Wow, what a week! It wasn’t a bad week, just a very long and hectic one. On Wednesday afternoon I wrote “liquor store” on my Thursday to-do list, which is kind of telling. I dropped the boys at their karate class and hot-footed it to the liquor store. I browsed around a bit, and noticed that a wine I like was on sale. I opened up a case to make sure it was the type I wanted – for whatever reason I didn’t see the information on the case itself. The cashier looked at me strangely, and said, in a bit of a snippy voice, “That wine is on the display! You can just take a bottle!” I smiled sweetly and informed her that no, I wanted the whole case, which caused the entire lineup of people to swivel around to look at the wino in aisle 2. What?

After hauling my case into the car, I texted a friend a photo of a cute bottle of wine that I saw.

The Wild One! That’s me! Even though I went to bed before eight last night.

Isn’t that the cutest? I texted it to my friend because she has three beautiful girls, and I feel a particular kinship with the middle one. I am a middle child myself, although I don’t have sisters, and so I decided to go back into the liquor store and pick up a couple of those bottles.

Nothing says “stability” like going back to the liquor store 90 seconds after leaving it.

Anyway, I was in line to pay for the three more bottles of wine I had somehow picked up, when I overheard the conversation from the other lineup. An older man was paying with cash, and the cashier asked him if he had five cents, so as not to have to give him a pile of change. He didn’t. “Oh! I have five cents!” I blurted out to this complete stranger, as I dug through my wallet for a nickel. As he was leaving, he said to me, “Thanks again, young lady, that was very kind.” Now, I don’t know how kind it is to give someone five cents, but it was worth many times that to hear the words “young lady”.

It was nice to hear, since I watched myself on the local television program I was on this week. I realized, suddenly, why I am so wrinkly. Not only do I talk with my hands, but I really talk with my face. I am like a female Jim Carrey, but without the…well…most of Jim Carrey. I have a lot of expressions, is all I’m saying. Also, my mouth is huge. I laugh and smile a lot with all teeth showing. This isn’t a bad thing, just an explanation for the forehead wrinkles and smile lines.

This is WITH filters.

It’s been freakishly warm here – I am certainly not complaining; any day in January that is not minus 30 is a win, as far as I’m concerned. But it has been ABOVE ZERO for a few weeks now! Someone suggested that perhaps this is due to my recent boot purchase. Hey, if I knew I could alter weather patterns via my clothing purchases, I would have bought ALL THE BOOTS years ago. Who knew I had so much power?