Everyone else may have put toupee' tape on their decolletage for coverage but I put mine there because the stick makes me hot.

It's been how many hours since the red carpet and I'm finally posting? Yeah. Too many. All the fashion has been piddled over already. Every single swarovski rhinestone has been inspected, reviewed and declared either delightful and chic or atrocious and nauseating.

This Oscar year I expected to be more interested. No, expected isn't the right term, I wanted to be more interested but the show turned into a snoozefest. This entire winter season has been a snoozefest. The Oscars aren't at fault. My brain is craving something, anything, new and my yearly watching of The Oscars was just more in a series of the same.

Which is kinda too bad because no one looked outright atrocious this year. Gowns fit better this year. Gowns were more colorful this year. Gowns were more classic this year.

Maybe if I wore Sarah Jessica Parker's yellow satin barrel and kicked myself in the ass I might pull myself out of the cloudy day that's lasted all winter. As it is, I'm hunched over like Miley Cyrus trying to keep herself from having a wardrobe malfunction in her too small strapless cup
Still, these ladies weren't the worst dressed. It's my pretense and my pleasure to award The Absent Minded Oscars Best and Worst...as far as I cared about them. As usual, I stick these awards on the ladies as a tuxedo is a tuxedo is a tuxedo.

One standout for worst dress. There were badly dressed, and tackily dressed, and under dressed, but any of those still looked passable. This one looked...like Barney gone homosexual.



Suddenly I want to set up the Fruit of the Loom guy in the bunch of grapes costume on a blind date. Worst dressed goes to Zoe Saldana. We see you. We sure do.

Onto best dressed...which nearly went to J-Lo. Nearly. I would have if one of the petals in the side train on her perfectly fitted gown didn't wave about every time she moved.

Best Dressed goes to Penelope Cruz.



Sigh. Perfect. Lovely against her skin.

Speaking of skin...did everyone else notice that it was fine and dandy to be seen as one's natural skin tone this year? As in, if you are the same color as mozzarella cheese, there wasn't a need to spray tan yourself fabulous?

Except for Demi Moore, whose dress matched her fake bake. It's 2010 Darlin'.

Maybe, just maybe, my natural skin tone, which is as lilac as Ms. Saldana's skirt, will be in by 2030. By then I'll be overrun by spider veins which had better be fashionable as well.

It's hard for me to kick against the pricks.

An acquaintance of an acquaintance of mine, being very concerned with all this seismic activity around the globe, has done her part for natural disaster relief by making a righteous observation about all the nations of the earth being called to repentance.

As in, fire and brimstone, y'all.

Not knowing the will of God as well as she does, all I can do is remark on the end of days in my own unsure and fallible human way. I woke up to my own 6.0 earthquake not long back and I feel I'm in a position to offer an opinion on Armageddon. That and my carbon footprint is amazingly small.

Screw repentance. This is the one time in existence where mayhem is going to be the norm and I'm going to make the most of it.

If the world is ending I want to try some pot brownies. I've never been one that found illegal or controlled substances attractive before but if this is the end of days I want to get a hardcore case of the munchies. No one has told me where I can procure marijuana though and that's probably safest for everyone.

I'm gonna jaywalk, woohoo!

If Armageddon can be put off until the warmer months I just might jaywalk without any clothing on. That makes it difficult to carry a concealed weapon and the associated ammunition but I can deal. No way in hell am I going to be doing laundry when the world ends.

I'm going to rip up the pledge I made to Oprah to not talk on my cell phone and drive...or worse, text and drive. No need for a pledge. No need to pay my cell phone bill! No need to text my vote to American Idol, not that I ever voted before.

Finally, I'm going to realize my dream of making a barbecue grill out of a grocery cart.

Until I'm sure it's gonna happen, and I think the same book that advises us to repent is pretty clear on how many horsemen are going to show up, I'll just live my normal everyday, fully dressed on the most part, existence.

...and I'll give because I can.

...and I'll not pay the acquaintance of an acquaintance any more mind. Hope there is enough room on the grocery cart for her ideologies after I spread out the carcasses of my yard gophers I caught to eat in a pinch.

From humble beginnnings...

I am talented.

I'm serious. I. Am. Awesome. I have skillz. There are traits and inclinations that were bestowed upon me when I was pooped upon this planet that I can exercise much better than alot of other people who were pooped on this planet.

If I entered contests utilizing these skillz I'd get a steenkin' prize.

And if I didn't get the top prize because judges can't or won't recognize my brilliance, well hell, I'd declare my own top prize. A superior prize. The platinum prize. Because I'm Awesome.

For instance, I am a marvelous stitcher on of sequins. My sequins are sparkly and well placed. My sequins are never gaudy unless I mean them to be. My sequins are superior. Therefore I declare myself the recipient of the Platinum Sequin Stitcher Award, podium and speech not necessary.

I am a keeper of the best pancake recipe the world has known and when I make them I include the dedication and love that makes pancakes a delicacy. Light, fluffy, a quickbread where syrup can only enhance the fineness of the crumb. I flip superior flapjacks and so I offer myself the Platinum Pancake Medal. Thank you.

If there is something you have trouble finding on the internets, I can Google any subject better than any other computer nerd out there. I can sift through information better than any other housewife on the planet. I can find a singular grain of sand on the digital beach. My typing skillz are sharpened by the ability to determine perfect and specific search terms. It's my pleasure to accept the Platinum Googling Guru Plaque. I'm going to hang it in my bathroom.

Also I am the past recipient and ongoing champ of:
-The Platinum Packing Peanut Round-Up Prize
-The Platinum Passive Project Runway Watching Award
-The Platinum Unstick the Garbage Disposal with the Handle of a Plunger Trophy
-The Socks Not Matching the Rest of my Outfit Platinum Cup

You may look at all my accolades but don't touch.

