago. Less than 60 years ago. We have not come that far. Can we stop pretending the playing field is level just because it looks even where we're walking? The opportunities, by and large, have not been the same. The treatment has not been the same. It takes nothing to admit that and to work hard within yourself to do your part to change that.

8. I have unfounded and irrational anger at egg whites. Like when I see them in a recipe I feel stabby. Same with egg white omelets. No thanks. Is there a support group for this?

9. Reminder:

10. E-card of the week:

Made in America, 

Linking up with Kristin & Joey and