Wouldn't want my greatness to rub off on you if you are unprepared for it.

Gimme a few years and I won't look old enough to be someone's grandmother either.

Today is my oldest son's 16th birthday.

While I was gone last week an old acquaintance told me that I didn't look old enough to have a 16 year old son.

She's my new best friend, God love her.

I get the little blue car in the game of Life.

I spent a portion last week travelling out of state for the funeral of a girl I grew up with, the older sister of my best friend and then next door neighbor.

She was 37 years old. There won't be a clear explanation to her death for another four weeks.

I spent my life at their farm until I was 11 years old. That's when I moved away and kept my best friend by phone until I could drive. My childhood was spent throwing manure in every form at each other at every opportunity, because throwing manure at one another was free and fun. We threw eggs too, fresh and rotten, because they had free range chickens before they were politically correct. We threw potatoes at each other when it was potato digging time which broke up the monotony of acres of such dirty work.

We tied each other up with bailing twine. We built clubhouses out of a stack of odd sized 2x4s and mud...mixed with more manure of course. One year we even fashioned a toilet and sink with running water. We played a sorry version of softball with whatever implements would serve as bat and ball. We soaked for hours in an irrigation ditch. We got the hell bit out of us by mosquitoes moving sprinkler pipe. We caught toads and tortured tomato worms. We chewed on fresh asparagus and rhubarb, pulled carrots right out of the ground in the garden.

In our cleaner moments we'd play with Barbie dolls under the lilac or sour cherry trees. Every single one of them dated my permanently castrated Michael Jackson doll. So much cooler than having a mud bath with Ken.

The old town has changed. Would it be snobby of me to declare that I once lived in the largest house in a rural town with far more cows than people? I did. Six bedrooms. Three and a half baths. A cellar room just to store potatoes in. The first thing I see when driving in last week was a McMansion in a collection of other newly built McMansions with a barn nearby that a horse wouldn't dare poop in. My old house was dwarfed by not only new consumerism but a large aluminum shed twice as tall and wide as the house in the first place, directly off the back door. They painted the front door an ugly black. I felt violated.

The playground equipment I used to scrape my knees on at the nearby park and rodeo grounds looks shabby, replaced by a series of safety enhanced brightly colored modern plastic tubes, ladders and swings. The tiny corner store, where I could get tootsie pops for a nickel, has long been mowed down. The spanish olive tree at the back of our alfalfa field is gone. My fourth grade teacher wears hearing aids and uses a cane.

True to form though, there was no cell phone service. The town is still that little. There are still plenty of cows. The smell is the same.

I sat for the funeral in the chapel of the church, in a new pantsuit that I swore I'd never own, aware that I had grey hairs showing and emerging crow's feet, and knew that there would never be an existence like the one I had ever again.

It was years of golden moments. Rotten egg splattered wonderful moments.

Ironically, my own Dad is feeling much the same way. Only a short time prior to the death of my friend a childhood friend of his passed away just as suddenly in an accident. His moments can't be shared anymore. Only remembered. My Dad is taking the time now to write down the moments so we can have a glimpse because they will never exist again.

It was my Dad returning to the existence he grew up with when we moved when I was 11.

I don't want to return to my old town though. Seeing the changes is enough.

I'll just write my moments down. I'll blog about it. We can all have a glimpse.

There is a prize in my box of cereal, yay!

My four year old son heard me peeing from the other side of the bathroom door and ever so politely inquired, "Did you grow a penis yet?"

I replied that girls don't have penises. They have vulvas and vulvas have a hole where the pee comes out.

Disappointed with that answer he asked, "Why don't you want a penis?"

It's a valid question. I'm told that having a penis is a life changing experience. They are fun to show off at parties. Nothing is ever boring when you have a little pirate in the crows nest over your poop deck.

I told him that I didn't want a penis because they were just too damned expensive. He's lucky he got his for free.

Then my son asked to watch cartoons.

Wrapped in cellophane, touched by an angel.

In part because of guilt, and in part because of my aging anatomy, and lastly in part of Dr. Oz's and Oh-pur's influence, I've been trying to incorporate more raw foods into my diet.

This isn't a new year's resolution. I just like a timely poo.

Which means one of my favorite raw foods, a nice crunchy wedge of cabbage, times these poos in even two hour increments from about 1 pm to bedtime.

There have also been carrots, apples, raw sweet potato and oatmeal. Sexy foods.

You can't imagine how clear headed a person feels after all that elimination. It's liberating in a way. Like spring cleaning and deep tissue massage all wrapped up in one fiber filled package. I've been bouncing out of the bathroom like it was Christmas morning.

...and then Justin brought home a box of Twinkies.

If I had the time to make a glittering Twinkie GIF I would. Golden auras of beautiful delicious cake calling all toward it guaranteeing spiritual epiphanies and two bites of bliss.

Justin doesn't eat Twinkies. He got himself a box of Ding Dongs. He loves me and he brought me home a box of cuddles. Cabbages are not cuddly.

So I ate these Twinkies.

Not all in one sitting...but close enough.

Which caused me to lose any motivation to move any part of my body not related to my right hand moving toward my mouth.

And then my brain shut off.

All I was left with until my balking digestive system worked through all that shortening was a bland sense having once been happy and a film in my mouth.

Christmas was over. My toys ran out of battery power.

If we stuff Dr. Oz full of Twinkie cream will the man ever die? He won't be the perky man we love but he'll live forever. If we stuff Oh-pur full of Twinkie cream will the woman ever....meh, nevermind.

I apologize to the Hostess company for limiting my Twinkie consumption to once or twice a year. I'm more sorry than you know. Middle age has found me and I can't eat like that anymore.

I'm switching to crumb Donettes. The crumb part has fiber I'm sure.